I was born and raised in Morocco for the first 18 years of my life. I will not deny that it is a beautiful country with a rich culture and history that is beloved and appreciated by millions.

However, I say to all the visitors that Morocco isn’t for Moroccans especially for Moroccan women. As an outsider, you can experience the beauty of Morocco and enjoy it fully without losing yourself or your freedom. Nobody will require you to follow the cultural and religious rules.

Being a Moroccan comes with a complex identity and a heavy heritage. As a Moroccan , I am Amazigh (Native North African People), Arab, African and unquestionably Muslim. In the middle of this, I couldn’t be free and be myself. I had to follow the rules dictated by cultural and religious beliefs. An inescapable and unbearable predicament. As long as I was living in Morocco, I was obliged to abide by them and break myself to fit the caricatural role of “ Bent Nass” that literally means “ The daughter of the people”.This expression refers to a well educated and most importantly “well behaved” girl. She is the reflection of the education of her parents, thus, she has the duty to not bring shame to them and taint and tarnish their reputation by acting inappropriately .

Since I was born, every behavior, every word and every movement was scrutinized, and dissected. Nothing is trivial and everything is memorized.
When you are “ the daughter of the people”, you don’t belong to yourself, you belong to your family and to the community as a whole.

The trauma for a Moroccan girl starts with the realization that her body isn’t hers.

This painful awareness manifested itself to me when I was 5 years old. My grandmother was showering me. The water was warm and her hands were cold. My little girl’s body was moving impatiently and she was grabbing it violently and applying soap on it. Nothing about that shower was loving or caring. I felt only hatred and shame. Then, she started cleaning my intimate parts even more violently and said to me with the most threatening voice : “ If someone touches you here, you will never get married”. I was shocked and I couldn’t understand it. How can the brain of a 5 year old grasp that? The only effect it had on me was fear. I was stunned and petrified . I had one haunting and obsessive thought “ I would never have a wedding and be a “ princess””. From that moment on, I was scared of everybody. I thought that I was surrounded by people who wanted to steal something from me. What exactly? I didn’t really know. I only perceived that it was something so important and so precious that if I lost it I am forever doomed. the real loss, destruction and dispossession started from that moment hereon.

In my teenage years, the brutal truth about being a woman in Morocco broke me even more. First, my body belongs to God and I need to apply the principles dictated by him. Second, it is possessed by my family and my community and if I use it for sex or to attract attention, I will bring shame. I will be considered as a “ Used Good”,“ Perforated” and more importantly not a “ Daughter of the people” anymore. I will be called instead “ the daughter of Sin” ( Bent Lharam). My reputation and value will be ruined. There is a very thin membrane between “ the daughter of people” and “ the daughter of the sin”. It takes so little to become the latter. Then, my body is the sole ownership of my future husband. He could use it for his own pleasure and gratification. Finally, my body is at the mercy of procreation. There is no way out of it. I am required to bear a child and fulfill the ultimate purpose of this enslaved and exhausted shell. From my first breath until my last, my body isn’t mine. On earth, it is owned by others. In the afterlife, it is returned to God.

To deal with all of this heavy legacy, I dissociated from my body for years. I rejected it ,hated what it represented and resented the burden I am subjected to because of it. I transformed the flesh into a living cage, I walked tediously on earth missing pieces of myself or all myself. I understood why my grandmother was violent against my little girl’s body. The violence wasn’t directed to me intentionally, it was directed to the curse of the woman’s body and the misery it brings.