Joshua Haynes' A Moroccan Emprise, chronicling his experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco, has made a welcome return after a brief hiatus. I still find it amazing that Morocco has progressed so much in the fourteen years since I was there that a Peace Corps Volunteer is able to maintain a web site.
Spain Speaks Out
For some reason, the King of Spain thinks that Spain has a "special interest" in resolving the conflict in the Western Sahara. I am a bit mystified by this statement, since it is my impression that Spain's sole historical involvement was as a second-tier colonial power bent on extracting as many resources as it could. Be that as it may, Morocco presumably has an interest in cooperation with Spain, both to further its ties to the European Union and to make progress toward ultimate restoration of the Spanish enclaves of Sebta and Melilla.
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.
Tingis is out!
The latest issue of Tingis has hit the shelves!
News in English
Friends of Morocco points to a new English language newspaper on the web, the Morocco Times.
Western Sahara Expert Joins Middle East Institute
Middle East Institute: Press Release
The Middle East Institute is pleased to announce that Jacques Roussellier has joined the Public Policy Center as an Adjunct Scholar. Roussellier, currently a specialist with the World Bank Group, served as spokesman for United Nations peacekeeping operations in Western Sahara from 1999-2001. During his tenure in Western Sahara, Roussellier was actively involved with UN operations in the region, organized and implemented the mission's public relations strategy, and developed relationships with key constituents and regional actors.
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.
Speaking of Jeffrey Tayler
He apparently has an article on life among the Berbers in Morocco in National Geographic. Thanks to Wafin.com for the link.
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.
Human Rights a Casualty of the War on Terror?
Human Rights Watch expresses concern over the government's crackdown on criminal defendants in the wake of the Casablanca bombings. In particular, Human Rights Watch notes that defendants can be detained for up to 10 days without being allowed to see a lawyer, and for up to 12 days before being brought before a judge. On a positive note, the Report discusses the Equity and Reconciliation Commission established to address human rights abuses under Hassan II, although it suggests the Commission's powers do not extend far enough. Human Rights Watch's summary links to a full 70-page report.
Teach a Man to Fish
MoorishGirl: "Give Us Jobs, Not Democracy"
MoorishGirl reports that the main concern of Arab youth is unemployment. Sounds right to me.
My experience in Morocco was that there were large numbers of well educated people who could not find jobs, and my students were generally pessimistic about their chances of finding work even if they obtained a degree.
Of course, sometimes political liberalization is necessary to promote job creation.
Backlash?
Some 20,000 Dutch gather to pay homage to slain controversial filmmaker
"I was debating whether or not to come, but I decided that as a Muslim and as a Moroccan I should take up my responsibility to show that we do not support this act," she told AFP.
The murder of Dutch filmaker Theo Van Gogh (a relative of the painter) by a Moroccan with dual Dutch citizenship sparks fears of a backlash against Moroccans in Europe. Moroccans have become one of the largest groups of immigrants in Europe.
Mounting Concerns over Terrorism in Morocco
The Washington Post reports that persistent poverty in the country's notorious bidonvilles (slums) and a government crackdown on Islamic groups may be contributing to radicalization of Moroccan society. The paper speculates that such radicalization could lead to a greater terrorist threat.
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?
A Distant Mirror
In the first place, Ibn Batuta's voyages, though often fraught with peril in the form of shipwrecks and attacks by pirates and bandits, are enveloped with an air of privilege. He travels from one sultan's court to another, where he is invariably showered with presents and frequently appointed to a state office. He leverages his experience in one court at the next by impressing each successive sultan by his intimacy with his previous host. His prestige reaches its apex when the Sultan of Dihli (Delhi) appoints him ambassador to China.
For protection on the road, Ibn Batuta typically travels with an armed escort or in a merchant caravan. In addition to being well provisioned, these caravans enable Ibn Batuta to bring his retinue, including a number of slaves male and female, with him on his journeys.
