Marja-Leena Rathje has pictures of Moroccan women based on photographs by Irving Penn. The women in the photograph are from Rissani, on Morocco's eastern border near Erfoud. More pictures of Rissani can be seen at Nomad's Land Photography and VirtualTourist.
Exhibition Seeks to Bridge Moroccan Dutch Divide
Bronze statues from Roman times, Phoenician jewellery, a 14th century wooden pulpit from a mosque, colourful mosaics: the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam has put 300 art treasures from Morocco on exhibit that it hopes will change how Dutch view people of Moroccan descent.
The story in Middle East Online includes a couple of photographs. I am reminded of my father's favorite site — the Roman ruins at Volubilis — that we saw when I took my parents on a tour.
Arabesques
Paul Barchilon explores his family heritage through ceramics whose design is patterned after the Moroccan art and tile work he studied in Safi, Fez, and Marrakesh. In a unusual twist, much of his work is Jewish ceramics such as seder plates. I became acquainted with his work when my wife and I were looking for a seder plate to give to my sister and brother-in-law as a wedding present. My wife gave me a handsome set of four Barchilon ceramic coasters for Christmas.
A friend to the end?
I ended up reading Tahar Ben Jelloun's Le dernier ami (The Last Friend) quite by accident. I was reading quite a bit about Ben Jelloun's Cette aveuglante absence de lumière, the English translation of which (
Le dernier ami is the story of the formation and unraveling over several decades of an unusually close friendship between a Moroccan professor and a Moroccan doctor. The story is told from the point of view of several narrators, mainly the two principals, Ali and Mahmed. In doing so, it paints a vivid picture of Moroccan life in the late 60's and early 70's.
Quite striking to an American reader, I think, is the author's direct and matter of fact account of the sexual awakening of his two protagonists. Without indulging in the soft pornography so characteristic of modern writing in English, Ben Jelloun is quite explicit about the sexual lives of the two young men in his story. I found this remarkable in part because I have found the public face of sexuality in Morocco to be quite conventionally moral (apart from fairly widespread prostitution). Ben Jelloun recounts the ingenious ways in which his characters circumvent their society's moral strictures in order to find sexual fulfillment. (The only similar treatment of Moroccan sexuality I have run across is the opening chapters of Jeffrey Tayler's
From the passions of adolescence, the novel quickly passes to chilling description of the brutalities of a Moroccan prison, into which the two protagonists are cast for reasons that are never very clear, other than the fact that they are young, educated, and flirting with communism. Imprisonment forges a far closer bond between Ali and Mahmed, who rely on each other to survive the experience. In the background is the shadowy and sinister presence of General Oufkir, the Minister of the Interior, chief torturer of King Hassan II's regime, and mastermind of two failed coups, the second of which resulted in his death and the decades-long imprisonment of his family.
Their release from prison marks the point at which the paths of the two protagonists diverge. Ali becomes a professor of geography and a operator of a ciné-club in Rabat; Mahmed becomes a doctor and ventures abroad to Sweden. While Ali manages to carve an apparently comfortable niche for himself in Morocco, Mahmed is at home neither in Morocco nor in his adopted Sweden, to which he repeatedly and unfavorably compares his native land. Ben Jelloun explores not only the complex relationship between Morocco and other countries, but the complex social relations of the characters within Morocco itself. Not until the very end does Ben Jelloun manage to fuse and reconcile the growing tensions between the two friends.
As far as I know, Le dernier ami has not yet been translated into English, but it is written in a straightforward and direct French that is likely to be accessible to anyone who speaks the language at an intermediate level.
Who Would Know?
MoorishGirl: Publish (in English) or Perish?
MoorishGirl has a lengthy discussion of the dearth of Arab literature available in English translations. She points out that English speaking readers would need a sample of Arab literature in order to decide whether it was to their taste. My question is whether there is an English speaking community that is publicly discussing Arab literature. In other words, what kind of word of mouth are Arab titles getting in the English speaking world?
Churchill at Marrakesh
Responses to "Sir Winston Churchill's art" August 12, 2003
Painting joined Churchill's vocations of politics, reading, bricklaying and writing. In his little book Painting as a Pastime he tells of the benefits and joys of his forty-year hobby. We've included some of Winston's paintings and a few of his perceptive insights in the current clickback at www.painterskeys.com/clickbacks/pick.asp
Among the paintings described and shown above is Churchill's painting of the Koutoubia mosque in 1948.
R.I.P.
"I've just heard that Moroccan author Mohammed Choukri passed away this weekend at his home in Tangier. A contemporary and friend of Jean Genet, Tennessee Williams, Paul Bowles (with whom he later had a falling out), and others, Choukri is probably best known for his semi-autobiographical novel Al-Khubz Al-Hafi, which dealt with famine in the 1940s and his experiences with drugs, homosexuality, and prostitution.
I guess I need to add Choukri to my list of people to read. It's not the first time I've heard his name, but I'm sorry to learn about him because of his death.
Textiles
Over the weekend, I caught the end of the National Museum of African Arts' exhibit The Fabric of Moroccan Life -- a show about Moroccan textiles. The show illustrated the central role of textiles in Arabic and Berber decor, and showcased a variety of clothing, curtains, pillows, and wall hangings. Like most shows at the Museum of African Art, the selection was chosen so that it could be seen in the space of an hour and a half. I came away not only with a new appreciation for Moroccan textiles, but also with two CD's of Moroccan music and a beautiful set of tea glasses.
On Display
The Dazzle Is in the Details (washingtonpost.com)
"Microfibers are easy-care technical wonders. But for emotional connection, they have nothing on the splendid spangled silks and striped cottons from old Marrakech, Fez and Rabat."