The sleeping child ( maghrebi Arabic: ''ragued'' or ''bou-mergoud''), according to Moroccan and the wider Maghrebian folk belief, is a fetus which has been rendered dormant by black or white magic and may eventually wake up and be born after the normal pregnancy term. This belief, supported by the concept that God's will controls everything and that no event should be considered truly impossible, is used by local communities to deal with occasional cases of pregnancy in women with absentee husbands, a frequent situation in the modern era due to the large number of males working as immigrant labor in Europe. This folk belief is used to dismiss an accusation of adultery and the consequences that such an accusation would bring. This belief was acknowledged by traditional Islamic legislation in Morocco, and is still given as an explanation by some divorced or separated women expecting their ex-husbands to acknowledge the

paternity Paternity may refer to: *Father, the male parent of a (human) child *Paternity (law), fatherhood as a matter of law * ''Paternity'' (film), a 1981 comedy film starring Burt Reynolds * "Paternity" (''House''), a 2004 episode of the television seri ...

of a child born up to twelve months after the separation. Article 154 of the current ''

Mudawana The ''Mudawana Ousra'' (or ''Moudawana Ousra'', ar, المدوّنة, lit=code), short for ''mudawwanat al-aḥwāl al-ousaria-shakhṣiyyah'' (, ), is the personal status code, also known as the family code, in Moroccan law. It concerns issu ...

'' in Moroccan law stipulates that a child born up to one year after the separation is considered as fathered by the ex-husband. The storyline of ''L'Enfant endormi'' (2005), a Belgo-Moroccan movie by

Yasmine Kassari Yasmine Kassari (born 3 October 1970) is a Moroccan film director, known for multi-layered diasporic cinema. Kassari moved to Paris as a teenager, where she graduated from high school and enrolled in a medical school. After studying medicine fo ...

, is built around this theme.

References

* Joël Colin, ''L'enfant endormi dans le ventre de sa mère, Etude éthnologique et juridique d'une croyance au Maghreb'', Presses universitaires de Perpignan, 1998. *
Sleeping children: the view of a traditional Moroccan midwife
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sleeping Child Superstitions of Africa Culture of Morocco Human pregnancy

See also

References