106 The Harem and Seraglio

According to Fatima Mernissi the Moroccan Muslim feminist there are two distinct kinds of Harems: the Harem where the wives and concubines of one man lived and the Harem were the extended family of a patriarch lived. In ‘Dreams of Trespass, tales from a Harem childhood’ Mernissi as a young girl constantly tries to define the concept of Harem. One definition was: a safe space for women where everything was kept out that was ‘Haram’ or bad. Another definition was that women who according to male perception were cause of all disorder (Fitna) had to be kept hidden away from the world. The most famous, politically savvy and enduring Harem, the one that inspired horny western painters in the nineteenth century like Ingres and Delacroix, was the Harem of the Ottoman Sultans in Istanbul the Seraglio in the Topkapi Palace. It is said that the Ottomans were for a century or more looking from the other side of the Bosporus jealously at the fabulous city of Constantinople with its visible domes and invisible royal ‘Seraglio’. The women of the Christian Byzantine ‘Seraglio’ were not allowed out at all and if they for some reason had to go out they had to be heavily veiled and accompanied by armed eunuchs. Western writers criticize the 12th century Byzantine biographer Anna Comnena as being terrible vague on locations, dates and battles. They obviously didn’t take into account the fact that she wouldn’t have had the necessary knowledge locked up as she was in the Seraglio of the palace. When Constantinople finally fell into the hands of the Ottomans in 1453 they introduced into their culture two things: Domes and ‘Seraglio’. Read all about it in: The Imperial Harem: women and sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire by Leslie P Pierce. However Harems were already introduced into the Muslim world during the Abbasid Califate (8th to 13th century). The drawing is of the White or Women’s Stronghold, the building that housed the Harem of Iligh.

105 Women and the public space

I grew up in the fifties and was an adolescent in the sixties. My idea was that the world was standard ‘normal’ and that I was crazy. Because how was it otherwise possible that my reality did not correspond with how it should be? As a girl/woman I was supposed to have the same access to the ‘world’ as my male counterparts, but in reality that was not true. Public space was one example. Women filled the public space at will but in reality men dictated how women experienced their sojourn there. Men set the rules and behaved accordingly: self-serving. If women didn’t like how men behaved and complained about it, men were quick to tell them it was their fault. While walking her dog my mother was sexually assaulted by a boy of about thirteen. She went to the police. The police laughed at her and said she must have fantasized the incident. She was in the menopause for sure and would have ‘liked’ the attentions of a youth. As I wrote before it was a relief when in the sixties I started to travel in Muslim countries. There the dividing line between male and female space was clear. I didn’t mind to be condemned a perennial trespasser as a western woman in Muslim lands. It was better than unknowingly crossing boundaries that weren’t supposed to be there in the first place. It was only after I had read ‘The Feminine Mystique’ by Betty Friedan in my twenties that I realized that it was not me who was crazy it was the world I had to live in. Fatima Mernissi one of the most important Muslim feminists has made the definition of the boundaries set for women, the ‘Hudud’, and its hysterical enforcement by men the subject of her studies. In ‘Dreams of Trespass, tales of a Harem childhood’ she describes the source of her fascination: growing up in the strict confines of an urban Harem in Morocco.

104 Muslim women strike out

After The Koran, the life of Mohammed and the Hadith I went on to some Muslim philosophers, historians and the like. It was interesting stuff, but it couldn’t hold my interest till I got to the Islamic Feminists. Now that was something to get excited about. I’ve reached adulthood during the second feminist wave in the seventies. The feminism of the white, secular, educated middle classes some people called it and I think it was true. Although it didn’t feel that way when I was living it. This feministic wave petered out after some offending laws were changed and the ‘military industrial complex’ got hold of it, to express it brutally. Feminism became a dirty word once again. However it caught on in unlikely places and in different guises: with women of colour and with religiously inclined women. Ever since Modernism struck the Islamic World there have been women speaking out on misogyny in Islamic society. Among them were Nawal Al Saadawi from Egypt and Fatima Mernissi from Morocco. In the eighties with the hardening attitudes towards Islam and the heightening confusion and identity crisis within the male dominated Islamic World Muslim women also became stirred up. They wanted change but they wanted it on their own terms. They knew as no other that Islam has little to do with modern western thought. That said: they abandoned any notion that western feminism could help them. They felt they needed to go back to the essence of Islam to be able to make the leap forward. In academe they were initially supported by similar movements among Jewish and Christian women. But soon enough they were out on their own as Amina Wadud calls it fighting ‘Inside the Gender Jihad’.

103 Mohammed and women

In ‘Religion: a discovery in comics’ Dutch graphic artist and theologian Margreet de Heer compares the ‘men’ behind the five biggest world religions for their women friendly reputation. Is it really a surprise Mohammed wins hands down? And him being a ‘child molester’ according to Geert Wilders. Reading about his life and accounts in the Hadith he loved the company of women. His first wife Khadija was not only considerably older than he, she was also his employer and socially and financially superior to him. He could have resented this. Instead he let himself be tutored. They seem to have had a happy marriage. They had six children. Three girls survived to adulthood. Fatima became the best known. When Mohammed started to get revelations, he was afraid and unsure. He didn’t turn to other men for advice but to his wife. She was very supportive and so became the first Muslim. After Khadija’s death and Mohammed’s subsequent move from Mecca to Medina at the request of his mother’s people his life changed completely. There were only a few people who followed him to Medina. Among them were Abu Bakr and his small daughter Aisha. Aisha was the first child born in a Muslim household. It was fitting that she became his new wife and yes: she was only 9 when they married. In Medina he became a statesman and a warrior. His other marriages reflect that. There are many stories in the Hadith about Mohammed and his wives and the women among his companions. They are often rather funny. At least that’s my opinion. Some Muslims might find it blasphemy. In their eyes he is ‘perfect’, but I see him as a man who sometimes is bumbling and tries to get out without scratch. Mohammed also liked to have sex and cared that his women were equally happy and satisfied. And yes, he had also concubines. Mohammed was strictly Hetero and that wasn’t very common at the time. His position on women must have been so strong that it has survived all misogynist interpretations by the men who collected testimonials for the Hadith.

102 The messenger and the message

According to the Hadith his wife Aicha testified that Mohammed ‘lived’ the Koran. That made him at the same time a man, a lover and a Prophet. But in his youth in Mecca he was an orphan who became by marriage the foreman of a caravan and after his move to Medina he became a statesman and a warrior out of necessity. These eight ‘roles’ are very important to keep constantly in mind when reading the Koran. He clearly was a man who knew what was going down in the world from hands on experience. One could speculate about why this man at that time and place was the chosen human to channel the Divine message. But reading his life and how he dealt with the challenges the revelations presented it fits. Of course it could have been made to fit by either God or if you are cynical, by subsequent writers, but one way or the other this man acquitted himself of his difficult task. The question is: is it God who forms the words of the revelations or Mohammed? It must be God because Mohammed’s human (fallible, time shackled) brain would not be able to process what is Divine. At the same time the message must have been made superficially understandable for Arabs living in the 7th century and given an eternal quality as it would be the last Divine communication. That should make the message multi layered and extensive. It had to address urgently the wrongs of the moment but it had also to have a lasting validity, guiding humanity on its merry and erratic way through time and forever changing circumstances. This way one had to expect that not everything could be understood equally always and not everybody could be happy with its meaning at all times. A meaning could become clear over time when circumstances demanded it. Anyway to me it seems like a giant jigsaw puzzle: extremely complicated but meant to be solvable… somehow… eventually, Inshallah…

