That is why, while flipping through an older issue of Vanity Fair last month, I found myself hooked on an article Hitchens had written about Salman Rushdie, specifically about the Rushdie affair, the Satanic Verses, and those who had come to Rushdie’s defense. And in the midst of the article was a brief mention of a book that, despite being a Rushdie fan (and an advocate of free speech, and for that matter, an atheist), I had never heard of: For Rushdie: Essays by Arab and Muslim Writers in Defense of Free Speech. Praise be to Amazon, within 48 hours, the book was on my doorstep.

Yet, it wasn’t till today that I picked it up, thumbed through its gently-used pages, read ten or twelve of the essays. Assia Djebar, Tahar Benjelloun, Amin Maalouf (strangely and incorrectly referred to as Libyan), Mahmoud Darwish. I showed Anas the half-page essay by Darwish and his eyes lit up; he said that even though his eyes were reading it in English translation, his head and heart were seeing the words in Arabic and hearing his voice. Such is the power of Darwish.

My favorite essay, at least of those I’ve read so far, was Benjelloun’s:

…In real life we accept without protest that things such as prostitution, misery, and violence all exist. But to treat prostitution, misery, or violence in a story is often considered intolerable. It is a notable fact that censorship exists even in certain countries concerning things that nevertheless do visibly occur in those very same countries; they occur and yet this arouses no apparent shock. What arouses shock is to describe those same things in words.

Benjelloun famously fictionalized the life story of a Tazmamart prisoner in his 2002 book This Blinding Absence of Light, only three years after the era of the Years of Lead had culminated in the ascension of King Mohammed VI to the Moroccan throne. His words at the time were scathing, but not nearly as scandalous as those of Malika Oufkir, daughter of General Oufkir, who lead a coup against King Hassan II and whose family was punished by 20 years in a desert jail. Malika’s book, Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail, was banned in Morocco for a time (but at last check was all over the country’s elite bookshops, along with the French translation of The Satanic Verses.

Still, as Benjelloun would say, what arouses shock is often to describe events in words. Though the Years of Lead are now spoken of semi-freely, the name “Aminatou Haidar” is off-limits, unless you disagree with her of course, not that anyone would bother touching it anyway: The Sahara is, to Moroccans, indelibly Moroccan. And in the past year, journalists have been tried for, among other things, ruminating on the King’s possible flu infection.

But back to the book…the book, which came out in 1994 or thereabouts; my copy was purchased then, anyway, by the Saratoga Springs Library on June 28 of that year, for $14.95, where it apparently sat until it was discarded. No one ever checked it out. Imagine, such a beautifully bound book, full of wonderful essays defending Salman Rushdie’s words, essays by Arabs and Muslims alike, defending words that, in many cases, they didn’t agree with…and no one ever read it. But not just my copy – evidence from Amazon rankings and elsewhere would imply that no one really read it all. It’s out of print now; copies are sold online, from libraries and the like, where they were probably discarded without their pages ever having been earmarked, their spines ever having been cracked. And we wonder why Americans are so clueless about the region.

But though the essays are all works of art in their own right, one set of two pages stands out the most. On pages 138 and 139 of my paperback copy is a two-page spread, not of words, but of sheet music; horribly complex and confusing, with no time or key signature, seemingly written for bass flute, with absurd crescendos and sharps and flats willy-nilly. At the bottom of the musical piece reads a brief note: “Pour Salman Ruchdi [sic]: afin qu’en artiste il puisse exprimer ce que je ne partage point.” For Salman Rushdie, in order that an artist might write that with which I disagree.

In 1991, when Demi Moore posed nude and pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair, there was significant outrage.  While Moore’s intent was to show the beauty of pregnancy as well as her “anti-glamour” attitude, she also succeeded in angering conservatives across the country and pleasing feminists, who saw it as an act of empowerment.  At the same time, she sparked a trend that continues to this day, with stars like Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears emulating Moore’s iconic pose on the covers of magazines.  In the US, the “baby bump” has become almost passé.

This November, 2009, Moroccan television newscaster Nadia Larguet (of 2M) took to the cover of Femmes du Maroc with the same pose, making the statement (as my friend cabalamuse stated), “I am pregnant, I am beautiful, I exist.”  In a country where out-of-wedlock pregnancies are completely taboo (but on the rise), where women still die in childbirth on semi-frequent basis in some rural areas, and where abortion is illegal but not so hard to find, this is quite a statement.

And yet in some ways, Morocco makes being a mother easier.  Working women get more time off than their American counterparts, breastfeeding in public (with a blanket to cover) is normal, and there is an expectation that the extended family will help raise the child.

The article* accompanying the provocative cover dug deep into serious issues: of maternal health, of abortion, of teenage pregnancy.  And it couldn’t have come at a better time; Morocco is in many ways waking up to the realities it now faces: Just this week,  Aicha Ech Channa, Association Solidarité Feminine, an organization that provides services to unmarried women with children, was awarded a $1 million prize by The University of St. Thomas and the Opus Prize Foundation for her work in Morocco.  Ech Channa’s project, though not without its challenges, has been extremely successful; I remember first reading about it in a copy of Glamour my parents sent to me while I was living in Morocco in 2007 (that article is here).

After finally reading the full article inside Femmes du Maroc, I first saw  incongruence between the cover image and the contents of the article; it seemed to me an unnecessary provocation, like including “sex” in a blog post tag simply to get hits (which works, by the by).  But the more I saw it (and it’s been popping up in blogs all over the place), the more it seemed to me a revolutionary stance, just like that of Demi eighteen years ago: “I’m pregnant, I’m beautiful, I exist.”  And even considering local sentiment and sensitivities, which shy away from nudity, public displays of affection, scantily-dressed women, I, like cabalamuse, would like to make the case that this is indeed revolutionary: It is a woman, standing up, unashamed and unafraid, in a country where “television channels are flipped at the mere sight of a man an a woman kissing, where, in neighborhood foodstuff stores, [and] menstrual pads are stuffed in a black plastic bag to conceal them from the embarassed looks of customers.”  It is revolutionary because it is so far out of the realm of what is acceptable, and out of the realm of what is (publicly, anyway) considered beautiful.  And it is, beautiful.

*If anyone would like the full article (in French), I can email a scanned copy.

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