The melhfa, women’s clothing in southern Morocco.
The quintessential women’s clothing from southern Morocco is the Melfa, a symbol representing the identity of the Moroccan desert woman.
The melhfa is a piece of cloth about 6 or even 10 meters long and 2 meters wide. The most common fabric is usually cotton. It can be colored with various prints or a single color, like black. You’ll see that, if you travel in Morocco, in very rural areas, like the small village of Jorf, near the city of Erfoud, women wear black melhfa. I always say, “I don’t know if you’re coming or going.” Because they’re so covered and leave only a small gap for the eyes, you can’t tell if they’re walking toward you or back.
But yes, behind the melhfa, you discover curious glances that pierce you like bolts of fire, between envy, ignorance and lack of freedom Morocco Desert tours
The melhfa is worn by women in the Moroccan desert from adolescence onwards. They hide their bodies and hair under the piece of cloth that wraps around their entire body and covers their heads. And what clothes do they wear underneath? Well, from what I’ve seen myself as a woman, and from my experience of women’s daily lives in the Merzouga desert area , what they wear under the melhfa are comfortable clothes, usually knitted pants with a sweater and a shirt. Many women also wear pajamas under the melhfa. And why do I say pajamas in the plural? Well, because they usually wear more than one pair of pants and more than one T-shirt or sweater. Also, most of these women don’t wear bras. What I don’t know is whether they wear panties. It’s true that when I saw freshly washed clothes lying in the sun, I didn’t see any panties, so… I’m not sure, haha.
The melhfa is the garment that Islam requires and wants, to hide the body from all eyes and is the essential garment for Bedouin society.
In southern Morocco, you should know that when women go to sleep at night in the “bed”—I put bed in quotation marks—because many of the houses don’t have beds, they sleep on the floor, which in our eyes is essential for a good night’s sleep, but for them it’s not an important element, and if you spend a night with a family in southern Morocco, you’ll find that they don’t change their clothes, but sleep in the same clothes they wake up in.
Most of the melhfa fabrics arriving in Morocco come from Mauritania, Niger, Mali and Senegal.
The truth is that the most beautiful mecha I’ve seen come from Western Sahara, in the Laayoune area, with beautiful blue colors.
There are also melhfas, which, instead of clothes, look like sheets, they are usually white with a border with large flowers and they are hideous.
Having done many tours in the Moroccan desert and having experienced various situations with women, I can assure you that the Spanish saying is true: Clothes don’t make the man!
And it is that appearances are deceiving, sometimes going covered with a Melfa, is simply hiding under a garment to try to appear as something that you are not, but as everywhere, we reveal lies disguised as clothes that do not correspond to people Viajes al Desierto Marruecos