101 Getting acquainted with Mohammed the Messenger of God

There are quite a number of books in English that have the life of the Prophet Mohammed as subject. Both Karen Armstrong and Tariq Ramadan have written acclaimed biographies. There is also a book called The People versus Mohammed by J.K. Sheindlin that sets out to prove that the Messenger of God was a dangerous mental case with a germ phobia. I didn’t think that book would be of much help. In the end I choose Muhammed his life from earliest sources by Martin Lings (1909-2005) a British convert to Sufism, Arabist and Keeper of. Oriental Books and Manuscripts at the British Library: another one of those weird and wonderful enthusiasts who colour the western Islamic firmament. Lings’ biography of Mohammed reads as a story from the Thousand and One Nights. But most importantly it gives a comprehensive picture of not only the life and times of the man but also the customs and circumstances of mid first millennium Arabia. The Surah in the Koran may not be chronologically presented. The biography of the Prophet adds enormously to understanding the content. Quite a bit is known about his life from testimonials of his wives, his close companions and other believers. All the stories, sayings and experiences were collected after his death in three books of what is called the Hadith. Still there is some debate if Mohammed was a historical person or not. There seem to be no contemporary accounts of him except those by the believers. Some suggest that he is a made up character to give Divine credence to stories from Mecca and Medina made up by people with the sole purpose to bring the frisky Arabian tribes together under one banner and challenge the Byzantine power. I heard an online talk in which Wilders’ advisor on Islam Hans Jansen made a suggestion to that extent. It sounds a bit as explanations after the fact.

100 What’s going on?

After my breakfast reading of the Koran was completed I was reeling. Although one professes to be open to the unexpected and wants to be surprised one really wants to be confirmed what one always thought one knew. What I had learned from reading the Koran was something I did not expect at all. Okay, I was never negative towards Islam and I didn’t share Geert Wilders’ prediction of ‘our culture’ loosing out against a normative, violent and invasive religion. Had I read a different Koran from the one he (or rather his Koran advisor Hans Jansen) portrayed in his short film ‘Fitna’? Or had poor N.J. Dawood the Jewish Arabist from Bagdad been so enamoured with ‘his’ Koran that his willingness ‘to increase the understanding and pleasure for the uninitiated’ had won it over a straightforward translation? Had I been blinded by my ‘Lesbian Feminist’ viewpoint, my historical interpretation and my intra-textual endeavours? I had expected writings that would confirm what I had seen everywhere in the Islamic world. I had taken for granted that the Koran would be a Divine acknowledgement of male superiority over women and allocate a subservient role to women in all things starting with religion. After careful reconsideration I came to the conclusion that I had been too fanciful in reading the text. I should have done less ‘reading’ between the lines and setting it in a historical context. Some subconscious sympathy for the vilified religion had coloured my judgement, I was sure. I resorted to Wikipedia again and found that there were extensive writings about the man through whom the Koran had been channelled: the Prophet Mohammed. I set myself to find out more about the man Geert Wilders characterizes as a child-molester and a pig.

99 The emancipation of women

The biggest surprise I got from my reading of the Koran at the breakfast table was how emancipatory and revolutionary the text is. Early in my reading I discovered that I could not read the text as a monolithic timeless structure. I constantly had 7th century Middle Eastern society in my head with Christian Byzantium as main trendsetter together with Coptic Egypt coloured by Hellenism and African Christian Ethiopia who were surrounding hungrily frisky heathen Arab tribes. I saw the riches of Syria and the decadence of Byzantine overlords. Reading the Koran text I also got a vivid picture of how the 7th century Arab tribes treated their women worse than their beloved camels. How they buried infant girls alive if there wasn’t enough food to go around or if they deemed there were too many of them. How orphans were robbed of their dead father’s property. How males preferred each other to females whom they abused and neglected. How group rape of innocent travellers was their idea of hospitality. How mercy, compassion and solidarity with the unfortunates wasn’t on the agenda. How greed, violence and exploitation reigned. Through The Act Of Recitation, Allah urged any man who would listen to change their ways and become decent, God fearing and considerate. Men were in particular urged to do good by women, girls and orphans. Allah let it be known through his Messenger Mohammed that women were equal to men in everything except in child making and rearing. In the historical setting of 7th century Arabia this was so revolutionary it was neigh impossible to demand. The obvious strategy for immediate change was taking one privilege or custom from men and granting them another lesser damaging thing. That’s why the Koran is directed equally to men and women in all things spiritual, ‘intellectual’ and communal while talking to men solely when it is about daily life, the treatment of others and acceptable behaviour. Or so I understood as a female and Lesbian reader.

98 A book of admonitions

Dawood’s translation of the Koran is 430 pages of densely written text. That promises a lot of content. But a hefty portion of the text is repetitive admonitions; something that had put me off the very first time I opened its pages 45 years before. Passages abound like this one: ‘Allah knows those who are truthful and those who are lying. Or do the evil-doers think that they will escape Our punishment? How ill they judge!’ Still all the warnings didn’t make for an aggressive tone, because in the same breath the do-gooders are assured of the rewards that await them. One could say that Allah was a ‘Mad man’ avant la lettre. He used near endless repetition to sell his product. The admonitions are the commercials in a TV program: ten minutes of every hour broadcasting. In seventh century Arabia it helped the Koran ‘reciters’ to let the audience reflect on what they heard ‘between commercials’ and in the meantime be subconsciously influenced by the repetitive ad-monitions. One could call it also ‘the chorus’. The whole Koran is one long warning: don’t do this, but do that. And what was one supposed to do to please Allah? The Koran was the last rescue operation of Allah for hopelessly erring humankind. Through the Koran the God of Abraham gives us earthlings a definitive guidance and directive. In the seventh century peoples ‘of the Book’ and Arab tribes had replaced the worship of the one God in favour of a pantheon of tribal gods, saints and holy rabbis. The main aim of the Koran was to get people to do away with idolatry and bow once again for the God of Abraham. That was the first easily understood meaning I got from my daily reading.

97 On reading the Koran

Of course when I started reading the Koran to get at its meaning I hadn’t realized what I let myself in for. There is a giant body of work written over the ages and is still being written trying to understand the meaning of the revelations. Who was I to ‘do’ it over breakfast 10 pages a day and ‘get’ it? Maybe it was a good thing that I was a total innocent. I set out with the brightly positive attitude that I would take God and his Messenger for granted. However I had forgotten to set aside my other biases. I tend to look at everything from a woman’s and a Lesbian’s point of view and I was aware that I could run into all kinds of terrible things written about women and LGTBs. In my own experience Islamic society was very male oriented and patriarchal. I braced myself for the onslaught. The only way to read a book like the Koran without prior knowledge or feedback and as only guidance the footnotes in the translation is to listen to the tone. What does the tone say? Is it aggressive or forgiving? According to the accusations of Wilders Islam is an extremely violent and unforgiving religion. He likes to refer to reports about stonings and beheadings of women accused of adultery and self-proclaimed atheists coming from Sharia ruled countries like Saudi Arabia and Sudan and warns that it’s coming ‘our’ way. I open the Koran and see that every Surah opens with the proclamation: ‘In the name of Allah the Compassioned and Merciful’. How so?

96 Dawood and his translation of the Koran

Dawood the translator of the Penguin edition claims that ‘The Koran is not only one of the greatest books of prophetic literature but also a literary masterpiece of surpassing excellence’. Not bad for a text that according Wilders is akin Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The writer for the publisher writes on the back flap that ‘Mr Dawood has produced a translation which retains the beauty of the original.’ and adds the mysterious remark about Dawood’s effort ‘altering the traditional arrangement to increase the understanding and pleasure for the uninitiated’. In his introduction Dawood explains: the original ‘recitings’ were at one time or another written down by listeners in Kufic script on paper, pot shards, stones and even palm leaves. Only later the whole lot was collected but without a chronological sequence. Dawood also warns that some passages are either ‘obscure’ or multi interpretable and he had not tried to explain them. So far so good. In my edition it says nothing about the translator himself. I resorted yet again to Wikipedia. N.J. Dawood (1927-2014) was a Jewish Arabist from Bagdad who came to England in 1945. After the success of his translation of ‘Tales from the Thousand and One Nights’ as Penguin nr 1001 he was invited to do the Koran. It became his life’s work. Although the first edition was published in 1956 he kept revising it for the rest of his life, incorporating new philological findings and notions. For instance when the gender specific ‘man’ was generally changed in ‘mankind’ he took that on board too. My edition is the second revised edition of 1966. His last revised edition was from 6 months before his death in 2014.

