Quartier des Voleurs

The quartier des voleurs is on the edge of town, along the road to Azrou. It's called that because the absentee landlords are thought to be dons of drugs and prostitution. The streets are undone, potholed and rough. But the houses are new. All have the architectural signature of the town, the sloping red roof, the black rod iron bars on all windows. But already many houses are coming apart. Under sills, along the corners of buildings, around doors, you'll notice the paint is cracking. Here and there a cinderblock has collapsed in a wall under construction. Occasionally, a balcony falls off from an upper story. Or, so I'm told.

The other day I stopped in to see N. who lives in a second story apartment looking out toward the soccer stadium. Her sometime lover is a policeman in the town. Her lover is not educated, and certainly not respected. He has an obscure past, to match his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. His smile is ghastly; there's no other word. But nobody knows the inside of the town like he does and N demands he tell her everything. They know all the scandals. This is why I visit them. Who is sleeping with whom; who accepts money under the table; the sexual harrassment charges against the vice president at the university. They know which rumors are true and which are false. They can tell you what the cleaning ladies say about the wretched conditions they work in at the local charity, which is supposed to help people like the maids.

"Everything here is fascade," N is always saying. She lectures on business subjects at the university.

When I arrive, she is reading Reading Lolita in Teheran. She lying on the couch. She's wearing shorts and a halter top and no bra. There's a movie on the television playing in the background. What's new? I ask.

Did you know the university is accused of being a hideout and a training ground for evangelicals?

I hadn't heard that.

It's true. There's a newspaper saying the university is a hotbed for evangelicas.

Nonesense.

Of course, she says. But now the story is spreading. How hard will it be for them get students now?

Just then her guard arrives. He looks worn and his uniform is dirty. "You're late," N says, watching me closely. "I was expecting you an hour ago."

A. looks at us briefly and takes off his cap, undoes his white holster, which has no gun.

We had to put up a roadblock.

Why, asks N.

No one knows what is it.

Perhaps, the king is coming, N says to me and then to A: Makes us some mint tea, will you? The way you do....

The policeman disappears.

N. has new stories. She tells me about the teacher who has been sexually harrassing one of his students, an exchange student from Italy. "In front of the whole class, he told she should wear hot pants." She loves to tell me these things. I love to hear it. " Another time he asked her what color bras she preferred. You can't imagine all the things he says to her. And listen to this. The other day a boy says, he's in the class, 'oh you should see her tits.' The professor wants more information. He wants to know all about it. In front of another professor he invited the girl over and said, "you see what I was talking about," and looked her up and down as though she were a slave for sale. "

N. lights another cigarette. She shakes her head and opens her mouth and lets the smoke ooze out like steam up out of a grate. " Incidentally, the professor is married to a close friend of the president's wife."

Well, what did you do? I asked, because N has connections on the "task force" created to look into charges like this.

I told them. She said. I even went to the dean. What am I saying? I even, I even went to the vice president for student affairs. And you know what he told me?

N. waited until she was sure I was sufficiently curious. "He said, 'yes, but if we said anything how would that make this man's wife feel?' So she is devalued twice. But that's the way they are here."

Is he still here, I ask.

"Yes, he's still here. Of course. What do you expect?"

The policeman arrives with the tea. Thank you sweety, says N. How was your day with surete?

The man shruggs his shoulders. whatever it's been he doesn't remember it as a good day now.

"I took the dog to the vet but you need to take her outside," N. went on adjusting her breasts. "Just around the block." The policeman looks at her longingly.

The policeman picks up a book on the floor, puts it on the table, and then without a word takes the dog out the door.

Here's another story, N went on, shaking her head as though she is upset.

What's the matter, I ask.

"This whole country is paresseuse.... Have you noticed that?"

I smile. This is her agreement with everyone: information for attention.

"But so," she said, "I've been doing role playing exercises in my class. You'll be interested in this. One of the students explained how a professor had invited her into his office one day and told her that she was an excellent student and even though she had missed some classes and not done terribly well on the quizzes, she was still going to get an A. The student was so thankfull. And then the professor asked if he could take her to dinner. The student replied that it would be better if they waited until the end of the term.

"The student went back to her room and told her roommate what had happened. The roommate, who was in the same class, wondered if the same was possible for her and so she went to the professor, dressed a little provacatively, and asked what grade she was going to get. The professor told her that because she'd missed classses and done poorly on quizzes that she was on the edge and would fail the course unless she did very well on the final exam. The girl was infuriated and told the professor what her roommate had said. Then he went into a rage and told the girl she would fail, there was no question, she was done. And then he threw her out of his office."

