December 2004 Archives
Middle East Institute: Press Release
The Middle East Institute is pleased to announce that Jacques Roussellier has joined the Public Policy Center as an Adjunct Scholar. Roussellier, currently a specialist with the World Bank Group, served as spokesman for United Nations peacekeeping operations in Western Sahara from 1999-2001. During his tenure in Western Sahara, Roussellier was actively involved with UN operations in the region, organized and implemented the mission's public relations strategy, and developed relationships with key constituents and regional actors.
Paul Barchilon explores his family heritage through ceramics whose design is patterned after the Moroccan art and tile work he studied in Safi, Fez, and Marrakesh. In a unusual twist, much of his work is Jewish ceramics such as seder plates. I became acquainted with his work when my wife and I were looking for a seder plate to give to my sister and brother-in-law as a wedding present. My wife gave me a handsome set of four Barchilon ceramic coasters for Christmas.
He apparently has an article on life among the Berbers in Morocco in National Geographic. Thanks to Wafin.com for the link.
I ended up reading Tahar Ben Jelloun's Le dernier ami (The Last Friend) quite by accident. I was reading quite a bit about Ben Jelloun's Cette aveuglante absence de lumière, the English translation of which (
Le dernier ami is the story of the formation and unraveling over several decades of an unusually close friendship between a Moroccan professor and a Moroccan doctor. The story is told from the point of view of several narrators, mainly the two principals, Ali and Mahmed. In doing so, it paints a vivid picture of Moroccan life in the late 60's and early 70's.
Quite striking to an American reader, I think, is the author's direct and matter of fact account of the sexual awakening of his two protagonists. Without indulging in the soft pornography so characteristic of modern writing in English, Ben Jelloun is quite explicit about the sexual lives of the two young men in his story. I found this remarkable in part because I have found the public face of sexuality in Morocco to be quite conventionally moral (apart from fairly widespread prostitution). Ben Jelloun recounts the ingenious ways in which his characters circumvent their society's moral strictures in order to find sexual fulfillment. (The only similar treatment of Moroccan sexuality I have run across is the opening chapters of Jeffrey Tayler's
From the passions of adolescence, the novel quickly passes to chilling description of the brutalities of a Moroccan prison, into which the two protagonists are cast for reasons that are never very clear, other than the fact that they are young, educated, and flirting with communism. Imprisonment forges a far closer bond between Ali and Mahmed, who rely on each other to survive the experience. In the background is the shadowy and sinister presence of General Oufkir, the Minister of the Interior, chief torturer of King Hassan II's regime, and mastermind of two failed coups, the second of which resulted in his death and the decades-long imprisonment of his family.
Their release from prison marks the point at which the paths of the two protagonists diverge. Ali becomes a professor of geography and a operator of a ciné-club in Rabat; Mahmed becomes a doctor and ventures abroad to Sweden. While Ali manages to carve an apparently comfortable niche for himself in Morocco, Mahmed is at home neither in Morocco nor in his adopted Sweden, to which he repeatedly and unfavorably compares his native land. Ben Jelloun explores not only the complex relationship between Morocco and other countries, but the complex social relations of the characters within Morocco itself. Not until the very end does Ben Jelloun manage to fuse and reconcile the growing tensions between the two friends.
As far as I know, Le dernier ami has not yet been translated into English, but it is written in a straightforward and direct French that is likely to be accessible to anyone who speaks the language at an intermediate level.
Human Rights Watch expresses concern over the government's crackdown on criminal defendants in the wake of the Casablanca bombings. In particular, Human Rights Watch notes that defendants can be detained for up to 10 days without being allowed to see a lawyer, and for up to 12 days before being brought before a judge. On a positive note, the Report discusses the Equity and Reconciliation Commission established to address human rights abuses under Hassan II, although it suggests the Commission's powers do not extend far enough. Human Rights Watch's summary links to a full 70-page report.
MoorishGirl: "Give Us Jobs, Not Democracy"
MoorishGirl reports that the main concern of Arab youth is unemployment. Sounds right to me.
My experience in Morocco was that there were large numbers of well educated people who could not find jobs, and my students were generally pessimistic about their chances of finding work even if they obtained a degree.
Of course, sometimes political liberalization is necessary to promote job creation.
