In hushed tones with upturned noses…“shhhh shoofi shoofi lala americania….” There are sides to Moroccan culture and relationships that I love, the ones that encourage family values, stability, longevity and togetherness. There are also sides that frankly I would rather leave at the door. This concept however I don’t feel is a product of Morocco specifically but surely exists in many other countries and cultures. It is the ever present glare of women who have decided that you have stolen one of “theirs.” I’m not so narcissistic as to think there is something special about me, because there’s not however I have overheard and been party to the complaints, stares and cajoles of Moroccan women unhappy with my marriage as well as those who have no problem letting me know that I am the starter wife.
Moroccans are known for their hospitality, their openness and understanding, their tolerance and virtues. Moroccan women however are not known for their love of foreign women who marry Moroccan men. It started as a few stares here and there when we would go to visit Morocco, but when we befriended many Moroccans it became obvious that there was something else there. Out of a handful of 10 couples all of the men had married an American woman first, and only my husband and one other were still married to that woman. The eight other Moroccan women didn’t have to verbalize what was apparent to the two of us remaining.
Perhaps it was an anomaly however it was clear that we were looked at as starter wives and that eventually our husbands’ would divorce us and find the “real” wife from home. This might sound like paranoia but I’ve heard this tale and seen it countless times on my own. It has also made me realize that as an outsider I will never be fully accepted into the circle. Even if I speak perfect Darija, am a Muslim and do stay with my husband I will always be an outsider and the inner sanctum that Moroccan women inhabit will forever elude me as an outsider.
Moroccans are generous, hospitable, open armed and tolerant of others, but that is a layered reality. On the surface there’s the reception and drinking of a the’. A little deeper is the sharing of a room in a home, or a meal. Further yet is a marriage to a non-Moroccan and even children with them. Deeper is full acceptance into a household and a culture, the final step, and one I dare say simply isn’t done-no matter what the circumstance.
5:31 am
You have it easy.
Picture if you will, the ordeal of a Christian, Buddhist, atheist or (gulp!) Jewish male foreigner dealing with Moroccans who think you have stolen one of “theirs”.
Then try telling us with a straight face how “Moroccans are generous, hospitable, open armed and tolerant of others”.
10:19 am
Seems to me that your husband’s friends got married for the sole purpose of getting a green card, then if you guys been together for more than 2 years now, looks like you are not “the starter wife”.
the way I see it, the problem is your husband’s entourage, backward mentality.
8:02 pm
hafid – you’re right and it’s the same problem. I think what I was trying to expose is that the generous, hospitable nature is a veiled existence. There are layers of that disposition.
Shak – you’re right they did and I in no way think I am the starter wife, but feel that from the view of Moroccan women I am just that and will never be accepted into their fold.
6:51 pm
I too am married to a Moroccan man. I also do not feel that I am a starter wife. My husband tells me I am his first love and last. So, for the women who think I ’stole” him…. how do u stick out ur tongue on this thing…lol
10:33 am
Hi
I am moroccan married to a very nice and beautiful American jewish woman for 7 years now . we have a beautiful 4y/o daughter. In the beginning , it was my mom who was skeptic . But after my two most favorit ladies meet they fall in love.
2:53 pm
Happy to hear such a good outcome!
3:15 pm
I am a Moroccan woman, and I think the main problem is not that the in-laws see you as a starter wife it is sadly the same way they would have treated a Moroccan daughter-in law.
Mothers in law (the majority) are very difficult to deal with, they like to interfere in their sons lives and retain some of the control they think they have over them to satisfy a need: they lack control over their relationships with their own spouses.
I have seen my own aunt do it with all their daughters in law: the French one, the American one and in more intensified way with the Moroccan one.
With the language barrier not existing they can be at their worst; my own mom after 50 years of marriage still does not get along with the in- laws
1:49 am
Interesting topic
I do not think you are the “starter wife”…he would have left like his friends did, so you got something genuine.
I’m also non Moroccan, married to a Moroccan…and I have to say I feel accepted (not at first) …I love my MIL…she makes the best Couscous…for real
Salam
7:01 pm
salam,
This is t’kherbiq that tries to sound like some insightful outlook into the intermarriage that joins an American woman with a Moroccan man. Matters certainly get worse as the disccussion becomes a totalizing statement about what Moroccan normes about acceptance are.
It is one thing to track a cultural trend carried out by a community in a geographical as unique manifestation of difference; it is another to singlehandedly attribute failed marriages with foreigners (Americans is a sample) to the very nature of marrying from a cross the border. In America, like in Morocco and the rest of the world divorce happens simply because fundamentals differences could not be fixed mainly by the people concerned .i.e the married couple. The so called Moroccan “interesting” (does this adjective mean anything at all?)culture and its adamant favouring of one’s own is a Myth comparable in its grotesquityto Boukhensha. Marriage to a Moroccan should cease to be experienced like the foreigner’s visit to l’hammam or those clandestine sexual acts on the roof after the future in-laws went to sleep. The please of experiencing a cultural difference on an intimate and especially shared level has to be snatched out of its exotic mind-blowing dimension and lived as a puerly universal, concrete, human interaction. In other words, looking at an Moroccan way of life through the biased lense of difference will always stress that very difference. When it comes to living together the cultural and geographical bouderies need to at least try to fade, because marriage is not a surreal walk in the old medina that ultimately ends at L’oudaya. It is a life changing experience, and for better or worse needs not be justified with the classical, backwardist rhetoric that only the tourists reverberate.
PS: Please avoid approching this subject like the frog in high school labs