N. took a hit on her cigarette and opened her bass like mouth, her rolling.

"Here's the problem," she went on. "The problem is that girls in this culture are taught to seduce and are rewarded when they do. You use all you have. Well, that's true in any culture, but here you have no choice and now it's become nearly genetic. But people who tell you that Islam has served these women, it's not true. You can say, 'well, it's not the religion, it's the people that interpret it.' It's the same in Christianity. No, but there is something else here. There is so much fear already, and then you add the fear of God, and it's too much."

A. returned with the dog. I could hear him in the hall unclasping the leash.

N. turned to me. "You better run along. Your wife will be worried."

Conversation

The other day, when a gay man was about to come into the room, the boy, about 17, said "But I don't want to shake his hand."
"Why?"
"Well, I don't know, it could come off his hand. I could get it."
"Get what?"
"You know."
"What?"
"I could be gay like him."
"You're serious."
"I don't know. How does it happen?"

And then in the library, in the stacks. Talking with a student who had asked my help on her photojournalism project. She said there were no books in the library to help her, but there were. I showed her. There was one especially good book, with a forward by Paul Bowles. A photo album of a young man who perishes in Fez. And then somehow we got terrorism.

"So you don't believe he exists," I said.
She shook her head.
"You don't believe Osama bin Laden exists."
"No," she said definitively.
"Why not?"
She shrugged.
I tried to convince her briefly. I've heard this before. I said, so you don't think those planes hit the buildings?
She extremely sensitive. The very thought overwhelms her. She shook her head. It couldn't be, she was saying, it just couldn't be. To believe that would be too much. Then in this country so full of despair there is no illusion left.
I persisted.
"And what about the suicide bombers in Iraq. Who do you think they are?"
"Mexicans," she said with a straight face.
"Mexicans?"
"They take them over there and they do it?"
I smiled. Of course, I said.
She smiled but ambiguously.
And what about George Bush, I asked. He doesn't exist either?
"He's a metaphor," she replied.
Now I agreed.
"But you believe in his father, that his father was real.
Yes.
"And Bill Clinton, you trust that he was real."
Oh yes.
But George Bush is a metaphor.
She smiled. Yes, she said and walked away.

1984

The question was, "is there anything in Moroccan history reminiscent of the events you're reading about in 1984?" These were 11th grade students. They'd been reading the opening pages. Winston is in a corner, writing in his diary and trying to keep out of sight from Big Brother. The teacher had suggested that many countries, including the U.S., have gone through such a period. The McCarthy era. The whole notion of Homeland Security. France before the revolution. Chile under Pinchot. Spain under Franco and so on. This is not a far fetched idea, the teacher was saying. But one student, a very bright student, 17, was genuinely worried. "Should we be discussing this? I'm not sure we're allowed to be talking about this."

Young Mahkzen

They're friends of the prince, the king's cousin, that wiry, little young man always in a baseball cap. You'll see him at the charity runs waving a sign to start the race, and if you didn't know who he was you'd think, 'how cartoon-like that boy is." But the friends of the prince are another matter. They're serious looking, tall, always striding, and supercilious young men. They make fun of everything. And they are always careful to reinsure in your mind their closeness to the palace. Referring to the prince, they'll say, "Hey, did you hear what he told me last night?" and they'll embroider some story he told them or even if he didn't tell them. Or, they'll say so they can be overheard, "Hey, what about the new Audi? 16 cylinders, that baby really hums." As though it were their car. Everyone has seen the creamy white new Audi, it seems like the prince has a new car every week, but it is more like every month, so to hear this is to hear power itself, to feel the weight of the palace, and the king, himself.

Or, you'll hear one of them say, "Yea, he's invited me down to Marrakech for the weekend. I'll probably go, I don't know."

They drift through the campus with the humid air of priviledge. This is not necessarily how they are one on one, but you rarely find them that way; they're ususually in a group, 4 or 5 boys, and a girl or two. The girls are groupies. Not always, but usually. They're drawn in for entertainment, fodder for a lazy afternoon. "Hey, stupid, get me a bottled water," they'll say. "Hurry." Or, "Let's see more of your tits." And if one of the girls steps out of line, they'll be crushed. If one said, "you know you're like little children. You're bullies of no consequence." Or, "You represent everything I hate about this country," which no girl would ever say, but if she had a certain expression that suggested judgment, or if she didn't respond soon enough to one of their jokes, they might treat her as though she had said, "you represent everything about this country I hate."

