‘Lucky Accident Foils Mass Bombings in Morocco’
I really commend that cyber cafe owner, anyway. I doubt that many people of any nationality would dare stand up to a suspected terrorist - probably harder for a Moroccan to stand up to another Moroccan; I’d imagine in some cases, hatred for the US might be stronger than hatred for terrorism, even if there’s a general hatred for violence.
It seems like someone or some group is protesting every week in Meknes. I couldn’t hear these women (and a few men) very well over the din of traffic…can anyone tell me what they’re fighting for?
(This was 20/3, on Ave. des FAR, Meknes)
Edit: Samir from The View from Fez says that it was a demonstration against terrorism. Well, good.
Down a little side street behind the glittery Rabat Ville train station is a tiny outfit run by an older Moroccan man and his daughter. Both speak English readily and fluently, and run a tight ship - the English Bookshop. The bookshop of my dreams…filled with highly organized used fiction, Islamic studies, women’s studies, Moroccan literature, dictionaries, teaching supplements and guides, hard-to-find African literature, Stephen King paperbacks. I found 6 Milan Kundera books - more than my hometown Barnes and Noble usually has - and Anthony Burgess novels I’d never found before. All of Mohammed Mrabet and Leila Abouzeid’s works were in stock; the rare In Morocco by Edith Warton and Morocco that Was by Walter Harris were there in multiples.
The aisles are crowded and the books are dusty but nevertheless, I think I’ve discovered the best English bookstore in Morocco.
English Bookshop; 7 Rue Al Yamama, Rabat; 037-70-65-93
As I’m sure you all know, I’m the author of this little book.
Today, I discovered the first review written by someone not related to me:
I’ve also had a few people e-mail me to let me know they’ve seen tourists wandering around with a copy of it! If you see someone with it, take their picture for me.
When writing about life in a particular country, particularly when that country is not well-known globally, or when the previous writings about that particular country are either outdated or unbalanced, there lies some importance in portraying that country with sensitivity, with balance.
When that country is not your native country, perhaps it is less important; writing as an expat is rarely balanced, and readers are aware of the outsider’s view. But, when writing as a insider, it seems that the responsibility is on your shoulders to portray your country in a positive light, even if your country hasn’t been so kind to you.
Have you read Reading Lolita in Tehran? It’s a lovely book; Azar Nafisi is a native Iranian who, despite spending quite a bit of time in the U.S., lived in Iran during the early days of the revolution (and beyond). Slowly but surely, her rights were stripped from her - forced to cover herself completely (and, might I add, un-Islamically), forced to enter the university from a separate door, her satellite TV seized as contraband. Worse yet, her neighborhood bombed. And during that time, after leaving her job and holing herself up at home, she managed to put together an all-female reading group, hence the title of the book. Her group read all sorts of books which were banned in Iran at the time, as well as some which were not. I recall Lolita, Daisy Miller, and The Great Gatsby as three such books.
Fatemah Keshavarz is also an Iranian writer and professor of Persian and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. Her new book, Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran, is (as she describes herself) a “cultural handshake” with Iran. In this interview, Keshavarz discusses her book as well as what she calls the “New Orientalist” narrative, a category in which she places Reading Lolita in Tehran…
…Which, despite not having read Jasmine and Stars, I find scorchingly unfair. Nafisi, as a biographer (her book can be categorized as semi-autobiographical, or autobiographical narrative), has the right to invoke her personal feelings. As a writer, she is free from the responsibility of delivering a balanced perspective of Iran.
Now, to be fair, I suppose it’s worth noting that I, and probably all of this blog’s readership, are not the average Anglophone reader and have a more balanced perspective of Islam, the Middle East/North Africa, or Islamic countries. We are probably more knowledgable about global issues than your average reader of a New York Times bestseller. And Keshavarz makes excellent points about filling the gaps in our information sources, something in which I firmly believe. She tells us to read translated fiction (or learn another language - although I doubt I’ll ever be fluent enough to enjoy fiction in any language other than English), meet people…all certainly important in understanding the world, the universe.
