A few odds and ends that seem worth recording between slightly more substantial stuff. Today in the Guardian a remarkable story to remind us of the power of the septième art – an account of secret cinema in Saudi Arabia, a clandestine film-showing announced by text message to a select audience who are then piloted … More Pot Pourri
Arabic is the second most widely used language in France, with four million speakers, and has been recognized as a langue de France since 1999. An article by Emmanuel Talon in October’s Le Monde Diplomatique (which I missed in my last post because it isn’t in the English edition) looks at the predicament of Arabic … More Parlers Patois
It’s striking how, with a few honourable exceptions, the British press skates lightly over events in North Africa, with coverage that is often cultural and picturesque as much as critically informative; and as for the Sahel, we read very little indeed of real interest, at a time when it is becoming more important than it … More LMD and acorns
There’s a famous photograph of Moulay Abdel Aziz, reproduced in many Moroccan histories, and in editions of Walter Harris, who wrote amusingly, if sometimes disparagingly, about the Sultan. It was taken in 1901 at Marrakech by a French photographer called Gabriel Veyre, who worked for the Sultan between 1901 and 1905. Veyre’s life is interesting, … More Gabriel Veyre and forgotten colours
Almost a year ago the British Council ran a cinema project here in Rabat with ISCA, the Rabat film school, and the Scottish Documentary Institute. Two wonderful directors came out to work with ISCA students, running a short course in making documentary court metrage films. The constraints of a 5-minute film were unfamiliar – to … More Filming the Revolution
This post is an unashamed plug for a new quarterly publication that has come out in Britain in the last year, and is now in its fourth number. It’s called Critical Muslim, and it is edited by my friend Ziauddin Sardar. In describing it, I can’t do much better than quoting Zia’s own words on … More Critical Muslims
This weekend the clocks go back. In many countries that would simply mean changing the alarm clock when you go to bed on Saturday night, and a belated twiddle of the kitchen clock on Sunday morning. Not in Morocco, where Summer Time has been deployed with a charming whimsicality only since 2008. Until this year, … More The Problem of Summer Time
Once they used to say that Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, and Baghdad reads, and when I lived in Baghdad in 1988-90 the book market flourished, a scruffy haven of old and sometimes wonderful books. Later I read of the dreadful business of libraries sold off piecemeal as the price of survival, the slow, tragic dismantling … More Bulldozing Books
I’ve just got back from ten days in London, starting with a splendid event at Chatham House, where a group of young policy analysts, from across the MENA region, a dozen of them from Morocco, debated their policy proposals. They had been working on these for eight months, covering subjects like energy, education reform, youth, … More Innocence and Muslims
Two weeks ago I took part in the launch event for Young Arab Voices, a project that the Anna Lind Foundation is running with the British Council. It took the form of a debate in front of TV cameras in a marquee outside the Bibliothèque Nationale, in front of an audience of about 400. On … More Arab identity: Truth or Fiction?
Martin Rose 