Encountering Morocco: Fieldwork and Cultural Understanding

3. Thinking about Class and Status in Morocco

56 3| Thinking about Class and Status in Morocco David A. McMurray My Socks A barber worked directly across the street from the front door of our apartment in the late 1980s in Nador, a gritty boomtown in the Berber north that was exploding with the repatriated wealth of emigrants away in Europe as well as the revenues from goods smuggled in from Spain and hash smuggled out of Morocco.1 The barber’s shop was decorated with posters of stylish men, all of them models advertising vari­ ous hair care products. He had hired another barber—­ a poorer man, judging by his attire—­ to help out during busy times, such as early evening hours and Fridays. He also made the sec­ ond barber sweep out the shop at night when they closed, about 9:00. The headbarberwouldloungeinthedoorwaytohissalon between customers. Nothing that we did across the street escaped his eye. He claimed, and I believed him, that he had spent a few months in Germany. His clothing, which could have been labeled at the time “urban Mediterranean,” suggested that he knew his way around the local big city of Oujda, perhaps even the national big cities of Fes and Casablanca, for he wore tight-­ fitting, open-­ collar shirts unbuttoned to mid-­ chest. His slacks had no back pockets so they could hug his hips and butt, though they did have immaculate creases down each Thinking about Class and Status in Morocco | 57 leg. His sockless feet were planted in polished loafers. His hair, while short, had some gel-­ like substance in it to make it glisten. He never dressed in traditional Moroccan male attire on Fridays or holy days, which suggested that he wasn’t especially religious or especially enamored of local customs. His trade let everyone know that he wasn’t a wealthy man. However, the families in his building would of­ten receive their letters addressed in care of the barber. This was a way the families used to maintain some anonymity, but it also revealed that they trusted him. Late one afternoon I came out of my front door on the way to the neighborhood baker to get bread for dinner. The barber stopped me. We exchanged the usual pleasantries. When the conversation had begun to wind down and I was getting ready to move on, he said, “Why do you wear socks with your sandals?” My normal attire in Morocco consisted of an all-­ purpose sport coat, buttoned-­ down shirts, khaki pants, and wire-­ rimmed glasses; in short, nothing too out of the ordinary except, apparently, for when I wore socks under my sandals. By “out of the ordinary,” I mean of course for a foreigner from the global north. My clothing choices were not made in imitation of Nadori notions of style, though I was trying to dress in a way that I hoped locals would interpret as conservatively respectful. Parenthetically, Michael Taussig (1993, 174–75) has pointed out that in colonized societies, men commonly anchor the mimetic pole while women embody alterity; hence, men around the world wear suit coats and pants in imitation of European attire, while women wear highly specific, local costumes. Perhaps in unconscious adherence to that rule, my wife wore typically Nadori female clothing in and out of the house and thus held down the alterity pole, while I wore a Sears sport coat made out of cotton and polyester , a reasonable imitation of Ameri­ can—­ if not exactly European—­ male attire. I no doubt cut a ridiculous fig­ure, which the barber could no longer resist commenting on. The first thing I thought to say back to him was, “You don’t like them? I think they look distinguished.” Then I wanted to say something like: “You never know when you’re going 58 | David A. McMurray to get invited into someone’s house and have to take off your shoes. I want to make sure, even when I’m wearing sandals, that I’ve got something on underneath because my bare feet are always dirty or they smell.” But I didn’t say either of those things. I tossed back at him what people of­ten said to me when I inquired about something they either hadn’t thought about or thought was too trivial to think about: “It’s a tradition in our country” (taqlid fi bledna). “No it’s not,” he retorted, catching me...