Mahjouba Edbouche who founded Oum El Banince. (Photo by Jennie Silis)

In 1976 Mahjouba Edbouche, 24 years old and heavily pregnant, is riding in a car with her husband and their five children. It’s July and on a road north of Agadir in southern Morocco her husband suddenly loses control of the vehicle. Mahjouba survives, along with her unborn child and the other children, but her husband is killed. It soon becomes clear that Mahjouba is worth nothing on her own. As a single woman and mother of six you are regarded as a burden in Morocco.

This tragic event becomes the starting point for Oum El Banine, a small, local organisation in Agadir, devoted to supporting pregnant, unmarried women and single mothers and their children, founded and run by Mahjouba. And it is Mahjouba’s story that becomes the foundation for Jennie Silis’s book.

“When Mahjouba told me about her life and said you could write a book about every woman at Oum El Banine I thought – I can write a book about her. That’s how I decided I wanted to write a book.”

Jennie has just been to pick it up and is holding a very first copy of the book in her hand. “It feels unreal. It’s a great feeling seeing your work in this format, as a printed book.”

Jennie Silis has written the book "En hedersam kvinna"  (An Honourable woman). She has always loved writing and is hoping to keep up writing. (Photo by Celanders)

Started studying at Malmö University
But to understand how Jennie ended up writing this book we need to go back in time ten years. When Jennie Silis is 19 years old she moves from Linköping to Malmö to start studying at Malmö University:
“Little did I know it would prove to be the best decision of my life.”

Jennie thinks the programme is very good, but it’s theory-based. So when an opportunity to do an internship turns up, she decides to go to Morocco.
“I wanted to do something substantial and practical within my field of study. All I knew was that I really wanted to go to North Africa and work with women’s rights.”

Did her internship in Morocco
On her first trip to Morocco in 2006 she just wants to get to know the country, but comes across Oum El Banine by chance. She does her internship in 2007, both in Agadir and at home in Sweden. In Morocco she follows the organisation, which runs a day care centre, provides protective housing for the women and children and does preventive work with young women. In Sweden she builds a website for Oum El Banine, in Swedish, English and French.

Lengthy process writing a book
Since she graduated in 2007, Jennie has held several different jobs at the same time as she has been working on the book. She travelled to Morocco eight times and paid for the whole project on her own. The book was completed a year ago and she has worked on getting it published since then.
“That in itself is a lengthy process. But then Celanders contacted me in March and were interested in publishing it.

Oum El Banine is situated in Agadir. Here's a picture from the Atlas mountains to the East where many of the women seeking shelter come from, most of them poor and illiterate. (Photo by Jennie Silis)

The book describes the legal system in Morocco: how sharia law works, what family law looks like and what the consequences of the system are. But it is also reportage, a description of the living conditions of Moroccan women. It’s a slice of reality that gives a voice to the women and their dramatic stories, an image of Morocco that is not often displayed.

“Before the Arab spring, this region was hardly ever represented in the Media. And the debate about ‘honour’ violence is often limited to discussions of religion, predominately Islam, while the underlying factors such as poverty, patriarchal structures and power relations are rarely considered. From the outside the country seems quite stable. But as a tourist you only meet and hear men. I wanted to describe what the reality is like for women.”

Jennie hopes that teachers, students and other people who are interested will read her book. She also hopes to have it translated into English.

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