Mr Omar

Atlas Mountains, Wednesday 15 October

I am torn between lying around by the pool, which is delicious, or to get a real taste of country life. I decide to visit a family in a Berber village, there is a trip going to visit them so along with a few others I am off to visit Mr Omar and his family.

Mr Omar is 65 year’s old. He is half the size of me. His face is bronze and like leather and he has a beautiful toothless smile - when he does his eyes crinkle up. He wears a traditional blue Jeliboa and a white kind of crocheted cap, bigger than a skullcap but small than a hat.

His dried mud house is at the end of a dried mud path, just off the dry main road. We walk along with the local kids who are used to the tourists and have learnt to trade well when the bus is in the neighbourhood. Mr Omar is introduced and we are welcomed to his house and left to wander with his permission before going upstairs for mint tea. Downstairs, the way we enter, is where the animals live. All I can smell is excretion! Then I realise there is a donkey tucked away at the back of a small windowless stall. There is another stall next door, in it are a couple of sheep. It is rare for there to be sheep here so they are probably here to be slaughtered for some up and coming celebration. Also downstairs is a large pizza oven looking structure also made of mud. We go through a little doorway and look from the other side...it is a shower! Mud walls to the shower box and a hole at the top, presumably for water pouring…there are of course no taps.

On the next level I meet Mr Omar’s daughter and her two kids, one is about four and the other probably 18 months? They are in the TV room - the recent addition to the house. There are two long divans against the longest walls and an old box TV stands in pride of place at the end of the room. Just off the TV room is the kitchen.

Mrs Omar is apparently about 20 years younger than her husband, I think she is younger, even with the pressures of her life she looks half his age. Very common in Morocco to have a young wife. Men can marry women who have been married before at any age but after the age of 25 if a women isn’t married she is considered ‘high risk’. Rightly so I say, but here virginity is still important. Most men won’t marry a woman over 25 no matter who she is because she will not be considered respectable.
I watch Mrs Omar make tea, she has two tiny benches and there is an old fridge. Her face beams when I point to the two hob enamel gas ring and smile, this is the latest family purchase. The living room is windowless on one side and has two holes cut into the walls on the other side and there is another kind of outdoor living room overlooking the hills, the picture window is completely open air. We don’t get to see the bedrooms, too private, I am happy not to be left with an impression.

Mrs Omar serves us freshly made flat bread to be dipped in honey or olive oil. Both are produced by the family. They have about 60 hives, including one that turns out to be right behind where I am sitting, it is the back of it though, the bees enter from the other side of the house so no flying things around me which will always be better for everyone else. It looks like a Pooh bear pot.

Through translation of Berber, Arabic and English we learn Mr Omar has eight kids. The two boys, Mohammet who is 21 and Aziz who is 12 will inherit 80 percent of the property when he dies. The oldest son will 'run' the family. The daughters get 20 per cent, but it is all held for the next generation anyway, the greatest success is Dad passing down the family home at his death. A wanna be huisband will give his fiancee a dowry. He will never be able to be intimate with the women until he has handed over the dowry in full and according to our guide “this can reach extravagant sums for example as much as $20k”. I ponder the lovely marriage belt I saw in the morning. The metaphorical diamond really is a girl’s best friend but here that's pretty much it.

Pic is Mrs Omar pouring the Mint Tea made on new gas hob.