Please don't sweep the rugs.

The most famous wedding tradition in Morocco takes place in the village of Imilchil

All the young people who live in the High Atlas mountains come to participate in the "Moussem", a kind of tribal marriage Festival where the brides choose their grooms

What is the Legend of Imilchil Brides' Festival?

Her name was "Tislet", his was "Isli". Their families were enemy Berber tribes from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Although they were lovers, in true Shakespearean tradition, their irate parents refused to allow them to marry. Their hearts were broken. To live apart was impossible. They sadly exchanged vows, then drowned themselves in two nearby lakes which now bear their names. Destiny wills that even in death, they are unable to unite. The imposing mountain seated between the two bodies of water acts as a guardian even as their spirits reach out for one another.

This act of desperation so devastated the hostile clans of the Berber "Ait Haddidou" that parents of this tribe thenceforth granted their children the right to choose their own marriage partners.

This is the story around the annual Berber Brides' Festival of Imilchil, held high in the lake plateau of the Middle Atlas mountains of Morocco. Each year in September after the harvest, from every corner of the Ait Haddidou domain, come young men and women in search of a mate.

The moussem, or festival, occurs near Imilchil, at the site of the burial place of Sidi Mohamed El Maghani, the patron saint of the Ait Haddidou. Legend has it that the marriages which were blessed by this holy man were happy and long-lasting thus the reason for the arduous trek to this isolated area.

At one time, this was an exclusive "family affair", with members of some fifty tribes from the region converging on the otherwise barren plateau for a Berber version of the family reunion and wedding celebration combined.

Now, those outsiders hardy enough to make the grueling trip are also welcome to participate in the festivities, the affair has become an international attraction for tourists from all over the world. So bring that brother or sister you just can’t marry off and see what they might find. I think it sounds better than speed dating!


DON’T SWEEP THE RUGS! It is not a sentence I have yet been able to make clear in Darjia to my housekeeper. Sweep the runs? Why would you sweep the rugs? You shake the rugs. Shake, outside. I shall try again on Thursday, perhaps a demonstration.


For a fun brain game go to http://wordimperfect.blogspot.com/


I’m it again! Tagged by i Beatrice: here we go,


1. I love dark chocolate
2. I like spiders and ants because I admire their persistence and industrious natures.
3. My greatest life's happiness is my daughter
4. Inside my head I am still thirty-years-old. I don’t think I will correct the error as it works for me.
5. I don’t cook.
6. I love to walk.
7. I do not do well in the heat.
8. I love to laugh. I think Eddie Izzard is brilliant.
9. I am a klutz. I am always running into walls and bumping my head and toes.
10. I very much enjoy Action blow ‘em up movies, plot is not required to have complexity, but the leading man is required to be pretty.

I have made a new and important addition to my conversational Darjia: Ha-r-r-r-ack means shit in Moroccan. As in, Harrrack she swept the rugs again!



The following is a conversation I had with Q. on the heels of something I had said that she found a bit shocking.

Q: “So when does that happen?”
Me: “What’s that?”
Q: “When you just get to say whatever you want. When you don’t care anymore what people think about what you say?”
Me: “Fifty. It is one of the brilliant things that happen when you turn fifty. For women, I am not so sure it happens for men.”