But look at that one there, with wavy hair, a head too big for his body, there, the swarthy one sitting on the window ledge outside the little cafe. He's the president of the local charity. He's the last one you would ever put in such a position, but his father was an advisor to Hassan II. He's Mahkzen if there ever were. You see him from time to time alone. He looks at you over the top of his dark glasses. He passes me and he doesn't know why I watch him. He lowers his head in subservience. I don't acknowledge him.

He is especially crude, this one. "I'll rape you," he may tell one of the girls with a curly, wicked smile. "I just might. You better watch it. And if you make fun of my friends, I will rape you."

Meanwhile, they walk to and from class, doling out conversation like acolytes with incense. They're in school to get a wall decoration. They will work for their fathers. Pas de problem. They're the second and third generation. On Ibn Khaldun's clock they are at ten to the hour: their families are crumbling even as they become more powerful. But they have no idea. The world is as bright and sure as 'dandy.' After all, their fathers are all part of the mahzen. Not in the narrow sense of security services, but they're from the great old families, the Fazzies, whom you always see at palace gatherings.

If you watch them moving around the campus, from time to time you may notice someone watching them, in between the pillars, someone who has felt their cruelty, someone watching with both detachment and loathing.

Meanwhile, the middle school teachers are on strike for the next two days. Two days out of 15, they strike. It's gone on for three years.

Meanwhile, you wonder how the despair can be so durable. Ask the imame in Azrou who was arrested after "May 16th" and spent a year in jail. What was his crime? Unlawful assembly. He wears a beard and so he looks the part of the fearful Islamicist. But it's nonsense.

Meanwhile, in back of Azrou there are two palaces. Not villas, palaces. One for each side of the royal family. Or so they say. They are staffed all year round and you would think there would be jobs when the royal family arrives. But no. The royal family always arrives loaded down with staff and belongings.

Meanwhile, the teenage boy, whose father is a travel agent in Fez, hit an old man while driving. The old man died. Nothing happened to the boy. It was an accident, except that the boy had no license; he was driving with friends who were drunk. But the notion is that he paid his way to get off any charges. It doesn't matter what the facts were. Perhaps, it really was an accident, but in the silt of stories about corruption, this is another grain. The little truth is irrelevant. The big truth is too great to acknowledge, to big to see its true size.

Stroll

We walked up the side of the volcano. The ferns are just coming back. We got almost to the radar station; two dogs came running down the hill, out through the trees. Barking like we were the devils. We scared 'em back up the hill, turned off, and sat on a rock.

He told me again about the makhzen, the system, how it used to work. The bottom dweller was the mokaddam. The sheikh. He was the tracker. He gave up to the Khalifa or the Kayad, who in turn went to the pasha, who went to the governor, who might, if something was up, call a friend in the palace. Everyone new in town, the mokaddam found out who they were, where they were from.

Still now, you go to town to get a housing permit. They tell you to come back while the mokaddam finds out your particulars. He asks the guards at the residence, or at one of the corporate retreat centers. The guards always know. You don't think they're watching. After all, it's a peephole of a window in the guardhouse at the residence, and what do they do all day? They sit in flimsy card table chairs talking about nothing. Sometimes, you'll see them pray. But they're working all the time. they talk to the cabbies, they watch like hawks at night. American girl has indiscriminate taste for Moroccan men, brings the cabbies up for some inshallah. It all goes to the mokaddam. And then you're a dossier down on the second floor of the police station behind the Cookie Cracque. I still can't figure out the name.

He tells me these things and, of course, what to believe. He's just a student. Still, he seems to know. He tells me people still disappear. Yea, but how do you KNOW that, I ask. Because the place is so matthair thick with rumors, I never quite believe. "I can't tell you," he says. "But they took someone in our family."

"I don't believe it," I say.

"Believe it," he says. And just then two kids passed below us carrying stolen firewood. "All I can tell you is that nothing has really changed except the appearance.

Woman No. 3

It was late. Everyone yawning.

"And left handed people die sooner than right handed people?" she said to make her point. Incidentally, I'm left handed, and she knows that. The conversation was about biological determinism. "We're just like birds," she went on, talking to her colleague, Barry, who believes that all love is construct. She suspects he's gay by the way. And she went into a long description of women looking for the bird-like red feather in a man, and not just any red feather, but the reddest, deepest hue of red. And that color would signify his ability to break into one her 128 eggs.

