Well, my goodness!  In the past couple of days, two (count ‘em) bloggers have praised Meknes, setting what is probably some sort of record.   Can this really be happening?

Cat in Rabat and The View from Fez both wrote fabulous posts in praise of my adopted city which, as you know, I shall soon take my leave of.  Now, Meknes is not the typical tourist town, as I’m sure you know.  In fact, as Cat in Rabat puts it, it’s the Alcohol & Murder Capital of Morocco.

Believe it or not, there’s sort of truth in that statement.  Meknes seems to have more bars per capita than any other city I’ve been to in this country, including Casa and Rabat.  Hell, it has even more than Marrakech.  The only explanation I’ve ever heard for this is Meknes’ long time position as a military base, but even that doesn’t explain how drunk everyone is on Saturday nights.

And as for murder, well…did I ever tell you about the incident with the kefta machine?  No?

Last summer, Hamza and I were sitting in the Cafe L’Alhambra, one of our favorites, when suddenly a man saunters in, shouting, and selling photocopies of a newspaper page for 1dh each.  Hamza of course bought one.

We were absolutely not prepared for the story inside.

In the medina, near the gold souq, was a kefta shop owned by a couple of men.  Above them lived a lawyer and his wife.  For years, the lawyer had been filing complaints against the shop - for selling drugs, for making too much noise, etc etc.  Some are hearsay, others true.

Anyhow, the lawyer was finally successful in his complaints, and the shop was given some sort of notice - an eviction perhaps?  This angered the butchers, who slaughtered the lawyer and his wife (one of them allowed his girlfriend to pose with the woman’s jewelry for photos, which surfaced afterward), grinding them up in the kefta machine and paying a taxi driver to dispose of their bones in the Jnane Maamora (outside of Rabat, about an hour’s drive from here).

So the moral?  I suppose one might say that when Meknassis do it, they…oh, forget it.

Go ahead, Rupert Murdoch.  Buy the Wall Street Journal.  It’s not like it gets any worse than this.

(I particularly like how the author repeatedly points out how “unsafe” Morocco is and cites the Casablanca suicide bombers as example, when they didn’t actually kill or injure anyone but themselves)

A lovely San Francisco Chronicle article talks of Tangier’s transformation from the “Tijuana of Africa” to a city actually worth visiting.  I’ve only been to Tangier a handful of times, but on my most recent trip this fall, for work, I discovered that the Grand Socco had been entirely re-done and that everything looked a little…cleaner.   The Cinema Rif had become the Cinematheque du Tanger, and now showed art films and kindly hosted our conference.

But with all of the good comes bad as well, and I’m not just referring to the sweatshops.  Casa Barata, a popular shopping spot in town mysteriously burned to the ground this January, for example.

Still, it’s a positive sign, both for Tangier’s 2012 bid for the World’s Fair, and for Morocco’s 2010 tourism plan.

Every morning (okay, I’m not that pathetic - nearly every morning) I get out of bed, eat breakfast, then go read as much as I can about the day’s news, here and elsewhere. I avoid turning on the television until something worth watching is on, because I know that if I flick that switch, I’ll be inundated with useless information and mindless banter.

Before I go out for the day, I check up on Morocco in particular. I read your blogs, I scan the news. Once a week I flip through TelQuel and Hamza recounts what’s going on in Nichane.

I love to write; you could say it’s my passion. Penning words onto paper, typing in any interface, writing is what I dig. I am not as prolific as I used to be, probably because I have a life that I quite enjoy, but at any opportunity, I’ll scribble things down. I am especially task-oriented, so when I can focus on one subject, be it a collection of short stories or a blog about Morocco - I am in, I’m engaged.

Whether I’m writing here in my own blog or elsewhere, or doing roundups for GV, I struggle with the idea of authenticity as well as my own internal biases. I know that there are certain things that I, as a woman, as an American, tend to lean toward. Injustice against women is one, free speech another. I like stories about heroes, and I always back up the underdog. On the other hand, religion is not a top priority for me and politics sometimes go over my head. Mostly, I just like to talk a lot. Er, on the computer.
And all of that explains why I blog. I’ve been doing it for seven years, and to make my experience in Morocco a continuation of that just made sense.

