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The
data on the female dolls of Morocco refer to the dolls of the girls, and rarely
those of the boys, of the towns of Fès, Moulay Idriss, Rabat, Settat,
Khouribga, Marrakech and Imi-n-Tanoute, of the Ghomara, Zerhoun, Khemisset,
Midelt, Goulmima, Merzouga, Ouarzazate, Taroudannt and Sidi Ifni regions, of
some Moyen, Haut and Anti-Atlas regions and of the Jewish girls of the former
Southern Moroccan Mellahs.
The
oldest female doll found in the collection of the Musée de l’Homme was made
by a girl of Fès and offered to this museum in 1931 (fig. 67). This museum
possesses three other Moroccan female dolls having the same frame with a
vertical bone. The height of these dolls varies between 21 and 28cm. But in 1915
the Mission Scientifique du Maroc mentions already a female doll of Settat made
with a bone dressed in rags.
Three
types of frame can be distinguished for the Moroccan dolls. The most common type
of frame consists of a bone, a reed, a little branch, a stick or even a fibrous
plant to which, most of the time, has been fixed cross-shapely a little reed or
stick to figure the shoulders and arms, as in the case of the doll of figure 67
(H = 28 cm, catalogue 3.9, 31.45.59). The second type of frame up to now only
found in the Musée de l’Homme’s collection has a square body made out of a
piece of textile fabric stuffed with rags to which have been sewed a head and
four limbs also made of pieces of textile fabric stuffed with rags as can be
seen on figure 68 (H = 29 cm, catalogue 3.9, 34.123.1/2). The eyes, nose, mouth
and tattoos have been sewed. The third type of frame is modeled in clay (fig. 152).
The
female dolls of Morocco described in the bibliography, those of the collection
and some of those I found in Morocco have elaborated facial features. These
features are made with soot, tar, ink, a ballpoint, a pencil, a red-hot iron or
a knife. In the case of the Moroccan dolls of the Musée de l’Homme the facial
traits are possibly executed in needlework. Myself I have found one example of sewed
eyes namely on the doll remade by a sixteen-year-old girl from the
village Aïn Toujdate in 1993 (fig. 70).
A
particular way to give a face and a frame to a doll is described by J. Herber in
1918: a doll of Sidi Kacem has its facial features cut in the reed, an oval
trait limits the chin, little traits, a bit of black and red color finish the
face; the inferior crossing, which is exceptional, keeps some rags in place and
forms the widening of the hips (p. 66). Until now, I have not seen again this
manner of creating a face or widening the hips. As this type of a doll’s frame
seems to be really rare, I have made the design of figure 69 based on the
photograph shown in Herber’s article (p. 67).
In
the Zerhoun region near Moulay Idriss (Herber, 1918: 66) and in Fès (Soulé,
1933: 355) a barleycorn is sometimes shoved under the fabric covering the head
giving a slight relief to the nose.
The
dolls’ hair consists of raveled out silk, cotton threads, woolen yarn, hemp,
leaves of reed, the beard of a maize cob (Indian corncob), pieces of a date
wrapped in a rag or a girl’s own hair.
The
dolls wear the dress of adult urban or rural women, a dress being more or less
luxurious depending on the means the girls dispose of. A mantilla and jewels can
complete the doll’s garments. Let us see how Herber describes in 1918 the
outfit of the dolls: the doll most often has natural hair that is held in place
with a headscarf or a headband. It is dressed with a series of rags of all
colors probably representing the superposing of polychrome caftans worn by the
Arab women. These rags have a hole in their center so that the doll’s head can
pass through and fall down forwards and backwards just as a very large robe
whose edges are then fold back at the alignment of the shoulders. A belt of a
piece of rag completes these garments. Sometimes the doll is embellished with
jewels and pearls (p.66-68).
The
authors have mentioned different names for the Moroccan female dolls. Doutté
(1905: 328) mentions the Amazigh word ‘tislit’, or ‘taslit’ according to
Westermarck (1926: 269). Doutté (1905: 328), Herber (1918: 68) and madam Soulé (1933: 355)
mention the name ‘arousa’ in Arabic. Destaing (1920: LVI) refers to these
three words in his book on the Amazigh of the Moroccan Moyen Atlas. All these
terms signify the fiancée or the bride. Moreover madam Soulé proposes the word
‘çouira’ and an article of the periodical France-Maroc (1917: 39) bears the
title “la poupée iblisa”. Destaing (1905: 64) speaks of the ‘blisa’
dolls of the girls of Tlemcen near the Algerian-Moroccan border in Algeria, a
name confirmed by Zerdoumi (1982: 228). Flamand who did research in Morocco from
1948 till 1958 mentions a more recent name. He gives the name ‘mounica’, a
word coming from the Spanish muñeca and referring to the doll in all Moroccan
milieus (p. 182). This name however is not so recent as one might think as J.
Herber already gives this name for Tanger, Larache and the Jewish mellah of
Rabat in 1918, adding that the Spanish merchants influence its use (p. 81). The
information I gathered since 1992, gives the Arab word °arûsa
and the Amazigh words tislit, tèslit or taslit, all
meaning the bride, to signify the traditional female doll. The term
‘mounica’ refers to the plastic doll dressed by the girl herself or to the
imported European or Asian doll. As in certain milieus, as for example in
Marrakech, the doll with an armature of reed has been left behind; the term
mounica is used for all kinds of dolls. Nowadays, one hears also the words
‘poupiya’ or ‘poupouya’ derived from the French poupée. Here also there
is nothing new about this name as J. Herber wrote in 1918 that the name ‘poupéia’
enters Morocco with the French dolls (p. 81).
The
doll play enacts different themes: wedding, pregnancy and childbirth,
mother-child relation, household life and funeral. J. Herber already mentions
the first two themes of wedding and childbirth in 1918 (p. 68). The games of
household life in which dolls are used will be described in Saharan and North African Toy and Play Cultures. The Domestic Life in
Play, Games and Toys.
Among
the publications mentioned in the bibliography, the most detailed description of
the wedding ceremonies the girls offer their female dolls was written by madam
Soulé and published in 1933 (p. 355-357, 360-361). She writes about the girls
of the city of Fès: whenever possible, some girls bring their doll with them
whereby the nicest doll will be the bride. At the same time, the girls have also
brought with them the little accoutrements, such as the small kanun (earthen
furnace), plates, glasses, tea-pot, tea-box, sugar-box etc. and even the
provisions for the festivities: tea, sugar, mint, semolina. Once a doll’s
kitchen and a doll’s room have been prepared, the bride doll is seated on a
cushion surrounded by the other dolls serving as guard of honor. Two older girls
are leading the game as mistresses of ceremony. A third girl dresses the bride
and a young black girl is the servant in charge of the household utensils. The
other girls sit around the dolls and represent the relatives and friends of the
bride. While the bride is dressed up behind a curtain tightened to a rope, the
mistresses of ceremony sing:
“Ohe!
Lady the bride! Come out, that we can admire you!
“Are
you really beautiful or only supposed to be so!
“Oh,
roses in the basket, call for your brother!”.
Part
of the female relatives and friends sing the phrases once more while the other
girls impatiently shout the typical joyous. Once the dressing up is finished,
the bride doll is exposed sitting on a cushion. Then the mistresses of ceremony
start singing, while clapping in their hands, the song in honor of the bride and
the other girls repeat this song phrase by phrase:
“May
the benediction of the Prophet be upon you!
“There
is no glory other than the one of our Lord Mohammed!
“God
is extremely merciful!
“There
is no glory other than the one of our Lord Mohammed!
“See
this pure beauty! (without wrappings).
“See
this beauty of Fès! (Moulay Idriss).
“Look!
May God bless you, oh Lady!
“See
that His protection rests on you, oh Lady!
“May
the Divine blessing rest on you, oh Lady!
“See
the honey on the needle’s point, see it!
“May
the Divine blessing rest on you, oh Lady!
“May
his patronage rest on you, oh standard of the bridegroom!
“See!
The bride is turning like a bowl of soup (bis).
“Oh
God, it is with the real ones (pieces of money) that we took her away (allusion
to the dowry).
“She
is welcome, the beautiful bride, together with those accompanying her!
“He
has taken her away! He has abducted her, the master of the men!
“May
God assure him enduring fortune!
“He
did take her away! He did take her away! He did take her away!
“Thanks
to his fortune!”
After
the exposing of the bride it is time for dinner for which the black girl
prepared the tea, the cakes and the couscous, and which the girls now share with
their dolls. At the end of the feast, the bride doll is put again in her room
behind the curtain where the bridegroom can join her. At that moment the girls
sing:
“May
she be happy, very happy at home!
“We
praise God for this moment, oh Lady!
“It
is only our Lord who disposes of everything!
“We
praise our Lord in this moment!
“Ohe
Madam! Take me with you, take me with you, and do not leave me behind as the
women’s talk tires me.
“Ohe
Madam! The apple hurts him!
“Ohe
Madam! Attend him with a licentious woman!
“Ohe
Madam! El Glaoui! El
Glaoui!
“Ohe
Madam! Attend him with the allusions!
“Ohe
Madam! He is hurt and the blood is flowing!
“Ohe
Madam! Attend him, oh commissioner!
“Ohe
Madam! He is hurt at the house door!
“Ohe
Madam! Attend him, oh commissioner!
“Ohe
Madam! The orange hurts him!
“Ohe
Madam! Attend him, oh Bitina! (a movie star).
“Ohe
Madam! The lemon hurts him!
“Ohe
Madam! Attend him, oh Mimouna!
“Ohe
Madam! The dagger hurts him!
“Ohe
Madam! Attend him, oh young lady!
“Ohe
Madam! Lord Abdelqadir Jilani you will help us!”
The
article “La poupée iblisa” in the periodical France-Maroc of 1917 also
mentions the doll play in which Moroccan girls imitate the wedding festivities.
Here the doll’s room is a hole in the wall covered with rags and closed with a
door-curtain. A little chair is made for the doll and she is put on it. Then a
second doll is brought in. It is the future husband of the bride. The girls
shout at him: “we welcome you, we have found you a bride that you will like
and who will give you satisfaction”. The bridegroom is placed next to the
bride in the midst of a lot of joyous and applause (p. 39).
The
use of a male doll among the Moroccan girls is also attested by the Moroccan
author Mohammad Ibn Azzuz Hakim (1959: 32) and this among the girls of the
Ghomara district (Gumara el Haila). According to the Encyclopédie Berbère the Ghomara region corresponds to the western
part of the Central Rif where a group of nine tribes lived (1998: 3110-3111).
Moreover, he notes that a little boy often replaces the male doll. This author
also mentions a few data not given by other authors. So a newly born kitten
enveloped in a rag sometimes replaces the female doll. For their doll play the
girls visit one another with their dolls and hold conversations just as if they
were talking, or they sing to their dolls so that they do not weep. Mohammad Ibn
Azzuz Hakim mentions not only the celebration of the wedding but also of the
circumcision and even of a baptism, although this term, given without any
further explanation, remains to vague to explain an Islamic reality, but maybe
it refers to the ceremony of name-giving on the fortieth day after birth as was
suggested to me by some Marrakech people. The doll play figuring circumcision is
analyzed in the chapter on Moroccan child dolls.
With
the exception of some bibliographical notes on the dolls and doll play of the Aït
Ouirra girls, of girls in Marrakech, in a few other cities and in the former
Jewish mellahs of Southern Morocco, the following description of Moroccan dolls
and doll play is based on my own research in that country, research that started
in 1992. This information is presented in a geographical order starting with the
data on children from the regions of El Hajeb and Khemisset in Northern Morocco.
Then follows the information on children from the Moyen Atlas, the regions of
Midelt, Goulmima and Merzouga, those of the Jbel Siroua Mountain region in the
Haut Atlas, of the regions of Marrakech, Imi-n-Tanoute and Taroudannt, of the
Anti-Atlas region near Sidi Ifni and of Sidi Ifni itself. Finally, the data on
the former Jewish mellahs of Southern Morocco are mentioned.
A
sixteen year old girl, Souad Ouazzani, living at Aïn Toujdate an Arabic
speaking village on the road from El-Hajeb to Fès, has remade in August 1993
the bride doll or °arûsa she used to
make when she was about ten, that is towards 1987. She and other girls played
with their °arûsa doll at enacting
wedding ceremonies, possibly using a bridegroom doll or °arîs.
One
day, during the °Ashûra festivities, Souad and her sister were allowed to buy
a small gift for themselves by their older brother. Souad did choose a female
doll and her sister a male doll both of plastic material. Together they then
played at the wedding of this °arûsa
and °arîs by covering them with a
piece of cloth and dancing and singing around them.
For
her doll play a girl of the Kabliîn Amazigh of about eight years, Hesna Ourèra,
uses some rudimentary female and male dolls. With one or several playmates, she
always plays at celebrating the wedding of her dolls. Hesna lives in the small
village Aït Hmed ou Yacoub located at 4 km from Khemisset near the road to Sidi
Slimane. When I met Hesna in October 1996 she stood near her dollhouse. In this
dollhouse, of a more or less elliptical shape and constructed with two layers of
stones, three dolls where lying down (fig. 71).
The
dollhouse leans against the wall of the parental home. As one can see on that
figure, a photograph on which Hesna did not want to appear, there lies in the
middle of the house a carpet, a piece of fabric, pieces of glass representing
the cups and a can of sardines serving as a tray. A clump of herbs has changed
into a cluster of flowers.
According
to Hesna, the dolls represent two tislit
or bride dolls and one isli or
bridegroom doll (fig. 72, see also Rossie e.a., 1998, video). Her dolls are made
with the half of a piece of reed completely wrapped in a rag. The dress is fixed
by sticking one end of the rag in the previous turn of it or with a little belt
made out of the same fabric. These dolls have neither arms, face, hair nor
jewels. The distinction made by Hesna between a male and a female doll is based
for the male doll on the insertion of a small stone on top of the reed, a stone
yet invisible as it is entirely covered by the rag. Among the three dolls given
to me by Hesna, the tallest one (17 cm) and the shortest one (13 cm) are female
dolls, the one with a stone measuring 16 cm is the male doll.
