In Defense of Al Jazeera: A Response to Marc Ginsberg

Former Ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg (during the Years of Lead, it should be noted) has penned a piece for the Huffington Post asking if Qatar-based Al Jazeera has fueled “Tunisteria” (that is, stoked the already-burning fires spreading across the Middle East toward the direction of intifada). It’s a valid question–that is, if we lived [...]

21.01.2011

5 Comments

Morocco’s Nichane Folds Under Royally-Backed Advertiser Boycott

When Nichane launched in September of 2006, it should have started a media revolution. As Morocco’s first-ever magazine published in the local Arabic dialect, darija, Nichane–a sister magazine to long-running French weekly TelQuel–quickly captured the attention of a generation with its taboo-tackling stories and often humorous approach. But just as the magazine was gaining traction, [...]

04.10.2010

10 Comments

The New York Times’ Exoticization of the Middle East

AT first glance, they seem like typical American college students on their junior year abroad, swapping stories of language mishaps and cultural clashes, sharing sightseeing tips and travel deals. But these students are not studying at Oxford, the Sorbonne or an art institute in Florence. Instead, they are attending the American University in Cairo, studying [...]

08.08.2010

21 Comments

Couscous, Djellaba, Tajine.

Originally posted at Talk Morocco Julia Roberts, McDonald’s, Mickey Mouse. This was how a young Moroccan student of mine described the United States to me. Images from his youth: Pretty Woman, glimpsed illicitly on satellite TV as a boy, or downloaded by BitTorrent. McDonald’s, which arrived in his hometown when he was eight, a beacon [...]

22.04.2010

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The Risk of Facebook Activism in the New Arab Public Sphere

Over at The Arabist, Issandr El Amrani ruminates on Facebook’s role in Middle Eastern politics, a subject I’ve had my eye on for quite some time. Drawing on the recent example of Egyptian reformer El Baradei and his enormous Facebook following, El Amrani marvels at the level of Facebook use for activism in the region. [...]

13.03.2010

4 Comments

Vive les escargots!

So much of travel writing relies on sensory memory – the aroma of spice and fire in Mumbai, the sound of crickets at dusk in Maine, the feel of still, humid Caribbean air. Thinking back through my years there, it would seem a natural conclusion, then, to write about Morocco through the lens of taste. [...]

09.02.2010

11 Comments

Obituary: Le Journal

Something is rotten in the kingdom of Morocco proclaims Issandr El Amrani in a Guardian piece about the closure of Moroccan magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire. Though El Amrani notes that the Le Journal case is only one indicator, something is rotten, indeed. The magazine’s offices were liquidated after a commercial appeals court declared that Le [...]

31.01.2010

8 Comments

For Rushdie

Let me tell you a secret: I think Christopher Hitchens is an idiot. Though I admit I’m a latecomer to his columns, from the moment I heard about the SSNP incident, I was utterly convinced. In fact, I’m perhaps glad that I didn’t know much about him at the time, because I fear that I [...]

05.01.2010

9 Comments

The Inimitable Arab Bloggers

Perhaps you’ve wondered about my bit of a blogging hiatus: I spent December 7-13 in Beirut for the second annual Arab Bloggers Workshop. The workshop, sponsored by The Heinrich Böll Foundation and Global Voices Online, with support from HIVOS and the Open Society Institute, brought together about 80 of the most amazing bloggers from around [...]

21.12.2009

6 Comments

Pregnancy as Provocation

In 1991, when Demi Moore posed nude and pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair, there was significant outrage. While Moore’s intent was to show the beauty of pregnancy as well as her “anti-glamour” attitude, she also succeeded in angering conservatives across the country and pleasing feminists, who saw it as an act of empowerment. [...]

06.11.2009

7 Comments

Every day on the bus, as I scan through the feeds coming through my RSS reader, I save the best folder for last. I flip first through folders dubbed “anthroblogging” and “arabists,” ones for my Global Voices readings, and ones for work. Once I’ve read, or at least marked all as read, I come to [...]

30.10.2009

2 Comments

Religion is Personal

In a post I wrote recently for Global Voices, I covered the efforts of the Mouvement Alternatif pour les Libertés Individuelles, a new Moroccan activist group that recently made headlines for eating in public during Ramadan. In effect, they broke the law; Article 222 of the Moroccan Penal Code stipulates that a Muslim who openly [...]

