Rabat – There’s no handbook, no official ceremony, yet every Moroccan knows these laws by heart, they are passed down through mother’s glances, sighs, and your father’s side eye.
Here are five rules nobody taught you, but you’ve always known.
The black plastic bags are the best
Ask a Moroccan mother, and she’ll tell you transparent plastic bags are basically an open invitation for your neighbor’s evil eye.
You bought new shoes? Cover them in black plastic immediately.
It doesn’t matter how flimsy the bag is, as long as it’s not transparent, your belongings are safe from jealous glances.
Science can’t explain it, but tradition can.
The amazing room is not yours to use
Every Moroccan home has that room, the one with the good rugs, the fancy tea set nobody’s allowed to touch.
It’s spotless, elegant, and completely off-limits… unless guests are coming.
The family, meanwhile, squeezes into a smaller room to watch TV, eat, and live actual life.
The good room exists purely to please, like a museum exhibit titled “Only Guests.”
The lord of the remote control
Spoilers!! it’s not you. It’s not your siblings either.
The remote belongs to him, yes the one you thought of, your Father.
He may not be watching anything important, he might even be asleep, but the moment you touch that remote, he opens one eye and he starts lecturing about how no one respects him anymore in the house.
Never accept food right away
Someone offers you food, and even if you’re starving, the correct response is “La, la” (no, no) followed immediately by a change of heart the second they insist a second time.
Accepting too quickly is practically going to be talked about when you go back home with your mother. The dance of polite refusal must happen first and always.
Mom’s ‘Do Whatever You Want’ is a trap
When your mother says “Do whatever you want,” she is not, in fact, giving you permission.
This is code for: “I dare you to do what you want.”
Proceed with extreme caution, because whatever happens next is entirely your responsibility and she will remind you of it in her own ways.
In the end..
Every culture has its own unspoken mannerisms that are familiar to its people.
Our Moroccan one is rich in those, each of them reflects a deeper value that is ours to interpret. Some of them take us years to understand.