Even
if all the information gathered in the middle sized town of Khemisset, the
county town of the Province of Khemisset, underline that there the girls
nowadays only play with plastic dolls, the above mentioned dolls of Hesna show
that local dolls made by the girls themselves can survive in villages just
outside such towns. The same situation occurs in Midelt a small town at the foot
of the Jbel Ayachi, in Taroudannt a small town in the valley between the Haut
Atlas and the Anti-Atlas, and in Sidi Ifni another small town on the Atlantic
coast south of Agadir.
In
Tiddas, an Amazigh village some 45 km from Khemisset on the road from this town
to Khenifra, Malika and Thuriya Bannour, two sisters of respectively seventeen
and twenty two years in October 1996, told me that they made bride and
bridegroom dolls when they where children. These tislit
and isli had a frame of two pieces of
reed fixed cross-shapely with a ribbon. The dolls were dressed as a woman or a
man and a face with mouth, nose, eyes and eyebrows was designed with a
ballpoint. They played together with other girls at celebrating a wedding and
singing the appropriated songs. However, Malika and Thuriya stress that these
self-made dolls, still made around 1990, do not exist anymore in their village
situated along the road. The local doll being replaced by a plastic doll, with
hair and a dress, bought in the small shops or at the market.
At
the foot of the Moyen Atlas on the road from Khenifra to Khemisset lays Oulmès,
well known for its spring whose water is commercialized under this name. In
1996, concordant information from the seventy-seven-year-old Fatima Boutouil,
from two other women of her family of about seventy years and from two boys of
about ten years I met on the way to the Oulmès spring, all being born in this
region, attest the use of a fibrous plant with long small leaves called bèrwèl
as the frame of a female doll. This plant that grows in the rainy season is also
used to make a bracelet or a necklace and even to pour some goat milk into it
once it has been inflated, milk that becomes butter when the filled bèrwèl
is warmed up.
To
make a doll the plant is cut at level with the ground, and then turned upside
down so that the white part of the stalk comes on top. Through this stalk a
little branch is put right through, so giving arms to the doll (fig. 107).
According to the two boys, the girls hang some rags over the arms of this frame
to give it a garment.
In
the 1940s and according to Sfia Gharîb, a woman born in the Amazigh village of
Arhbalou-n-Serdane on the road from Khenifra to Boumia but living at Midelt, she
and other girls between four and eleven years made themselves their bride doll
or tislit to play together with some
four girls or sometimes even alone at wedding, almost always at wedding. For
this game they used a small dollhouse delimited by stones. During this doll play
they also prepared a dinner using for its preparation a little hand mill or takkerût.
This doll play could be played all over the year and nothing prevented the girls
to play with their dolls at home.
Figure
106 shows the kind of bride dolls Sfia used as a child and that she remade in
January 1997. Always using a bone of a sheep’s leg, part of a half reed is
fixed cross-shapely to this bone with a ribbon. Four or five rectangular rags,
at the center of which a little hole is made to pass them over the doll’s
head, serve as garments. The colors of the rags are white or rose, once it is
black. The upper garment or tfina is
for both dolls a white transparent cotton fabric as is the large cape or ternèst
the dolls wear on their shoulders. The head is covered with a black or a rose
scarf held in place with a white ribbon. There are no facial features on the
part of the bone that remains visible. This doll is 29 cm high and the arm-span
measures 9 cm.
A
Moroccan professor of physical education, Lahcen Oubahammou, obtained in June
1987 his master’s degree in physical sciences at the Canadian University of
Laval with a thesis on the ethnography of the traditional games of the Aït
Ouirra. In his thesis, the only one of its kind in Morocco as far as I know, the
author describes 53 games with many variants. These games most often are games
of dexterity and sportive games. However, he also mentions the doll play of the
Aït Ouirra girls. The Aït Ouirra are a population of 24,019 people, according
to the census of 1971, living in the hilly and forested region of El Ksiba at an
altitude of about 1100 m and 27 km from the city of Kasba-Tadla.
Lahcen
Oubahammou describes the doll play of the bride, 'ilihane n-tislit', as follows.
The girls take a piece of reed, ‘aghanim’, to which they tie in the shape of
a cross another piece of reed representing the arms. A bone of a sheep's leg,
the tibia called 'taâjijt', can replace the vertical reed. The facial traits
are designed with soot, ‘ayffouss’, and the doll is dressed with old rags.
The girls walk around their ‘tislit’ while singing:
“Yim
takhen a brid”
“A
ikhamen makkourrine”
“A
youchen ghedd tamlatt”
“A
yifigher noubrid”
“A
lamoun mech immouth”.
“Do
open the way for us”
“Oh
big families”
“Oh
snake of the road”
“Oh
jackal, Oh gazelle”
“Especially
when it is dead.”
The
group of girls who is receiving the other group answers:
“Nssayakhount
ahrir”
“A
ikhamen mekkourine”.
“We
present you ahrir”
“Oh
big families.”
Crossing
the Moyen Atlas and continuing in the direction of Errachidia one arrives at the
small town Midelt situated at the foot of the Jbel Ayachi Mountain at an
altitude of about 1500 m. As in other places, the self-made doll seems to have
disappeared here. In any case I only saw girls playing with plastic dolls
whereby now and then I could observe how girls dressed their plastic doll with a
self-made dress. Yet, at 3 km before Midelt when coming from Meknès, many girls
still make the traditional doll. They are girls from the Oulad Khawa - Ikhawîn
in Amazigh - of the village She°ba, an Arabic-speaking village in an
Amazigh-speaking region.
In
November 1996, Bouchra, a school going girl of about eight years showed how to
realize an arûsa doll (fig. 93, H =
15 cm, arm-span = 6.5 cm). Two pieces of wood are fixed in the shape of a cross
with a shoelace. Then she dresses this frame with a rectangular piece of an old
plastic tablecloth. On top follows a caftan of transparent fabric with shining
designs tightened at the waist with a belt made out of the same fabric. To have
the possibility to pass the head trough the dresses the girl makes a fissure in
the center of the rectangular clothes with her teeth or if necessary by hitting
the right place with a stone. The headscarf is a large black ribbon that covers
the face completely. Bouchra asks another girl to put on this headscarf. As some
other girls present explain, the headscarf is sometimes missing on the doll
especially when the girl making the doll cannot do it.
With
such a bride doll several girls play together at celebrating a wedding. Once the
game is over the doll is thrown away to be made once more when the time comes.
Neither is there a particular moment of the year to play with the °arûsa.
The girls say that at one time they play with such dolls, another time they play
household, then at hopscotch and so on, just as they like.
In
this village some girls receive now or then a plastic doll bought in a local
shop or at the market of Midelt. Such a doll is quickly broken but nevertheless
it continues to serve as a bride doll even if the arms and legs are missing. The
original dress is, if needed, replaced with one resembling the dress of the
traditional doll, as one can see on figure 94.
At
the end of 1996 and the beginning of 1997 I had the possibility to get detailed
information on the doll play and the dolls in the village Ksar Assaka situated
at 4 km of Midelt in the direction of the Jbel Ayachi. This information comes
from three sisters, Souad, Najat and Sabah Laabib, who played with their
self-made dolls between 1975 and 1985 and from their mother, Aïcha Aït Mamou,
who did the same some twenty-five years earlier. This family belongs to the Aït
Merghad Amazigh. Nowadays, the traditional doll has become very rare in this
village, if not nonexistent, and has been replaced by plastic dolls.
Souad
Laabib, born at Ksar Assaka in 1968, describes with great precision the doll
play of her childhood, which she engaged in between the age of six and twelve
years. She enjoyed this doll play within a very stable playgroup consisting of
herself, two cousins and two girls from the neighborhood. The place also was a
fixed one, namely at the sunny side of Souad’s paternal house where there were
neither houses nor fields. These girls played with their dolls all over the year
alternating the doll play with hopscotch, knucklebones, hiding and seek and even
playing football with the boys. The doll play, figuring always a wedding or tamgra,
was played almost once a week. The favorable moment of the day is the afternoon
while the parents take a nap.
The
playgroup splits into two parts, whereby Souad and two girls play the role of
the bride’s family and Zhor, a girl friend, with another girl the role of the
bridegroom’s family. Each girl chooses an old name, e.g. Aïcha, Ettou, Bidda,
Fadma etc.
The
first thing to do is to control the state of the dollhouses, that of the bride
and that of the bridegroom, to repair them if necessary and to clean the houses
with some water and a brush. Both dollhouses are rectangular and similar in
surface, the walls of more or less one meter long being delimited with stones
(fig. 95). The small house is called taddert
n tislit, the house of the bride.
What
distinguishes the house of the bride doll is its staircase with three steps,
three little rectangles of stones placed before the entrance and a large stone
with a small one on top put in front of the staircase to serve as a
door-knocker. In each dollhouse six pieces of cardboard replace the carpets,
pieces of glass become teacups and some herbs, or if they are available some
wild flowers, create a bunch of flowers. While the other girls clean up the
houses, Souad makes the bride doll or tislit
and Zhor the bridegroom doll or isli,
the latter resembling the one of figure 99 left.
Once
all this is finished, Zhor, the mother of the bridegroom, and her companion
arrive before the house of the bride, they knock at the door and are invited to
come in with the necessary courtesy. Tea is served and after an exchange of the
latest news, the real purpose of the visit is declared, the mother asking the
girl of the house as bride for her son. While praising the virtues of the one
and the other, a discussion according to the established rules is engaged in and
once an agreement has been reached the date of the marriage is fixed. At this
moment the doll play, which lasts already for about two hours, is stopped, to be
continued on the following afternoon or even later.
The
second part starts with the inspection of the houses and the dolls that remained
there, as the girls did not bring their dolls with them at home. Souad states
that she never brought a doll into her home but she has no reason to offer for
this behavior, it just was not done. Once the repair is done, the mother of the
bridegroom and her companion return to the bride’s home with the usual gifts
such as garments, shoes, flour, sugar symbolized by rags, old shoes, an empty
can, a great stone. Then everybody sings and dances as in a true wedding marking
the rhythm with a real little bendir or hand drum. When the singing and dancing
stop, they go to get the bridegroom at his home where the songs and dances start
once more. After a while the mother of the bridegroom takes the isli
doll in her arms and in procession they all go back to the home where the tislit
doll is waiting.
The
isli is put beside the tislit
and everybody sits around them. At this moment the ceremony of the application
of the henna, replaced by wet sand, on the hands and feet of the newly-weds is
symbolically imitated while singing the right songs. Now follows a real meal
with bread and tomatoes. After the dinner the newly-weds are taken to the
paternal home of the husband. When the tislit
leaves her home, the girls sing a sad farewell song but when they arrive at the
home of the isli the song is joyful.
In this home the bride and bridegroom are then laid down side by side on a
cardboard bed. The really short wedding night ends with the return of the
mothers and relatives who come to verify the proof of the bride’s virginity, a
white rag on which some red saffron has created bloodstains. The doll play comes
to an end when the songs in honor of the virginity of the bride have been sung.
The newly wed couple stays in the dollhouse and everything is abandoned until
the next doll play.
When
Souad made once more her bride doll she stressed that it was of an unchanging
type (fig. 96). The frame is made with a reed at the backside of which a piece
of a half reed is fixed cross-shapely with a ribbon. Over the arms hang two
garments made with long rectangular pieces of fabric that have in their center a
fissure for passing them over the head. This fissure is obtained by hitting the
rag placed on a flat stone with another stone or sometimes with scissors. The
first garment, representing the tshamir,
is a multi-colored rag with floral designs. The upper garment or tfina should
always be a fabric with shining designs. Souad's mother brought these precious
rags from a tailor's shop when she went to the Sunday market at Midelt. For the
doll of figure 96 a fabric with a black transparent background with red flowers
and leafs bordered with a golden stroke is used. A belt of the same fabric is
tied around the waist. The part of the reed above the arms is completely wrapped
in two headscarves or tèh’nebusht,
a blue one and another one of the same fabric as upper garment. This way nothing
is visible of the doll’s face that never had facial features. The bride doll
measures 29 cm of height and the arm-span is 14 cm.
Najat
Laabib, Souad’s sister born at Midelt in 1971 but living at Ksar Assaka in
1996, engaged in doll play till the age of twelve or thirteen years. The
playgroup consisted of herself, a younger sister, Sabah, and two female cousins
living next-door. As in the case of Souad’s playgroup, it is always and only
the wedding ceremonies that are imitated. According to Najat, they liked this
doll play very much. It always was something special. At the beginning of the
1980s they played it often except when it was too cold.
The
doll play starts by constructing or repairing the dollhouse in the garden of
Najat’s paternal house, always at the same place. It is a quite large
rectangular dollhouse, of about 2 m on 1 m, with four rooms in the angles where
each girl can easily sit. The house and rooms are delimited by a row of clean
and shining stones of the size of a fist supplemented at some places with pieces
of white and green glass from broken bottles. In the room of the upper right
angle a little stair, two pieces of reed onto which wooden fragments are
attached with a ribbon, leads to the virtual terrace. Once the dollhouse is
finished, it is cleaned with some water. A few herbs or wild flowers create a
garden.
Then
each girl starts to make her bride doll or tislit.
They competed to make a beautiful doll and if a doll is not considered nice
enough it is immediately remade. The girls make also their own bridegroom doll
or isli. So the wedding ceremonies
will be celebrated for the four couples by singing and dancing as for a real
wedding. Two girls use a tellunt or
bendir hand drum and two others a tèbja
or flute made with the horn of a sheep. Two scenes are enacted during this
wedding. The first one is the mounting of the tislit on a sheep doll and in the second one the bridegroom welcomes
his bride in his home. During this welcome ceremony the isli
wears a stick, proof of his marital authority, hold in her hand by the girl who
manipulates this doll. There is also a dinner with tomatoes and bread.
The
sheep doll figures the sheep brought by the bridegroom’s family to the home of
the bride who mounts this sheep in order to have a good life. To enact this
ritual, the doll is laid on the back of the sheep and somewhat walked around
(fig. 97). The sheep doll is made with an old plastic oilcan around which a
piece of a used sheepskin is tied. Two sheep horns are pierced into the can at
the right spot. As legs serve four used batteries, put on the ground, on top of
which the doll sheep is placed.
This
doll play lasts for several hours but it can also be interrupted to be continued
later on. In this case Najat possibly brought her doll into her home and she
insists that her mother never had any objection against this. Once the wedding
of their dolls is over, the girls enjoy a new play, namely to destroy under
great laughter the dolls and the dollhouse.