95 Starting the “Koran’ project

Geert Wilders made me take the Koran from the bookshelf. The book was one of those nice compact Penguin Classics with a black ridge. It’s top was covered in a thick layer of dust and it smelled a bit musty. I was daunted. So I took to Wikipedia first and looked up Islam. I learned that the word Islam meant ‘subjection’. Koran is 'the act of recitation'. The credo of the Muslims was: ‘there is but one God and Mohammed is his Messenger.’ Over a period of 23 years God gave Mohammed a great many revelations. Mohammed had to ‘recite’ them and others had to recite them after him. It came down to 114 Surahs or chapters and every Surah was divided in a random number of 'Aya' or verses. Even before I opened the Penguin I felt a revulsion coming up I often get with sacred texts. They are all so…. Male! I wanted to put the paperback back and forget about finding out if Wilders was right. In the end I came to the conclusion that I wanted to go on. But before I could I had to change my attitude. I had to accept the credo for what it was and take it seriously whether I believed it or not. From then on there would be only one God and his messenger would be Mohammed. I was going to read through the entire Koran translation taking in 10 pages every day at breakfast starting with the introduction by the translator N.J. Dawood. For better or for worse I would open my brain to the meaning of the revelations and trust the translator for not having made a cock-up.

94 The Geert Wilders Effect

Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who heads a influential ‘single issue’ party in the Dutch parliament. His ‘single issue’ is ridding Europe and in particular The Netherlands of everything Islamic. As even he recognizes that it is democratically impossible, he attacks the religion relentlessly within the boundaries of the law and freedom of expression, but not within the boundaries of human decency. Among his proposals: to scrap article one of the Dutch constitution the non-discrimination principle, closing the borders for non-western immigrants and putting a moratorium on the opening of Islamic schools and mosques both for at least 5 years, a ban on foreign Imams and preaching in other languages but Dutch, that Muslims if they want to stay in The Netherlands are only allowed to read a censured version of the Koran and a tax of Euro 1000,- on the wearing of the Hidjab. He also likened the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, called the Prophet Mohammed a child molester and a pig, opinionated that ‘we’ are suffering from an invasion of ‘Islam’ which aim it is to transform The Netherlands into ‘Nederarabia’ a province of an Islamic super state Eurabia (this last remark is quite funny really). There are a lot of people who vote for him (his party is the second largest in parliament) because ‘he dares to say it instead of covering the ‘truth’ with soothing words and denials’. A majority of Dutch people believe in one way or the other that Islam forms a real thread against ‘our culture’. They believe that Islam is intrinsically violent and threatens our ‘freedom’ and our ‘democratic rights’. Is that really true? Does Islam stands for forced conversions, dictatorship, violence against women and the killing of anybody who isn’t a ‘true’ believer? I’d better find out and I finally took Dawood’s translation of the Koran from the shelf.

93 Dawood’s Penguin Koran

Through Pop Art I became interested in Islamic art. And I wasn’t the only one. In the sixties and seventies carloads of Islam related trinkets, posters and handicrafts of all kinds were brought back home by backpackers and other tourists. The bright colours of the prints and the decorative patterns of the Arabic script were viewed as prime examples of popular art. It was never meant to be ‘artistic’ but it had still a natural artistry. By now probably most of these ‘trophies’ have been thrown out with the trash or have disintegrated over time. As a souvenir from the era I still cherish a screen print ‘scored’ in Afghanistan of a drawing of a brightly coloured rose bush with the 99 names of Allah, carefully framed and hung next to a historic poster of the first Andy Warhol exhibition in Great Britain. But I didn’t leave it at that. In 1967 on my way to or from India I bought in Teheran or Kabul (I can’t remember) a Penguin paperback edition of the Koran translated by N.J.Dawood and published in 1956. At the time I did my utmost to read it but it was so full of admonitions that I quickly got put off. And anyway I was told that the ‘Qu’ran’ has to be read in Arabic. Otherwise you couldn’t get to the divine meaning of the text. As they told me: ‘There are many Bibles but there is only one Qu’ran.’ Meaning the Bible you can read in whatever translation, but the Koran you cannot. Was I really interested in reading a divine text be it Islamic or other? I don’t think so. It was the cultural effects the text had had on the believers I was interested in. Of that I got plenty of experience. In the end it took Geert Wilders for me to take Dawood’s Penguin translation from the bookshelf again.

92 God, the Divine, my Mother and I

The concept of God and/or the awareness of the Divine was not given to me with my Mother’s milk. And I still don’t get it. My Mother raised me on a recipe of Social Justice and the intrinsic goodness of Human Beings. If people did bad things they were ‘misguided’. Another principle was that you had to do it now because there would be no ‘later’ and what you left by your deeds was your legacy to the future. Carrying on like that she could have started a religion, but she didn’t. Religion to her was an educational tool ‘we’ didn’t need. Her amazing example was the why and how of prayer before dinner. Prayer before and after meals was prevalent in religious households when I grew up. ‘Why?’ I asked my Mother when I came home from a friend’s house where I had witnessed this phenomenon. ‘Because it is good for the metabolism to sit down properly before you eat and take a few moments for your system to prepare for the onslaught of food.’ Knowing this, there was no prayer needed to whet the metabolism. I’m not an atheist, nor am I an unbeliever. Nobody has to ‘prove’ for me that God does not exist nor do they have to convince me of the opposite. God is something for others and I recognize the value it has for others. With the ‘Divine’ it is the same and spirituality is also wasted on me. But I won’t trash it either. Religion is a complex human effort that has defined our existence, moral judgement and place in the scheme of things since times immemorial. It fascinates me no end.

91 Generalisations about Pop Art and Islamic Art

My first trips east left undoubtedly the most enduring impressions. I studied art in a time that ‘rationalisation’ was the most prominent feature in Western art. It permeated all levels of the prevalent culture. Being in art school I had the feeling that things were happening on a cultural level that were me. I was connected. Pop replaced figurative art. Numerical systems akin to cybernetics were dominating abstract art. In fashion simple lines and pret-a-porter transformed ‘Haute Couture’. In literature the French Nouvelle Vague concentrated on the cool description instead of emotion. Even in cinema the laws of storytelling were challenged by notions of ‘real life’. Pop culture seemed to do away with the ‘originality’ of individual expression. We were seeking the ‘common denominator’ and we were aiming for the ‘highest’ common denominator. By being ‘ordinary’ we hoped to become less ‘ego centric’ human beings. A lot of these ‘modern’ notions I found to my amazement back in Islamic Art. For me simply stated: ‘Islam’ was the popular culture of the Islamic world and the Koran was the ‘common denominator’. Calligraphy, numerology and mathematics that combine both in a ‘rational’ way were the artist’s tools of expression. This ‘rationalisation’ was used to conceptualize spirituality. For me the results were very much the same level as what I saw in the contemporary art of where I came from. The beauty of the mathematical patterns of shapes in all forms of calligraphy, architecture and crafts and its availability to all was totally ‘Pop’ to me. It opened up an interest in Islam.