"A man just has his sperm, which he's willing to splash out wherever he pleases. It's nothing to him. But we have our eggs."

Barry waved Woman No. 3 aside and went on about how everything he'd ever felt was born out of his family's and society's predelections. "No one can convince me otherwise," he said. "Love is what's taught, not what is felt." Recently, his girl friend arrived from Paris. She wants to get married; he doesn't. He wants her, however he wants her, but not the commitment. Not kids, for sure.

Woman No. 3 had something to say about children as well, but I won't belabor it. "Whenever I go back to Canada," she said. "I just want to leave again. It's too much. My husband, my children, I just want to leave."

She brought out some digestive she'd bought in Italy.

Woman No. 2 by the way is also Canadian. Mary. I took her to Volubilis one day. She loves to Curl; she's on a curling team that curls three times a week in that season. She gets respectable scores; she goes 2nd, which is significant. When she's not curling, she's golfing, or traveling. There's hardly a place she's not been to, a cruise she hasn't taken. She was abused by her only husband 20 years ago. She likes to talk about it. At home, the only other living thing she has is a cat. Not even a plant. We had lunch in the square in Meknes. She asked me questions the way you do with guides. She has spent her life with people leading her around. She doens't like to be alone. She certainly doesn't like to travel abroad without someone at her side.

Woman No. 1 asked me in no uncertain terms to take Woman No. 2 on this adventure. Woman No. 2 is an old Grateful Dead fan. She's a chemistry teacher, and also Canadian. Women No. 3 and No. 1 are very close. They were in American schools together in Maylasia and beyond. Woman No. 1 and No. 2 are also close. I don't know why. Woman No. 3 and No. 2 are not close. They despise each other and sometime I'll tell you about their trip to Marrakech and Merzouga.

But as I say, it was late. Four people in a third story one bedroom apartment, in a small livingroom, big enough for four people, with a fire and a white rug; Miles Davis, a wilting plant, proper lithos and les objets personnelles.

Woman No. 3 is smart. She reads people closely. She is particularly tuned to body language. It is part of her notion of biological determinism. Everything is seduction, fight or flight. But mostly seduction or not. Something caught her mind and she went from anthropology the fact that all these teachers here are losers. She didn't use that word, but that was the word in her mind. There are many good examples to support that argument. Many people here who are lost, who have nowhere else to go. She mentioned several. The psychologist for example, from Boston, who I suspect was done in by The Courage to Heal. By that whole scandal with repressed memory. She's the kind who would have taken on clients and gone along with the fad and then one day been sued. Or forgotten. I could go on about her. You've never met a woman with child who had so little business being a mother. "You want to get rid of him now?" she'll say on the phone after her son has spent the night or been with us for an afternoon. "Shall I come and collect the little savage?" But not said the way you or I might, where the words would be a veneer that you could easily see through, to the love inside. No. See, here, there is no love.

And there are so many other examples.

Woman No. 3 went on. She was pissed that one of the college administrators had called her to account for teaching things not in the curriculum. She'd never been called to account before. "But I'm not like all these other people. These are people with nowhere to go; they have no life. But I can go anywhere I want. I can go to a hundred places; I can go pick up with my family any time I want...."

Morocco is full of contradictions. And it seems everyone who comes here. Weren't we among those people? Didn't she mean us as well?"

B. spoke up. "I don't know what you're saying. But I'm not a loser and I don't count myself among these people you're talking about...." She got up, kissed cheeks, and left.

I stayed on.

(to be continued)

"Work"

I meet him in Fez. He prefers a little cafe inside the medina. He teaches Arabic Literature and film in Rabat. We talk about the Koran. I ask him about words and phrases, about the difference between haddiths. Occasionally, we talk about broad questions: what does the Koran really say about revenge? kings, women, ghosts?

"God said that if you need witnesses for a trial, you must have two men or one man and two women. Why? Because God understood that women during that time of the month of their menstrations sometimes act a little odd. They forget. If you have two, one can remind the other."

I tell my friend there are women in Berkeley who would behead him if they heard that.

We talk about one of Mohammed's disciples, Awas Ibn Malik, whose teaching, my friend says, is the basis of the Sunni faith in Morocco. "Why? He's the easiest." Compared to say, Wahhabists, who believe that you absolutely must not pray unless you have used water to cleanse yourself. But ibn Malik was a pragmatist. For him, you can simply find a rock, not any rock, not a volcanic rock or one with holes, but a smooth stone and you put it in a corner of your house — not unlike the meteorite in the Kabaa but my friend tells me this is a coincidence, not symbolic — and you rub the stone and then rub your face and hands and the simulation is enough.