17.09.2009

22 Comments

On Travel

I remember a time when the world felt big. Where, as an angsty nineteen year old, I told a friend over cigarettes and copious amounts of coffee that the better alternative to suicide was to run away, lose yourself in a part of the world that you’d never even imagined. I remembered that conversation three [...]

15.09.2009

18 Comments

Links for 9.2.09

There are far too many things for me to comment on, and way too few hours in the day. Some links for your reading pleasure: Charlotte has an excellent piece on “authenticity” on Morocco that makes use of a recent Guardian piece on finding the authentic in Casablanca (also worth a read). Naomi Wolf states [...]

08.09.2009

8 Comments

On “Otherness”

[Since writing this post yesterday, I've had a number of interesting conversations, not to mention received more e-mails and comments than usual. Although it's perhaps too soon to revise my post in a meaningful way, there are a few things I feel that I should have included: my age and status as a single woman [...]

04.09.2009

23 Comments

Meknes, ya Meknes

As I get ready for work, I finger a row of books on the shelf, tickling the spines of favorite titles like John Updike’s Brazil and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita until I reach a tiny volume. My fingers rest upon the broken and bent spine of Allan Hibbard’s Paul Bowles, Magic, and Morocco, [...]

04.08.2009

11 Comments

Poor Alternatives

Anne Applebaum, liberal-ish Washington Post and Slate correspondent, former-USSR expert, and wife of the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently published the most ridiculous op-ed of all time, entitled “Morocco, an Alternative to Iran.” On Slate, it was published as “Morocco Makes Peace With Its Past” (perhaps even more proposterous), and I perhaps wouldn’t have [...]

30.06.2009

3 Comments

A Step Forward for Women?

As Hisham notes here, the Moroccan elections were significantly overshadowed on the world stage by those in Iran, and no wonder – no matter the outcome, they would have been met with little protest anyway. What was notable this time around however was a rise in the number of female candidates, as reported by MAP: [...]

26.06.2009

3 Comments

On Homosexuality in Morocco

The Syrian blogosphere recently got fired up over the subject of homosexuality. Specifically, a group of bloggers of a variety of backgrounds launched a campaign against homosexuality, and another group of bloggers responded rationally (though angrily). As my dear friend Razan pointed out in this epic post: It is very outrageous for some and for [...]

31.03.2009

10 Comments

Aleppo

I’ve been home from Syria for ten days, and pathetically, I have only written one blog post. I’ve been busy, you see – looking for a new apartment, catching up on work, being human…and absorbing. Since Prague, I haven’t traveled anywhere personally significant, and even Prague, even the city of a thousand spires, didn’t meet [...]

25.03.2009

8 Comments

Morocco: Disappearing the Amazigh

So it looks like the Moroccans are at it again. Instead of just letting people be who they are, the government is still going on about their naming laws. In other words, if you want to give your child an Amazigh (Berber) name, tough luck. Moroccan human rights groups recently proposed a list of Amazigh [...]

21.01.2009

23 Comments

Fun with Google Analytics

All Visitors Ever Visitors this week As you can see, I’m missing very few countries! Unfortunately, most of Africa has not yet visited my blog, and no -stan has set foot here. I’d love to get at least one visitor from every country, eventually! This week, visits from the United States, Morocco, and Japan have [...]

15.07.2008

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More on Sahara coverage

Last week I mentioned that Yazan Badran, Renata Avila, and I will be covering Western Sahara for Global Voices. I may have briefly explained that I attended the GV Summit with the thought marinating in my head, and left having created a plan with those two (as well as many other interested parties). Yazan broke [...]

14.07.2008

4 Comments

Simple Thoughts

I remember being in my early teens and complaining to my father about something I had learned about the American political process (if I remember my 13-year-old self correctly, it was probably the electoral college). His response? Your typical American one – that there’s no where better in the world to live. One friend of [...]

09.04.2008

2 Comments

Welcome!

Welcome to my new posting grounds! Thanks to my good friend Mykal Cave, who designed and is hosting this site for me, I finally have my own space – and just in time for WeMedia, which I will be attending in Miami this week (see interview with me here). At the conference, I’m hoping to [...]

23.02.2008

4 Comments