Women and Romance – The female character in Kingdom of Heaven, Sybila, is a woman of European descent who has adopted Middle Eastern culture, and she flaunts it well. She mentions to her lover, Balian, that she has two faces, "one for the world, and one which she wears in private." To a Western audience, that may sound ridiculous, but Sybila does offer a somewhat accurate portrayal of many women in Morocco. In the street, women are robotic in expressions and emotions, walking arm-in-arm with other women from destination to destination and rarely stopping to talk to or even glance at men (flirtation is a thing for prostitutes, not college kids). Conversing with women (and men as well) is incredibly round-about, never direct, usually full of wit and humour, and makes American conversations seem dull, fast, and even, well, dumb, by comparison.
But, as my American friends will attest, as soon as they enter the home, the women strip off their hijabs and become energetic chatterboxes. Additionally, the public bath (Hammam) is perhaps the most private place in the city for women, who will spend up to three hours naked in a hot sauna, not necessarily in order to clean themselves, but to be in a safe space where they can show their true faces. It’s worth noting that among women the adjective “crazy” (as in, “She’s crazy!”) is in fact a term of endearment. Other things to note: arranged marriages (among family friends) are not uncommon and the regional music and films are corny and Bollywood-esque, obsessed with romance, marriage, and relationships.
Wit and Games – In Kingdom of Heaven, clever remarks made among the characters are viewed as admirable and demonstrative of deeper intellect. Nasir is the go-ahead man here—from the very beginning, pulling a clever “prank” on Balian by lying about his status as an elite general. Even his inflections are reproduced in Morocco in eerie fashion, like when he says to Balien, “Then you must give him the horse!” or at the end of the film, “It is not a very good horse. I will not keep it.” It took me a long time to realize that the reason I was having trouble (and still am) interacting with many Moroccans is because these sort of conversations go straight over my head. My family indulges in them, and I notice how pulling a semi-witty—sometimes sarcastic, sometimes biting—joke, aimed at another member of the family, makes them laugh for minutes (simple things, like when offering my little brother a candy bar, asking him “How much will you give me?” or blithely telling my family not to listen to my pushy, math whiz older brother because he’s “not very logical”).
Bargaining is itself all about wit—pointing out flaws in the product (humorously), asking shopkeepers to lower the price because you’re a “poor student,” etc. Even dinner becomes a game, where you’re forced to eat everything on the plate unless you can provide smart excuses. A light-heart helps. “Eat, eat, Michael—have this piece of chicken.” “I’ll eat half, you eat half.” “No, no, I only eat full parts.” My older brother actually enjoys being called a “smart-ass.” When I let him into the house one afternoon and asked him where he went, he said, “Outside, of course.” When I showed him something I bought at a local shop, he looked at it and said, “It’s not very good quality. I don’t like it.” I replied (to his pleasure), “Of course. It’s made in Morocco.” In general, though, I’m still bad at this whole wit-thing, and I should have taken a cue from comedy programs in Morocco, which involve playing pranks and gags on other people (think Candid Camera, not Jackass). My more Americanized Moroccan friends, on the other hand, resort to more crude forms of humor, of which I’m sure need no explanation—let’s just say they know the female anatomy very well, in English.
Ibelin – Other bits of cultural nuance in Kingdom of Heaven involve Ibelin, the name given to Balian’s land and real estate. When I first viewed the film in 2005, I remember thinking how phony Ibelin appeared: groups of young children running after knights on horse-back, the incredible hospitality of the servant who shows Balian his home, greenery and trees sprouting out of nowhere shortly after the discovery of water. Yet these scenes, also, have proved to be extraordinarily genuine and unadulterated. In the streets of the medina, groups of young children run to greet you, shouting your name (as long as you’ve introduced yourself beforehand); the people are extraordinarily hospitable and my American colleagues are regularly invited into stranger’s homes for dinner (one time, a nine year-old girl invited me into her home to meet her family after talking to me for only 5 minutes on the street… and she was the one who approached me!); and lines of palm groves—thanks to the technology of a one thousand year-old irrigation system—really do sprout out of the middle of the desert, like an oasis. It’s no wonder Kingdom of Heaven was shot in, guess where… Morocco.
Click for photo: My witty and at times obnoxious older brother Ilyias.
Click for photo: In the Southeast, lines of palm groves, bearing dates and cultivated by rural farmers, sprout seemingly out of nowhere and sometimes continue on for miles.