Invariably, the conversation returns to the disparity between rich and poor in Morocco. This is the real topic. The Koran is warm-up, two laps around the field. He shakes his head at the way the teachers are treated in local schools. They strike twice a week in Ifrane he tells me. They get low salaries, they're rarely paid on time; no resources for their classrooms. And who is to blame, the rich ministers and members of the assembly. Look at what they're paid; their retirement packages....

"And did you ever wonder what happened to the hospital?"

There is a brand new hospital on the edge of town, once fully equipped. It was supposed to be the seed of a medical school, but never opened. One story is that the university couldn't find enough doctors to come live in Ifrane.

"Do you believe that?" my friend asks.

I don't know what to believe anymore.

Under his smile, his deep faith, my friend seethes. Above all, he resents the rich students he must deal with at the university in Rabat. His patience is tested when he hears how the poor are treated these days.... This is the door to the most sensitive subject of all.

Once, I asked him about the royal linneage, the tie to Mohammed. He took out a piece of paper and wrote Mohammed's name. He drew several lines to suggest a family tree. Under some, he wrote, 'son'. Under others, 'daughter'. Then he crossed out each of the three sons.

"All died," he said. "No heirs. We know that."

He likes to draw diagrams.

Then, he asked me my name. He can never remember it. I told him. He wrote it down as he had written Mohammed. He wanted my children's names. I told him. "And your sons, when they have children what will be their name." Mine, I said. He was nodding all the time. "And when your daughter has children what name will they carry?" I hesitated. "Will they carry your daughter's name?" he asked. " No, I suppose not."

"Exactly," he said. Then, like a math teacher, he tapped both trees with his pen. "You see?"

There is no link, no tie, no line. "It's all a fabrication. No one who knows about Islam believes that. It's for the people, but it's not true."

"You see," he went on, "the only link, the only tie through the Koran, could be through 'good works'." And above his diagram he wrote "work" and underlined it twice. "Good works is the only possible link, " he said, leaning forward because he believes there are spies and informants everywhere and that the people are getting fed up to here again.

Rustica's Magdalene

Two broads on the wall.
— "Who's the stiff?" I asked.
— "Mags," said the 'tender.
— "She don't look so good."
— "She passed."
— "Still..."
— "Each to his own," he said
and chucked me another.
— "She looks used," I said.
Not like I remember."
— "Whataya expect? She was used."
— "Still.
Mic towled some tumblers.
— "Who was her last?
That's what I want to know."
Mic shook his head.
— "I like the angel better anyway,"
he said.
— "Classly lookin' broad,
good figure," I said.
— "She comes in here from to time.
After hours."
— "Yea?" I said. "I'll wait."

Falles virgins

Falles virgins
Originally uploaded by macnamband.

Dialogue With Stone

Volubilis
Originally uploaded by macnamband.

"I had a dream".
Stone didn't reply. She was just happy to be pushed.
"In it I wrote a play, which was not well received by my agent."
So, said Stone. So.
"All I can remember from the dream was the line, 'You can't beat the 20th Century'."
You can't beat it for what, said Stone.
"That's it, I don't know."
Well, why think about it then?
"I'd like to know if there's some message there."
Maybe, you spent enough time beating up the past. Or beating around that bush.
We went on up in silence.
"Do you enjoy being pushed," I asked.
You always ask me that.
"Wouldn't you rather be immovable? After all, that's part of your nature."
But then where would you be?
"Back in Corinth".
Being devious and a trickster? No, you're better here.
And just at that moment we reached the top and I let her go even before I had to and watched her roll down until she was absolutely still.

On the way to the Falles Festival

Lecherous painter
Originally uploaded by macnamband.

Malaga’s odd squalor, condic splendor for slavo tanners,
In the name of sol. Of old and cold. Ravenous for a light.
Bus neighs and quivers, swerves away, north-by-heaven,
To Granada, beyond the coastal range, Allah’s Allah:
Covered in olive oil and trees; corn-rowed hills like heads,
All dead asleep. The land’s labaisse. Labaisse? Hamdullah!
‘While the rest of Europe’: sewerless, lightless, or books,
Flea-bitten, and gray. Rat rich in gothy, goric clamor,
Meanwhile, far above. Al Hambra’s carved white verses,
Curving in the still, of faithfully protractered pools,
The water-master's geometric haven, but always sad...
Never quite Babylon, or Mecca, is it? Fez or goat enough,
Tent enough, Berber strong and warm enough...

