Mouad Ezzahir, 18, Casablanca. A woman so demure, A society so impure. Growing up in a male-dominated Moroccan society, I have always come across this sort of subsequent patriarchal culture that is very condescending to women, a culture where they are facing general and blatant devaluation. Women have been told that they occupy no other place but that of caregivers, that the sole purpose of their creation is to reproduce and care for the generations that follow. Moral codes are very complicated and intricate and when they cross religious statements, they implicitly impose immense boundaries on one’s sense of decision making, and now allow me to flip the coin and tell you a story I have witnessed growing up, the story of a woman who, against all odds, was able to get a proper education and raise her daughters well when everyone and everything stood in her way in the name of “decency”: my grandmother. From a young age, I have always seen my granny as a power figure, she was the first person that taught me the meaning behind how to live and not simply exist. She always says that certain memories fade away quickly like they were never meant to be remembered whilst the most bitter ones stick like honey to a pot, and with that being said, her painful story goes as follow. Let me take you back to the 1950s in a setting where Morocco was still in an early postindependence phase, imagine having to live as a daughter of a Franco-Moroccan soldier in a city as conservative as Rabat., living in the midst of unbearable envy and a certain sense of not belonging. The tale gets even more crooked as everything gets taken away from her by the time her husband and daughter die leaving her with nothing but her other four daughters and strong will. Her husband’s family conspired against her and kicked her out with nothing in her hand or pockets; luckily, one of them took her in until she became financially
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