Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Maroc: Tasty and Beautiful

Since I have been back to Marocco in 2005 my mindset about my origin changed. Even as a maroc myself I was influenced by public opinion and media with the result of me loosing my pride of being Maroccan. My trip in 2005 was wonderful. I discovered Marocco is one of the most beautiful countries there is because of the culture and atmosphere but certainly also because of the people who are warm, friendly and charming. So why is it that everybody I know who has been to Marocco talks with such charisma about the country and its people and when talking about dutch maroccans the glance in their eyes change? Its not necessarily out of personal experience I think its like me the opinion they subconciously formed.

When coming back from Marocco I decided to recover my maroccan pride by actively looking to have more Maroc in my life. Thus so I started going to maroccan restaurants (not all good experiences i must admit-will write about it some other time), going to concerts of maroccan artists and even to maroccan parties. Very scary i must admit because all of a sudden I started to wonder if I act gay and that they would recognize me as a gay man and if that would cause a problem. Hilarious when I look back at it because when you see the fashionstyle, intimacy maroccan friends have and the way they dance the only thing how they would recognize you as being gay would be when you would walk in dressed in a Versace catsuit with Vivienne Westwood platform shoes on. So I immediately feeled at ease untill I noticed that there was a lot of eye contact going around. Which made me insecure (and believe me getting me insecure is quite an accomplishment) because i didn't know what it meant. Was I being hit on or where they just acknowledging my presence. All of a sudden I realised that I really lost touch with my origin. I became the so cold 'bounty' (black/coloured from the outside and white from the inside). It was a shock because allthough i had lost my pride I always felt that I was maroccan and argued with everyone who told me that I wasn't because I was this succesfull integrated man. I came full circle. I understood why in 2005 the urge to go back to Marocco came up: it was because I needed a wake-up call. It hit me close to a year later, which is sort of slow according to my standard. The path I started going would confront me with all sort of parts of me that became more Dutch than Maroc and I will need to regroup and make every single choice again. There is one choice that I know I don't need to make which is that i can be a lot of things part of those are being both dutch and maroccan, being gay and being proud of it and finally being tasty and beautiful :-)

Thanks all for giving me great feedback on my blog. Its fun to discover that people read my postings!

1 Comments:

Blogger hayati said...

ik denk dat het komt omdat er nogal een groot verchil is met het marokko dat mensen bezoeken, zien en mooi vinden (net als dat jou in 2005 overkwam), en de gebieden en mensen die in nederland zijn...marokkaanse steden en kasba's als fez, marrakeh en tane, zijn nog altijd heel iets anders dan marokkanen in nederland! En ook d gebieden waar deze berber marokkanen vandaan komen, zijn qua schoonheid niet te vergelijken met de andere gebieden in marokko...wat heeft tetouan nou te bieden? Ik ben er 6 keer geweest (werk)maar na de eerste keer was het al met enorm veel tegenzin.

Armoede in combinatie met het harde bestaan dat de cultuur heeft gevormd en de psychose die veel marokkanen hebben als reultaat van innerlijke trijd tussen an de ene knt de islam en aan de andere kant de geneugten van het leven die zij veelal als westers goed zien, maakt dat veel marokkanen, vooral die uit het noorden, geen leuk mensen (meer) zijn...

In nederland al helemaal niet!

4:37 AM  

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