common to whom

 from the introduction section (by anna della subin) in the hospital by ahmed bouanani  [published by new directions]

"in his manifesto the editor and poet adbdellatif laabi railed against the stagnation of moroccan thought and called for the total decolonization of culture and art. yet what foundation was left upon which to build a national culture? what bound moroccans together as a nation? after all, it was the colonizers, laabi wrote, who had come up with the boundaries of nations, artificial divisions that retraced the history of conquest and dismembered tribal zones. what made morocco a unity beyond a shared history of defeat? its conquerors had imposed an invented binary between 'berbers' and 'arabs,' for the french had seized upon linguistic differences to pit two imagined 'races' against one another. often, colonial administrators extended special protections to the berbers to alienate them from their arab neighbors, in a classic tactic of divide and rule." (16)

"the number fourteen conjures a conflicting way of measuring time, as the islamic fourteenth century a.h. corresponds to the twentieth century c.e. - the designation ever prompting the question, common to whom? the dueling systems of timekeeping destabilize any authority time itself might have, that 'invention of adults' which twists into absurd shapes in the eternity of a hospital ward." (24)