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The sleeping child (maghrebi arabic  : ragued or bou-mergoud) is, according to Maghrebian (especially Moroccan) folk belief, 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 anything, so 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 due to the large number of males working as immigrant labor in Europe), hence avoiding the disruption that an accusation of adultery and its consequences 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 of a child born 12 months after the separation. Art.154 of the current mudawana 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, is built around this theme.

[edit] See also

• 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.
• (fr) Sleeping children : the view of a traditional Moroccan midwife