90 Generalisations about the Islamic world and me

When in 1966 I made my first trip east hitchhiking, I was struck by the division in the Muslim world between the realm of men and of women. As a foreign traveller I would only meet men. Men peopled the street and kept shop, men talked to strangers and offered rides. It was a men’s world. It was not much different from what I was used to in my own country. Except that in my own country I as a woman was supposed to participate publicly in this state of affairs. In the Muslim world women didn’t have to participate or were not supposed to. I walked around in public spaces as a curiosity, a brazen anomaly: young, blond and foreign. Finally it was obvious to the whole world who I was: not fitting in. I felt comfortable with it. And just like at home it seemed difficult to reach out to women. However when I met women it was on their own terms and always without the meddlesome intervention of men. What a relief! At the time Muslim men seemed lost. They roamed the streets and they roamed in their heads. They didn’t seem to know who they were and what they were supposed to do to be themselves. On the international platform there was a Cold War going on with both the US and the USSR trying to convince the Muslim men their side was the one to follow to get the best, most and happiest. Popular culture was flown in from America and Europe and made them question their own culture. Pan-Arabism was urging them to become ‘modern’ or miss out. The Muslim men were cranky and unsure and were feeling more and more insecure. On the other hand this cultural, political and moral upheaval all passed by the majority of women. As they didn’t have to participate they could stay themselves and stayed comfortable in their own culture. In the West they tended to call Muslim women ‘backward’ but I loved their self-confidence and conviction. Something I lacked myself as a thoroughly modern girl.

89 Am I an ‘Orientalist’?

People often ask me if it is through Bert Hogervorst and her Flying Hippo travel organisation that I travelled sketching through the Middle East and Morocco. They are surprised when they hear that from the age of 19 I’ve travelled and even lived and worked in the nearby Islamic world. Ever since as a child I was read from the Thousands and One Nights (with illustrations of Rie Kramer), I’ve had a fascination for the ‘East’. One could call me an ‘Orientalist’. However Orientalism and the Orientalist does have a patronizing and disparaging connotation. Nineteenth century British and French male travellers come to mind. They were lured on by perverse fantasies of alluring, sex-crazed women locked up in Harems. They would use the excuse of ‘study’ to scan the place for colonial purposes and they would undertake expeditions solely to establish ‘scientifically’ their own and their religion’s superiority over the indigenous Islamic and Jewish population. I don’t know if I fall under that definition of an ‘Orientalist’. I’m an elderly woman from a European country and a Lesbian to boot and I don’t have the tendency to ‘go native’. Maybe that could make me a sexist with neo-colonial tendencies and feelings of moral superiority. The only thing that I know for sure about myself is that I’ve always felt myself at home and safe in most of the Islamic countries I visited. Paradoxically I was also spurred on by an exiting sense of the dangerous unknown like so many travellers before me.

88 Michiel de Ruyter in Iligh

Michiel de Ruyter has written in his diaries about his visits to Iligh and his meetings with the ‘Sant’. But until now there are no documents found written by people in Iligh about his visits. Of course Iligh was destroyed a few decennia later. The strange thing is that there isn’t a memory either among the family Aboudmiaa of a Dutch trader selling them modern weaponry. Maybe the sounds of the name were just too foreign: El Soussie who wrote about Iligh in the nineteen fifties did mention him and gave him an unrecognizably scrambled name. Bert Hogervorst hasn’t figured out yet how he came by his information: from the biography of De Ruyter or by documents he got from the Aboudmiaa family and reportedly never gave back? Thinking about De Ruyter in Iligh I can see that the set up might be different from what he was used too, but I’m sure De Ruyter also saw similarities between Iligh and the Dutch Republic. Iligh was small but was making a name for itself in international trade in particular across the Sahara. It had mighty enemies that were eager to destroy it. It was wealthy and it had a liberal attitude towards others. Jews in particular had found refuge there. Not Jews from the Iberian Peninsula as in the Republic but Jews from nearby Ifrane. And as in the Low Countries the Jews had brought prosperity because of their connections. It was ‘The Golden Age’ in the Republic but the same can be said about Morocco. In the seventeenth century there wasn’t such a big difference between the standard of living and the level of development in Europe and the Islamic world. That only came to be in the nineteenth century with the industrial revolution in Europe.

87 Thinking about Michiel de Ruyter

During his lifetime Michiel de Ruyter was portrayed many times. His portrait in paint and print must have decorated many a wall. Clearly people needed at the time of threatening civil war an idol and he fitted the profile. When De Ruyter became vice admiral of the fleet under Cornelis Tromp, the less talented son of the celebrated Maarten Tromp, he was a novice to the viper pit that was the Dutch political scene. He had no connections and was a self made man. He came from an Orangist Island but got his commission from Johan de Witt a staunch State supporter. Although admiring Johan de Witt and his gifted brother Cornelis and becoming friends with them, he never chose sides. In contrast his boss at the Admiralty Cornelis Tromp was an card-carrying Orangist and took part in intrigues to bring Willem III Prince of Orange to power. De Ruyter’s only loyalty was with his family and the Dutch Republic. On the portrait paintings of De Ruyter he has a fleshy, glum but not unfriendly face albeit rather plain. He is clearly heir to generations of Jenever drinkers as so many Dutch. His stance is confident but rather square. His clothes are plain and practical. His ability to stay neutral yet be loyal to a few principles, combined with a sharp mind and healthy curiosity in anything that was new, different and could be put to use, made him an ideal ‘traveller’. His ships might have been an extension of his home island, but once on foreign shore he was open to new experiences. Hence his learning the Irish a.o.. This worked very well of course when he was not tied to the duties of warfare. The Bros De Witt stimulated his innovative tendencies. That’s how a.o. came the forming of an ‘army at sea’ about: the Marines.

86 Michiel De Ruyter on shore

After his lucrative period on the Salamander Michiel De Ruyter settled into the life of a respected Burger of Vlissingen. He married Anna van Gelder a 38 year old widow with children and bought a house. To celebrate his love for his new wife he called his house: ‘De Gecroonde Liefde’ (The Crowned Love). It could have been the name of a ship. With the narrow, steep stairs and small low-ceilinged rooms houses in Holland and on the islands (Zeeland) could be seen as ships on shore. Of all the properties in Vlissingen De Ruyter chose the house right across the warehouses of Cornelis Lampsins. I drew the street and the house. There was a sharp cold wind from the north. It made sitting out of the sun very unpleasant. There was also no seating. However the man of the house where I leant against the windowsill kindly gave me a chair: to leave when I had finished. De Ruyter never sold the ‘Crowned Love’. However his plans for a peaceful life on shore was never to be. That same year the Republic got into war with England. The Admiralty of Zeeland asked him for help and he couldn’t say no. Although he really didn’t want to go back to sea. From that time onwards till his death in 1676 he was in the Navy. The ships the Province of Zeeland send to war were just merchant ships with guns. Nevertheless De Ruyter defeated the English war ships in the Battle at Plymouth. After the death of Admiral Maarten Tromp, De Ruyter was asked by Johan de Witt the ‘Raadpensionaris’ (leader of the governing council) of the Republic to take Tromp’s place in the Dutch fleet. This promotion forced him and his family to move from Vlissingen to Amsterdam. He and his wife bought a house on the ‘Buitenkant’ (Outside) with a view of the harbour. Now it is Prins Hendrikkade 131. He became the hero of three sea wars with England, invented the Marine Corps and modernized the fleet.

