One thing that people from home always ask me is how I feel as a single woman traveling around here. It's a question I'd rather not have to field, and often times feel like, if people are going to ask me what it's like in Turkey, Lebanon, or Morocco, they should ask me what its been like in DC too. BUT, it is an interesting question... so I suppose I'll try, in a very round-about way, to field it.
Tonight I hopped on the 30 bus downtown, headed to the train station to go to Casablanca, which didn't actually happen because I missed the two trains I could have possibly gotten on because I got sidetracked writing, writing, writing. So I figured I would wander around the medina (the very busy, crowded "old city") and downtown and eventually try to meet up with some other friends who were heading to a west African music club.
Walking towards the medina and along the wall: constant smooching noises, men saying "Bon soire," "hola," "hey baby," saying things in Moroccan Arabic that I couldn't understand. It was like a swarm. And I, in the middle of the annoyances, just kept walking, face forward, not looking at anyone, not turning to acknowledge it, just keep on moving, as I tend to do. I have found in the past that turning to acknowledge the attention just makes it worse. Usually I can deal with the unwanted attention - I figure out a way to diffuse it, to avoid it... it's usually not that bad, actually (and never bad when I'm walking with a male friend), but that night, I was just NOT in the mood. I was annoyed. And then I was angry.
The most annoying thing is if you end up changing your path to avoid someone, having to take a different route than the one you anticipated. The funniest thing is when a guy comes right up next to you, walks beside you, and starts making conversation. There's always the few minutes of figuring out which language to try, establishing which languages I speak, which I'm native in (that is, if I acknowledge at all). Much of the time I completely ignore the guy (I'm rather good at that, actually - I probably should feel worse about completely and utterly ignoring people, but I don't. Not when I'm treated like meat.). The funny part is that, if you choose to ignore him, he starts getting hurt, like "Why won't you answer my question?" feeling bad that you aren't speaking back at him, getting personally offended, like suddenly its your fault that you are the undesiring victim who just wants to be left alone and not talk back. His voice begins to blame you, to make you feel guilty for not responding, to feel bad for being rude. But the thing is, from what I have observed, most Moroccan women don't get this treatment. And if I were walking with a man I would never, ever, get this treatment. Nope, when I walk with guy friends, no one bothers me, unless they're trying to sell me something or ask for money, and even then they generally ask the guy and not me.
Tonight I was in one of those moods where I didn't want to get bothered, I just wanted to be left alone, to walk around anonymously, to just hang out, wander, watch, and not have to talk to anyone. Usually I'm better at dealing with the annoyances, I can figure out what to say to make the guy just leave me alone. Sometimes the whole game is counter-intuitive. Sometimes if you're really nice and respond, just respectfully, proving yourself as a respectable woman, you can easily wiggle out of the conversation. Sometimes its impossible to wiggle out - you just get sucked back in, and then you have to be a little more forceful.
An American friend who has spent a long time living in Morocco and I had a long talk about whether or not this kind of interaction is actually "harassment." His point was that the word (in the American conception) places more weight on the actions than in a Moroccan context, that it's not so bad as to merit being called harassment. I think it's an unwanted bother, that, yes it's not as if people are coming up to me and grabbing me (although tonight a guy selling roses stuck his roses in front of my face as I walked by and grabbed onto my arm. I had to shake his hand off and give him a "back off you worthless scum, you should be ashamed of yourself" death glare.), but their actions are certainly not desired or enticed, that they bother me without me approaching them, that their actions are based entirely on my gender, on the way I look, that they make me feel uncomfortable in situations where I otherwise would be fine, they sometimes restrict my movement and impact my choices, cause me to miss out on some things (because I want to avoid them), and they make me so angry that sometimes I just want them go to hell (pardon the crudeness). I think it's pretty clearly harassment.
I have even been approached standing right next to a family, right next to a group of old ladies wearing hijab (head scarves), right next to a bunch of little kids in the park. It's such a sneaky, sleazy encounter, too - sometimes guys whisper in creepy voices, sometimes they just holler out as they walk by, sometimes they're standing and make kissing sounds as you walk by. I don't know what they're expecting. I'm sure their tactics don't impress anyone.
In al-Jadida (a beach town down the coast from Casablanca) there was this man who spent about 20 or 30 minutes staring at us intently from across the sidewalk - literally staring at us from ten feet away with a piercing gaze while people walked through, while Adrienne and I just stood there waiting for some Moroccan friends. Neither of us looked at the guy, because every time we nearly caught his eye, he would start gesturing slightly to us. I have no idea what he was hoping would happen. The whole thing got very uncomfortable. And then he started pacing around, circling around the sidewalk in front of us. And mind you the whole sidewalk was lined with people standing alongside it, we were by no means the only ones there. Finally the guy walked away. We were relieved that he didn't stay to follow us. Is this not harassment?
What if I wore a hijab? Or a djelaba (a loose-fitting robe that women sometimes wear over their clothes on the street)? What if I covered myself up more, tried to blend in more? I'm not sure that it would even matter, I think I'd be annoyed just the same. I think single women just get attention. Single men and groups of men can walk around, but women get called out. The hypocrisy is frustrating. It makes me militant. It puts me in man-hating mode (sorry, guys). It makes me unnecessarily unhappy.
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