When
I asked Najat in September 1996 if she wanted to recreate as faithfully as
possible the bride doll of her childhood she offered me on a next visit three
bride dolls.
The
first tislit (fig. 98) has a frame of
two whole reeds fixed together with a ribbon in the shape of a cross. In the
center of a blue rag a fissure has been made to hang the upper garment or tfina over the arms of the doll. The only garment is tightened at the
waist with a yellow ribbon. This bride wears her hair in two long plaits in
front of the arms, the hair being replaced by brown woolen yarn taken from an
old carpet. The headscarf, a red rag, is fixed with a white ribbon. Two big
earrings, each one having three pearls, hang into the headscarf. This bride doll
without facial features measures 28 cm of height and the span of the arms is 21
cm.
The
second tislit (fig. 99 right) has the
same frame as the first one but a piece of a half reed is used for the arms. It
wears one garment, a long rose rectangular rag with shining designs tightened at
the waist with a ribbon of the same fabric. Another rag of the same fabric
serves as a headscarf. From under this scarf and before the arms hang two long
plaits of hair. These plaits are made with woolen yarn from an old carpet. Just
as the first doll, this doll has no facial features. The height of the doll is
28 cm and the arm-span 13.5 cm.
For
the third tislit (fig. 100) the same
frame is used once more, except that the piece of a half reed goes right through
the vertical reed, a ribbon tightening the whole. The garment is a rectangular
rag that is somewhat fissured in its center so that the head can pass through.
The belt consists of a few black and red woolen yarns. A white rag serves as the
headscarf. In opposition to the two other dolls of Najat or those made by her
sisters, this doll has facial features designed with a black ballpoint for the
eyes and eyebrows and a red one for the mouth and the make-up on the cheeks. The
hair also made with woolen yarn of an old carpet, hangs at the back in one big
plait. The headscarf is held in place at the neck with a ribbon. The scarf and
ribbon come from the same fabric as the dress. This doll is 22.5 cm tall and the
span of the arms measures 10 cm.
The
isli doll or bridegroom is very simple
(fig. 99 left). The cross-shaped frame, with the arms consisting of a piece of a
half reed put into a fissure on top of the vertical reed, is strengthened with a
ribbon. This male doll wears a jellaba and a turban of the same mauve fabric and
measures 19.5 cm of height with an arm-span of 8.5 cm.
The
youngest of the Laabib girls, Sabah, was born in Midelt in 1973. When living at
Ksar Assaka about 1983 she played together with her sister Najat at the wedding
of their dolls.
When
I asked Sabah at the end of 1996 if she wanted to make once more her doll, she
also made three bride dolls just as Najat did. Twice she used pieces of reed and
once an ear of maize (Indian corncob). The doll for which an ear of maize has
been used is made as follows (fig. 101, H = 19 cm, arm-span = 11.5 cm). At 5 cm
of the top of the ear a piece of a half reed is put right through it, this way
giving arms to the doll. The long reddish-brown hair is just the beard of the
ear. The unique garment of this tislit
is a rag flannelette fabric taken from an old baby dress, green at the outside
and white at the inside. Through a small hole in the center of the rag the head
of the doll can pass through. A rag of the same fabric, with the inside on top,
covers the arms. A small blue ribbon is tightened around the waist. At the back,
the garment is fixed by piercing the end of the stalk through the rag. The top
of the ear of maize figures the head, but there are no facial features. The use
of an ear of maize to make a female doll is also attested for the village of
Tizal near El Khemis.
For
her second doll (fig. 102 right, H = 23 cm, arm-span = 18.5 cm) Sabah uses two
parts of a half reed fixed with a ribbon into the shape of a cross. The abundant
hair of this doll consists of hemp and envelops completely the top of the
vertical reed hiding the whole of the face without facial features. The part of
the hair falling down in front of the arms has been plaited at the bottom. For
all garment it wears a red rag with black dots cut out of an old jellaba. A
fissure in the center of this rectangular piece of fabric makes it possible to
drape it over the arms and torso, a large mauve and black belt tightening the
waist. In front, the bottom part of the garment is held tight by the end of the
reed.
The
third and tallest doll (fig. 102 left, H = 35 cm, arm-span = 18 cm) has a frame
of a whole reed with part of a half reed going right through it at 6 cm of the
top. This doll wears a fine transparent garment with square designs of golden
threads, a ribbon of the same fabric making the belt. A shell attached with a
safety pin forms the doll’s only jewel. The most remarkable is its green
hairdo plaited out of reed leaves. At both sides of the head these plaits form
two big curls fixed at top of the reed with a multi-colored headscarf enveloping
the whole head so that noting of the face is seen. This hair imitates the
typical woman’s hairdo of the region, called ikherbèn,
still worn by Sabah’s grandmother but no more by her mother.
As
well Souad as Najat and Sabah Laabib stressed that an individual name was not
given to the tislit or the isli. This habit of not giving a first name to a doll has been confirmed in
September 1999 by two girls of eight and nine years living in Zaïda, a village
on the road from Meknès to Midelt and at 30 km before this last town.
Aïcha Aït Mamou, born in 1941 in Ksar Assaka where she lived during childhood and the mother of the three above-mentioned sisters, remade in October 1998 the tislit or bride doll she played with as a young girl about 1950. The frame of this doll consists of a whole reed and half of a reed fixed together cross-shapely (fig. 119, H = 29 cm, arm-span = 11 cm). The doll’s underwear consists of three rags and an upper dress of varicolored textile fabric with vegetal motives and vertical parallel golden lines. In the center of these rags a hole has been made to pass them over the doll’s head. The scarf is a long piece of the same textile fabric as for the upper dress. Both ends of this scarf are attached to the upper dress with a needle. The top of the vertical reed is wrapped in a black rag figuring the hair and kept in place with a ribbon. This ribbon and the head-scarf knotted at the back come from the same textile fabric as the upper dress. Black eyes and eyebrows, a red nose and mouth and red cheeks compose the doll’s facial traits. The mirror hidden in a tin box singularizes this bride doll. Until the early 1990s such a tin box with mirror attached to the red scarf hiding the bride’s face was used during wedding ceremonies and although one could still buy them on the local market in October 1998 I was told that this part of the bride’s wedding dress was not seen anymore. Aïcha explained that a specific belief linked to pregnancy was connected to this mirror. A belief stating that the bride will not get pregnant as long as the tin box is not opened but that if she wants to have a baby she will look at her own image reflected by the mirror.
Aïcha Merghad, an about sixty-year-old woman in 1998 born in the village Aït Sidi Amar of the El Ayachi apple producing region about 20 km before Midelt when coming from the Moyen Atlas, also remade the dolls of her girlhood. The frame of the tislit or bride doll she remade in October 1998 consists of a piece of reed and a little stick fixed cross-shapely. The facial traits resemble those of the foregoing doll. This doll received breasts by putting two little stones under the its dresses consisting of an under dress, an upper dress, a belt and a scarf of the same white textile fabric decorated with varicolored spots (fig. 120, H = 25 cm, arm-span = 14 cm).
Already
in November 1997 Aïcha Merghad remade two examples of the dolls she played with
at the end of the 1940s but this time the vertical part of the frame is a bone.
The first doll’s frame is an 11 cm long bone to which a piece of a half reed
is attached cross-shapely with a ribbon (fig. 121
right, H = 33 cm, arm-span = 12 cm). The face of the doll being hidden by a veil
one cannot see the bone. This frame is wrapped in a green under dress with white dots, a blue tshamir
or long blouse with white stripes and a white tfina
or upper dress spotted with blue, red and brown dots. Three pieces of the same
fabric create the belt, the large scarf and the ribbon keeping the scarf in
place on the doll’s head. As I observed in November 1997, the bride is wearing
such a large scarf when conducted to her husband’s house. The second doll,
closely resembling the first one, has the top of the bone wrapped in a red rag
that keeps the long hair in place. She also wears a little necklace with white pearls
and a large yellow scarf with gray and brown geometric designs covering the
whole doll (fig. 121 left, H = 23 cm, arm-span = 8.5 cm).
Kemal
Laabib, born at Ksar Assaka in 1979 and the last born of Aïcha Aït Mamou, told
me that he played at wedding together with some girls using a bride doll but
with a little boy as bridegroom. This happened between his four and six years.
Once the children had become six or seven years it was not proper anymore for
boys and girls to play together. He also remembers to have made a bride doll but
this was surely an exception.
Mhamed
Bellamine, a man born in Ksar Assaka in 1968 told me in May 2000 that when he
was a child the Ksar Assaka girls and boys between six and ten years played
together at marriage. A nice girl was chosen to be the bride and her make up was
done with khol and red lipstick. A boy was designated in turn to be the
bridegroom. With stones the plan of a small house was created and waste material
such as sardine tins and old radio batteries serves as kitchen utensils. Then
the girls shout joyous while the bride and the bridegroom are guided to the
house where the henna decorations are applied by using mud. Finally, the
children kiss them farewell and whish them good luck. This wedding game also
contained a dinner play for which the children possibly received some oil and
vegetables from an adult. Yet, Mhamed stressed that these vegetables only where
prepared but not eaten. The same happened with the tea when it was prepared.
At
Tataouine, situated along the road to the Jbel Ayachi Mountain at 11 km from
Midelt, and with the help of Hammioui Mohamed, a local primary school teacher, I
received in September 1999 eight dolls, four made by girls (fig. 122)
and four dolls made
by a mother (fig. 123). With such a tislit
or bride doll and sometimes also an isli
or bridegroom doll, the girls normally play at wedding in small houses delimited
by stones. The frame of these dolls consist of a vertical reed or
bone with a stick attached cross-shapely. Some dolls have facial traits possibly
incrusted on the reed with a heated pin. The hair of one of the dolls is the
beard of a maize corncob but otherwise the girl’s own hair is used. One little
doll is a copy of the telghenja doll used to ask for rain.
In
the village Tabenatout at 4 km from Midelt along the road to Tataouine I saw how
girls give very long hair to their tislit
or bride doll in November 1997. To create this highly valued hair three to four
times as long as the doll itself the girls look for the upper part of a young
reed with long green leaves. With her fingernails Imane Bâalil, the
thirteen-year-old girl seen on the photo, splits two or three leaves into small
strips (fig. 124, H = 16 cm, length of the hair = 49 cm). These leaf strips are
attached to the top of the vertical reed of the doll‘s frame with another leaf
strip or with a thread. At about 5 cm from the top of this reed a stick is put
through it to form the arms. Then one or more rags are put over the arms and
tightened at the waist with a ribbon serving as belt. The facial features are
sometimes designed on the reed with a black felt pen and the hair can be
plaited.
A
real novelty for rural Morocco are, as far as I know, the dollhouse and the °arûsa
or bride doll with which two eight-year-old girls from the village Zaïda, on
the road from Meknès to Midelt and at 40 km from this last town, were playing
in September 1999. The mother of one of the girls, whose husband is a primary
school teacher, clearly stated that she does not want her daughter to play
outside in the dirt. Probably because of this interdiction, the girl invented a
dollhouse that overcomes her mother’s objections. The dollhouse is a cardboard
box with four little windows and a door, cut out in the four sides, decorated
with curtains at the inside (fig. 125). It also contains a few self-made
cushions and some rags serving as carpets or blankets. This girl, together with
a girl living next door and having the same kind of dollhouse, often plays at
marriage with such a dollhouse and a bride doll (fig. 126, H = 21 cm). The bride
doll is as peculiar as the dollhouse. It is an imported plastic doll of the
Barbie type sold in local shops but normally serving as a decorative object for
which a woman or an older girl crochets an Andalusian dress (fig. 111). With
some rags both girls create a dress for their plastic doll. In the center of
these rags a hole is made to put it over the doll’s neck after the head has
been removed. The sides of the dress are then sewed together. According to these
two girls a first name is not given to the bride doll. There can also be an arîs or bridegroom doll possibly represented by a plastic Father
Christmas as the one held by a two-year-old girl from the village Ignern and
that her mother bought at the market of Taliouine for 5 dirham (0.5 Euro). When
I photographed this little girl in November 1998 I was told that the local name
for this plastic doll is afkir or old
man (fig. 127). The wedding ceremonies most often enacted are the day of the
arrival of the clothes and other gifts at the bride’s home and the day when
the bride leaves her home to be conducted to her husband’s house. During their
doll play these girls sing and dance as for a real wedding and a virtual dinner
is also enacted although nuts are sometimes available. When playing with such
foreign plastic dolls local doll-making skills can still be useful. Looking more
closely at the doll of figure 126 I noticed the original way in which one of the
girls replaced the missing arms of her plastic doll with a piece of reed in the
way arms are given to traditional dolls.
At
Aït Slimane, a small village near Amellago in the Haut Atlas some 50 km to the
north of Goulmima, I found in September 1999 a group of five six to
seven-year-old children playing in their dollhouse (fig. 128). Two girls
accepted to be photographed with their tislit
or bride doll (fig. 129). The children said that they always play at tamgra or wedding whereby they also use an isli or bridegroom doll.
Whereas
in Goulmima, a little town of the Aït Merghad Amazigh along the road from
Errachidia to Ouarzazate and at 60 km from the first town, the plastic doll -
the ‘poupiya’ - seems to have replaced the indigenous doll - the tislit
- this was not the case around 1980 or even 1985. The change has been gradually,
as within the Lihi family where Aïcha only played with the tislit
doll and Rachida, her younger sister, as well with a self-made doll as with an
imported plastic doll her mother gave her.
In
Magaman, a village just outside Goulmima on the road to Tadirhoust, the Amazigh
girls of the second year of the primary school still make bride dolls. On the
photograph these seven-year-old girls hold their dolls (fig. 89). I obtained
these dolls and the following information thanks to the teacher of this class,
my friend the poet Omar Taous of Goulmima, in November 1996.
Among
the eight dolls, seven represent a tislit
or bride and one an isli or bridegroom
(fig. 90, 91, see also Rossie e.a., 1998, video). The cross-shaped frame is the
same for all the dolls. Four dolls have a frame of reed, two of little branches
and one of two pieces of wood, the arms being attached with a ribbon. For the
last doll the reed has been replaced by a piece of a red plastic tube pierced by
a little branch. None of these dolls has facial traits. They are dressed quite
rudimentary with one or maximum two garments, rags in the center of which a
little fissure is made to put them over the head. The upper garment is white,
white with green geometric designs, red with black stripes, transparent black
and multi-colored in two cases. The doll with the plastic tube frame wears a
transparent upper garment with green and golden floral designs, its belt being
made from the same fabric. This doll also wears a green plastic necklace. The
other dolls have no jewels and with only one exception they have a ribbon belt.