The society that Ibn Batuta describes centers around a series of royal courts, generally presided over by a sultan. In attendance on the sultan are one or more viziers and any number of princes. Ibn Batuta encounters a number of Sufis and other Islamic holy men along his route, and even withdraws from the world and embraces an ascetic life at one point until he is once again seduced by the pleasures of the court. Ibn Batuta was by birth a shaikh and by training a qadi, or Islamic judge, and various sultans appoint him to judgeships in the course of his travels. Merchants are mentioned, but mostly in paasing to explain how the court is provisioned, there is little description of them in terms of individuals. Finally, one gets the impression that the courts that Ibn Batuta visits are maintained by a veritable army of slaves.
Ibn Batuta's world is also clearly one of male privilege. As mentioned above, he usually travels with several slave girls, whose main purpose is evidently his sexual gratification. He even mentions at one point that one of his slave girls bore him a child. In addition, at any given court at which he stays for any length of time, he takes up to four wives (the maximum number that the Koran allows). When it is time to move on, he simply divorces them, a practice that in some cases was enjoined by a ban on women's traveling. In one instance he returns to India to look for a son that was born to him twenty years earlier, but the boy has died in the interim.
The Travels are punctuated with savage violence. In addition to the brigandage en route, the usual means by which one Sultan succeeds another seems to have been by murdering his predecessor, who is often a member of his own family. In addition, such offenses as picking up a piece of fruit lying on the public highway are in some kingdoms a capital crime, and the hapless offender is impaled and crucified as an example to others. Ibn Batuta appears to take such punishments as a matter of course.
Ultimately, the Travels portray a rich mosaic of sophisticated cultures throughout the Islamic world in the 14th century, when it was arguably at its zenith, and for that reason alone are well worth reading.
Ancient City Walls of Xian
I am reading about Ibn Batuta's voyage to China, which he considered the most sophisticated civilization of the time (despite their not being Muslims). Ibn Batuta was writing in the 14th century, during the reign of the last Khan before the descendants of Genghis Khan were overthrown by the Ming dynasty. Although I have not come across a mention of Xian, he does talk about a number of walled cities. I happened across this picture quite by chance, but it spoke to me.
Flickr
This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
Adoption from Morocco
The United States Embassy has a statement on adopting children from Morocco:
If you wish to adopt a child abroad, and you are in the United States, contact the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Service office that has jurisdiction over your place of residence. Please be advised that securing custody of Moroccan orphans for immigration is extremely difficult as adoption is essentially illegal in Morocco.
I do not know the full story, but my understanding is that the prohibition stems from a desire that Muslim children not be adopted by non-Muslims and so lost to the faith. After all, the King of Morocco is still the Emir Al Moulmenin (Commander of the Faithful).
Malika and I
Malika and I are pictured at La Creche Lalla Hasna, where I worked during the summer of 1989 between school years. The Creche was a privately funded charity and day care center attached to the state orphanage, and offered extra care to children from 8 months to 3 years old. The plight of the children was quite poignant, since they were unlikely to be adopted, and the resources at the state orphanage were not sufficient to care for them properly.
During the year,I was teaching English as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the village of Outat El Haj, and coming to the big city was a marked cultural change. (Naturally, it was also cooler on the coast than in the desert.)
Casablanca Volunteers
MoorishGirl discusses her meeting with Karim Tazi, who runs a number of charities in Casablanca, including one that helps people in the Casablanca bidoville (slum) where the Casablanca bombers lived:
I wish people who spend their time talking about bringing democracy to the Arab world and who accuse Arabs of not doing enough would come see for themselves. Maybe then, instead of bombing these people into democracy, they'd roll up their sleeves and help.
My first thought is to wonder whether Mr. Tazi is any relation to the Mme Tazi who sponsored La Creche Lalla Hasna when I volunteered there in the late 90's. The Creche provided enriched day care to orphans between the ages of 8 months and 3 years who lived at the adjoining state run orphanage. The children faced a hard future — illegitimate or born of prostitutes, they were unlikely to be adopted by Moroccans. At the same time, state policy discouraged adoption by non-Muslims, so they were likely to remain wards of the state for a long time. The state run orphanage simply did not have adequate resources to give the children the care and attention they needed.