https://www.atalayar.com/articulo/reportajes/sueno-zohra-unica-amazona-norte-marruecos/20200619100807146261.html

Among the riders galloping at the Mouseem Mata equestrian festival, there is only one woman rider. She is determined, passionate and respected among men and women. She has been competing for a decade in this peculiar race. Mata means “bareback riding” in Arabic. It is an ancestral equestrian festival, considered a world and cultural heritage by UNESCO. The race has Mongolian origins and is about 800 years old. This grandiose event has been promoted for the past nine years by the Baraka family, descended from the poet Moulay Absselam, creator of Sufism, and also by King Mohammed VI.

It is also an unmounted race involving about one hundred male riders, belonging to six tribes of northern Morocco. These riders compete fiercely for a rag doll, which is made by the matriarchs, the women of Beni Arous, province of Larache. In the past, whoever got the doll had as a prize the right to choose a woman to handcuff. This rag doll, which is also called Mata, is the only woman who, together with our heroine, Zohra, rides wildly on the esplanade.