One doll differs from the others through her upper garment as it is made out of
a large strip of whitish fabric with green designs that is several times winded
around the trunk beneath the arms. Although not one doll wears a headscarf, the
girls say that it sometimes wears one. The bridegroom doll is very slightly
dressed with a transparent rag but normally it should also wear an upper
garment. The maximum height of these dolls is 18 cm and the minimum height 13
cm.
Even
if these dolls have been brought to the classroom at the demand of their
teacher, the girls claim that they still play with them at home. Following my
question if they also have plastic dolls, their answer shows that they would
prefer these imported dolls if they could obtain them, but when a boy reacts by
saying that the self-made dolls are better as they cost nothing, several girls
change their opinion. This chance in opinion eventually reflects the difference
between the reality and the dreams of these village girls.
With
their dolls these girls play at wedding. One girl explained that therefore she
makes a tislit doll and her sister an isli
doll. Both are laid down on two flat stones and then they start the appropriate
songs. Sometimes, the girls also play at imitating with their dolls the typical
Amazigh ahidûs dance, using a small
bucket to rhythm their songs and dance. The whole class agrees to say that boys
do not make such dolls and the girls add to this that sometimes a girl makes a
doll for her little sister to play together while singing.
In
a small village, Ighrem-n-Cherif, near Goulmima but on the other side of the
Oued Gheris, girls also make bride dolls of the same type. Hesna Midouan, an
unschooled Amazigh girl of six years, elaborated the tislit doll of figure 92 in November 1994. This 21.5 cm high doll
with an arm-span of 6.5 cm wears on a cross-shaped frame one long garment of
cotton fabric with multi-colored flowers and a small belt of the same fabric
tightens the waist. On top of the reed a headscarf, of the same fabric, is put.
This doll also lacks facial features.
To
the East of Goulmima, some 50 km from Erfoud and near Merzouga at the edge of
the Erg Chebbi sand dunes, the Amazigh girls of the little village Ksar Hasni
Biad propose to the tourists some traditional female dolls. There, about ten
girls proposed me their dolls in February 1997. I bought three dolls showing
some variety for ten dirhams each (1 Euro).
The
frame of the three dolls consists of a vertical quite big reed to which has been
tightened a piece of a half reed. One doll (fig. 103), bought from a girl of
about five years, has much faded facial features with eyes and eyebrows, nose,
mouth and tattoos. The mouth is a little straight line. The arms and body are
wrapped with three rags giving fullness to the doll. On top it wears two
rectangular pieces of fabric, one of rose color and the other of blue color. The
garments are held tight with a yellow ribbon crossed before the arms and a belt
of orange woolen yarn. A large red headscarf is held in place with a red ribbon.
A little necklace of white plastic pearls embellishes the doll. At both edges of
this necklace a ribbon is attached, permitting to wear the doll. This doll
measures 23 cm of height and the arm-span is 9.5 cm.
Another
doll (fig. 104), bought from a seven-year-old girl, has clearer facial features
but at the same time faded features at one of the sides of the reed, as if the
doll received a new face. On top of the eyes and eyebrows one sees a tattoo in
the form of a reversed V and there are two dots on the cheeks. The
crescent-shaped mouth is continued in its middle by a line with three dots at
each side of the line. On top of the head a large red scarf is fixed with a
red-gray ribbon. Beneath the arms a piece of the same fabric is wrapped several
times around the reed to give fullness to the doll’s body. The upper garment,
a rectangular white cotton fabric, has a fissure in its center to pass it over
the head. A green-gray ribbon crossed between the breast and two green threads
at the wrist keep the garments in place. Just beneath the arms sequins are sewed
on the upper garment in the form of an oval. This upper garment still white at
the inside but already dirty at the outside together with the two faces support
the information given by a carpet merchant of the same village that the girls
play with these dolls before selling them at tourists when the occasion occurs.
The height of the doll is 22 cm and the arm-span 9 cm.
The
last doll (fig. 105) seems to be more recent. Yet it is at the same time the
most typical doll of the three. It belonged to a girl of seven years. The face
has black eyes with black eyebrows, two dots for the nose also painted in black,
a straight red line as mouth and two red dots on the cheeks. On the forehead a
tattoo of four red dots has been painted in the form of a lozenge. All this has
been painted with a kind of black tar or red nail varnish. The hairdo, called ikherbèn
as in Ksar Assaka, consists of two big curls made with a piece of a date wrapped
in a black rag and stuck on both sides of the reed. A red and a green woolen
yarn tighten a large dark green headscarf. A rag has been turned several times
around the reed beneath the arms to make the doll big-bellied. On top there is a
folded large yellow rag and another orange piece of fabric of rectangular shape.
To put the garments over the head a fissure is made in the center of the rags.
Two little balls of fabric have been put under the garments to give breasts to
the doll, moreover a green ribbon is crossed between the breasts to accentuate
the form. With its 25 cm this is the tallest doll of the three, the span of the
arms being 11 cm.
Luc
Lauras bought in 2001 some forty dolls from young nomadic women living in their
tents recently dressed along the trail to Merzouga. He bought these dolls made
for tourist but resembling those of the girls of Ksar Hasni Biad to be shown at
an exposition of the Musée International des Arts Modestes in Sète at the
French Mediterranean coast (November 2001-February 2002). When invited by Luc
Lauras to participate in this exposition called Modesties Exotiques, I exhibited
my collection of Amazigh children’s dolls from the Moroccan Atlas and
Pre-Sahara (Rossie et Lauras, 2002, Vidéo: Poupées de l’Atlas et du Pré-Sahara
Marocains). As the catalogue of this exposition was not printed, I used the
concerned article for the number on Amazigh populations edited by the
intercultural review Passerelles in 2002 (Rossie, 2002).
In
the little Amazigh village Aït Ighemour, located at 8 km of the Jbel Siroua
mountain at an altitude of 2600 m and at the end of a 36 km long track starting
from the village Anezal on the road from Amerzgane to Tazenakht in the
Ouarzazate province, I have been able to collect in October 1992 ten dolls made
by girls between six and twelve years (fig. 80,
81).
This
has been possible through the help of Nour-Eddine Ihbous, an Amazigh schoolmaster
from Essaouira who was teaching there for two years. Such dolls, already made by
three year old girls, function in the imitation of wedding ceremonies,
especially those celebrated before the entrance of the bride in her husband’s
home. To enact this, the girls are sitting behind the doll, the tislit,
and clap in their hands while singing the appropriate song.
The
frame of all these dolls consists of a vertical reed onto which a little branch
is fixed horizontally with a ribbon. This frame wears three or four garments. In
order to have the possibility to put these dresses over the doll’s head, the
girl makes a small fissure in the middle of the fabric. The garments are tied
with a belt of fabric. The ‘tshamir’ or upper garment is most of the time a
piece of fabric with shining designs. One doll wears on top of this shining
garment another one of white color, however this doll does not wear the black
headscarf, a distinctive feature of married women, worn by all the other dolls.
This doll should therefore be seen as a young girl. Most of the dolls also wear
the khèrraif, a shoulder belt used on
top of the garments to attach the rolled up sleeves while working but which is
also worn on other occasions. The shoulder belts of the dolls are made with
mercerized cotton threads, although one doll has a khèrraif of gold colored
threads, this way imitating the women’s khèrraif for festivities that also
has a shining color.
Seven
of the ten dolls show the reed’s surface at the place of the face but facial
features are never designed. A red, blue or white turban covers the head without
hair. These dolls do not have any jewels, what according to the girls is always
the case. The height of the dolls varies between 9.5 cm and 16 cm and the span
of the arms between 5.5 cm and 7 cm.
In
this village, where I found a male doll with a head of a summer squash made by a
ten year old boy (fig. 24), another boy of more or less the same age made a
female doll of some 50 cm height whose head is a potato in which the nose, mouth
and eyes have been curved. The armature is a vertical stick pierced by a metal
bar figuring the arms. The doll’s head is covered with a red scarf. The red
upper garment is centered on the waist with a belt of the same color and the khèrraif
is made with green threads. Unfortunately, I have not been able to photograph
this doll.
Ignern
is an Amazigh village of some sixty houses, situated at an altitude of 1600 m and
15 km from the rural center of Taliouine when coming from Tazenakht. A 4 km long
track relies the village to the road from Tazenakht to Taroudannt. In this
village the girls still make in November 1996 a female doll called tèslit
or bride. Such a bride doll made by an about ten-year-old girl has a frame of a
vertical reed horizontally pierced by a little branch (fig. 83,
see also Rossie
e.a., 1998, video). Through a little fissure three garments have been put over
the doll’s head: a piece of a sweater with stripes going from brown to beige,
then a piece of cotton fabric with white and blue stripes and on top a piece of
a red sweater going down to the waist only. Finally a piece of transparent white
textile is fold over the belt made with a red plastic thread. The beard of an
ear of maize gives locks of hair to this doll. The hair is kept at its place
with a ribbon from the same fabric as the cotton garment. The piece of reed seen
under the ribbon has no facial features.
Ennèya,
a thirty five-year-old mother from the same village also made a doll for me. The
frame of the doll is a vertical reed into which a little branch is pierced to
form the arms (fig. 82, see also Rossie e.a., 1998, video). To design on the
face eyes, nose and mouth she uses a decoction of herbs called èktran, a
kind of tar used for the preparation of a sheep’s skin. Three layers of
garments, two whitish and a third one with a red background, are put over the
head through a little fissure in the middle of the fabric. A blue ribbon with
white designs tightens the waist. The zîf,
a large blue headscarf with black designs, is held in place with an amelul,
a red ribbon. Finally a whitest blanket envelops the doll. This doll measures 16
cm of height and the span of the arms is 9.5 cm.
According
to Ennèya, the boys do not make such dolls and they do not participate directly
in the doll play of the girls. What could happen is that the girls buy in the
little shops, constructed with stones by the boys, all they need for their doll
play and pay with pebbles.
At
Ignern plastic dolls are now found together with the traditional dolls. An
eight-year-old girl explains that the girls join in the house of one of them
with the purpose to sew by hand trousers and a long shirt for their dolls. The
doll of 43 cm height shown at figure 84 belongs to a girl of nine years.
The
girls of another Amazigh region, the village of Tizal near El Khemis, located at
60 km from Marrakech near the road to Ouarzazate, still played at the beginning
of the 1980s with dolls having a cross-shaped frame of reed they dressed as
brides using brilliant cloth for the upper garment. Sometimes the taslit was
made with an ear of maize (Indian corncob) through which the girl pricked a
short stick to give it arms. The plaited or non-plaited beard serves as the
doll’s hair. As jewels the doll wears a necklace of pearls. A hole in the wall
of the inner yard serves as the dollhouse. According to information given by a nearly fifty-year-old woman of
Tizal the reed doll of her childhood was
between 10 and 15 cm long and it had a cross-shaped frame. Around
1950, her doll play imitated the henna ceremony in preparation of the wedding
and the wedding itself. When playing the henna ceremony the girls gathered
around the doll. One of the girls took the role of the bride’s mother and
another one was speaking for the doll. When the ‘mother’ applies the henna
on her ‘daughter’s’ hand, both start to ‘cry’ while the other girls
sing in Amazigh:
“In
the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate,
“God
we submit to you, be with us.
“God
will be with you my daughter and with us”.
Later
on the wedding of the taslit is celebrated and on that occasion the girls sing:
“The
taslit is like an almond flower of the Ihîhî region,
“when
the flower opens, it attracts the bees”.
Dr.
Guichard, speaking of the toys of Marrakech in the periodical France-Maroc
(1921: 162-163), describes and shows a little chapel and a miniaturized chair
used when playing with dolls. The designs of figures 73 and
74 copy the
toy-chapel and the toy-chair seen on the photograph of Guichard. Sitting in a
chapel or ‘ammaria’ carved out in wood, the bride receives the evening of
her wedding the homage of the guests and of the bridegroom. The bridegroom has
his own ‘chilia’ chair on which he is sitting when confronted with the
pleasantry and the jokes of the guests who on turn stick to his forehead a piece
of money with their saliva.
As
well the little chair as the little chapel is painted in bright colors and
embellished with multicolored arabesques. The woodworkers make these toys. The
parents buy them for their little daughters, especially for the °Ashûra
festivities on the tenth day of the Muslim year, and for the Aïd es-seghir, the
feast at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Today such attributes are
still used for a real marriage, but all my female informants of Marrakech told
me that they never played with such a chapel or chair in miniature and,
according to them, these must have been toys of children of wealthy families.
At
the beginning of the forties, the young girls of this city make dolls with a
frame of two reeds assembled in the shape of a cross. For modeling the head and
face they sometimes use leaven. The facial features are designed with local
make-up products. This °arûsa was
married to her °arîs, the bridegroom
doll, following the ceremonial of that time.
Madam
Skouri, director of the school Kbour Chou Filles (Essmara) in Marrakech, has
given me the °arûsa or bride doll of
figure 75. A girl born in 1954 and going to this school made this doll. It is a
doll of 24 cm of height with a frame made with a whole reed onto which a piece
of a half reed of about 10 cm has been tied cross-shapely. To give some volume
to the doll the crossing of the reeds and a part beneath them have been wrapped
with rags. Of a rectangular piece of fabric hanging on the back of the armature
only a small part is seen at the neck because it is hidden under a white dress.
Above this white dress the doll wears a tunic open at both sides and made out of
a very brilliant cloth of silvery color. All these dresses are tied with a small
textile binder. As upper cloth there is a transparent mantilla fixed with a pin.
This doll has no facial features, but Madam Skouri is sure that other dolls had
a face.
Although
some young women of the Daoudiyât quarter and of Douar Akioud in Marrakech
believe that the traditional doll is not made anymore, Youssef Aït Ammou of the
University of Marrakech states in 1992 that one can still see here and there in
certain popular quarters of the town young girls playing with a female doll
having an armature of reed.