85 Wives’ tale

In the 17th century the life of sailors wasn’t easy. They were a long time away from home if they came home at all. Michiel de Ruyter had a relatively charmed career. He was wounded only twice and survived. The first time when he was just a lad he was wounded and taken prisoner by the Spanish. He escaped and walked home from La Coruna. The second time was when still in his early twenties he got an axe in the back of his head fighting the feared pirates of Dunkirk. The third time he didn’t survive. Sailors tended to marry girls from home, because they knew how life was, coping without men. A life at home with a husband at sea wasn’t easy especially when the money ran out and children had to be fed. However it had also its compensations. The women of the Dutch islands were independent of character, knew how to be thrifty and were money wise. They often bought her husband’s ship’s supplies and knew how to get a good deal. If they survived long enough to develop those talents. The main trouble that faced women in the 17th century wasn’t life without men, but having children. Childbirth itself and complications after childbirth were the major causes of death. De Ruyter had three wives. The first one died in childbirth and her child soon after. About 5 years later he married again. 13 years and 4 children later she kicked the bucket too. Only 2 of the four kids survived. During those years De Ruyter traded with the ‘Sant’. By then h had a nice bit of money to his name and got the honour of having citizenship of the city of Vlissingen. De Ruyter was looking for certain qualities in his next wife and that wasn't youth and beauty. He wanted someone he could grow old and wealthy with; somebody with a sense for business and in robust health.

84 Weapons for Feathers

For eighty years the Dutch Republic was in a state of war with the Spanish Kingdom and made it a profitable business. The Republic started off on borrowed money trying to fight a war the traditional way with hired troops under the command of Princes. That didn’t work at all. Quickly enough the Republic came to rely on the Merchant Navy. With letters of consent in the pocket and guns below deck the captains of the merchant fleet became the scourge of the Spanish. Part of the loot went to the coffers of the Republic but a sizable part stayed with the ships owners, skippers and the crew. That part was often in kind: goods, riches and weapons. The Dutch became important weapons’ traders. The story goes that the most important client was actually the very people they had taken the guns from: the Spanish. When Michiel de Ruyter sailed his own ship the Salamander to Morocco, he brought at first ‘regular’ stuff for trade with him. In the MuZeeum in Vlissingen they told me with a knowing smile he brought ‘beads and mirrors for the natives’. It was a little bit different. Ali Aboudmiaa, the ‘Sant’ as De Ruyter calls him, had territorial ambitions. He wanted weapons of the most advanced variety. And that was what De Ruyter provided. In exchange he got Ostrich feathers. Was it a good deal: weapons against feathers? De Ruyter thought so. At home the rich and powerful liked to wear Ostrich feathers on hats and helmets. They were willing to pay handsomely for ‘fashion’. Ali Aboudmiaa probably laughed till his stomach hurt. The once very advanced guns are now decorating the sea wall in Vlissingen. Ancient or not they still have firing power. On special occasions the wick is lit and the cannons boom.

83 About Pilots, Pirates and ‘Lorrendaaiers’

In the old days pilots were fishermen who for a bit of cash helped skippers through the treacherous waters of the estuaries that made up the Low Countries. Even now with satellite navigation, radar and depth sounding there is not a ship that passes Vlissingen without a pilot. The pilot’s boats are high-powered affairs that flit in and out of the pilot harbour like hornets out of their nests. The sketch shows a pilot leaving port. To the left on the fort the statue of De Ruyter. It is funny to see the small boats speeding angrily up towards one of the huge freighters, swerve around, latch-on and board. When the job is done they race back full throttle. The whole procedure reminds me irresistibly of pirates. The Dutch Republic owed in its first 25 years a lot to pirates and privateering. In the beginning the Republic didn’t have a fleet and on land it could do little against mighty Spain. But on the waters between the many islands and beyond on sea belligerently fearless and reckless skippers and their crews did Spain but also England a lot of harm. Writing out letters of consent to privateers (Kaperbrieven) kept the Republic in money. The biggest triumph was when the pirate Piet Hein captured the Silver Fleet that sailed from the Americas back to Spain. It provided the State’s coffers with money for almost a year. De Ruyter did the ‘kaap’ (privateering) once: in 1637 commissioned by Lampsins. Pirates were considered respectable until the Dutch got a proper fleet. On the other hand ‘Lorrendraaiers’ were bad asses! There is a painting of two ‘Lorrendraaier’ ships before Vlissingen in full sail and proudly flying the Republic’s colours in a devil may care attitude. ‘Lorrendraaiers’ were ships that carried no letters of consent and didn’t belong to any organisation. Instead they pirated on the regular merchant navy. In particular they did a bit of illegal slave trade. Before becoming an admiral De Ruyter worked all kinds seafaring jobs but never did he stoop so low.

82 In search of the ‘Salamander’

The most important reason for visiting Vlissingen was to sketch the model of Michiel de Ruyter’s ship the ‘Salamander. De Ruyter commandeered ships of Cornelis Lampsins and war ships of the Admiralty, but only once he had stood on his very own decks. That was on the Salamander when he traded with Morocco and the Caribbean. I knew the MuZeeum (MuSeaum) had a model in its collection. So there I went. The front desk of the museum is manned by volunteers. They had heard about De Ruyter’s ship but it didn’t ring a bell that the museum should have a model. They were most helpful but further than a printout of the model from a general maritime site they didn’t come. I was stunned. They called the back office. There were the professionals, but everyone was out to lunch. If I could wait? Of course I could, I chatted a bit with the volunteers and took a tour of the museum. The museum is set up in three parts: the new building next to the Lampsins House and behind the Lampsins warehouses. It is a huge complex over three floors, a cellar and an attic. Between the Lampsins House and the warehouses were glass encaged galleries. Here I found among other gable stones a very big one representing a ship that looked like the Salamander except that it had sails two stories high instead of three and it was rigged out as a war ship with two rows of cannons. I decided to draw the stone as it was nicely detailed. One of the volunteers had an interesting comment. He said that the Salamander was only a small ship. Regular VOC vessels had up to 250 men on board, but the Salamander would only carry 50 men or so. Half way on my tour somebody came down from the offices to tell me that indeed the model was in the museum, but it was not on view. Later Gabrielle Baumann the director of the museum came to see me. I explained I wanted to draw the model for the purpose of using it in a graphic story about Dutch contacts with Iligh. She told me she couldn’t let me into the museum’s warehouse. I had to write a letter and the board would than take it in consideration. I did and I haven’t heard from her or anyone else since.

81 Lampsins of Vlissingen

After the Church of Saint Jacob where Michiel de Ruyter was baptized and married the next logical step was to the Lampsins House. Lampsins was is an important ship-owner. Originally from Oostende Jan Lampsins settled in Vlissingen and made his fortune there. He was also the first employer of Michiel de Ruyter. As a young child after flunking school Michiel took up a job working on the ropewalk one of the businesses of Jan Lampsins. Later a children’s song was written that starts with this period of his life when ‘turning the big wheel, all day, while his boyish heart longed for a life of adventure on sea’. Or something like that. In 1618 as a 11 year old he went to sea. In 1631 after a very adventurous life on shore and at sea he was hired again by Lampsins. This time it was Cornelis Lampsins the son of Jan. Michiel was send to head the company’s office in Dublin where he learned to speak fluent Irish. The story goes that on a trip back to Vlissingen his ship was attacked by pirates. He saved his ship by smearing Irish butter on the hull of the ship. In 1638 De Ruyter was made captain of one of the Lampsins’ ships. By 1644 he had his own ship the Salamander. In 1652 he bought a house right behind the Lampsins House. The Lampsins house is now a museum. The balcony on the roof is said to function as a kind of crows’ nest. It was used to watch the ships depart and come in. The old tidal dock is now a marina. Hence the high walls. When sketching the sun was out, but a freezing cold wind from the north was blowing around my ears. High time to go inside in the MuZeeum (MuSeaum).

