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Month of September is:
Marriage Fair A mass engagement and marriage moussem,
or “festival,” held in the remote village of Imilchil in the Atlas
Mountains of Morocco. As many as 30,000 people of the Ait Hadiddou
tribe, a Berber clan, gather for the three days of the moussem. Also
known as the Fiancée Festival, this is a
combined trade fair and pageant of public courtship, instant
engagement, and the immediate exchange of marriage vows. The festival
solves the problem of meeting a mate in a society where isolation is
the norm: the men spend half a year moving with their flocks to upland
pastures, while the women stay in the villages, planting crops and
weaving rugs.
Families and their herds of sheep and donkeys stream onto the
Imilchil plateau at dawn of the first day. They sell or barter their
wool, meat, grain, and vegetables, while tradesmen set up tents of
pottery, rugs, and tools. Musicians beat tambourines, games are played,
and acrobats perform. The center of their Islam-influenced devotions is
the tomb of the holy man Sidi Mohammed el Merheni. It’s not certain
when he lived but it’s known that the marriages he blessed were happy.
The courtship proceeds with women wearing a peaked headdress and
striped wool capes over white dresses. Their eyes are outlined with
kohl and their cheeks are rouged. The prospective grooms, wearing white
robes and turbans, weave in pairs through the clusters of brides-to-be.
A man speaks to a woman, the woman nods assent, and if the family
approves, the couple will enter the wedding tent to seek approval from
a representative of the Ministry of Justice in Rabat. Brides who have
not been previously married will leave the moussem with their fathers,
and be welcomed by their grooms’ families with a feast later in the
year. Women who are divorcees or widows will go directly to live with
their husbands. (Ait Hadiddou women are free to divorce and remarry.)
When a woman consents to marriage, she tells her suitor, “You have
captured my liver.” The Ait Hadiddou consider the liver to be the soul
of love because it aids digestion and well-being. From Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations of the World Dictionary |