Nevertheless,
the evolution from the traditional doll, with an armature of reed and made by
the girls themselves, towards the plastic doll, bought in the local market in
1992 for about 3 dirhams (0.3 Euro) (fig. 76) seems to have started several
decades ago, probably after World War II at least in the major cities. This
evolution might begin even a lot earlier, at the beginning of 1900, as I did
find in an article of F. Castells, “Note sur la fête de Achoura à Rabat”
published in 1915, the following statement: some shops besieged by the children
sell toys imported from Europe, e.g. rifles, balls, dolls, drums, bugles etc...
The most shining objects are those most wanted. Next to this shop sits in front
of his merchandise an old representative of the tradition selling with little
success humble small toys made locally...” (p. 342).
In
the more or less well-to-do milieus of Marrakech, for example in the family of
Madam Skouri, the traditional doll was not used anymore around 1950, neither by
herself nor her nieces or friends. Moreover, her daughters played in the
beginning of the 1970s with great imported dolls (fig. 77). They dressed these
dolls with baby clothes or clothes they made themselves or their mother made.
The jewels of the doll were those the girl had. According to the necessities of
their imaginative play this doll, named Sofia or Yasmina, was dressed as a baby,
a girl or a young woman.
In
the popular quarters of Marrakech the doll with an armature of reed survived
longer. In the poor district of Douar Akioud most girls still played with this
traditional doll about 1980. However, Fatima Kader, a woman born in 1971 and
living in this district, then already played with a plastic doll she
whole-heartedly dressed and putted on a make-up. Fatima was so kind to make for
me in 1992 a copy, as truthful as possible, of the doll she played with at the
age of about nine years. Before describing this doll, I have to stress the fact
that this young woman had from her young age a great skill for decoration and
make-up. This is confirmed by the fact that she developed from a girl creating
remarkable dolls to a woman who excels in applying complex figures with henna on
hands and feet.
The
plastic doll (fig. 76), mass-produced in China or elsewhere, was transformed
under my eyes in a real bride from Marrakech (fig. 78). To do this Fatima has
first of all given breasts to her doll by putting two pieces of rag rolled into
small balls under the dress the doll wears already. Then she did sew underpants
from the same old cloth serving later on for the dress and the long veil. In a
rectangular piece of this somewhat transparent white fabric, a hole for the head
and two smaller holes for the arms are cut out. Once the dress is in its proper
place, the sides are sewn. Then comes the moment to fix the hair that consists
of natural dark-colored wool. The long hair is fixed on the head with some glue,
bought in the nearest little shop, and plaited into two braids at the end of
which Fatima fixed an elastic with plastic ornaments, an elastic often used for
little girls’ hair. With the same wool and glue the doll gets eyebrows and
forelocks. In order to stress the lips and cheeks a red nail varnish is used to
design geometric patterns on the chin and above the nose and the tache de beauté
on the left cheek. The nails of the hands and feet have been lacquered in red.
Just above the forelocks the kherîr,
a decoration of red mercerized cotton threads, is fixed. This decoration, also
worn by the brides, has a lozenge-shape with in its middle a vertical shaft of
gilded threads. On both sides of the lozenge hang long plaits made with the same
red cotton threads used for the lozenge. With these two plaits the lozenge is
tied to the head. A mauve kherîr fixes the veil, cut out of the same textile as
the dress, on the hairdo. Two girdles, one with red mercerized cotton threads
and another with green and white threads, encircle the waist. The necklace and
the two bracelets of the doll are made with a child’s necklace having big
green pearls and small yellow pearls with green strokes. Finally, Fatima
introduced into the doll’s head two earrings for little girls. These are made
of a piece of yellow metal with three small pendants of green and orange pearls.
The
two kherîr, the earrings, the necklace, the two elastics with plastic
ornaments, the nail varnish and the eye-liner used to decorate the doll have
been bought by Fatima at the medina of Marrakech in order to create the doll.
However, when she was a child she used her own jewels or those she could obtain
from her grandmother, mother or other female relatives together with their
make-up products.
For
celebrating the wedding of their bride doll - but without using a bridegroom
doll or a little boy instead - the girls of Fatima’s generation in Douar
Akioud, gathered together in small groups of four or five girls between five and
ten years old. In the vegetable gardens in the vicinity of the houses they
erected a dollhouse with little stone walls covered with wet sand, the doll
being placed in one of the corners (fig. 79, copy of the design made by Fatima).
Such dollhouses were still made in 1992. Once everything is ready, the girls
dance and sing as during a real wedding and when the wedding party is over the
girls give each other a kiss and return home.
A
photograph of a more or less rectangular play-house can be seen in the book of
Mohamed Sijelmassi Enfants du Maghreb
entre hier et aujourd’hui in which this pediatrician of Marrakech recounts
memories of his childhood. The photograph shows a playhouse with walls made with
stones of different sizes. There are two doorways, one at the front and one at
the back, and on the floor are lying empty tins and rectangular pieces of
clothes representing the furniture and utensils (1984: 94).
According
to the restricted information I got from the quarter Daoudiyât in Marrakech,
the girls who had between six and twelve years during the sixties also played at
wedding ceremonies. But here children, not dolls, played the role of the bride
and the bridegroom. The same kind of plastic dolls as the one from Douar Akioud,
dressed and given some make-up by the girls, have been used to represent babies
or young children to carry on the back, to feed or to coddle. For this doll
another type of dollhouse was erected. Three walls are made with three layers of
sardine cans, the fourth wall being the wall of a house. A can placed on the
ground is the doll’s bed and another round can is the dish or the washtub.
A
female student of the French Department of the Cadi Ayyad University of
Marrakech told me in November 1993 that she played at imitating wedding
ceremonies at the town of Ouarzazate around 1980 and this as well with dolls
with a frame of reed, made by herself just as the other girls did, as with a
nicely dressed European doll. Since about 1990 the local doll has disappeared in
the city itself but would still survive in the surrounding villages. The dolls
could also serve for a game of baby and mother, the girl being the mother.
In
the little town of Imi-n-Tanoute on the road from Marrakech to Agadir, the
Amazigh girls still dressed around 1982 a frame of reed to become their taslit. The frame of this bride doll was constructed in the
following way: a reed of about 15 cm is split into two halves, then one half
shortened to about 8 cm is fixed onto the upper part of the longer half to form
a cross, the vertical half reed showing the concave side as the front view of
the doll. By wrapping the intersection and a part beneath it with rags some
fullness is given to the doll’s body. Rabbit droppings are often put under the
piece of cloth to form the breasts. The hair is of sheep wool, possibly colored
with henna, and fixed with chewing gum or a little ribbon. Several rectangular
pieces of fabric, with a hole in the middle to pass them over the doll’s head
and not sewed together at the sides, are superposed on the doll’s body. They
figure two undergarments and the traditional long and large Amazigh dress. The
undergarments have a uniform color and they are fixed with an elastic cord
crossed over the chest, just as the older Amazigh women still do. The upper
garments should be made out of brilliant fabric with designs of golden or silver
color. A piece of textile fabric imitates the large woolen cape the women put on
their shoulders. Finally, a textile belt tightens the waist and a headscarf is
knotted on the head. A little necklace and possibly a brooch serve as the
doll’s jewels.
The
information gathered locally on the facial traits of the dolls is more or less
ambiguous. All things considered, each girl seems to decide herself if she wants
to give her doll a face or not. If a face - with eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth
- is designed it is done, during the second half of the 1970s, with a ballpoint.
A housewife from Imi-n-Tanoute, who did play with a doll around 1950, affirms
that the facial features were indicated with charcoal.
Melika
Bamoussa of the same town, a young mother of 21 years in 1992, married with Smaïl
Khettou and speaking Amazigh with her husband, gently offered to make once again
the taslit of her childhood (fig. 87).
This
bride doll conforms totally to the description given above except that it is 25
cm tall with 12.5 cm of arm-span. White wool is used for the hair that is
plaited into one very long plait and attached with chewing gum. The
undergarments are khaki and white, the upper garment is transparent with printed
floral and geometric patterns where the white, black, mauve and green alternate
but where the outlines are marked with lines of gold color. As woolen cape
serves a red transparent rag draped over the shoulders and held together at the
front with a safety pin at which is hanging a big white pearl. The waist is
girded with a strip of white cloth and on top of a twisted belt, composed of
three plastified iron wires around which golden strings, used with wrapping
paper for presents, are twisted. A brooch, a big flower with golden petals,
sticks onto the chest and a red-mauve kerchief finishes the costume of this
taslit with her face designed with a ballpoint.
The
rags used for making the doll’s dresses were found in the garbage can of the
tailors. These years, however, this has become impossible as these rags are used
for weaving carpets. In the search for the rags, especially the brilliant ones,
the services of young brothers were sometimes called upon as Smaïl Khettou
remembers very well.
The
girls do not give a first name to their taslit, as this would belittle her to
the level of a young girl, she who is a bride.
Melika
and the girls of her generation played at celebrating the wedding of their bride
doll without making a bridegroom doll. This doll play was really popular during
summer, the wedding period after harvest. A dollhouse with a quite uniform
scheme is constructed with stones. However, the size and the arrangement of the
rooms vary (fig. 88, copy of the design of Zohra Bamoussa, 19 years in 1992).
Such a dollhouse includes an inner yard, a guest room, where rags and a little
can replace the cushions and the table, the taslit’s bedroom, with a bed
consisting of an empty sardines tin covered with rags, and the kitchen
containing imitations of household utensils.
The
doll play was sometimes played in the courtyard but the terrace on the flat roof
was preferred. Nevertheless, the home was not the best place for these play
activities as parents did not view doll play favorably arguing that little girls
should not be preoccupied with matters related to sexuality and men-women
relationships. In order to overcome these objections, Melika and her female
cousins went playing at their grandmother’s place when their mothers gathered
at the home of one of them. Before returning to their own house, the girls did
hide all the material they used for their doll play.
In
1992 and in the same social background where ten years ago girls still made the
traditional bride doll and where their brothers and husbands became teachers or
have jobs at the same level, Melika and Smaïl showed me with some pride the
teddies and dolls common in France given to their baby girl by one of the family
members living in that country.
In
the region of Taroudannt and around 1945, the girls of the Oulad Yahya used to
make as well an °arûsa or bride doll
as an °arîs or bridegroom doll.
Therefore they took two pieces of reed tied together in the shape of a cross.
Bones of sheep should not have been used. The height of such a doll was about 50
cm and the span of the arms some 40 cm. Wool was used for the hair of the bride
doll but also the beard of Indian corn could do. The face - with eyebrows, eyes,
nose and mouth - was painted with charcoal on the reed. At least one necklace
beautified the bride doll that resembled as much as possible a real bride. The
bridegroom doll was dressed as a bridegroom. The doll play preferred by the
girls was the imitation of the wedding and for their couple of dolls they
erected a dolls’ house with walls made with little stones covered by mud.
Some
parents of the Oulad Yahya accepted that their daughters entered the house with
their dolls but others refused this arguing that young girls have more serious
things to do.
About
1992, the girls of the Oulad Yahya of Taroudannt do not play (almost) anymore
with dolls with a frame of reed. They receive Barbie-like plastic dolls for
which the girls themselves or their mothers make dresses or, as it is the case
at the end of 1996, a little doll dressed as a young girl, made in China, is
bought for ten dirhams (1 Euro) (fig. 85). According to the owner of the small
toyshop in the Medina of Taroudannt, the girls also like very much the baby doll
with its feeding bottle.
Unlike
the substitution of the doll with a frame of reed by a plastic doll, the
Arabic-speaking girls from the rural area of Hmar, at some 15 km from
Taroudannt, still play with the traditional doll. According to Latifa, the
eleven year old girl who gave me this information at the home of Abdellatif Aït
Hedda in February 1992, the frame of this doll consists of a vertical stick for
which is used a strong hollow branch of the bûsûsû
plant that must be dried first. The girl chooses a branch with a fork, the fork
serving as the legs. For the arms a reed is cut in two halves before one part of
it is being fixed in the shape of a cross to the vertical stick (fig. 86).
Once
the frame is ready it is wrapped in rags to give volume to the doll’s body.
Its hair is made with some hair of the girl herself, of a horse or with woolen
yarn. The girl fixes this hairdo with a thorn on top of the branch. The hair
should be very well combed and according to the mood of the girl she will plait
the hair or leave it non-plaited. In the branch two little holes are made for
the eyes with a sharp object, another opening for the nose and one for the
mouth. Then the eyes, nose and mouth are marked with charcoal. With pieces of
old clothes the girl makes female clothes for her bride doll and male clothes
for her bridegroom doll. The bride doll’s upper dress normally should be a
piece of textile with a brilliant design to make it a festive attire. It can
also be decorated with a necklace of snail-shells of various colors and sizes.
The
girls mostly play at celebrating the wedding of their dolls. Therefore they
erect a dollhouse delimited by stones. In one of the corners of this miniature
house the bride doll is laid down on the slightly elevated soil. The girls of
Hmar play with their dolls as soon as they are able to herd the sheep, thus from
the age of five years, until they are ten or twelve years and during all
seasons. At dusk, the little shepherdesses return home with their doll on their
back. However, they do not enter the house with it. The doll is hidden in the
vicinity and picked up in the morning by the shepherdess when she returns with
the sheep to the pasture. Doll play comes to an end when the girl starts helping
at home. At that time she will give her unique °arûsa,
that she always has surrounded with much care and tenderness, to a younger
sister or cousin. Latifa added to this that the Barbie-like plastic dolls,
dressed as an Andalusian or otherwise by the women, only have a decorative
function in her village (fig. 111).
On
a third visit to Abdellatif Aït Hedda in November 1998 he gave me two dolls
made by girls and brought from the village Hmar by Latifa’s mother. The first
doll is made with a piece of the bûsûsû
plant whereby a thickening of the stalk serves as head, a head without facial
traits, hair or scarf (fig. 117, H = 17cm, arm-span = 11 cm). This doll is
dressed in four rags wrapped around the stalk below the arms. These rags serve
as underwear, the third one being a piece of white gaze. The upper dress
consists of a textile fabric with red, green and silver designs tightened around
the waist with a belt of the same fabric.
The
second doll is remarkable because it offers one of the exceptional examples I
have found of a doll figuring a mother carrying a baby on her back. The
cross-shaped frame is made with a piece of reed and a little stick for the arms
(fig. 118, H = 21 cm, arm-span = 8 cm). This mother doll wears an undergarment
and its upper garment is a piece of mauve gaze decorated with golden flowers.
