Thursday, December 20, 2012

Granny's Colored Scarf, & Masha's 6th Finger

Granny's Colored Scarf, & Masha's 6th Finger


Instead of trying to fix the electricity problem in the weekend, going searching for French films in Al-Mutanabbea street was chosen, …….out-of-the-blue. It was a surprise to find an Algerian film. "Free Men" or "Les Hommes Libres" is such a wonderful film. It talks about the second world war, when the Nazi's were in France, and the Mosque of Paris started to issue faked identity cards to the Algerian Jews especially, to all the Jews in need generally, to declare that they are Muslims, so that they escape the Nazi's danger.





The friends of this Moroccan Jewish singer had engraved a faked grave for his father in the Muslim's cemetery as an evidence that he is Muslim, this has saved his life, …….to melancholia.




His friend, who engraved the faked grave, wanted a favor from the Jewish singer: "Come, I told my friends that you will sing for us!"


That seemed so silly but finally the singer accept and sang a song dated to the 40s when the US troops had take from Morocco a station before and/or after entering to France. The US troop had introduced the Dollars to the Moroccan market, and the grannies (as the song says) started to wear colored scarf. New words entered into the Morrocan dictionary including "Okay" and "Bye bye" as the song says:






The weekend was very happy instead of the failure to solve the electricity problem nor the internet problem which is related to the electricity problem. Working days started again soon and Chekov's "Three Sisters" were taken in the bus for a re-read. One of the sisters, named Masha, said that she talks many languages including French, German, and Italian, but she feels that such abilities seems useless in the small "retarded" village she lives in, ……."useless as a 6th finger" as she literally said.


Thinking about the trivial things that left memory in those last days herald a bias …….a bias of the memory to forget electricity and focus on novels and films, to neglect electricity for the sake of the Moroccan grannies' scarves and Masha's 6th finger.



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