“I once went to Morocco Mall, and stayed for an hour, dreaming in front of the big aquarium. I think the fishes in this great jar live better than we do in our pigsty,” says a boy from Douar Tqalia (‘Tripeville’) on the outskirts of Casablanca. Tqalia is a squalid bidonville on the edge of … More ‘Une tendre noirceur’
I went last week to an evening lecture called Berber and Berbers: Basic Questions, Basic Answers, at NIMAR, the Dutch Institute in Rabat. It was given by Professor Harry Stroomer of Leiden, a descriptive linguist who has spent his life immersed in Berber language, oral history and ethnography. I went along with a sense of … More Alphabets, synecdoches and PC
“The good old-fashioned newspaper” says Maroc Hebdo this week, “on the terrace of a crémerie, between café crème and croissant, is finished. From now on, we must arrive with i-pads under our arms …” and there’s truth in this rather sad comment. For one thing I do find myself arriving most mornings at the Café … More Here come the deontologists
Last week in Marrakech I bought a couple of interesting silver-plated objects – a sugar-box and tea-caddy made by Richard Wright of Manchester. Wright has, as all Moroccans know, given his name to the silver tea-tray, or rayt, and was also responsible for what must have been enormous exports of silver-plate from the 1830s onwards, … More Mancunian silver
I have spent the last few days talking to Moroccan academics, publishers and others about the book business; and it has been quite a revelation, if not quite so much of a surprise. As I have noted in this blog before, Morocco is not a great reading nation. With literacy running at 55% or so … More For Whom the Book Tolls
‘What is the role of the historian in society?’ asks the interviewer, in this week’s TelQuel, and Maati Monjib replies, “He studies it, understands it in order for it to transform itself, to change.” Monjib is one of Morocco’s leading historians, an editor of the IRRHM’s monumental Histoire du Maroc, réactualisation et synthèse, recently published … More Let them eat pencils
It is hard to live in Morocco and not become at least a little obsessed by language. I was very taken by a recent article from Jeune Afrique sent to me by a friend in Washington. It’s by Youssef Ait Akdim, and it’s called Tamazight, darija, français? Le Maroc est “lost in translation.” Clearly preoccupied … More Aporia with knobs on
In Dubai for the British Council’s Going Global 2013 conference, I realize that I was last here in 1982 or ‘83. Dubai has changed in the intervening 30 years. I remember then sitting on a hot hotel terrace overlooking the Creek and thinking it all rather glitzy, but the extraordinary landscape of towers in the … More Smelly fish and flailing beards
February 17th is the anniversary of the Day of Rage in Benghazi which kicked off the Libyan Revolution in 2011. It’s the iconic date that peppers the graffiti on Tripoli’s walls, the placards commemorating the dead of the revolution which hang in the streets, and the tourist mementos sold in the medina. This presumably lies … More A Tale of Three Desks
Recently I flew from Casablanca to London, and high over Spain listened on my i-pod to the last of Melvyn Bragg’s excellent BBC radio discussions on The Value of Culture. At some point in it Matt Ridley quoted John Maynard Keynes calling Poverty of Aspiration the fifth horseman of the apocalypse – the biggest block … More Al Mustaqbal with Trumpets
Martin Rose 