Muslim Custodians of Jewish Spaces in Morocco by Cory Thomas Pechan Driver

Author:Cory Thomas Pechan Driver
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Authentic “Experts”

Guards like Hamid and Naima are not the only people who are attached to Jewish cemeteries. A host of other people, such as taxi drivers, unofficial guides, and guards also try to define themselves as experts who will “explain” the site to tourists, usually for a nominal fee. But how is one to distinguish between the actual ritual experts and the self-styled “experts” who do not have any connection to or knowledge about a site? The veracity of the stories they tell and authenticity of their performances to Moroccan Jewish tradition differ, but both types of guards are certainly acting performatively.

For many tourists, as long as they hear a good story that touches their hearts and for which they do not have to pay too much money, they are happy. In fact, I have been told a couple of times that I “ruined” a vacation by asking follow-up questions of tourists who were saddened to learn that the story that they had come to cherish since they heard it was completely different from the version that the guard had told to a tour group of Moroccan nationals just an hour earlier. They told me that they wished they had never talked to me, and wished they could have just enjoyed the heartwarming story of uncomplicated peaceful coexistence of Muslims and Jews.

But what about the descendants of those whose remains are entombed in the cemetery, and the pilgrims who come to venerate Morocco’s many Jewish saints? These visitors presumably are after more than just simulacra and would be very disappointed to find the care of their ancestors’ graves to be in the hands of a parasitic opportunist. I use “parasite” here in two of Michel Serres’ senses of the term: one who benefits from another without returning any benefit, and a source of noise or conflicting information apart from the intended information—as “static” on a “signal.” 7 Visitors pay money to guards like Hamid to make sure that he says the correct prayer at their parents’ graves. The pilgrims do not want to travel thousands of kilometers to arrive at a grave that is indistinguishable from the many others surrounding it. They expect the graves to be well-carved, well-preserved, and the grave of the saint to be set apart from all of the others with one of the new mini-mausoleums that seem to be growing over every grave with the name Pinto on it in Morocco. I have seen the results of untrained cemetery keepers who destroy graves in order to build a fancy new mini-mausoleum on their own initiative. In the process they often drip concrete and paint all over the grave they were trying to protect. The point of these actions is trying to attract tourists and pilgrims to some minor saint’s tomb over which they have appointed themselves guardians. But then there are also guards who work with the High Atlas Foundation and the Jewish Community Council in Casablanca to carefully preserve graves while at the same time building infrastructure that will meet the expectations of the expanding pilgrimage market.

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