Mock Russian Dolls Imitation with S. Zekri in traditional Mehdia outfit.
The mashta, literally “hair comber” in Arabic, is the name given to traditional women who sing ancient folklore songs of blessing and praise (also to express the emotions of the mother) and take care of the bride at Tunisian weddings, mostly in coastal areas like Mahdia and on islands like Kerkennah. The wedding is a gendered ritual which marks the passage from one social status to another; namely, that of a virgin who becomes a married woman and potential mother. It is also a community event which often gathers people of the same origin, binds the fates of two families, and displays the rites and customs of a particular region. As an entertainer who dresses and praises the bride, the mashta turns into a symbolic maternal figure who supports and preserves the feminine community surrounding her. This central character also has potential for women’s empowerment, in spite of her economic difficulties, and can help preserve an intangible Tunisian cultural heritage and identity.
The I in Mashta: A Journey through Women’s Voices, Rituals, and Memory in Tunisia
Souhir Zekri
When I met Maram Nairi, a former student of mine, on the street two years ago and we hugged, I would never have thought our fates would become intertwined in such a beautiful and productive manner. She asked me to help with the translation of her autofictional documentary Echoes of Machtat, which won first prize at the tenth edition of Ciné Par’Court, and I rediscovered the Mahdia wedding in a different light. This encounter became the starting point for a multimedia project exploring the mashta tradition in Mahdia and Kerkennah through photographs, recordings, videos, interviews, creative writing, and academic research. The title reflects the project's auto/biographical approach and its attempt to give voice to the mashta herself, with as little intervention or interpretation of her words, thoughts, and songs as possible. It also comes from a poem I wrote in Tunisian as a tribute to the mashta as a figure of Tunisian heritage and culture. The title of the poem came to me in English, as a play on the nonexistent letter “I” in the word mashta.
This specially designed online blog is meant to be a multimodal journey, a live but fragmented archive which seeks to preserve the idea of “collage” through an aesthetic composition made of various “materials.” But instead of concrete paper, cloth, or wood glued on a surface, this type of collage is made up of six hyperlinks which lead to an exhibition of photographs, videos, creative and academic texts, as well as voice recordings. The digital format reflects the subject itself: the world of the mashta is transmitted not only through words, but also through voices, songs, images, gestures, and performances. This exhibition brings together fieldwork and research materials in different forms in order to respectfully share the content and information gathered. Rather than offering a single interpretation, the project places these different materials alongside one another. In an autonomous and unrestricted spirit, the reader/viewer is allowed to build their own journey, to narrate their own story, navigating through the various hypertextual elements and discovering their themes and visual components in the order of their choice.
The project ultimately asks what can be preserved when an intangible cultural practice begins to change or disappear. Recordings, photographs, and testimonies can preserve traces, even when the social world surrounding the tradition is changing.
Most importantly, this blog attempts to pay a modest tribute to these Tunisian heroines, these women who keep fighting to maintain their status and dignity as artists, mothers, wives, and women in a conservative society which paradoxically disrespects and values them. Their sometimes contradictory position—as performers, workers, maternal figures, and guardians of cultural memory—is at the heart of this project.
Acknowledgements: I am deeply grateful to my dearest friends Maram and Roua, who provided precious fieldwork help to the shy Souhir in me; to Omar Khlif, the kindest and most professional of graphic designers; and to all those who shared my thoughts and encouraged me during dark and bright moments. This project would not have materialized without you.