Over the pass. My mind is at a run, contemplating El Rio
Guardalmedina; Hannibal’s retreat; the lasting insult
of unremembered dreams; two breasts vibrating,
a student's, rearranging credit cards; my father, forever
shaving in the nude, those bent blue eyes, under the shade
of martini glasses, and eucalyptus, on North Cordoba Drive,
Sounds of pirate masts, reaching, in sargosso’s still —
save for a witch’s crow.

Bus puts shoulders to the road, head swinging under a load.
And suddenly there it is, out of somewhere, baby paradise,
just as it would have been, in 732, spitting images of Atlas,
white caps over old Marakkech, but less rocks here, less
curse, more oranges in the air. But now. Disolve. Latter day,
Rolling through the gates of the city: under car-topped pillars;
Faschisti-taggers and signs of whizi-goths outside the clubs.

Ibn Khaldun's clock strikes twelve... Bus snorts — spooked:
that same scent of shephard's despair... Now where's home?
and the new Almovids whirling in the dust, disoriented,
unfounded. No, this is not a sweet Seville and never was....

Half faced

Dash portrait
Originally uploaded by macnamband.

The grail’s somber bell strikes 10.
For a blue boy’s Arthur at any age.
We pause at Plaza de la Reina,
St Martin’s all agony, half-faced,
Our traveler backs to the wall,
Go this way, that way, another way.
All dons know their sacred way.
But in the moment all looks lost;
windmill can’t turn, horse won’t budge.

Truth & Reconciliation

moon-and-mosque
Originally uploaded by macnamband.

He was from the Truth and Reconciliation Committee: Abdelhay Moudden, a big shouldered man and the academic director at the Center for Cross Cultural Learning in Rabat. He gave a lecture at the university, followed by questions. The biggest question is how the truth — the whole truth about Hassan's II's treachery, what he knew and when he knew it, which may never be known, considering the chaotic and inaccessible state of the national archives — how the truth will affect people's notion of the monarchy? Will this open the door to more democracy or more fundamentalism? Or the military who, you'll remember, staged 3 coup d'etats.

But it was the very last anecdote that caught the ear. He explained that last week he and some of the commissioners had spoken at a school near where the commission meets. At the school he met three 13-year-old girls who asked him about his work: what was he doing? What was this commission looking into? Why? He had never thought of the problem posed by having to explain this kind of work to children. What a fool he had been and suddenly he had a revelation, which was that, of course, this would all have to be explained to people for whom politics is never mentioned. The girls had all seen the commission hearings on TV. What do you remember about it? he asked. Well, they said, they remembered a few individual stories: the one about the man who was arrested while riding on his bicycle and another about a woman weeping for her lost son. He asked them, what do you think we are doing? He knew they had some idea. Just tell me, he said, what comes to mind. They shook their heads. Anything at all, he said, any idea that comes to mind. They shook their heads. And that's when it occurred to him that even having no direct experience in the violations, which may still be going on, they knew instinctively, reflexively that that this was not a subject to know anything about. Politics, he said, is taboo and we are still living in a place and a time when this subject is associated with pain. An association, an NGO, is looking into this matter of how to talk to children; it's called Mountada al Moutana, in Rabat.

Shutters on the fly

Mosque entrance at AUI
Originally uploaded by macnamband.

Shutters on the fly, in the wild blue wind,
Striking strange chords through hollow 'crete.
A score for the big uneasy, a ginsome hangover
It was that flippant Y-N oracle three days ago,
But we have a team on it: will there be an Easter?
Or is that it, the 13th month, actuarially speaking.
Not more than a year from June. Which is it,
Feeble mind? Girly-boy Berber without his sheep?
Such stupid things became you faith. Saw layers,
Signs, now messages from a garage boy’s mind?
What possessed you? Well then, you deserve it.
But of course, what to do with the habit,
Hope mind over doubt? But you don’t have it to override....
So now you’re stuck, hopped up on your wait,
Making out.... “Make it a double, please.”
Right old Bill? The G-man behind his desk,
Haunted by the early death of his only G-dad:
A right winger from Maine in the FBI.
But I'm thinkin', I just need that third book.
Then I'll go... 'c’mon, baby, just one time.'
and his was a good mind given to doubt.
In Water Street holes he revived, with 5 Vodka
Tonics and after 2, all neats, he could see light,
‘Though not tonight.... There it is again....
That flat pic will not make me dance.
Shutters on the fly, in the wild blue wind,
Tsunamis roaring down the flue.
Hey, put down that imagination, boy.
Get hold of yourself, ain't no bots in the rain.
Rest easy, girl, there’s more to come.

