the superiority of the unseen to the seen

I keep trying to write short entries more often, but apparently that’s not in the stars.

Mauritanians are neurotically messed about color, and no doubt.

Not that there is anything new -either here or in the rest of the world- about that, but I wanted to mention it. One (namely me) could draw some vague parallels between Mauritanian and American societies, or I suppose any other society that had an extended period in the past of enslavement by one group of another, and in which those classes continue to live together today, working and interacting together constantly in ways that are weighed down, or at least influenced, consciously or unconsciously by all their fucked up past shit.

Anyway, Mauritania is a racist society, to varying but mostly significant degrees, with a lot of it being perpetuated by so called “white Moors” (who are not white) though of course not all.

The Haratiin or black Moors are composed, ethnically, of various black African tribes (one might guess that these are those which are located geographically in the region even today, like Fula, Bambara, Wolof, Malinke and peeps like that, but I’m not an expert), which were captured and enslaved during the previous millenia by Moorish and Berber tribes across the Sahel. Don’t ask me how this happened, because I tend to think of Moors, probably to fallacious excess, as nonviolent, all-bark-and-no-bite pansies, who come to me complaining about paper cuts and couldn’t manage a successful takeover of Vermont, but surely those were different times.

So modern day Haratiin are Moor in basically every way- culture, language, habits, dress- differing only in skin color.(There does exist a spectrum of colors among black Moors, but commonly people are grouped into either: ekHal, which means "black", or aHmar, which actually means “red”, but also “brown” in some instances. And also “purple”. And “pink”.) I used to think that they were nicer, or at least a little easier to get close to than WMs but I no longer think that. They may be slightly more open and less uptight than WMs, taken in general, but this really depends on the degree to which they retain an influence from black Africa, which varies a lot.

Also, BMs can be easier for me to get interested in work and projects in the gardens because they actually have gardens and do work. In a lot of Arabic-derived societies like this, manual labor is commonly looked down upon, and sure enough many WM’s are lazy to the upteenth, because they can be. Those who have money leave the manual stuff to the BMs. In fact, my friend Dahan the other day was telling me about how the ideal, though not always attainable, is for women to actually do nothing at all but sit under the tent and make two (one ingredient) meals per day, make tea, stuff themselves until they become (sexy) bloated barges, and sleep. This is common, which, first, is like, “gag me”, and also really sad. But I’m not judging. Ha ha.

Anyway, BMs (omigod, I just realized what an awful abbreviation that was –sorry) often don’t have the option of not doing stuff because they are lower class, poorer and powerless-ish, so they do manual labor with me and everything’s great.

OK, I wasn’t going to talk about “The life and times of race relations in Mauritania”, I just wanted to talk about skin lightening creams. Yes, skin lightening creams, which you can find anywhere here and which are widely used. These are little tubs of cream which are purported to, not surprisingly, lighten one’s skin color, using a mixture of harsh chemicals which maybe include hydrogen-peroxide? and blah blah, other stuff. (What am I, a chemist?) I clearly have no experience with this junk, though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there is a small percentage of Americans using them. Also, I think it’s a thing in some Asian countries, maybe India, and probably anywhere else in the world where there are people with color who are trying to achieve some kind of Casper-like ideal. Anyway, I’m just talking about Mauritania.

This is a woman thing, right across the board too -white Moors, black Moors, black Africans- and these creams are basically horrible, abrasive things to put on your skin, that bleach out or destroy pigment, obviously. Black women come out looking all rosy and roughed-up, like they just went crazy with a Brillo pad, and white Moors end up looking like the scary pale victims of vampires. Neither one looks either attractive nor anywhere close to normal, and every time I see this I get heartbroken and angry and sorry and other things.

I once saw a container of one particular brand of cream, and it had two pictures of an Indian-esque woman, one where she was dark and frowning heavily, and the other one, taken presumably after she had slathered herself with this lotion, where she was fair and smiley. So, really subtle messages coming through.

