The parties begin at 00ish and finish after dawn. The music played over the loudspeakers, swells and swells progressively until it reaches its unnecessary maximum intensity and loudness, shaking the whole neighborhood. The so-called singers keep belting out their amplified soit-disant songs that pierce people's ears and hearts. They turn people's homes into harsh prisons and torture chambers. They deprive everyone - babies, old people, sick people - of sleep, keep their hearts quivering and make them suffer ear ringing the whole following day or tinnitus all their life.
It is a 'compulsory insomnia', in Abdellah Damouns words, that almost everyone in this country has gone through. I say 'almost' because our Makhzen (ruling elite) is well-known for its selective application of the law. The elite districts are often safe, peaceful and so calm that you could hear a pin drop at night. When it comes to the plebs, the authorities adopt the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" policy.
Disturbing the peace is a crime in every jurisdiction. However, like many rules in this country, this one is also drawn but not followed. Morocco does not lack laws but the rule of law. Many things here are preached but not practiced or they are practiced selectively.
I have been a little bit around the world, but I have never come across a case where one parties until dawn and the rest of the district stays up writhing in agony in their beds. I have never witnessed a situation when people have to listen, unwillingly in the dead of night, to drums that damage their ear drums. I have never heard cars honk their horns anywhere else in the streets at dawn except in this country where rules are made to be broken.
This situation compromises the future of younger people who are growing up in this lawlessness. Their version of right and wrong will certainly be not only completely different but dangerous too. Adding this lawlessness to the deliberate chaos that is given free rein in our streets after the Arab Spring is adding fuel to the fire. Our future generation is being taught to flout the law, to scoff the rules, and to grow up careless and indifferent of their responsibilities and duties. That's ultra danger.
There is no better way to end this post than pray to God − in the absence of law enforcement − and ask Him to grant us all patience this summer and help us keep strong through the usual summery ordeal. Amen.
1 comment:
Summer Ordeal in Morocco
I have gone through your vociferous, vehement article entitled as ‘Summer Ordeal in Morocco’, wherein you put across, or uncover some disturbing practices that overlap with summer holiday, practices that neither our customs as Moroccans nor our values as Muslims seem to correlate with. What strikes me most in your article, however, is the title which must have been meticulously chosen. The summer holiday which is presumably meant for enjoyment, fun, and rest, the holiday that we all fervently long for to relax and enjoy our time has turned out be an ‘ordeal’ for some of us. The paradox the title evokes could only be applied to Moroccan society which itself is full of contradictions, the society stung, as it were, by illiteracy and ignorance , the society where egotism and self-indulgence have shaped people’s thought, the society where people are totally ignorant of the limit of their freedom. Hence, these revolting practices are eventually the by-product of such a society. Today’s celebrations ranging from weddings, circumcisions, birthdays have deviated from the norms set by our ancestors; they have become, regrettably, a source of distraction and unbearable disturbance. Loudspeakers, loud hailers, cars touring the city, sending unpleasant sounds that could resurrect the dead are but a few examples out of many. Of course you know , Nourdinne, where I am living in Khemisset, next that leisure complex or the so-called ‘Complex of Mimouza’ and you can imagine the kind of nights my family and I spend in the summer. The sultry weather and the rattling noise emanating from that complex render my nights hellish, blackish, nightmarish nights; the night hours become a real ‘ordeal’ indeed. But what I lament most is that it is the middle class and the poor who are usually liable for this ‘trash’. The money for which they work assiduously to save squander it in a wink, observing a celebration, yet causing discomfort to others. I do not hold much hope in law enforcement, because I hold fast to fact that corrupted people would never fight corruption. But I do hold much hope in the new generation; I honestly wish that people’s mentality would change one day. If it does, then the law would change, those practices would die away, altruism would prevail, and our society would be much safer to live in. May Allah bless our country and may Allah bless us all.
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