The baby doll is held in place with a rag. The hair of a horse has been used as
well for the hair of the mother as the baby. After one extremity of the hairdo
has been wrapped in a little rag this end is pushed into the upper opening of
the reed. A black rag with white geometric patterns serves as headscarf. To give
breasts to the mother doll two little rag balls are pushed under the dresses.
This mother doll has facial features an opening for the mouth colored red and
eyes represented by two little holes made with an iron pin and colored black.
The nose is lacking. Its eyebrows are indicated with two black oblique lines.
The
frame, hair, and eyes of the baby are the same as for the mother doll but the
mouth and nose are lacking (fig. 118, H = 9.5 cm, arm-span = 5.5 cm). White rags
have been used for the baby’s under dress and upper dress. This mother and
baby doll is completed with a small bag made with a rag and containing some
pieces of textile figuring the baby’s clothes and necessaries.
The
following examples of dolls and doll play enacting weddings come from a few
Anti-Atlas villages of the Sidi Ifni region and from this Southern Moroccan
coastal town itself.
With
the help of Said Bari, a teacher at the primary school of Imou Ergen located at
about 10 km from Sidi Ifni, I received in November 1998 a series of eleven
dolls, nine dolls created by girls between ten and fourteen years and two dolls
made by a boy of twelve years and another boy of thirteen years (fig. 130). Of
these eleven dolls, ten represent the tislit
or bride and one the isli or
bridegroom. As well the boys as the girls play with these dolls to enact a tamgra
or wedding using small houses delimited with stones. The children stressed that
the boys play at wedding with these dolls when herding the livestock in the
mountains but they play separated from the girls.
The
smallest doll representing the isli or
bridegroom is less elaborated than the female dolls, as it neither has facial
traits nor hair (fig. 131, H = 6.5 cm, arm-span = 2.5 cm). It only has an under
dress cut out of a piece of paper from an exercise book and an upper dress for
which a candy’s orange transparent wrapping is used and that is tightened with
a strip of a black plastic bag. Its frame is made with a piece of a half reed to
which a stick has been fixed cross-shapely, the rounded side of the reed serving
as the doll’s front.
The
frame of the ten tislit or bride dolls
consists of a vertical piece of reed (fig. 132,
133, 134, 135,
136, 137, 138,
139, 140, 141). In nine of the ten cases, a
stick of wood or reed has been pushed through the reed to represent the arms.
Except one doll, they all have facial features showing eyes, eyebrows and mouth,
eventually also a nose, designed on the reed with a black, blue or red
ballpoint. Two dolls have a smiling mouth, the other seven dolls having a strait
line as mouth. The facial traits of three dolls are much effaced. The hair of
eight bride dolls is made with black hair of a goat. For one doll a girl’s
hair has been used but cotton or woolen threads could also serve. The doll’s
hairdo is pushed into the opening of the reed and held in place with a ribbon.
The underwear of these dolls consists mostly of two rags. In one case the doll
has three under dresses, only one under dress or no under dress at all. In the
center of the rags a fissure is made to be able to put them over the doll’s
head. The upper dress of eight dolls is a varicolored piece of textile fabric
with designs. The dresses are tightened at the waist with a rag ribbon, once
with white cotton threads. For the upper dress of one doll a girl has chosen a
piece of transparent red plastic cut out from a plastic bag (fig. 138). This is also the
doll for which the girl used her own hair as hair for her doll. The dolls’
garment is completed with a large scarf, once even two scarves, but it happens
that a piece of the upper dress is used as scarf. The height of the bride dolls
varies between 7.5 cm and 20 cm and the arm-span between 2.3 cm and 5 cm.
The
tallest doll has no facial traits and no hair but a strip of textile fabric
representing the scarf surrounds the upper part of the reed while a piece of
scotch is used to keep it in place (fig. 140, H = 20 cm, arm-span = 4.5 cm). A
long rag is wrapped several times around the reed and figures the underwear, the
upper dress being dressed over the doll’s arms and body and tightened by a
ribbon belt. The piece of reed representing the arms is not pushed through the
reed but a fissure was cut on top of the reed to be able to place the arms at
the right place. One of the two smallest dolls is singularized because of its
two under dresses for which the girl used candy wrappings (fig. 139, H = 7.5 cm,
arm-span = 2.3 cm). Its upper dress is a piece of green gaze tightened with a
ribbon, the same gaze serving as scarf. The doll’s black hair comes from a
goat. The second smallest doll is the one with only one dress, a piece of
textile fabric with a white background. It is tightened at the waist with a red
ribbon. The hair of this doll is also made with the hair of a goat (fig. 132, H
= 7.5 cm, arm-span = 3 cm). Both these small bride dolls have facial traits
without an indication for the nose.
In
Ergoub, located at 9 km from Sidi Ifni at the end of the asphalt road and before
Imou Ergen, the seventeen-year-old bride Aïcha who just married Mohamed ou
Hamouche explained in November 1998 that there the girls do not make themselves
the traditional doll since about ten years but instead use plastic dolls. She
stressed that nowadays the Ergoub girls view the self-made doll as ‘dirt’.
It
happens that a type of dolls is so representative of the milieu where it
originated that it is possible to locate it at first sight. This is the case
with a doll made by a girl of the primary school at Imou Ergen in November 1998,
a girl coming from the Tafraoute region in the Anti-Atlas. The frame of this
doll is a unique vertical reed (fig. 142). The top of this reed is wrapped in a
white rag fixed with a cotton thread and on which round eyes, eyebrows and a
nose have been designed in black, the mouth being indicated in red. A dark blue
rag is draped over the doll’s head and body. At the level of the chin both
sides of the dress are sewed together with a white thread. A second rag of the
same textile fabric surrounds the lower part of the doll and is held in place
with a string, the upper part of this dress being folded down over the belt. The
doll’s garments totally resemble the way Tafraoute women are dressed as I
noticed when visiting this small town at the end of the same year. In February
2002, one girl among the girls of the village Lahfart who made the next series
of dolls also made a doll resembling the Tafraoute women (fig. 143, H = 18 cm).
The frame of this doll is a cone used to spoon mercerized cotton threads but
without arms. The doll’s face and facial traits are like those of the other
doll but its nose is a red V. It is dressed with a black dress wrapped around
the cone and hiding the doll’s mouth. A very large black scarf of the same
textile fabric covers the head and the whole body. This scarf is sewed together
in one point at the front of the doll.
When
I settled down in the Southern Moroccan coastal town Sidi Ifni in the beginning
of 2002, the primary school teacher and co-founder of the Isni Culture and Art
Association, Boubaker Daoumani, contacted me after seeing my 1993 book on dolls
and doll play that I just had given to his colleague Said Bari. Boubaker
Daoumani teaches the first two years of the primary school at Lahfart, a small
village located in the coastal slopes of the Anti-Atlas. To reach this village
one has to walk on a climbing track for some twenty minutes, a track starting
from the road leading to Sidi Ifni and at km 9 before this town when coming from
Tiznit. In February 2002 and with the help of his colleagues he collected
several dolls and a few toy-animals created by the pupils.
Several
about-ten-year old girls made twelve tislit
dolls or brides. One of these girls made three brides resembling each other very
well (fig. 144, H = ± 25 cm, arm-span = ± 8 cm). The frame of these dolls is
composed of a vertical reed transpierced by a reed stick. The facial traits are
slightly incrusted into the reed and painted with a black ballpoint. Their hair
is made with wool plaited into a long hairdo hanging down at the dolls’ back
and fixed in the belt. To fix this hair on top of the reed it has been pushed
into a small fissure. The underwear of the dolls consists of a multi-colored rag
open at both sides. The girl gave her three dolls a skirt made from the same
yellow textile fabric with shining green, rose and white floral motives also
used for the scarves. The sides of the skirt are sewed at the back of the doll.
The large scarf covers the head and shoulders. It is crossed at the doll’s
front and put into the skirt’s belt for which elastic is used.
A
small doll with the same type of frame has effaced facial traits designed on the
reed (fig. 145 right, H = 12 cm, arm-span = 5.5 cm). It wears two multi-colored
dresses pushed over the head through a large fissure and hanging over the arms.
These dresses are tightened under the arms with a white thread. A white gaze is
used for the large scarf covering the head and the whole body and it is
tightened with a mauve thread. For the underwear of this doll and the next doll
the girls used a textile fabric with shining motives, a kind of textile fabric
normally used for the dolls’ upper wear. With the exception of the
above-mentioned three bride dolls made by the same girl, the bride dolls of the
Lahfart girls have upper dresses without shining motives. This little doll’s
hair is made with the hair of the girl who made it. One end of the hairdo is
wrapped in a ribbon and pushed in the opening on top of the reed where it is
held in place with a little stone of adequate size.
The
other small doll with shining underwear is peculiar for other reasons also (fig.
145 left, H = 10.5 cm, arm-span = 4 cm). The vertical part of it’s frame is
not a reed but a cardboard tube used to spool mercerized cotton threads, the
arms being represented by a piece of reed pierced through the tube. At the top
of the tube the upper layer of the cardboard has been cut of. This part is
whitened with nail varnish and oval eyes with pupil, eyebrows, nose and smiling
mouth form the facial traits designed with a blue ballpoint. One extremity of
the woolen hairdo is pushed into the tube’s opening and held in place with a
reddish ribbon. Two multi-colored skirts wrapped around the cardboard tube are
fixed below the arms with a ribbon, the upper skirt having shining designs. A
large rose scarf covers the head and the arms of the doll, a scarf held in place
by the green upper dress with black flower designs, a dress put over the head
through a fissure and sewed at both sides below the arms.
Six
bride dolls have the lower part of the vertical reed cut out to form two sticks
representing the legs, a way of giving legs to dolls I have found only very
seldom up to now. On five dolls these legs are hidden by the dresses but on one
doll these legs remain visible (fig. 146, H = 20 cm, arm-span = 5 cm). The eyes
and eyebrows are straight lines made with a blue ballpoint. A straight line
designed with a red ballpoint represents the mouth. A multi-colored rag wrapped
around the reed serves as underwear. The upper dress with a central fissure is
put over the head and shoulders and sewed together at both sides as is done for
some other dolls. A scarf of the same textile fabric as the dress covers the
hair made of black plastic strips, hair fixed into the opening of the reed with
a little stone. A large scarf of white gaze tightened below the arms with a
thread covers the head and body.
For
two of these six dolls the girl’s own hair has been used, fixed in the same
way as for the foregoing doll (fig. 147, H = 16/19 cm, arm-span = 5/6 cm). Their
facial traits are alike but one doll also has a red nose. Both dolls have two
multi-colored rags wrapped around the reed representing the underwear but the
doll without a nose also wears an under dress cut out of a green transparent
plastic bag. A large skirt of white gaze held in place with elastic over which
it is folded down forms the upper wear. Both dolls have two scarves, a smaller
one holding the hair in place and another really large one wrapped around the
whole doll. The smallest doll wears a belt of white cotton threads.
Two
other dolls of the series with cut out legs have the same kind of facial
features designed with a blue and red ballpoint. The long hair is lacking and
only a few short lines designed on the forehead with a blue ballpoint suggest
the hair (fig. 148, H = 12 cm, arm-span = 6 cm). As usual two under dresses, an
upper dress and a large scarf tightened with a ribbon constitute the dolls’
garment. The last doll of this series also lacks hair but its face shows a
different facial design with round eyes and pupil, eyebrows, a round nose and a
big smiling mouth all designed with a blue ball-point (fig. 149, H = 12 cm,
arm-span = 7.5 cm). This doll has three multi-colored under dresses, an upper
dress with rose background and vegetal designs, and a large rose scarf with red
stars and dots covering the head, the arms and the whole body.
The
smallest of the twelve Lahfart bride dolls offers a quite unique outlook (fig. 150, H = 10.5 cm, arm-span = 4 cm). Its frame is made with a short piece of reed
transpierced by a stick to form the arms. The facial traits are slightly
indicated, two straight lines made with a blue ballpoint for the eyes and a red
little straight line for the mouth. A piece of a cake’s aluminum wrapping in
whose center a large fissure is made to put it over the head hangs over the arms
and represents the upper dress. One end of the doll’s long hairdo made of wool
has been pushed into the reed’s opening, a black ribbon keeping it in place on
the forehead. A piece of an elastic with little white and blue pearls as used
for a little girl’s hair decorates this forehead. The doll’s hair hangs down
in three strings, two on the doll’s front and one at its back. The belt, a
piece of the same elastic with pearls, tightens the dress and the hair strings.
A
doll made by Mina, a thirteen-year-old girl and pupil of Said Bari who in
February 2002 was teaching at the Lahfart primary school, has a kind of frame I
never saw before, this frame being cut out in a piece of Isomo protecting
electronic or household appliances (fig. 151, H = 17 cm, arm-span = 10.5 cm).
This tislit or bride doll has its whole body - head, arms and legs - cut out in one piece of Isomo. The eyes, eyebrows, nose and hair are designed
with a blue ballpoint, the mouth with a red one. With the blue ballpoint the
girl also designed toes on her doll’s feet and three dots on the doll’s
forehead and cheeks to represent the traditional color designs. A dress is put
over the head through a central fissure, sewn together at one side and tightened
with a blue ribbon below the arms. An about 3 cm large ribbon of the same blue
textile fabric surrounds the dress below the belt, its upper edging being sewed
to the dress. Finally, a large piece of white gaze covers the head and
shoulders.
One
of the two mother dolls carrying a baby on its back I have found up to now has
been modeled in clay by a fourteen-year-old girl. This mother and baby doll was
also collected by Boubaker Daoumani in the village Lahfart in January 2002 (fig.
152, H =12.5 cm, arm-span = 10 cm; baby H = 6 cm, arm-span = 3 cm). Through the
massive clay body with a large head but no neck, short legs and feet, a stick
has been pierced to give it shoulders and arms. The facial traits, two straight
lines for the eyebrows, another one for the mouth, and little holes for the eyes
and nose are slightly incrusted in the clay. Fine lines suggest the hair with
the hairdo ending in a bun. The baby carried at its mother
back is an exact miniaturized copy of the mother doll with the same frame and
face, the only difference being that the fine lines indicating the hair are
lacking. The mother doll is clothed with a multicolored dress sewed together at
one side, hanging over the arms and reaching the beginning of the legs. A large
scarf of the same textile fabric knotted at the mother doll’s front keeps the
baby in place.