There are few blogs about Morocco in the English language. Most of them are linked from this site. Most are written by expats who live or have lived in Morocco and Moroccans who live abroad. I fall into the first category, of course, which means that any view I present is a Morocco report (not the, as my blog’s title implies - something which I doubt any person could claim) - Liosliath put it well the other day when she said:

“One of the top search phrases for my blog is “What’s it like to live in Morocco?” People, don’t ask me. In fact, don’t ask any Westerner who lives there. We’re all going to have different experiences, and therefore wildly different opinions.”

It is absolutely true that any person, Westerner or not, even Moroccan - will have a different perspective; Morocco is an extremely interesting place, and I say that without qualification.  Blogging is an extremely interesting medium…Therefore, the more blogs, the merrier!

New to the scene:

Fes: The Fake Blurry View - As Everything Morocco puts it, “This writer has an irreverant sense of humor and a straightforward, no bs way of stating opinions. So slip off those sepia-tinted specs for a minute and take a look at 21st century Morocco through the eyes of someone who lives there.”

Amazigh Roots - written a friend of mine who makes his home in Casa (and occasionally Meknes), the first entry is entitled “Our Ancient Cousins the Berbers” and espouses on a Celtic-Amazigh connection.

Myrtus has already posted about this, but I felt compelled to spread it even further.  Glamour, which I actually subscribe to back home, just published a piece in which Mariane Pearl visits Morocco for her monthly Global Diary segment.

Pearl meets with activist Aicha Ech-Chenna, founder of Solidarity Feminine in Casablanca, an organization which helps unwed mothers to keep their babies and overcome stigma and hardships.

 Most of Morocco’s unwed mothers are poor, illiterate women from the countryside who started working as domestic servants, or “little maids,” as young as age seven, explains Aicha. Handed over into virtual enslavement by their families, the girls spend long hours cooking and cleaning for better-off Moroccans. Their fathers take what little money they make. After years of this, many girls will have sex with any man who promises marriage; countless others are raped. Those who get pregnant often end up on the streets—and worse. “These girls are at risk of being beaten and even killed,” Aicha says.

The full article is here.

A lovely article over at The Boston Globe entitled “Everywhere in Morocco, tagines are family fare” managed to whet my appetite this afternoon.

The author, Sheryl Julian, not only accurately explains the uses and purposes of the ubiquitous tagine (the cooking implement), but also describes how to cook a tagine (the dish that goes in the pot of the same name) using anecdotes from Moroccans and wives of Moroccans:

The dish couldn’t be simpler. It’s essentially a golden chicken stew with lots of seasonings. Before serving, Nahir instructed us to sprinkle the dish with green olives, parsley, and fresh coriander, then he showed us how to take the rind of the lemon and cut it into the shape of a hand. “Fatima’s hand,” said Nahir, “to ward off evil spirits.”

Julian notes that a cooking class is available at La Maison Arabe in Marrakech.  There are also cooking classes available in Fez at Riad Laaroussa.

Via a post from Bill Day, I came across this great blog, annalog; the post which Bill mentioned happened to be about the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca, which tourists love and Moroccans are typically angry about.

The blogger, Anna, writes of an encounter in Boston with a Moroccan taxi driver - upon telling him of her travels in Morocco and how beautiful she found the famous mosque, the driver explains to her its origins.

What a piece of trash.  Not only are Marrakech and Morocco misspelled in the photo caption (Marakesh, Morroco), but the article provides no new or unique information and doesn’t even answer its own questions!  Will someone please explain to me how this woman got a job writing for CNN?  Please?

I think it’s notable that despite the recent bombings, there have been several mostly positive articles in far-flung newspapers from around the globe.

Canada.com’s “North African High” (by Archie McLean) published today, is a travelogue of a trip up Jebel Toubkal, Morocco’s highest peak. The article also gives practical information for those planning similar trips.

And Jason Burke’s article for the Guardian Observer (”Morocco’s turning tide”) paints a nice picture of modern Morocco, with excellent quotes (although imagining a Moroccan saying “he was a nice bloke!” is a bit rocky).

The Washington Times article, “Morocco’s savory tagines” is a mouthwatering ode to the ubiquitous Moroccan dish.

Another, “Tourism Meets Terrorism in Morocco,” by Geoff D. Porter for the Lebanon Daily Star, extols the necessity of tourism in saving Morocco’s economy, but also brings to light the issues of the shantytowns and slums in major cities, said to give rise to Islamic extremism.

And on that note, Everything Morocco, though a blog and not a news site, has had a few excellent posts recently regarding poverty in Morocco and is worth a good read.

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:

Amazon.com

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.