The honey or the sting?

It seems that every line I write these days is “My apologies for the delay.” However, I am amazed at how the days slipped into weeks, and then to months. Since my last post, I have begun teaching again, was married, finished my second-to-last dissertation chapter, and have reached the eve of “race day.” This post, brought upon by the loom of yet another running race (the running race!), does not actually have to do with running. Or rather, only a little bit with running. It mostly has to do with bees and how to situate the bee’s honey with its sting.

For a bit of backstory — in my second project, I have been thinking about the ambiguity and materiality of water and the relationship of saintly narratives about water to not only shrine practices but also communal management of water. I am grateful to my close friend Emily, and her partner Jake, for letting me tag along on their ethno-archaeological research trips. The three of us sped across southern Moroccan in a tiny Dacia, stopping for holes in the ground, irrigation canals, camels, and shrines. Bees, while not originally part of the field research, have come to figure prominently in the writing of this work.

What follows is an excerpt of one of the papers that emerged out of this research and that I worked on in a creative nonfiction class at the Loft last year.

Excerpt from “And So, the River Carried the Story”

“In the mid-eleventh century, the people in a small town south of Marrakesh were suffering from a terrible drought. Despairing, they gathered together and debated what to do. One of them mentioned an Islamic mystic and Sufi saint who had previously passed through the town while traveling in search of knowledge. Emboldened, the people decided to seek his aid. They traveled by foot and donkey across the anti-Atlas mountain range, to the sea, and then down to the small fortress and village of Aglou in the region known as the Souss-Mass. Finally, after many days, they reached the Qur’anic school and lodge that the Sufi saint, Sidi Ougig, had established. When they arrived, the Sidi Ougig asked them: “What brought you here?” They answered, despairing, “The rains have been withheld this year, we’re suffering a terrible drought, so we came to ask you to pray to God on our behalf.” Sidi Ougig was disgruntled by their statement. He replied: “Verily, you are like the people who observe the beehive and think of the honey, not the bees! However, despite this, stay with me for, verily you are guests.” Not understanding his meaning, they nonetheless decided to stay and rest before their return home as they had a long trip ahead of them. When they decided to return, he said to them: “Do not take the same path you took here, rather, return on another so that you may stay in caves that will provide you shelter from the rain.” As soon as they departed, God sent clouds filled with rain poured over them with such ferocity that they did not reach their land until after six months (Ibn Zayyāt, Kitāb al-tashawwuf ilā rijāl al-taṣawwuf, 89-92).”

Back home in Minneapolis in late August, I re-read Ibn Zayyat’s story of Sidi Ougig and was struck by the bee’s sting. “What does it mean to look at the beehive and only pay attention to the honey, not the sting?” I asked my partner, Trav, one night while walking our cattle dog rescue by the nearby lake. “Maybe he’s mad that they didn’t visit him before and is modeling correct behavior?” Trav was silent for a moment. I thought he hadn’t heard me, so I began to repeat the question louder. At that moment, Trav reflected: “Maybe it’s about us, about how humans treat the earth. We only think about the pleasures that come from it and never care for what it means to really cultivate and tend it so that it flourishes.” 

Passing by the sign celebrating the lake’s new trash removal net, hazily illuminated with the faint whisp of Canadian wildfire smoke, I could only nod in agreement.

…

In the Qur’an, water is tricky substance. Water is life, al-mā’ al-ḥaya. Yet, water is also punishment, al-hudūd. How many have been flooded, washed away for denying the truth of God’s prophets and messengers?

I am reminded of the ambiguity of water and the sting of the land, glued to my phone after news of the 6.8 earthquake that struck Morocco in early September 2023. Emily and Jake are also home at this point, back in the New Mexican desert. Between us, we check in with interlocutors, friends, fellow researchers. Everyone is safe. Our Arabic teachers in the north, where Morocco touches Spain, felt the faint tremors. I can’t imagine what the southern area of the country must have felt like.

In Arabic, earthquakes are called zalzala. The word slips trembles off the tongue, reverberating like the earth’s tremors. I think of the clocks in a Sufi shrine in Marrakesh. There are fourteen clocks, some tall, grandfather clocks gifted a century ago, some smaller and plastic, recently bestowed. They were all out of sync. None marked time. I wonder if they remained, or, like the walls around Marrakesh, were brought down and shattered. I can’t shake the image of broken glass and off-time clocks.

Emily sends me a photo. It’s the base of a sandy rock mountain; water is flowing out of it and pouring into a shallow ravine. “The kheṭtara in Imi N’Tizghet village was damaged. But look, Mostapha sent me this and said in the mountains around Ouarzazate a bunch of new springs and waterfalls have appeared following the earthquake. A small blessing.”

…

To narrate a tale, rawiyā, is also to bring water, to irrigate the earth. In Moroccan folk tales, a good narrative is like water, moving from one place to another yet always enriching those it departs, continuing on in them. The ending is an invitation and a hope, a wish that the story, like water will continue to circulate, change, and bless:

“And my story went from a river to another, and I stayed with the good people.”

خرافتي مشات مع الواد وأنا بقيت مع الجواد