Dhar el Mahraz at Fes is awash, according to press reports, with commerce illicite de toutes sortes de marchandises (drogues, alcool, sabre, prostitution …). It sounds a bit like the Baltimore housing projects in The Wire. And the neighbours aren’t great, either: Il est entouré, autre les bidonvilles de Dhar el Mahraz, Douar el Askar et … More Swords, students and vegetables

When I started this blog almost two years ago, I chose as the masthead picture a line of mannequins outside a clothes shop in Avenue Hassan II, between Allel ben Abdellah and Mohamed V. They seemed to me to capture something quintessential about Morocco, the melancholy of the young men chipped and battered by life, … More Roll up that Chap

Last week saw an extraordinary press headline: Morocco’s Minister of Education: French is No Longer Valid, English is the Solution. Lahcen Daoudi proposes, in this interview, a number of radical changes to higher education policy. The Ministry, says Dr Daoudi, is to make English proficiency a condition for obtaining a doctorate. “We master neither Arabic nor … More La trahison des clercs

Here is what I firmly believe to be the British Council’s first business card written in Tamazight and printed in Tiffinagh. Not a work of high literary pretension (indeed it is perfectly possible that it says, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s letter, Kill the Bearer, though I hope not), but symbolically important. Tamazight is an official language under … More Say it in Tamazight

There’s a nice piece on bridges in last Thursday’s L’Economiste, reporting a conference at the Ecole hassania des travaux publiques. Mustapha Qadery of UM5A spoke about his research on bridges, and particularly into why so many bridges in Morocco are reputed to have been built by the Portuguese, even when they are in parts of … More Bridge of sukuns

Last week the Secretary-General of the Istiqlal, M Hamid Chabat, said in a moment of anger that Morocco should abandon French and establish English as its second language. That prompted the cartoon (above, ‘Le Pinocchio de la Semaine’ in TelQuel) which pokes fun at his perhaps less than entirely policy-driven suggestion and adds the naughty … More Hell hath no fury …

In last week’s TelQuel there is a comment by official responsible for Morocco’s  14 public museums, that gives me pause for thought. The bulk of the interview is predictable and worthy – is the president raising much money from the private sector? Is there tension with the Ministry of Culture? What is the state of … More O for a Muse of Fire …

In Marrakech for the Biennale, an increasingly splendid extravaganza dropped from heaven on the Ochre City this year for the fifth time. There’s a lot of interesting art, and many friends in town. The opening took place at the Badi3 Palace, in a courtyard so huge that the other side was lost in the haze … More To dream of an engine

An intriguing cultural phenomenon in Morocco is the cascade of invitations that arrive on my desk after the event to which I am being invited. I have for example not once received an invitation to a vernissage at the Ministry of Culture’s splendid Bab el-Rouah Gallery – and I have had many dozens of them … More Sufficient unto the Day

A week or so ago I was driving down to Marrakech to open a conference on Jurassic palaeontology, and I stopped for coffee at one of the strangely alien Shell stations that dot the bare landscape like moon-bases. I thought a newspaper would go well with my coffee, and went to find one. I walked … More Wordless among the crisps