Ech Chenna: a Princess of Hearts

“I had just come off of maternity leave. This young girl (a single mother) was in an office near mine breast feeding her baby. The social worker came in, gave her a piece of paper to sign and pulled the baby away (to be placed in an orphanage or up for adoption). I remember the time: 5:30 p.m. I couldn’t sleep that night when I got home. I said, ‘This has got to stop.’ I could feel her pain.” Aïcha Ech Chenna, founder of Solidarité féminine.

I was a young medical student and it was only my second year as a trainee when I was first assigned to the obstetric ward of Ibn Roshd Hospital (Maurice Gaud) in Casablanca. I was impressed, maybe even scared, like most of my young colleagues, by the sheer chaos in the ward and the huge amount of activity and number of women who needed help. And amongst those patients were the youngest who were noticeably scared. One could see the despair and horror that the distortions due to the pain of pregnancy labor could hardy conceal from their faces. I was later told that those young mothers were in fact unmarried; that they were “b’nat l’hram,” or illegitimate mothers.

We heard terrible stories about some unwed pregnant women being rejected from clinics by doctors or nurses, and about newborns being abandoned near the gates of hospitals and clinics, and we saw those same abandoned babies and infants (“ben X” they were called, or “son of X”) being brought to the maternity unit, malnurished and dehydrated.

To be fair, those women were reasonably well treated, though one could sense the coldheartedness with which their cases were addressed. It was then that I first heard of organizations like “Solidarité féminine,” “Association enfance espoir Maroc” or “Bayti,” and of wonderful people like Aicha Ech Chenna who took upon themselves the burden of helping those young mothers and abondened children, in a society that continues to put the responsibility of extra-marital relationship, mainly on women. A terrible stigma that only people like Ech Chenna might help erase.

Ben Barka’s Nightmare

“Once upon a time, there was a Sultan who had a beautiful elephant, whom he adored. Much to the dismay of the local population, the animal wandered freely in the city of Fez, causing every day, enormous damage. Gathering all their courage, the people of Fez decided to send a delegation to the palace to present their grievances. On its way, the delegation lost most of its members. All but two daring delegates, who courageously came before the Sultan: “Majesty, you own an elephant so charming that the people of Fez are happy to offer it the company of a female.”

This is a story, reportedly, the late internationalist Moroccan opposition leader, Mehdi Ben Barka, liked to tell his young comrades (see page 299 of Gilles Perrault’s Notre ami le roi -Folio – 1990), whilst teaching them the merits of democracy and freedom.

Mehdi Ben Barka: a Spirit that Refuses to Die

With an unflinching belief in the future, Ben Barka’s generation, inspired by an international drive for emancipation, helped pull the country from its feudal past, and, bearing tremendous sacrifices, despite a reluctant and brutal regime, helped plant the seeds of a modern state.

Forty four years after his abduction in Paris, which anniversary we’ll be commemorating tomorrow, needless to say that the elephant still tramples on the holy mess of Moroccan public and political life, with even more damage than what ever Ben Barka could have envisaged.

What started as a benign transition toward a brighter, liberal and free Morocco, looks now more like a cheesy play, where protagonists, stuck in an empty theater and exhausted by a boring story that repeats itself again and again, try to convince themselves that their master will end their torments one day. But this never happens.

On a weekly basis, journalists are being dragged before judges, handed down prison sentences, financially asphyxiated and treated like criminals. During the dark era when Ben Barka and later on, leftists were tortured or put to death, there was at least one man in charge. Hassan II was a cruel despot, no doubt, but at least he didn’t lack neither presence, nor charisma, nor ingenuity in crime. Today, the feeling is of a shady group of powerful and privileged, who are pulling the strings, lurking in an inner circle close to the king, who seems to be the last one to know when his own subjects are beaten up in his name. Giving way to an insidiously dangerous perception of a ship without a captain.

And whilst the truth about the assassination of Mehdi Ben Barka still is one of the most guarded state secrets, the spirit of the man will keep haunting us, inspiring generations upon generations of Moroccans who no longer want to be considered as mere subjects of his majesty. Citizens who have the courage to point at the elephant and say: this is wrong!

Pinter Forever

 

The day will get off to a cloudy start.
It will be quite chilly
But as the day progresses
The sun will come out
And the afternoon will be dry and warm.

In the evening the moon will shine
And be quite bright.
There will be, it has to be said,
A brisk wind
But it will die out by midnight.
Nothing further will happen.

This is the last forecast.

Harold Pinter.

By traveling freely across cultures

those in search of the human essence

may find a space for all to sit…

Here a margin advances. Or a centre

retreats. Where East is not strictly east,

and West is not strictly west,

where identity is open onto plurality,

not a fort or a trench

Mahmud Darwish
1941 – 2008