The
two following dolls also made by Said’s pupils are not to be seen as dolls
used for doll play but as decorations. I nevertheless want to describe them
because one of them offers an example of the rare female dolls made by boys and
because both they show children’s creativity. The bride doll made by Lahoucein
Idouhna, a twelve-year-old boy, has a frame consisting of a vertical reed
through which a long piece of iron wire has been pushed to create its long
curved shoulders and arms (fig. 153, H = 24 cm). The upper part of the reed is
wrapped in white cotton on which big eyes with pupil and eyebrows are designed
with a black ballpoint, a nose, cheeks and mouth with a red ballpoint. The head
without hair and the shoulders are covered with a large transparent veil as
usual for a European bride. This doll wears as upper garment a white
wedding-dress inspired by the European wedding-dress that eventually also is one
of the dresses Moroccan brides wear during the wedding ceremonies. The boy who
made this doll said his mother helped him to make the veil. The other doll
figuring a man and made by a seventeen-year-old boy who started primary school
really late, has a unique frame (fig. 154, H = 22 cm). A head and neck cut out
in a piece of Isomo is put into the opening of a reed with a diameter of 3.5 cm
to which in the other opening have been fixed two long legs made with two reeds
of 1 cm in diameter. At the end of these legs two pieces of a half reed have
been glued to represent the feet. This doll’s arms are created by pushing a
small strip of metal through the reed and curving it down at both sides. The
neck, body and arms are wrapped with ribbons and a large cape hangs over the
shoulder and arms, a cape sewed together in one point at the throat. The hair of
this doll is made with a piece of sheepskin and its wool glued to the head. Its
facial features with round eyes and pupil, eyebrows, triangular nose, ears and a
smiling mouth are designed with a blue ball-point.
Shortly
after receiving the two dolls with a total or partial Isomo frame, the use of
Isomo to make toys was confirmed when I saw a young boy scratching with a flat
piece of iron a piece of Isomo to create the form he wanted, this while sitting
in his house’s doorstep in a popular quarter of Sidi Ifni.
The
video filmed in the Sidi Ifni region on March 4th 2002 shows the
house construction and doll play of Halima, a six-year-old girl, and Fadil, her
nine-year-old brother, living in an isolated house build in the traditional way
near the asphalt road in the Lagzira area at km 10 before Sidi Ifni when coming
from Tiznit. The type of dolls used by these Amazigh-speaking children is unique
as far as I have been able to observe it in Morocco, yet it hat been mentioned
once or twice by a bibliographical source. As well the bride, bridegroom, family
members and visitors are represented by snail shells, whereby the bride and
bridegroom have been singularized by wrapping the shell in a piece of white gaze
(fig. 155). The wedding play starts with driving around the bride, bridegroom
and some family members in the wedding-car figured by an old sardine tin (fig. 156). After a really long trip across the play area in front of the house, the
bridal procession arrives at the village with its small houses. Once Halima
arrives with her wedding-car at one of the dollhouses she starts to put the
dolls in the correct position with the opening of the shell figuring the head on
top (fig. 157). When Fadil has finished to drive around his wedding-car both
players construct another small house with stones and mud. A detail shows how
Halima and Fadil, growing up in a poor and quite traditional household,
introduce in their play activity the latest high tech item only available in
Sidi Ifni since about 2000, namely the portable telephone represented by a piece
of an old remote control handset. The protocol with a detailed description of
this video is available on SITREC's website (Rossie and Daoumani,
2003, Video 4).
When
visiting Sidi Ifni, a town of about 25,000 inhabitants on the Atlantic Coast
south of Agadir, for the first time in November 1998, Malika, a then
twenty-three-year-old member of the family running the local hotel-restaurant
Suerte Loca, told me that one could find in Sidi Ifni the self-made doll with a
reed frame until the beginning of the 1980s and that nowadays the girls play
with imported plastic dolls. The use of an imported plastic doll was at that
moment confirmed by observing a six-year-old girl playing with her cheap plastic
doll at the doorstep of her house located near the mentioned hotel-restaurant.
But even if a plastic doll has replaced the self-made doll, the other items used
by this girl for her doll play are found or made locally. So, this girl placed
her plastic doll in a dollhouse, the little square of paving stones on top of
the stairs leading to the door, and as utensils she used a miniature wooden
table with on top a few oil can stoppers filled with water and figuring cups of
tea.
As
some other Sidi Ifni informants also stated that self-made dolls have
disappeared there, I was really surprised when making there the first video on
children’s doll and construction play in collaboration with Boubaker Daoumani
on 31 January 2002 to see that self-made dolls could still be found in this
town. Coming into contact with an Arabic-speaking popular class family through
grown up girls standing in front of their house on the Barandilla or beach
boarding stairs, it was possible to get with parental permission the
collaboration of Fatiha and Yasin, a six-year-old girl and her four-year-old
cousin with whom she often plays. Starting to play without any other indication
than the one given the day before and explaining that we liked to film her doll
play, the first thing Fatiha does is to create a doll with a wooden spoon as
vertical part of the frame, a spoon linking somehow this doll to the dolls used
to ask for rain. To this spoon Fatiha attaches cross-shapely a little stick to
form the doll’s shoulders and arms. After designing a face on the inner side
of the spoon, she gives her doll a dress tightening it with a belt. Later on
Fatiha makes several other dolls of the same type but with a stick as vertical
part of the frame. On a few occasions and more or less pressed by his niece,
Yasin starts to make a doll. Yet, it looks like he only pretends to make a doll
and he never finishes to make the frame. During the whole doll play the attitude
of this just four-year-old boy expresses his refusal to do a girl’s job, not
only in making a doll but also in executing some other female task such as
preparing a meal. Finally, Yasin very strongly expresses his refusal by shouting
at his niece who asks and even orders him to prepare the breakfast or dinner:
“go yourself. I am a man not a woman! I, I am a man not a woman!”
Exasperated by Yasin’s refusal Fatiha decides to go to prepare the meal
herself.
After
some eight minutes of creating dolls, the doll play really starts with preparing
the children’s breakfast, children represented as well by the self-made dolls
as by two Barbie-like plastic dolls Fatiha did place against the house wall and
thus being available all the time. The enacting of this food preparation is
followed by the children’s waking up, having breakfast and being brought to
school. Although reference is made to the school and the classroom the enacting
of one or the other event linked to them is lacking. Yasin is collaborating in
this sequence of the doll play by surrounding with four sticks, sticks he could
have used to make a doll, a rectangular space representing the school. At the
end of the play activity the children are to be brought back from school but
then Fatiha proposes to bring the meal to the classroom. A detailed description
of this video can be found in the protocol available on SITREC's website (Rossie and
Daoumani, 2003, Video 1).
Another
example of doll play filmed on the flat roof serving as terrace of the
hotel-restaurant Suerte Loca in Sidi Ifni on 10 February 2002 shows two sisters
of an Arabic-speaking middle class household whose maternal grandparents are the
owners of this establishment. The third player is the nearby living
nine-year-old Malika, a girl from a popular class household who a year earlier
asked the two sisters if she could play with them and so doing became their
friend. Malika speaks Moroccan Arabic when playing with the nine-year-old Jalila
and the seven-year-old Awatif but at home she speaks the local Amazigh language.
These girls use original Barbie dolls, one of them in an Hawaiian outfit but
dancing on Algerian raï or other modern Arabic music, a baby doll, and several
anthropomorphic and zoomorphic soft or plastic dolls and miniaturized figurines.
The play activities lasting for thirty-nine minutes presents several themes
mostly linked to mother-child roles, the mother role being played by Malika. The
two sisters play at helping the mother or they engage in additional roles such
as phoning with toy-mobile phones, going to shop, bringing the children to
school, roles also staged by Malika. At one moment both sisters start to enact
traveling in Morocco and abroad but they also engage in a personal playful
activity for a
while. Next to the dolls, the available play material such as a toy-beauty set,
children’s earrings, toy-keys, toy-telephones, a wind up music box, fake Euro
banknotes, different kinds of bags, a suitcase, and some hotel furniture e.a.
little chairs, banks, plastic tables and chairs, clearly refer to the standard
of living and the multicultural situation in which the Awatif and Jalila grow up
and to which Malika who performs the more traditional mother role easily adapts
when playing in this environment. The detailed protocol of this video is soon available
on SITREC's website (Rossie and Daoumani, forthcoming, Video
3).
An
example of doll play with the in China made Little Miss doll (fig. 85) was
mentioned to me in September 2003. A young Amazigh mother, Fatima Moutaouakil,
living in Tiznit since her three years there played between the age of about
seven years till about twelve years at doll play with two somewhat older girls
of her neighborhood and her younger brother. In the beginning of the 1980s,
Fatima made clothes for her doll who was the only doll of this kind in the
playgroup. The doll was dressed as an adult woman and one favorite game was to
give make-up to the doll by using artificial saffron and a then largely
available red chewing gum that after moistening it with saliva served as
lipstick.
Fatima
together with the same two girls and three boys, mostly cousins, liked to play
at wedding ceremonies, at household or at father and mother. However, they then
played without using dolls, the different characters such as the tislit
or bride, the isli or bridegroom, the mother and father of both families
and sometimes also a female or male servant being represented by the players.
Small cushions figured the children. This game was played in the house of one of
the players but only during the absence of the parents. As play material the
utensils and other material in the house were used and the different rooms
served as play area. When they played household somebody was send of to do some
shopping. When talking about people, as is done by adults in such circumstances,
they always talked about imaginary ones. Other play themes could be going to the
doctor or to the market. Sometimes the play theme was more fantastic like
playing at tarzent or the monsters of the local tales. It also happened
that they created a beach by letting some water flow over the pavement to be
able to slide on it. According to Fatima, the richness of the play themes was
mostly due to the somewhat older boys who always invented new ones. Of course
everything needed to be put in order in the house before the mother came back
because other ways they would be beaten, something that did happen.
According
to Pierre Flamand the girls of the former Jewish mellahs in Southern Morocco
played at the wedding of their bride doll but as bridegroom served a little boy
sitting next to the bride doll. This author writes that the game consists of
dressing the doll with the traditional accessories and enacting with her the
behavior of a Jewish bride. The girls try to reproduce the ceremonial and the
ritual gestures of the wedding festivities. They invite a lot of girls. The doll
dressed in a white dress with a tulle veil framing its face is placed in the mid
of the dining room in a chair surrounded with white flowers. The bridegroom, a
little boy brought along with a sister or another girl, sits next to the bride
doll. When arriving, each guest kisses the bride and the bridegroom and
congratulates their ‘parents’. These offer wine, liqueur and sweets that are
as real as the household resources and the contributions of the guests permit to
do (research from 1948 till 1959, p. 183).
A second theme for doll play is pregnancy and childbirth of which two authors speak and that is confirmed by recent information.
The already mentioned article "la poupée Iblisa" from 1917 describes the representation of childbirth as follows: and soon it is said that the mother will give birth. Quickly a girl makes a doll resembling the mother doll but being smaller. Another girl playing the role of midwife down before the mother doll while all the girls say "Oh Sidi Bou Serrhine (a marabout buried near Sefrou), oh bird with the legs colored with henna, help this woman to give birth soon. Do not leave her in pain". Then the midwife puts her hand under the mother doll's dress and pulls out the small doll shouting "she has given birth". The dancing, shouting joyous and clapping hands start all over again and the children say: "praise to God and the great dispenser who is our master" (p. 39).
Already in 1908 Maurice Cortier described this game of giving birth (p. 310). Once more a girl plays the role of midwife while her playmates sing "Oh father of the little ones, bird with the feet colored with henna, give that the child is immediately born and that the mother has no pain, etc.".
The
information on female dolls I gathered in Morocco also refers to the imitation
of pregnancy and childbirth.
Latifa,
a young girl of about eleven years in 1992 and from the rural area of Hmar near
Taroudannt, explained the relationship between the different kinds of doll play
that exists among the girls of her village at the beginning of the 1990s. After
the doll play in which the arûsa or
bride doll and the °arîs or
bridegroom doll are being married as described above, and after they have been a
couple for some time, the °arûsa is
given a protruding belly. She is pregnant! At this stage, the doll play
integrates what the girls already know of the customs, rules and protective
measures related to pregnancy. Later on the °arûsa
will give birth to a little boy or girl, a miniature male or female doll. When
it is time to celebrate the birth, all the dolls are invited to join the feast,
to sing and to sit at the doll’s tea party.
During
the 1940’s, the same series of doll play was enacted by the girls of the
Oulad Yahya of the rural areas around Taroudannt. This triple doll play also
exists among the Amazigh population of Imi-n-Tanoute at least about 1980. To
give to the female doll a protruding belly a little cushion or some rags were
put under her clothes. The baby doll is here also a small copy of the adult doll
but it is dressed more simply. The mother doll will give birth to a boy doll, iwis,
or a girl doll, illis, just as the
girls agree upon.
According to Sfia Gharîb,
an Amazigh woman born in 1938 at Arhbalou-n-Serdane in the Moyen Atlas, the
already described bride doll (fig. 106) could also serve as a pregnant woman
delivering her baby figured by a really small doll of the same type.
The
collection of the Musée de l’Homme possesses a toy-cradle from Sfax collected
about 1933 (33.70.10), a toy-cradle mentioned by F. Castells in 1915.
Until
I made in collaboration with Boubaker Daoumani the videos on doll
play in the Sidi Ifni region in the beginning of 2002, I only had three references
talking about doll play staging mother-child relations or of dolls representing
little or young children. These references concern the girls from Ouarzazate, the Oulad ben Sbaa girls and
the Jewish girls of the former mellahs of Southern Morocco.
As mentioned at the end of the information on the female dolls of Marrakech, the relationship between a girl representing the mother and a doll representing the baby was playfully enacted at Ouarzazate around 1980.
At
Oulad ben Sbaa, near Sidi Mokhtar on the road from Marrakech to Essaouira, the
girls between six and twelve years use their dolls, as Abdelhalek Naseh says,
especially as babies. This doll play is done alone or with one or more girls
from the same family or neighborhood in the courtyard of the house. It is a
common game played all over the year. This doll, nevertheless called °arûsa
or bride, has a cross-shaped frame of reed or little branches dressed with rags.
The basic form of the dolls remains the same although certain details of the
bride doll can be accentuated as for example the breasts, head or buttocks
(1993: 30-31).
