Fatima

As my semester here comes to a close, I would like to highlight some moments from my gender studies class, because as bored as I was listening to Fatima’s stories for the thirtieth time each, she said some things that, fee rah-ee (in my opinion), are pure gold. I will miss Fatima; she has the strangest idea of America ever, she loves Lady Gaga, and she argues that traffic problems in Morocco stem from its patriarchy. If there is one person who could bring gender equality to this country I would definitely bet on her. She is just nuts enough to take on the challenge.
Some “Best of Fatima Quotes” :
-She was telling us about how after a surge of Islamic extremism in her university she started to challenge the Islamist students by giving them parts from passages of the Quran and teasing them when they could not complete them. She said, “One of my students came to me one day after class and said, ‘teacher, please stop, we really like you and if you continue this they are going to kill you!’ and I thought to myself, well, if it happens, it happens.”
-Fatima has only been to America once. She went to apparently the richest part of Florida and this is her picture of the country. She was surprised that none of us flew our private planes to school. She recalled one time when she was invited to tea with an elderly couple, “the place was like a hospital and a hotel… I don’t remember what it was called but there were a lot of old people there. It was very, very nice.” It’s called a nursing home, but that’s what it is, parents, a mix between a hospital and a hotel.
- “ I was amazed to learn that you still have polygamy in America. I watched that show, “Big Love” and I was amazed! Do those people really exist? How do you call them, Mormons? Are there a lot of them in your country? ”
- “Tell me, do women in your country often fall in love with gay men and they do not know that they are gay and the men do not tell them and then they are heartbroken when they find out?” We were confused, saying there would probably be signals before true love that the man was gay. She replied, “But if it is love at first sight, and she does not know, is she very heartbroken? Does this happen a lot?” Maybe…? Love means something different, I think, when marriage is arranged or dating means “exchanging words of love and sometimes kissing but not in any way that could bring up sexual feeling.”
- “I cannot understand why your country has not made it illegal for people to have guns! Don’t you feel afraid? Do people just walk around holding their guns? And you are just sitting by a person on the train and he has a gun on his lap?! I simply cannot understand how you are not terrified.”
- “We were so angry when you elected Bush for the second time and we could not understand why you would do this. And then every American I talked to said, ‘No we did not vote for him.’ So who was it that voted for him?”
- “ I saw John McCain and I thought, he is so old he cannot even stand! Were you worried that he was too fragile to be the president?”
- “There is a big Islamic feminist movement but there is no thing called a Christian feminist movement. Why has no one asked why, for example, the Pope cannot be a woman?”

So many good points, Fatima, I’ll tell you when I figure out the insanity of Americans, and you keep explaining the insanity of Moroccans. We’ll do a cultural exchange, and I will love every minute that you don’t retell the stories I’ve already heard three times.