June 2006 Archives

Obituaries in the News - New York Times

PARIS (AP) -- Robert Carrier, a prolific American cookbook author, restaurateur and television chef, died Tuesday in southern France, a friend said. He was 82.

The chef, who moved to Europe during World War II, made his name in print and television in the 1960s. His books and programs reflected his love of world cuisine, from Morocco to the Caribbean.

I will have to look up Carrier's cookbook, "A Taste of Morocco."

THE VIEW FROM FEZ: The charming snakes of Morocco

The View From Fez has much to say about the Moroccan snake charming tradition and a few observations about the ecology of native snakes.

Bloggin' the Maghreb: Land Mines in the Desert

Bloggin' the Maghreb has a thoughtful post on the human and ecological cost of mining the Western Sahara.

THE VIEW FROM FEZ: Huge upsurge in internet in Morocco

The number of internet users now stands at 4 millions and is expected to jump to 10 million within three years.

With the introduction of DSL, the View from Fez predicts an explosion in Internet usage in Morocco. My immediate question is how access will be distributed, and whether it will reach the more rural areas of the country. (When I lived in Outat El Haj, the only telephone to which I had access was at the Post Office, and that had to be cranked to get the attention of an operator in the city.)

Laila Lalami is a literary evangelist. If she's not working on her second novel, writing her literary blog, or giving away books, she's on the road talking about her current novel Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and her forthcoming novel. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting her briefly and hearing her read this evening at Olsson's Books and Records in Washington, D.C.

One of Ms. Lalami's dreams is to bring her first novel to the people of her native land — Morocco — in their native Moroccan dialect, Darija. To date, no publisher has even agreed to translate the book even into the more widespread, but less accessible classical Arabic that is the traditional language of literature and public life. Ms. Lalami hopes to translate her book into Darija during her forthcoming Fulbright fellowship in Morocco beginning this December.

Ms. Lalami addressed a wide range of questions, from the challenges of working as an Arab author in America, to the audience she writes for, to her literary influences and writing technique. She explained that fiction is often a better vehicle for arriving at the truth than the kind of sensationalized non-fiction that makes up the contemporary news. As a Arab writer, it can be difficult for her to be seen as airing the community's "dirty laundry" sometimes, particularly since she is deeply indignant about the way in which Arabs are so often misrepresented in contemporary America. And while she feels an obligation to feed the hungry minds of the 15,000 visitors to her website every day, ultimately she writes her books for herself alone. Otherwise, she said, she would always be censoring herself, if she thought about what other people would think, and that would betray her central mission — to write the truth.