By Rachid Acim
By Rachid Acim
Beni Mellal – Upon reading my article “Difficult to Find a Spouse in Morocco,” a Moroccan teacher from the suburbs of Casablanca came to me to talk in private. He was in a state of feeling complete wretchedness and melancholy. He had read the article and seemed to share the same viewpoint to some extent. “True,” he said. “It is too difficult to find a good wife these days.”
Behind his words was a blue story that he himself felt unable to recount to me from the very moment we talked. The same story could be experienced by any one of us owing to our lack of expertise and communication techniques when dealing with the opposite sex.
Hamid is 30 years old. He is highly educated, very ambitious and very enthusiastic to find a life partner and settle down. He is standing for the Moroccan youths who are duped by the tyranny and betrayal of some girls, who hardly could reciprocate a noble feeling like love or communicate an exalted emotion like trust on a mutual basis.
The girls he had known, he told me, were so selfish and money-oriented. They did not believe in love. Worse, they never thought of marriage or of letting him associate himself with other trustful partners. “The first thing I am asked to do is to send a credit card to my would-be-wife,” he said. “If I refused, she would take me for a close-handed man. Then, I am ignored.”
He confessed that he had many times succumbed to such requests, but he later discovered that the partner he was taking for a future wife is not different from the first. Either she is having another man controlling her emotions or she is testing his capacity of endurance and obedience before stepping ahead in any project.
It will be stupid to generalize the issue. There are some girls who are well-educated and respectful. They will never dare ask a stranger to send a credit card, give them money or anything for free. Their conviction is that anything that is given for free will result in taking something also for free.
Our talk was fruitful because it touched on many aspects of life such as love, marriage, divorce, polygamy and the family code to mention but a few.
What I deduced is that Hamid is really a smart person when it comes to debate. He does attentively listen to his interlocutors. Moreover, he shows a lot of interest in one’s ideas however trifling they are. Afterwards, he advances his arguments dwelling on a mathematical logic. He never talks from vacuum, but he admits that he is still inexperienced in terms of talking to girls.
In my interaction with him, I felt that he was really lost. Suggestively, he might have been exposed to an emotional shock that spurred him to cast his wrath at all girls.
Whenever a girl laughs in his class, he thinks, she is laughing at him. She might be jeering at him for a given reason he does not know. That’s his complex, he admits. He starts to abhor himself and the whole society. However, he comes to seek help and advice in the virtual world. Who knows? Some experiences are possibly common to particular groups of people. Some stories might be reiterated in different settings. Love or marriage partners might fail and the reason might be the same.
I really sympathize with this helpless young man. He is not relishing the beauty of his youthfulness. He is thinking of avenging all girls whom he would meet in the coming days. That might be a pessimistic solution because only the fiasco can appeal to it.
Really what aches Hamid is not the cupidity of those girls but the mischance he has with them. He hates himself when he hears his friends boasting of their relationships with many girls. He confides in me that he has changed a lot. Earlier in his adolescence, he was very devout, courteous, even naive. Yet, the subsequent love disasters made of him another man. He would now smoke, smell tobacco, drink and spend most of his time in discos to forget all the love adventures he had.
Apparently, he might be also representing the rebellious young generation who aspire to live the moment no more no less. He does not care for marriage anymore, but he regrets it. He does not live with his parents anymore. He does not practice sports anymore. He does not frequent the mosque anymore. His life is upside-down.
Such a case really needs guidance. One girl or two cannot corrupt the glamor of life, dear Hamid.
Obviously, no matter how cultivated are they, men will always find it difficult to learn what’s going on inside the head of their female partners, be them spouses, girl friends or whosoever. “I was betrayed and stabbed on my back,” proclaimed Hamid regretfully.
On hearing his story, I was on the verge of shedding tears because the young man was straightforward and honest in reporting every minute detail about himself to me, albeit we had never met. He did not hide anything. One rhetorical question he addressed to me was, “Who is the best kind of women in your view?”
I turned silent. I myself did not have the answer. After much reflection, I replied kindly, “Is it your mother?” He sent a smiling icon to suggest that that was part of tautology; he was not expecting that it though.
A good cook who can prepare succulent food for her husband does not seem to be the right answer, either. Neither the patient nor the obedient one was an answer Hamid was expecting of me. Even the educated, the self-employed were incorrect answers in his view.
I had to reminisce about the famous Prophetic tradition given on the criteria of choosing a good spouse. “If you see her, she cheers you up.” That was my last suggestion to the man and he did not accept it.
I was in the dark.
We left each other at midnight. Still none of us managed to answer the uphill query, “Who is the best kind of women in your view?”
Before sleeping, I had to mull over his question again. Thereby, I thought for myself women are like peaches on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree. They are beyond our reach. Most youngsters, and by extension, most men want to get associated with beautiful women, a mannequin and they forget about her roots.
They may squander lots of money on that. Instead of raising their heads up to see those noble ones at the top of the tree, they take a bow to pick the rotten peaches from the ground both dirty and inedible.
After the earthquake in Japan, the rate of marriage went up. Japanese girls did not turn down any single man and forsook some criteria they had set for marriage at the beginning. Indeed, the disaster changed people’s outlook of life and marriage. Beauty and money are no longer the measure. People started thinking of rebuilding their country, accepting each other and they have shown an unparalleled spirit of solidarity and sacrifice.
Not much different from Hamid, one man betook himself to a village in search for wisdom. He was searching for a wise man to tell him about the kinds of women. A bystander said, “There’s no one with intelligence in our village excepting that man over there playing with children, the one riding the stick-horse. He has keen, fiery insight and lots of knowledge. However, he conceals it and disguises himself as a fool.
The young man repeatedly shouted at the fool, “O tell me about the kinds of women.” At first he hesitated to answer him and continued to play with the children. But later, the fool, on his cane horse, drew nearer and said:
“The virgin of your first love is all yours. She will make you feel happy and free. A childless widow is the second. She will be half yours. The third, who is nothing to you, is a married woman with a child. From the first husband she had a child, and all her love goes to that child. She will have no connection with you.”
“The fourth, one adds, requests you to send a credit card. Shamefully, she asks you to type 586 and text her. She is stupid.”