In El Qidiya, this isn’t such a giant issue simply because it is incredibly isolated and these products are not even available to be purchased in the boutiques, even if most people had the money to buy them with, which they don’t. Furthermore (honestly) El Q is hardly the fashion forefront of Mauritania, so there is not so much concern about image. It's more like Appalachia to Nouakchott’s NYC. Although that analogy is almost heart-stoppingly weak, so I’ll say Albany.

Nevertheless, people have still imbibed this notion that being black, or at least really black, is bad, and women often ask me if I can give them something to ‘take the black off’. This is actually what they say (in Hassaniya of course) and though I sometimes try to argue with them a little, I mostly realize that there is no way I could alter any of their received ideas about color, even if it was any of my business, and I usually try to change the subject as quickly as possible, because it makes me feel skeevy. It’s embarrassing, I mean, I’m embarrassed for them, because while they religiously cover every square centimeter of their bodies with layers of fabric, they are simultaneously revealing to me something even more personal: a pathology.

People also ask me if I have some kind of special soap, which will make them really ‘clean’ (masguul) –which I think is a rather thin euphemism, and I’m like, “Girl, I use the same crap you do, and it comes in brick-sized blocks for 200 ougiya. Get a grip”.

Occasionally, this works in my favor like when people are bugging me about marriage (always), and someone else will come in and say “Oh, he doesn’t want to marry in El Qidiya, he’s waiting to go back to America and marry an American (read: white) girl”, and I think, uh…right, that’s why.

I don’t mean to overdramatize this: Mauritanians are hardly the first group to do messed up shit to their bodies in the name of “beauty”. So while I think it’s an important and interestingly dysfunctional feature of the culture -which, though sad, is a rather logical outgrowth of having a slave legacy and a lighter-complexioned group in power- its not like people are killing themselves left and right over this or living miserable lives. They’re not, of course. So it’s a small, if intriguing, symptom of a much larger, nuanced and contradictory condition, but if you think I’m going to talk about all that here, you’ve lost your mind.

Another interesting thing: while everyone makes a big deal over me not being Muslim (it’s a really big deal. It’s the deal), that doesn’t prevent them from creating their own little hierarchies of worth, even within the Muslim framework: WMs unsurprisingly hold themselves above BMs and black Africans, but even worse, BMs hold themselves above black Africans too (also Muslim) who are referred to collectively as li-kwar, and are, in truth, basically their distant cousins. It’s fucked, although, hardly unexpected or even unnatural, considering how humans have always acted towards other humans (you’re not in my group, I’ll cut you.) We will, if not always then at least a lot of the time, find ways to follow our biological imperative and divide ourselves into little groups, even inside of bigger ones like nation, religion, race, language. I mean, I’m doing it right now. So of course we all do it, Westerners are, or at the very least were, clearly just as culpable as everyone else. Though this excuses nothing.

The other day in Tijikja (Okay, this was like 6 months ago) I went into a WM shop to buy carrot seeds and the old man said, “OK you should continue to come here, don’t buy from those shops”. He gestured across the way. I said “What’s wrong with those shops?”, to which he replied, “They’re Haratiin shops.” And then I asked, “What’s the difference between you and the Haratiin?” And he said simply, “Oh. One is good, and the other is bad.” Guess which one is which.

In El Q, people will also tell me that I shouldn’t spend so much time with BMs (with whom I actually do spend most of my time) and when I ask why, they hold out their forearm and point to it, saying, “This.” They mean skin color. “This is better than black. Black is bad.” It sounds like I’m simplifying these statements, but this is truly as complex as their arguments are. And then when I get fed up with their crap, I’ll sometimes hold out my own arm and say, “ Oh, okay. But you’re darker than me. That means I’m better than you, right?” And then someone will chuckle nervously or get flustered and tell me that I don’t understand.

Okay, okay. But maybe I do.