80 Vlissingen 1652

1652 was an important year in the life of Michiel de Ruyter. Het married Anne van Gelder and had bought a house. His trade with Iligh and the Caribbean had made him a rather wealthy man. He wanted to spend more time with his family and less time on the seven seas. However that was not going to be. Johan de Witt asked him to help out the young Republic as it was threatened on all sides. This map of Vlissingen shows a relative big city that is well protected from outside enemies both human and water. The population of Vlissingen has grown but not by much. The old town and coast are still more or less the same. Although most harbours and docks as well as the moat have been filled in. What I had to draw I could find on this map. The history of Vlissingen is a long one. It has always been a desirable possession because of its strategic position at the entrance of the Schelde estuary and its rich hinterland of Antwerp, Brugge and Gendt. In 1572 it became the second city within the very young Dutch Republic to rid itself of Spanish rule. They weren’t ‘taken’; the population freed itself. After that it became a wealthy port and trading centre by itself till Amsterdam took over in importance. Typical after getting his commission as Vice Admiral of the fleet De Ruyter had to move to Amsterdam. However he kept his house in Vlissingen.

79 Michiel de Ruyter and the Church of Saint Jacob

I’ve read it many times: when somebody in history becomes something like a ‘saviour’ or ‘hero’, people will find ‘signs’ of the later greatness in earlier life. The same happened with Michiel de Ruyter. Even though quite a bit is known about his youth that didn’t prevent myths to be spun. A few had to do with the Great or Saint Jacob’s Church. It is said, he climbed the tower to better see the ships on Vlissingen’s roadstead and the North Sea beyond. When he came down he chose to come via the façade: as if the tower was the main mast of a ship. De Ruyter was baptized in the church and was married there, but he is interred in the ‘Nieuwe Kerk’ (New Church) in Amsterdam. After having made a drawing of the church tower the day before, I wanted to ‘do’ the interior. Like most old churches in the Netherlands this church became Protestant during the 80year liberation war with Spain. That meant that the church was stripped of all altars, statues, confession boxes and little sanctuaries. What was left was a rather naked, open space. The inside of churches like this one I find extremely difficult to draw. It is just too big and there is little to take hold of. The only focus point is the pulpit and that structure is usually an over ornate and rather pompous affair. I always admire the perfect acoustics those churches have. That’s why the Saint Jacobs church is also used for concerts nowadays, the churchwarden in charge of ‘events’ told me. The day I sat down to sketch, the ‘evangelical’ broadcasting corporation (EO) was preparing the space for a televised recording of public church singing: ‘Nederland Zingt’ (The Netherlands Sings). In the drawing the lads have just finished hanging the lights and putting up the recording system. While drawing the pulpit the musical instruments were tried out. I was invited to stay on for the rehearsal, but I declined and hastened from the place of worship to head for the nautical venues.

78 Michiel de Ruyter as seen on TV

On my first night in Vlissingen my local friend Martina and I settled in front of the TV to watch ‘The Admiral’ on Netflix. The film tells the story of Michiel as head of the fleet during the wars with England. It is set in the period after he was a trader, had his own ship the ‘Salamander’ and travelled with it to Morocco and the Caribbean. It starts in the year he was asked by the council of the Dutch Republic to join the admiralty. Apart from his prowess in battle and his genius as a naval tactician we are shown the political reality of the times. The Republic was rich and doing well in international trade. The other sea powers were jealous and attacked the young country: in particular England and later France. Inside the Republic a civil war threatened. The Seven Provinces were ruled by the party of traders and ad hoc politicians called the ‘Staatsgezinden’ or State Supporters. Their leader was Johan de Witt who was supported by his brother Cornelis. They were opposed by the faction around the Prince of Orange. The princely pretender was Prince Willem III the later King William of England or King Billy. Willem III was gay and Lord Bentinck was his lover as seen on the film. Michiel de Ruyter came from a region that was staunchly Orange, but was also a great friend and admirer of the bros De Witt. Apart from some misplaced, modern American style and lengthy speeches about ‘freedom’ the movie explains a very complicated and for an Anglo-Saxon public totally incomprehensible moment in history succinctly effective. Well done! The sketch is of the Great or Saint Jacob’s Church the most important landmark in the coastal town and very important in the life of De Ruyter.

77 Introduction to Vlissingen

Nowadays Vlissingen can be reached easily by train. But till the sixties of the last century Vlissingen was on an island: Walcheren. After the devastating effects of the Flood Disaster of 1953 the islands that made up the Province of Zeeland were connected to each other and the mainland by dykes, bridges and flood defences. Walcheren is no longer an island and if you didn’t know you would never notice it had been. The train ride took just over three hours. Because of recent rescheduling it took half an hour longer than during the time I visited the town for work. I had always enjoyed visiting the province. Work for the National Bureau of Water Management had taken me many times to Zeeland. In 2001 while recovering from cancer treatment I had been kindly taken in by a couple living on Walcheren. In the nineties my aunt Taat had taken Bert and me for a Whitsun holiday to Vlissingen. We had stayed in the Grand Hotel Brittannia or ‘De Brit’. All rooms in the hotel had balconies looking out over the Roadstead of Vlissingen. That view I wanted to have this time too. But ‘De Brit’ had been demolished. Fortunately there are more hotels on the ‘Boulevard’. I chose the Hotel Truida and was given a room with the desired view. Better still: when I sat on the loo I could draw this sketch. Martina, a Dutch friend from Achill Island has a ‘pied d’à terre’ in Vlissingen. She welcomed me and gave me a thorough introduction to the town. She took me and her dog for a circular tour around the old city. Starting on Wall Street she took me to the Saint Jacob’s or Great Church and on to the yacht harbour and the Lampsins House, past the Pilot’s port and Bellamypark or the old dock harbour to the statue of Michiel de Ruyter and to the harbour inlet and on to the Prisoners’ Tower and the boulevards. Turned out her home was just behind the hotel in the 19th century part of the town. In the evening we watched the movie ‘Admiral’ on Netflix. I couldn’t have gotten a better introduction to Vlissinge the town of Michiel de Ruyter.

76 In search of Michiel de Ruyter

The first chapter of the Graphic Story about Iligh will be about the Michiel de Ruyter connection. Michiel de Ruyter was born in 1607 and died in 1676 during a sea battle against the French. He hailed from the town of Vlissingen on the island of Walcheren in the Province of Zeeland. Zeeland was in the 17th century an independent region of small but rich and powerful islands within the Dutch Republic of Seven Provinces. Michiel de Ruyter is an iconic hero of the seas. His sailors gave him the honorary title of ‘Bestevaer’ (grandfather). The latest biography about him by Ronald Prudhomme van Reine was called ‘De rechter hand van Nederland’ (The right hand of the Netherlands) and a movie about his exploits during the wars with England was titled ‘Admiral’. At primary school I learned the song ‘In een blauwgeruite kiel’ (In a blue tartan shirt) about him as a youth dreaming about going to sea while working on a ropewalk. Lately his heroic status has been questioned and to have an interest in him is considered dubious and ‘not done’. He is accused of facilitating the slave trade. The Dutch had taken over the cross-ocean trade from the Portuguese and made it more ‘efficient’ and thus more vicious and dehumanizing. As with all iconic figures a lot of myths were attached to him and he had become more like an institution than a human being. Time to get a ‘feel’ for this man and to make drawings ‘in situ’ for the graphic story. I took the train to Vlissingen. It was a beautiful sunny day when I set out to the railway station only to find out that the scheduled direct train to Vlissingen had been cancelled. Time enough to sit down and do some serious sketching of the monumental Amsterdam Central Station.