Pierre
Flamand speaking of Jewish girls in the Southern Moroccan mellahs writes: two
children place a doll between them or in a vehicle at its stature, a baby
carriage, push chair or cardboard box pulled with a rope. Different occupations
of the parents are enacted: preparing the dinner of their ‘child’,
discussing its future, bringing the child to the school, paying or receiving
visits in its company, etc. (research 1948-1958, p. 183).
So
I thought that using dolls as children to enact mother and child roles was quite
exceptional among Moroccan girls. I therefore was surprised to see that
the first two playgroups engaged in doll play and filmed in Sidi Ifni freely
choose to partially or largely enact child-mother and child-school relations. In
the first case these dolls representing children were self-made dolls and
Barbie-like dolls made by or belonging to a six-year-old girl of a popular class
family and in the second case real Barbie dolls and soft dolls belonging to two
sisters of a middle class family were used (Rossie and Daoumani, 2003, video 1
and 3). For the description of these dolls and doll play see above at the end of
the description of the wedding play.
The
burial of the doll is another theme in the doll play of the Moroccan girls. The
first mention of this game in the bibliography dates from 1915. The tenth day of
the Muslim year, it is to say during the °Ashûra feast, the children of Settat
and other places enact a burial by making a grave in order to bury with the
usual ceremony a doll made with a bone wrapped in rags (Mission Scientifique au
Maroc, p. 302).
A
young woman, Naïma Tadili, of the town of Khouribga, I met at the Centre
d’Etudes des Problèmes du Monde Musulman Contemporain at Brussels in 1981,
spontaneously spoke me of these burials of dolls. Her memories, and those of her
mother-in-law being on a visit in Belgium, have given the following information.
A
bone of the leg of a sheep killed at the Aïd el-kebir, it is to say the tenth
day of the month el-hijjaj (the last month of the Muslim calendar and the month
of the pilgrimage), is used by girls of the region of Khouribga, near Settat and
not so far away from Casablanca, to make a doll called °Ashûra. A stick is fixed cross-shapely to this bone to figure the
arms and then the frame is dressed as a Moroccan woman. On the head of this doll
the girls put henna. The facial features are not indicated. During a whole lunar
month, these dolls are at the center of the girls’ play activities. With their
doll they walk around in the vicinity and ask for gifts from the family and the
neighbors. These give them some money and food. Then comes the day of °Ashûra,
the tenth day of the first month of the Muslim year. In North Africa in general
and in the given region in particular, the °Ashûra feast gives rise to rites
and customs that are related to the birth of a new year and the death of the
last year. A recent description of the °Ashûra festivities in the city of
Marrakech has been published in 1976 by Jemma-Gouzon. During °Ashûra the death
are remembered. Moreover, it really is children’s day during which they get
sweets and toys. It is in this context that the girls enact the death and burial
of their doll. As is said in the above mentioned quotation from 1915 and as it
still was common among several families of Khouribga during the second half of
the sixties, the doll dies at °Ashûra and is buried by the girl herself. The
girls of the same family and vicinity bury together their dolls while imitating
the burial rites for the doll that has been a whole month a beloved one they are
now loosing at °Ashûra. The seventh day after the burial, the girls return to
their dolls’ cemetery to accomplish the appropriate rites as is done for human
beings. According to my informant, Naïma Tadili, all parents did not tolerate
this traditional game. She herself did not participate in this doll play but she
has witnessed it when the girls of her neighborhood engaged in it. Among certain
families this doll play would still be played nowadays especially in rural areas
but less and less in urban centers. Another Moroccan woman, Rhimo Bijat Laraïchi
born in 1942 at Larache but living in Ghent in Belgium, told me in July 1982
that she did see this burial game of the dolls in Settat, on the road from
Casablanca to Marrakech, but that this custom did not exist in Tanger, Tetouan
nor Larache.
Laoust,
in his Noms et cérémonies des feux de
joie chez les Berbères du Haut et de l’Anti-Atlas, speaks in 1921 of the
burial by little girls of the doll called ‘°ashûr’ or ‘isli n-°ashûr’,
meaning the bridegroom of °ashûr, also called 'my Brother Achour' or 'my Uncle
Achour' (p. 31). This terminology clearly states the sex of the doll, it is a
male doll from a region outside the Sahara, other Moroccan examples of
non-Saharan male dolls being described in the chapter on the male dolls.
According to this author, this male doll is in Tanant, near the Cascades
d’Ouzoud in the Marrakech region, a reed covered with blouses and a burnous
overcoat, but a bone can be used as well. Laoust describes this ritual game as
follows: some days before the appearance of the new moon of °Ashûra, the girls
walk with the doll on the road going to the market of the Aït Majjen and the
mausoleum of Sidi Sâid. They put it upright at the feet of the big terebinth
tree whose shadow protects the tomb of the agourram and stop all those who by
chance are passing there, saying: “give us the offering of °ashûr, “aqarid
n-’asur”. When the moharrem moon rises, they get dates, nuts, raisins of
which all families build up a large stock for °Ashûra. Then, at the evening of
the feast, they go from house to house with their doll, asking for little
presents, eggs and small pieces of meat it is the custom to give them. After
dinner the girls meet under a fig tree and standing around the doll laying on
the ground they show great pain. They undo their plaits, scratch their face, cry
noisily and sing such mournful lamentations as hears in families where there has
been a death. This night really is the one of the death of °ashûr, of the
enigmatic character personified by the doll. Once this ritual is accomplished,
the girls separate but meet again at the same spot at sunrise, the precise
moment of the death of °ashûr, to carry out the funeral. On the little tomb
where the doll is laid in, dates and eggs are put. When the girls have left the
scene, the boys arrive. They rush to the tomb, take the dates and eggs, unearth
the doll, strip its clothes and throw it naked on the ground so that it will
call for rain. Maybe they believe that the enlivening and fertilizing rain
directs the revival of the weakened or dying spirit of the vegetation probably
personified by this doll (p. 30-31).
In
February 1992, this information from 1921 has been confirmed for the second half
of the 1970s by a young Amazigh woman of 24 years who lived her whole youth in
the region of Beni Mellal in the Moyen Atlas. She also said that the young girls
see the feast of °Ashûra as their own feast and that they sing while going
from house to house every time:
“Now
it is °ashûr, we are free!”
“It
is at the Aïd el-mulud (the feast of the birth of the Prophet) that the men
rule!”
I
found a new confirmation of the burial at the cemetery of a small doll, the
‘bride of °ashûr’, by the girls of the Aït Ouirra of the El-Ksiba region
in the Moyen Atlas. This ritual play marks the end of the °Ashûra festivities
(Oubahammou, 1987: 88). In Enfances
Maghrebines M. Dernouny also talks about the burial of a doll, a male doll
called ‘Sidi Achour’ carefully made with a bone as basis by young girls a
month beforehand and burried on the day of °Ashûra (1987: 26-27). In an
article published in 1971 it is written that the evening before °Ashûra rural
girls make dolls they call 'Achour' and that they bury in old deserted tombs,
dolls the boys are searching after the next morning in order to destroy them
(Belghiti, p. 102).
This
doll play simulating a burial is clearly connected to the rituals in relation
with agriculture just as the doll play for asking rain. Although the ritual
dolls remain outside the scope of this book, it should be stressed that the
difference between ritual dolls and dolls for children’s play sometimes
becomes indistinct as in the case of the doll used for enacting a burial or the
doll made with a wooden spoon used for asking rain and of whom a Moroccan
example is given below and a Tunisian example with the female dolls of Tunisia.
Souad
Laabib of the Amazigh village Ksar Assaka near Midelt remembers that she has
made until the age of fourteen years, it is to say about 1982, together with the
other girls of her village and during periods of drought a doll with a wooden
spoon, called telghenja, dressed like
a more or less old woman but never as a bride. Therefore a stick is fixed
cross-shapely to the spoon of some 50 cm high in order to give arms to the doll.
Rags, serving as dresses, are draped over this frame after a hole has been made
in their center so that the head can pass through. This head is then wrapped
with rags, representing the headscarves, so that nothing of the wooden spoon
remains visible. A belt tightens the waist of telghenja who this way always looks like a skinny woman so much that
when people want to say of a woman that she really is skinny they say that she
is like telghenja.
Once
the doll is finished and in the afternoon, a group of some ten girls of more or
less the same age go in procession, singing and playing the bendir or hand-drum,
to the er-rûd or covered tomb of Sidi
Bûnwâr at the cemetery of the village. On their arrival the girls sing:
“Sîdî
Bûnwâr jînâ,
“er-Rabbî
t°afû °alînâ”.
“Sidi
Bûnwâr we did come,
“may
God cure us.”
Then
the girls take off their shoes and, taking with them telghenja,
enter one after the other the covered tomb, kissing the door-post and walking
three times around the tomb while kissing it several times. The whole group
remains inside while a fake tah’rért
soup is made with cold water and some flour. The girls leave the covered tomb
and one of them climbs on the roof to pour this soup in the flow so that the
soup runs along the wall.
During
the procession and during the rituals the girls hold in turn telghenja upright above their head but once the tea party starts telghenja
is laid on the ground. For their tea party the girls have brought with them
bread, tomatoes, pieces of sugar and the tea prepared at home. After their tea
party the girls sing again. However, the songs are those sung during sessions of
possession by spirits and the hair dance related to it is also done. After that
the procession gets moving again, singing and with telghenja
well exposed, to make a tour of the houses of the village, but without asking
for something or entering the houses. While telghenja
is walked around in the village, the girls sing:
“a
telghenja asî ûrâwûnnem sîginnâ,
“gher
er-Rabbi enzâr atkertûga”.
“ô
telghenja raise your hands to the sky,
“pray
God so that the rain makes grow the grass.”
or
also:
“a
telghenja marja wunna wurdifighen,
“isi°mâ
ghed isîmût”.
“ô
telghenja marja, those who did not come out of the house to see you,
“they
are blind or dead.”
When
the girls are tired of walking around with telghenja,
they sit down and talk about the rain that should come or other things and laugh
a lot. After some time telghenja is
stripped of her clothes, these clothes are thrown away and the girl who did get
it from her mother takes the wooden spoon back home. Once the mother of Souad,
finding an old big wooden spoon in her house, made herself the telghenja
that Souad and her girl friends used for this play.
The collection of the Musée de l’Homme contains two Tunisian female dolls
from two cities, made before 1931. These dolls of about 30 cm height have a
body, a head and the members consisting of a piece of textile stuffed with straw
and rags. Their face, with a mouth, nose, eyes and eyebrows, is designed and
embroidered. To mark the nose a grain has been put at that place under the
fabric, as is done with some Moroccan dolls. One doll wears a dress of an Arabic
woman (fig. 108: H = 36 cm; catalogue 3.10, 30.54.891) and the other is dressed
like a Jewish woman (fig. 109: H: 33 cm; catalogue 3.10, 30.54.888). These dolls
wear several dresses and the one dressed as an Arabic woman also wears many
jewels.
Sigrid
Paul describes and shows in his book “Afrikanische Puppen” (1970: 118, 208 -
Abb. 97) a Tunisian doll of 28 cm height, collected by Moberg in 1950. Unlike
the Tunisian female dolls of the Musée de l’Homme, this doll has a
rectangular wooden head covered with white fabric. However, the facial traits of
this doll, with its mouth embroidered with a red thread and designed eyes,
eyebrows and nose, resemble the facial features of the other two Tunisian dolls.
Aimé
Dupuy informs us on the Tunisian dolls in 1933. He writes: surely, the doll
forms part of the girls’ toys. A student following the training to become a
primary school teacher (mouderrès) of Agareb (cAïdat of Sfax) declares however
that the Arab woman of the villages holds herself aloof of luxury. She does not
buy a doll for her daughter from a toy merchant she makes it herself... The girl
continues this game that shows her attachment to indoor life, until the age of
eight or ten years. The same author also describes the doll play: the girl sees
her doll as a living companion. She loves her passionately, prepares meals for
her consisting only of some earth and grounded herbs, takes her for a walk,
often sleeps with her and does everything she can do to make her better dressed
and more beautiful than those of her neighbors (p. 309).
In
Tunisia the doll consisting of a wooden spoon, but dressed as a bride, used for
rain rituals at the beginning of the year is mentioned by Jean Servier (1962:
294). Moreover, this doll, shown in Servier’s book (photo 12), resembles not
only in general but also more specifically in its facial traits the two Tunisian
dolls of figures 108 and 109.
In
his Mots et choses berbères, E.
Laoust describes in 1920 the spoon-doll of the Tunisian children as follows: Umm
Tangi or Tango, the “mother Tangui” is, in Tunis, the little doll walked
around by the children in times of drought, while they sing:
“Your
mother Tango, oh women,”
“ask
God for rain!”
“Your
mother Tango, with her necklace,”
“Implore
God, so that He will not turn her down!...”
In
the island of Djerba, the name of Tongo is given to the little spoon children
receive as a toy at the major religious festivities and especially at the
approach of Ramadan. This spoon is decorated by the merchants in a really
strange way, the rounded part of the spoon showing the head of a young girl
whose facial features - eyes, nose and mouth - have been designed with black
paint and whose hair “à la chien” is also painted and decorates the
forehead in the way of the brides. In Tunis, where the same custom is followed,
the decoration of the spoon is done in each family and not, as in Djerba, by the
merchant. The children eat with this spoon during the whole fasting month. Then
the girls play with it as a doll. The custom is observed among families of a
certain standing and not, as one might think, among the popular classes. Totally
curious is the fact that this special spoon is not given the usual Arabic name,
mgerfa, but the Amazigh name gonjaia. In the oldest Islamized parts of the
Maghreb, the hardly modified name of the great African divinity Tlghenja
continues to be applied to its symbolic representation, the spoon that became a
child’s little doll. This doll, however, is different from the other dolls
because of its ritual aspect, as it is only during the Muslim festivities that
it is played with (Laoust, 1920: 225-226).
In
the region of Sousse, the children also walked around from door to door a doll
to ask for rain. This doll was not made with a spoon but with two planks, nailed
cross-shapely, covered with colorful fabrics. People poured water onto the doll
at each house (Dupuy, 1933: 316).
An
overview of the information on the personalization of the rain in the Maghreb is
given by Gabriel Camps in the Encyclopédie Berbère under the item “anzar”
(1989: 795-797).
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