First, I would like to apologize for the lack of posts this past week. I had hoped to be able to write about the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday which was last Wednesday through Friday, but the whole experience was kind of a let down. I’ll describe what was supposed to happen, but over all it was not what we expected. Saturday two of my roommates, our friend Don and I went to Chefchaouan, the blue city, and it was fantastic! I absolutely loved it. I haven’t been able to post about it though because the internet we have been using in our apartment suddenly disappeared. We believe the wireless connection we had belonged to one of our neighbors and for one reason or another it is no longer there. So I will now have to resort to the students’ café at school, internet cafes, and the ISA office when it is open in order to get internet.
The Prophet’s Birthday: For those of you who don’t know, the Prophet is Prophet Mohammed, the founder of the Islamic religion. He was an illiterate man, who one day walking out in the desert was spoken to by the angel Gabriel who relayed to him the message of the Quran, the holy book of Islam. This makes the Quran miraculous because it is written in a very refined and poetic language and since Mohammed was illiterate he could not have written it on his own. The Islamic calendar is determined by lunar cycles unlike the Christian calendar. The Christian calendar is determined yearly and all dates are decided for the entire year. The Islamic calendar is a little more up-in-the-air you could say. Celebrations, holidays, feast days, and fasts are not able to be determined until a certain phase of the moon has taken place. So all last week we were waiting for the official proclamation from the Imam in Fez saying that the moon has reached the correct point and the Prophet’s Birthday has begun. This finally happened on Wednesday and because of the lunar cycle, it lasted until Friday. This meant no school for those three days, carnivals in the big parks around town, and some major festivities in the medina. Meknes holds a special place in Morocco for the Prophet’s birthday. There is an Islamic saint buried here in Meknes so many people from all over the country travel here to visit his grave, especially during the Prophet’s birthday. Celebrations are mixed between festivities approved by the Islamic religion and those that are more ritualistic, tribal behaviors left over from ancient Berber practices. For instance, trance dancing is one spectacle to see on the Prophet’s birthday. Basically the idea is that these Sufis ( small mystical sect of Islam) go out into the square in front of the mausoleum and begin dancing to a drum/chanting music. The beat of the drums and the movement of their bodies puts them into a trance and they are one with Allah(God). They are then no longer in control of their actions until the trance wears off. During a trance we were warned that they might cut themselves. We were also told not to wear black because when you are in a trance, evil possessive spirits appear to you in black and they must be attacked to prevent possession. I only briefly caught a glimpse of the Sufi trance dancers, but other people in my group got a chance to see them. They did in fact cut their arms while they were dancing which creates this terrifying surreal dance with men in all white robes covered in blood. THIS IS NOT AN APPROVED ISLAMIC TRADITION. It is a tribal behavior that has been added to the local variant on Islam. Another one of these tribal activities that we were warned about was live animal sacrifice in the streets. As in, people who need some sort of divine intervention bring a sheep or a goat to the Sufi trance dancers and they rip it apart while it is still alive. Then everybody feasts on the raw flesh. I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A PRACTICE OF ISLAM.
My roommates, a few other ISA students, some Moroccan friends, and I went to the medina in the late afternoon to check out all the action. We were told things didn’t get going til around 3 and that’s right about when we got there, but apparently we were late. The medina was so crowded you couldn’t even breathe. There were people everywhere. Our group had a very hard time staying together in the crowd. There were a few times when the massive crowd literally got stuck and no one could move anywhere. This quickly became a not enjoyable experience, but we were determined to get to the mausoleum and see some trance. We finally get there and there are so many people that we can’t see anything. We move around to some different spots and keep trying to be optimistic, but things aren’t working out. After awhile, the whole thing was just not worth it anymore, there were too many people and we were worn out from fighting through the crowd. I wish I could have seen something, that would have made it all worth it. I’ve tried searching online for pictures of this particular event, but the Sufi trance dancers don’t appreciate having their picture taken and I’ve heard stories about cameras being smashed so that could explain why my search hasn’t been fruitful. You can see a Turkish version of Sufi Trance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEadcv79Wto This is an organized stage performance, meaning no blood or animal sacrifice involved. My roommate, Tiffany, also wrote about this. She actually has some photos and video from the day, check it out: Tiffany's Blog.
On another note, I would like to say thank you for all the amazing words of support I got from my last post. Thank you so much for reading my blog, for writing comments, and for letting me know that there is hope for the future.
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