75 Paolo de Mas in Iligh in 2011

Paolo de Mas only came back to Iligh in 2011 with a TV crew with presenter Daphne Bunskoek. The Dutch national broadcaster made a series about slavery and the Dutch: a rather controversial and neglected subject. One part of the series was dedicated to Dutch hostages or the so-called Christian slaves. They weren’t really slaves they were hostages held for ransom. But of course when they weren’t paid for they ended their lives as slaves. In the meantime they were set to work: for instance on building the city walls of Meknes. The rulers in Morocco tended to hold all Dutch sailors for ransom that stranded on Moroccan shores or whose ships were looted. In the 17th century that were quite a lot: among them was also Dutch rebel warrior Piet Hein. The VOC had a ‘ransom fund’ for these occasions. But crews of ships that weren’t part of that organisation had to rely on private or parochial fundraising to be bought out. The House of Iligh also held Christian sailors for ransom and among them was a number of Dutch. Michiel de Ruyter describes in his diaries how he could buy out a number of them but also had to leave behind some as he didn’t have enough funds and he didn’t know if he would be paid back for his troubles. To highlight this story Paolo de Mas took the TV crew to Iligh. They were welcomed in the White Castle by his old friend Hamdi Aboudmiaa. Most shots were taken amid the rundown southern part of the village: not even in the ‘court’. And by the look of it, the weather was cold and miserable. But it is a great story and Paolo told it well in front of the cameras.

74 Paolo de Mas 1975-1982

From 1975 to 1978 Paolo de Mas was in Morocco for the REMPLOD project Willem Heinemeijer was doing for Dutch minister Jan Pronk: Reintegration of Emigrant Manpower and the Promotion of Local Opportunities for Development. For this project the University of Amsterdam, UvA worked together with the INSEA in Rabat: the Institut National de Statistique et d’Economie Appliquée. For this project De Mas visited Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa for the first time in 1975. Later he would stay there for a while. Him and the other project members would stay in the building the Friends of Iligh would later have lunch. When the project was done, Paolo de Mas and others didn’t want to leave Morocco yet and went on the look out for another opportunity. They found it in the building in the lot next to that of the INSEA. It was the INAV Institut National Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II in Rabat. In this institute Paul Pascon set the tone. From 1979 to 1982 the UvA and Paul Pascon worked together. First on the REDRA project in the Rif: (Ressources en Eau et Développement dans de zônes Arides). In 1979 however Paul Pascon published his inventory of the documents on the trade the House of Iligh conducted in the first half of the 19th century. After this publication he wanted to conduct an in depth study of not only the trade, but also the political and social history of the House of Iligh. In October 1980 he took Herman van der Wüsten and Paolo de Mas on a fact-finding trip to Iligh. After that Paul Pascon collected a large ‘equipe’ around him and VD Wüsten contributed Dutch funds for the Iligh project that would last till 1982.

73 Who was Willem Heinemeijer?

Bert Hogervorst was given a copy of the book by Paul Pascon about Iligh as a present by Herman van der Wüsten. The former owner had written his name inside and that was not VD Wüsten. The name didn’t mean a thing till our conversation with Paolo de Mas in the 1ste Klasse Wachtkamer in Amsterdam Central railway station. Suddenly we read what had been written: W. Heinemeijer. The name brought back memories. This man had not only had a very important influence on the life of Paolo de Mas, but I had also known him in a totally different context and only very shortly. Who was he? Willem Heinemeijer was born in Amsterdam in 1922 and died there in 1999. He didn’t live anywhere else, but apart from Amsterdam he loved Morocco. Paolo de Mas told us the story that Willem’s father was as stamp collector corresponded with the (French) postmaster of a small village in the High Atlas. One day Heinemeijer saw a picture of the postmaster’s daughter and fell instantly in love. He hitchhiked via Marseilles and Algeria to the high Atlas. At the time both Algeria and Morocco were French colonies. His infatuation with the daughter didn’t pan out and instead Heinemeijer fell in love with the country. Heinemeijer studied Social Geography at the University of Amsterdam and later became professor there. Reflecting his continued interest in the country his 1968 phd thesis was about National Integration and Regional Diversity in Morocco. Heinemeijer wasn’t just a academic he also loved to mingle in popular political and social debates. In particular where it touched on his ‘beloved’ Amsterdam. In the mid nineties I came to know him as member of a think-tank set up by the squatters of the Nineteenth Century port of Amsterdam. We, the squatters wanted to make an ‘alternative’ development of the old port possible based on ‘what was already there’. The city wanted to make as much money as possible on the land and location. Heinemeijer and a few of his old ‘cronies’ helped us. Paolo de Mas knew him a very long time. He got to know him as a very inspired and inspiring teacher and hands-on intellectual with whom he became fast friends and who stimulated his choices. As a Social-Geographer he saw ‘development’ and ‘under-development’ in the context of the dynamics between the land and the communities that develop there. Exactly what we did as squatters in the old port of Amsterdam (The Turning Tide, Buchel, Hogervorst, Vermaase, 1996 Amsterdam, see my website: www.petibuchel.com). A pungent detail for Dutchs fans of the author Gerard Reve: in his acclaimed novel ‘De Avonden’(the evenings) Heinemeijer and his wife are both portrayed . Eduard Hoogkamp is Heinemeijer.

72 Paolo de Mas and Morocco

Paolo studied Social Geography under Willem Heinemeijer in Amsterdam. Heinemeijer stood at the foreground of research into migration and in his youth had ‘done’ Morocco hitchhiking. When in the mid-seventies the then Socialist minister for ‘Collaboration with the Developing World’ set aside billions for research into the effects of immigration in the home countries Heinemijer got the moneys meant for Morocco. Paolo de Mas was one of the promising students whom Heinemeijer trusted with the job. The two focus areas were the Rif in the north and the Souss region in the south. That was where the bulk of the Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands came from. Paolo de Mas started his Moroccan adventure touring the country with a friend for a month to get ‘a feel for the place’. After that he settled into the research job in a village in the Rif near El Hoceima. Later he moved (of all the possible villages in the Souss region) to Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa for more research on the impact of migration on rural communities. If I remember correctly the Social Democrat government was looking into the possibility if they could make it a policy to provide the ‘returning’ migrants with the infrastructure to help building a ‘better’ community at home. In the Netherlands the need for un-schooled labour had shrunk. They wanted to stem the tide of incoming migrants. If there was job opportunity at the place they came from there would be no need for immigration was the reasoning of politicians. Paolo de Mas remembered those years as him being an ‘elephant in the porcelain cupboard’. Meaning: probably doing more harm than good. I think that that was exactly what was wrong with the attitudes regarding ‘aid’ that were in ‘vogue’ at the time. At least it was not overtly greed driven... yet. By the time the research should have led to policy Thatcher had come into power in England and everything changed. However Paolo de Mas came away from his research job with a lasting love for Morocco in his heart.

71 Paolo de Mas

Paolo de Mas was one of the Dutch experts who didn’t come to the Reunion Des Amis d’Iligh. He had prior engagements. However he was one of the Dutch connections with Iligh. All through the preparations for the Iligh project he also had been extremely helpful. Chapter 5 of the Graphic Story that had to deal with Paul Pascon had him as the protagonist. We had boldly made that choice although we didn’t have a clue what he had really done during Pascon’s stay in Iligh. He wasn’t on the cover of the book. Herman van der Wüsten was as was Daniel Schroeter and Mohammed Tozy. Bert set up a meeting with him in the ‘1ste Klasse Wachtkamer’ at the Amsterdam Central Station for May 8. Before we went we read up on him. There was an in depth interview with him and his brother on the Internet. He was the son of Italian immigrants who came to Alkmaar in the Thirties and started an ice-cream parlour there. Paolo and his brother were second-generation immigrants. When he went to school in the fifties and sixties other waves of immigrants came to the Netherlands: Italians, Spanish, Yugoslavians and from the early sixties onwards Turks and Moroccans. According to the interview on the Internet Paolo keeps close ties with the village of his parent’s birth in the Dolomites. He visits it at least once a year and takes part in the community. He also cherishes his diploma Professional Ice Cream Maker. From childhood on he was fascinated by maps and geography. When he went to study at the University of Amsterdam he chose Social Geography. His professor there was Willem Heinemeijer and that man had a great influence on Paolo’s life.

