Headers in Hijab: Women’s Soccer in Morocco
By Nicole Matuska
The setting sun cast a deep orange glow across the dusty Moroccan countryside on a warm Sunday in November. I stood on the sideline of a soccer field in Tamara, a small town south of the capital city, Rabat, waiting for the game to begin. It was to be a women’s match between a local high school team and Rabat’s Association Cite des Arts (A.C.D.A.). A group of men lingered around the outside chain-link fence. It wasn’t often that they saw women playing soccer, a game that seemed to dominate their own lives and the lives of their sons.
I had begun researching women’s soccer in Morocco, specifically A.C.D.A., a couple of weeks before as part of my study abroad program. This was the association’s first game since I began my research, so I was excited to finally see the team play. I sat down and began taking notes about how the two teams warmed up, what drills they used, and the number of players who were wearing cleats as opposed to torn tennis shoes. Their coach, Abderrahman, called in his team and then motioned for me to join them.
I jogged over and squeezed my way into the circle of players awaiting his instructions. Some women wore pants and long sleeved jerseys, attempting to cover all visible skin in accordance with Islamic law. They were the ones who tucked their hair under the traditional hijab, pinning it tightly to their heads so that even a hard sprint could not shake it loose. Most women, however, simply wore their short-sleeved jerseys and shorts, exposing their bare legs and arms. Abderrahman spoke quickly in Arabic while making sweeping hand motions toward the field. I imagine he went over strategy, a lineup, perhaps a couple words of inspiration. The referee blew the whistle and the circle broke as players took the field. I started walking back toward the bench when Abderahman yelled out to me in French.
“Nicole, where are you going?” He pointed toward the field. “Didn’t you understand what I was saying?” He smiled, knowing I had no clue. “You are playing.”
And so began my short-lived Moroccan soccer career. …
I first came across A.C.D.A. while at a men’s indoor soccer championship match in Rabat. My friends and I had arrived an hour early to secure seats. While settling in, we noticed a demonstration game already underway and I quickly realized that the players were all women. I was amazed and confused. It wasn’t that I was unfamiliar with women playing soccer; I myself had played the game since I was eight. What confused me was that I had yet to see even one Moroccan girl playing soccer on the streets with her brothers or friends. At any given time of the day in the small narrow streets of the medina or the hard packed sands of the beach, you could find men and boys playing the sport. Barefoot, cleats, brand new balls, old flimsy pieces of rubber—the sport seemed to run in the veins of every male in the country. Not once had I seen a girl among their ranks.
Now, however, I was watching two teams composed entirely of women, playing decent soccer while men around us cheered and booed. When their game ended, I left my seat to try and find some of the women. As I was flying down the stairs towards the locker rooms, I ran into one of the players on A.C.D.A. In broken Arabic I quickly blurted out: “Hello, my name is Nicole. I am a student from the United States. You play well.” The girl, Naima Benzahia (who, I would learn later, plays for the Moroccan women’s national team), smiled and yelled something to the rest of her team coming up the stairs. Soon I was surrounded. Abderrahman joined the crowd and, after learning that I was a soccer player myself, invited me to watch the team practice the next day. It was then, surrounded by 24 women and their over-exuberant coach, that I realized I had found my research topic.
I spent the next four weeks with the team, staying with the coach’s family, going to all the practices and games, eating dinner at the girls’ homes, and meeting their friends. I slowly began to realize that this group of women was much more than just some soccer team in a Muslim country. The team was a cross-section of female Moroccan society—girls who simply liked a sport that their brothers and male friends got to play every single day on the streets. This cross-section included 15-year-old high school students and 30-year-old grocery store employees. Some came from affluent homes in the clean suburbs of the capital; others lived in houses with no electricity. Some had cars; while others took three public buses to practice. Some had their parents’ support; others would sneak out of the house to play. Soccer was the one thing they had in common. When I asked some of them why they played, the goalkeeper answered it was her “ raison d’être. ” Another player said soccer was as much a part of her life as water and food.
Eventually, the players invited me on the field with them, which is where I found myself that Sunday evening in November. I remember some things from the game, like how Naima, the A.C.D.A.’s star forward, slide-tackled her opponent from behind, earning a bloody nose in the process. I remember another forward diving head in for a crossing pass to score the game’s only goal. I remember the bruised, scratched bare legs of some of the women—markings of their tenacious play on the hard and unforgiving earth. In Moroccan society, these women were often told they play like men, and indeed they run like men and have the same kinds of bodies. But the women themselves don’t make that association. They simply say they have the bodies of athletes.
Nicole Matuska is a journalism graduate from Northwestern University . She returns to Morocco in the fall on a Fulbright grant to make a documentary film about women’s soccer.