Going Toward It

I'm always telling them, you can be anything you want on stage. I reassure them. I explain that Building 17 is freedom's palace if there ever was one. They understand and slowly they're beginning to believe it. The core group gets it; they want more.

Once, I had a warm-up exercise in which the Red people stood perfectly still and silent, while the blue people walked around and said whatever they wanted. Then reverse. I never get involved; I prefer to go around and coach. It's a chance to be a voyeur as well. But this time, since we were short, I played the statue opposite a young actor. This was her first time. She was like a yelping dog around a bear. She backed up and crouched and went into a tirade about her worries, academic and social, but particularly about the theater and here she was taking a real risk by coming and she was afraid, and what was I going to do with her, and how would this all turn out.

We switched roles and I got very close to her, close enough that I could smell smoke in her hair and perfume. It was instantly erotic, being able to talk to her in this way. I whispered in her ear that I wanted her to be a little frightened, I wanted her to take a risk, that was the whole point, to be fearless, I said, and I told her what I had told Marina long ago, one afternoon, on the beach in Malibu. I said to the actor, it's like swimming in the ocean and suddenly here's a set you didn't notice and the waves are too big and too close together to get to the shore, yet the prospect of staying out is frightening, you'll be swept away, you'll be caught by the undertow, and so your instinct is to get in, but you start and the suction is so strong you can't and then you look over your shoulder and there's the wave, gathering up into that marble wall, that lovely, terrifying wall, rising up higher and higher, the marble disolving to black and then finally to deep green, and there you are, in no man's land. Now, you've got to suffer the break and all that boiling white chaos, or else go toward the wave and, just as it breaks, go down and dig your hands into the sand, wait, come up and then swim away from the beach.

And know that as soon as you get to the surface there'll be another wave right there. It will look monstrous and you may have to come up through the kelp, which is heavy and adhesive and you'll have to go down again, and again, and you'll have to go down and really hold on. You may have to do this three or four times, diving and surfacing, and it'll become more and more frightening. You'll begin to doubt. You'll look for help. But there's nobody on the beach and they couldn't hear you anyway.... Eventually, the sets will clear. You'll forget that; but there'll be an opening. "Go toward it," I said, looking at the side of her face, enjoying the role, languishing in the sensualities, going toward the wave, towards her, away from shore, right to the sand, feeling the wave come down like a collapsing building and roll past.

Narratives

http://www.narrativemagazine.com/rn/rns.php#macnamara

The Colonel

m
Originally uploaded by macnamband.

http://macnamband.blogspot.com/2004/12/disquieted-americans.html


Did I tell you about meeting the colonel? We met him in the souk in Casablanca. At the Debrghaleff. Down a dark little rabbit run, that ends up in electronics. Here, everyone knows the colonel. He's now a policeman. He invited us to his house. We looked at each other and agreed to go.

He lead us to his car, told us to watch for pickpockets. The car was a shiny blacked-out, black Benz. Inside, you could see it had known better days. The transmission shuddered. Doors didn't open. We drove away.

The colonel stopped by to get pastries. We arrived at his house, an old villa in the California district, which is home to retired military.  In the front yard, a Firebird up on chalks. Next to that a rotting garden. The porch, a mess.

We sat down and looked at pictures of the colonel in better days. At Ft. Benning and Ft. Hood. In the same class in war college as Schwartzkoff and the secretary of state. "Oh, I love America," said the colonel. "My first wife was from San Diego." He showed us her picture. She looked like somebody from San Diego: Blonde, dark glasses, a smile. Definitely West Coast.

These days the colonel is in charge of all detectives in Casablanca. Or so he claimed. He loves movies about espionage and international terrorism.

His wife appeared. She brought more pastries. His children appeared. Beautiful children. We talked and talked and finally it was time to go. We went out to the Benz but the tire had gone flat. We walked across the causeway. He walked with us, waited with us, hailed a cab, got us in and away. We promised we would call him, but we haven't yet.