Aicha and her projects

To be able to 'get things done' for the village Aisha Aboudmiaa went into politics. She stood for election for the regional council. She got in and is now a representative. Although she works and lives in Agadir where she is a civil servant and works on her phd, she applies herself to make life in the local community better. The dusty football pitch is a visible example. In March 2018 work was on the way to upgrade the pitch to a proper sports field. In the sketch Aisha is talking to the workmen who are setting out a sports oval. Another successful undertaking was the coming of the Medical Caravan. For about a week a number of mobile medical facilities were set up in the village. People were seen to for free. The aim is that in future the Medical Caravan visits the village on a regular basis. Aisha had also asked the women of the village, what they needed most. On top came out: good quality water. The water the diesel pump brings up is barely good enough for irrigation. Because of the opening up of water as a marketable commodity, drinking water is now bottled and sold in shops and has become too expensive for most local families. Through Aicha's efforts a deep well has been sunk that brings up drinkable water for the use of the villagers. Another thing is that for the olive harvest the women have to go miles away. Aisha has planted about a hectare or more on the south side of the village with olive trees. In 2018 they stood about at 1.50 m. However the orchard has suffered from draught and theft. Year round safeguarding and maintenance has proven very expensive.

Coming into Iligh from Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa

Driving from Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa for the first time, it takes a long time before you see Iligh. The winding road first dips down into the local Oued. The Oued is green with trees and gardens. A number of water wells of different ages are visible. All are abandoned. If you stop the car you can hear the put-put of the diesel pump that brings up the water for irrigation. After crossing the Oued the road rises amid undistinguished ruins. On the right are the ruins of Old Iligh and an old Souk to the left the extensive ruins of two mellahs. A bent in the road and suddenly the village is there: blocks of houses carelessly thrown down on a plain. The casbahs with their towers and fat bellied walls that make up the fortress are on the other side of the village. They are still invisible. The sketch is made from in front of the village school. There are no other amenities in the village except a dusty football pitch and a tiny little shop in a doorway. For their household and farming shopping the villagers have to go to Tirmigh 20km to the north. For other things like banking, and medical care they have to go to Tiznit 60km to the north-west. In the daytime there will be not many people around as they will be working in the fields and gardens. Some may be employed elsewhere. There are some new houses made out of concrete, but on the whole the village doesn't look prosperous. The people you'll see are all black African. There seems nothing else left of the glorious past but ruins and descendants of slaves that have made Iligh their home for the past 300 years.

What happened at the sanctuary of Sidi Bubkr?

After lunch everybody finally went to Iligh. From Sidi Ahmed Ou Moussa it is 6km to Iligh and halfway along the way in the middle of nowhere and in a bend of the road is the sanctuary of Sidi Bubkr. The Marabout is surrounded by a walled graveyard. Nobody seems to know who Sidi Bubkr was, but the Marabout marks an important land division and is mentioned in many old documents. It was also the site of a gruesome murder with far-reaching consequences. Thursday 1 December 1814 a man named Mahmud El Warari was stabbed near the Marabout ten times. His stomach was cut open and filled with stones. The assailants were send by Hashem the ruler of the House of Iligh. Like Hashem, Mahmud was a descendant of Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa. They were related in more ways than one and they were political rivals. Their fiefdoms bordered on each other. But while Mahmud obeyed faithfully his overlord, Hashem also known as 'the Lion of the Tazerwalt'followed an independent course which got him into difficulties many times. It went so far that the fortress of Iligh was destroyed twice between 1810 and 1816 by the overlord. When Mahmud met his death he was crossing the 'border' at Sidi Bubkr while on the way to Iligh for the circumcision ceremony of the son of Hashem and the sister of Mahmud. The case came to court and there is a legal document about the case kept safe in the mosque of Toumanar although it was set afire and torn into pieces. 10 years later in 1825 the son of Mahmud wanted to retaliate a disgrace his wife had suffered when she visited Iligh for a wedding (there are 5 different versions of the same story). He shot Hashem under the famous Argan tree in the souk of Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa during the yearly Moussem in honor of his ancestor the Sufi saint. The murder was part of both a vendetta and a long drawn out civil war. Paul Pascon gives an exhaustive description of the events in his study "La Maison d'Iligh'.

The Dutch presentation

After Paul Dahan's presentation it was the turn for the experts from Holland to say something. The Dutch delegation consisted of Herman Obdeijn and his wife, Mohammed Saadouni and Leon Buskens of the NIMAR in Rabat. Also part of the NIMAR group were Sarah Michiel from Belgium and from Morocco educator Omar Zkik and driver Ahmed Chenouni. Herman Obdeijn took it upon himself to say something about the Dutch connection with Iligh. For us Michiel de Ruyter is of course the most striking connection. However even for the Aboudmiaa family De Ruyter is an unknown factor. They had never heard about him till Bert told them. Herman set things right by quoting from De Ruyter's diaries about his visit with Ali Ben Mohammed Ou Mousa the then ruler who was the first who took the name Aboudmiaa to distinguish himself from the other descendants of the Sufi saint. De Ruyter called him 'Sant' in short. During the presentations Imam was in the room restlessly moving about at first but when he saw that I was sketching he settled beside me. As always I think partly because he want to protect me because he considers me his guest, partly out of affection I think. Of course he knows that when I'm around he gets his portrait taken. After the meeting we went back to the Zaouia were the lunch was served. The students from the driving school joined us and this time men and women mixed around the three tables. Remarkable was that the dignitaries of the Zaouia shared a table with the girls from the hairdressing course and partook in their enthusiasm. It was a heartwarming sight. Maybe the girls were the granddaughters. Who knows.

The meeting in Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa

Next the Friends of Iligh repaired to the municipal building for a meeting during which different presentations would be given. As the 'Reunion' was financed by the Governate of Tiznit Aisha and Bert had to comply with certain demands from high up. One of them was that the Alderman for culture of Tiznit Ahmed Boumzegou would also give a presentation. Apparently he had done his phd on 'Iligh'. Boumzegou had not been particularly helpful when Aisha and Bert had ran up and down the stairs in the Governor's palace in search of support. They both had taken a dislike to him. However in the morning before we set off for Sidi Ahmed Ou Mousa word came that Boumzegou suddenly had to go to Rabat. In his stead came a man in a baseball cap. This man insisted that he gave the first presentation right after the introduction by Bert and by the Mayor. His talk was about documents from the archive of Iligh that had proven beyond doubt that Morocco's claim on Western Sahara the former Spanish colony was legit. The claim was never recognized by the international community. The take-over was engineered by General Franco just before his death and king Hassan II. The story goes that one day a helicopter landed in Iligh with people a.o. a minister who demanded of Houcine Aboudmiaa the then ruler of Iligh to hand over the relevant documents. It is unclear to me when this took place and how the authorities in Rabat knew the documents existed. Did Houcine tell them or did they know from El Soussy the historian who died in the mid sixties and who wrote extensively about 'Iligh' in Arabic (never translated). One thing is certain: the documents never came back.I didn't know all this when I made this sketch otherwise the usurper would have been prominent in the drawing. From left to right: Paul Dahan, Manoubi Abdelmjid the Mayor, Bert, Aisha in Hajib and on the phone, Abdullah El Mountassir, and the two Sufi dignitaries from the Zaouia: Moulay El Mahfoud and Moulay Houcine El Ourari.In the background a very large poster of king Mohammed VI.