What I cannot get behind, however, is her invalidation of Nafisi’s book. Nafisi was writing about her own experience, her own perspective. I’ve read a lot of fiction and non-fiction from developing or lesser-known countries - but should I hold Tsitsi Dangarembga responsible for the world’s perspective of 1960s Zimbabwe? Should Fatima Mernissi hold the key to the world’s understanding of Morocco? If I were to write a book about my loath for the Bush administration but were to leave out all of the wonderful freedoms that come with being American, would my perspective be too unbalanced, too unfair?
Keshavarz makes good points, and I truly look forward to reading her book, but I don’t believe that one can be held responsible for leaving out aspects of a society. A perspective is just that - a perspective - and no one can take it away from you.
(Thanks to Forever Under Construction, who reposted the interview which inspired this post)
It seems that this weekend is when Nichane will be permitted to arrive on the newsstands again. I intend to buy a copy just on principle, although with Arabic being hard enough to read, you can imagine that derija is even more difficult.
For those of you just tuning in, Nichane was suspended for two months after editor Driss Ksikes and journalist Sanaa el-Aji (also a blogger) published an article on jokes that Moroccans find funny - the jokes were not new, rather, they were picked up from the streets and analyzed. Ksikes and el-Aji were given a two year suspended sentence and fined a relatively large sum of money (which I cannot confirm, but most reports have said about $8,000 each or 80,000dh).
Since the ban on Nichane, its French sister magazine TelQuel has been publishing a small section in the back of the magazine in derija, the lingua franca of Morocco.
I will attempt to translate a few small articles for your reading enjoyment.
According to Magharebia.com, the Moroccan government is working hard to improve education for the disabled. The article states that only 30% of disabled children are enrolled in school - mostly due to lack of facilities. The government runs 185 classes for disabled students at 48 different sites, most of which are located in cities.
Recently, I’ve been in contact with someone looking for places to volunteer in Morocco - we’re not talking a “volunteering vacation;” I mean, this person is truly interested in serving disabled populations (or barring that, other populations) in Morocco. I’ve compiled a list of organizations, but if anyone has more ideas, I’d love to add them so that I can assist others in finding organizations which need help.
Please keep in mind that I’m not in contact with these organizations and am unsure of their volunteer needs. I’m just providing points of contact:
Ain Leuh Village of Hope - English, French, Dutch, German
Bayti - French, English, Arabic (the French site has the most comprehensive information)
Daba - French
L’Association Marocaine d’Aide a l’Enfant et a la Famille (AMAEF) - French only
I opened a Cafepress.com shop awhile back then forgot to check it for a bit - apparently I’ve received a few orders!
If you’d like to purchase a Morocco Report product or other fun Morocco products (all created with my photography/Windows Paint abilities), go here
Recently, a friend on LP’s Thorntree told me he wouldn’t be bringing me Peter Pan peanut butter as previously requested - because apparently it’s been causing illness. This morning, I was reading through Morocco blogs and discovered this entry on the blog of DRiVER, a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco - apparently PCVs were issued a note letting them know that, if they had received peanut butter in care packages, to be cautious.
This article states that all Peter Pan or Great Value peanut butter (they’re produced in the same Georgia plant) produced since 2004 with the code “2111″ should be discarded, as it is at risk of containing salmonella.
Yikes! Less than a year ago, a friend sent a jar of Peter Pan and I devoured it. It’s gone now - but all I can do is wonder if that was the mystery cause of so many stomach troubles here! Or perhaps it was just the kefta…
In the past few months Morocco has made headlines for attempting to abolish the death penalty, subsequently sentencing a prisoner to death (but not - yet - executing him), pardoning of 9,000 inmates on the day of Lalla Khadija (the daughter of the king), and for the suicide attack in Casablanca early this week - which turned out to have been committed by a former prisoner pardoned after being held after the 2003 Casablanca bombings.
Blad schizo.
Abdelfattah Raydi, who was 23 and from Sidi Moumen, was one of 2,000 men arrested in 2003 at the age of 19 for being members of Salafist groups in the slums surrounding Casablanca. Along with 163 others (some of whom were arrested as accomplices to the recent bombing), he was given a royal pardon in 2005.
So now, according to various sites, either 9 or 13 men have been arrested in relation to the recent Sidi Moumen cybercafe attack (which, incidentally, was allegedly meant to target tourist spots in Casa, but instead the bomber detonated his bomb after becoming angry with the cafe owner’s son for not allowing him to view “jihadist” websites, as I mentioned before).
I wonder if they’ll be given the death penalty…