Salon piece

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/29/view/index.html

The Specialist

In those days the Colonel had other "responsibilities." One was to keep the opposition in line and if you were on his list, he would send his men out to find you. If you were in say, Khouribga, he would send the "specialist". The "specialist" was an anonymous looking little man with unsusually smooth skin. He would arrive at your house at any hour. You were always asleep. Or, you were naked and compromised in your bed. His men would steal into your house and escort him up the stairs right to your room. They would open the door and suddenly here is the "specialist" standing over you. If you didn't wake up by then, he might look at you for a long time and maybe even draw up a chair and sit down next to you and blow smoke at your face until you woke up. "Good evening," he would say in French or Arabic. If he spoke in French he would adopt that culture and he might humililate you verbally for a moment. He might say, "Who is this woman you are sleeping with? Is this your wife or your mistress?" You see and if it was your wife, then she would think you had a mistress. If it was your mistress then you would be on notice. He always knew. He was like a good lawyer, he always knew the answer to his question. Or, he might speak to you in Arabic and he would speak in a low voice and tell you that you were barely goat shit and enough was enough. He was, he said with his left eye fluttering sometimes, finished with your doubts and your fears and whatever reservations you had about the government. He might occasionally also speak in English, if you knew he could not speak it, or Spanish, as a way to test you and he might say, "I'm going to fuck your wife right now in front of you and all my men after me." And if you didn't react that would tell him something and he would go further to find out if you were either ignorant or clever. He would track you down, bring you to ground. Isn't that the expression? and then suddenly he might stand up and leave. He would go down to the car while you got dressed. Or else, if you were naked, he might sit there and watch you get dressed and comment on your body, on your fat or your muscles or lack of them and of course inevitably "your thing" as he called it. How is "your thing" doing these days. And he might even talk to it, and have the guards bring you close so that he could speak directly and at close range, as though it were another person. "I'll bet you know something; and I'll bet you'll talk won't you. You'll tell me what's been going on here. You never lie and I trust you. So don't worry, you'll be taken care of; you don't have to worry. But it's important that you get him to understand."

And then he might look at you. And depending on his mood he might have one his men lean down take you in his mouth. Anything was possible. He might pull out a pair of scissors and snap them open and shut. There were other specialists in those times, and they all used different methods. But the head of specialists, the most feared and the one the colonel handpicked, and some say, trained, for the job, was this one. I have never heard him called by name, only the "specialist." When I asked the colonel, he merely smiled and shook his head. "I never asked," the colonel said to me.

When he was finnished with you, in one way or another, he would go down to the car and wait for his men to bring you down and you would all drive back to Casa. Followed by a second car. He always went in two cars. If you were important he would have you sit in the front seat and he would never stop playing with your mind. He might show you a piece of piano wire he carried in his pocket. He would talk about the g string, and if you were sophistcated, he might make a joke about the double meaning of the G string. Or even the G spot. "I love the G spot," he would say. "I always find it. Women know I will." He would try to get you to relax and then he might slip the G string around you neck and let you ride with it like that for several hours. He could tighten it or not. And so you were always living in the moment. This was his plan, to get you to live in the moment, but of course always a moment of fear. And then at some point he would offer you Moroccan tea. With honey. That was his signature, the honey. That was sign to you; you were now in the hands of an icon, a myth. If you had questions until this moment, then you could relax if only because the truth was out. You are in the hands of the Specialist. And so he would take you to Casa to the colonel's home in the Laya quartier where your experience would begin in earnest....

Dialogue With Stone

Volubilis
Originally uploaded by macnamband.

What is that? I asked, seeing something in the distance. Looks like someone. Or is it a shadow? A shadow, said Stone.
— No, it's a person. I can see them quite clearly now.
— Allah's shadow on earth.
— His what?
— caliph.
— How do you know?
No reply. He's like that. Just drifts off. Gets to the punchline and won't tell you. I went back to pushing. We were almost to the top.
— I don't understand these berbers, I said after another long time.
— What's to understand?
— You look in their eyes and.... And....
— Yes, and....
— I see pessemism.
— What did you hope for?
— Some sign of hope. But all I see is pessemism, as though their emotions were very far away, just a glimmer. You hold their faces in your hands and you are watching old ruins, you are looking into their dark tents in the middle of winter.
— They're warriors. Think of their empires. Imagine such a life.
— Yes, I understand and then after the battle, what is there? Only sorrow, for the dead and because the battle is over. Life is hope for another battle.... What was her name, Kareena? The amazon, who smeered her breasts with hennae the night before a great battle. Who drank the blood of her enmey's children....
— Think of the power that might give you.
I look at the stone.
— And what is their culture? I said. Nothing. They have none. They're thieves and cons. But I have this attraction for them.
— They're familiar.
I saw something far away just as we reached the top and the stone went rolling off toward the bottom.
What is that? Another Caliph, perhaps.