Friday afternoon. We go to the aids wing of the district hospital in Eldoret, a wild west town of 40,000 in the highlands above the Rift Valley. Marina has been very clever, she has lead me into the country slowly as though a long qualification is required. First to the game preserve, to heritage, to the ‘idea’ of Africa, to what little is left you could say of its origins; then closer in, but still on the flanks, to the colonial notion of a far away place, wild and inescapably beautiful. But ever in a compound, ever protected. Ever cut off.
Then finally, on the third day, to this second story room we’re in right now, with ten people, men and women in their 20s and 30s and one woman, in her late 40s. They look like professionals. They are attractive people, well groomed, with big smiles, confident looking. They remind me of insurance sales people I used to work with. In fact, they are trainers and outreach workers and they look like trainers and outreach workers anywhere in the world. Janice, the woman in her 40s, is a forceful personality, in her closely cropped hair, with her theatrical manner and voice. She introduces me to the group with the suggestion — and I'm guessing here — that because Marina is in Africa, and by gracious extension, African, therefore I am also African and being a father I am the father of everyone in the room. Everyone addresses me as 'Dad.'
'Hello, Dad.' And I'm thinking, is Janice playing with me or is this merely a clever graciousness? Later, I talk to her in the hall, say goodbye, and she seems both distant and close. I can't make her out. But then she has the illness, herself.
After Janice's introduction, one by one, we go around the room and each person identifies themselves. Most begin, ‘I am hiv-positive, ‘ and they might add, “living positively”, which has become the catch phrase in the last several years, a mantra from Magic Johnson perhaps to remind oneself that the stigma can be faced and life goes on. Despite the awfulness of the disease and all it has done to ravage humanity and make filth of a life. In West Pokot the infection rate is around 10 percent, although figures are suspect. Perhaps, 7 percent. And falling although the worst has yet to come......
So these people dressed in skirts and slacks are the front line soldiers whose job it is to go to towns and villages and persuade people that testing is worthwhile, especially for children, that condoms are not filled with the virus, that this is not an American plot to kill Africans, one of those myths that many here believe. And that living and facing this disease is the way to shed the stigma, not hiding, not fearing.
It’s tough work. And consider that these workers who themselves have the disease also have families. And they’re having children and having sex.....
Afterwards, Marina goes off to see someone. I stay in the courtyard of AMPATH, the large NGO, whose three story building this is, and whose game this is as well. They’re the organization spearheading getting drugs and food to HIV patients in the West Pokot District — one of say four districts where the virus in Kenya has hit hardest; the others are around Mombassa on the coast, Lake Victoria, three hours to the east, and to the south. All tolled there are 2 million people here who are HIV positive. Along with 900,000 orphans, in other words, children with one or both parents dead from the illness.
After I run into Janice I sit on the brick boundary of a circular garden in the courtyard. I notice a neon green grasshopper. I put my finger out; it shakes the tip of my finger and leaves its leg in the air as though to say, ‘I enjoyed meeting you.’ I try to continue our conversation but it jumps away, and then again. It moves toward a deep hole in the cement and I stand up and try to steer it away back toward this little circular garden, but it doesn't want to go that way and it occurs to me that I may increase the very danger I’m trying to eliminate, so I walk away. Everything is a metaphor in Africa.
Marina returns and we walk out to the parking lot of the hospital. And now there is an interesting little exchange that tells you much about the interior of the problem in fighting AIDS. Marina is arranging a taxi to take three trainers to their home after this seminar. In the background a man is singing from a low building with bars. This seems to be the facility for mental health patients. I ask the taxi driver what the man is singing but he doesn’t know because they’re from different tribes.
I notice a woman standing a few yards, away, white, in her 40s, clearly an American, with the sunglasses and body authority so engrained in Americans. She's from Iowa and exchanges greetings with Marina who asks about the possibility of getting more services to some of her patients. This is a long and convoluted story, but suffice to say Marina’s NGO works in part as a subcontractor to AMPATH, does some of the outreach work and shares in the grant money which AMPATH pulls in by bucket full. And to its credit. But there is some acrimony here. The NGO business is entrepreneurial by nature. The directors often act like Greek colonels or Donald Trumps for that matter. It’s all about control and since you’re so far away from the donors and administrators in New York or London or Geneva, anything goes. And if you can show the numbers, you get more money. And if you are a powerful personality you can attract more money. And the more money you get and the more numbers you get — the more people you can document getting your service — the more donors you get. The whole edifice of NGOs is built on the notion of critical mass — of patients and donors. Efficiency, however you define that, becomes the guiding principle, but as your organization grows bigger, and more and more management controls are applied to handle the ever bigger number of patients, the humanity sometimes begins to leak out. And in terms of management flexibility may be sacrificed. So the director of AMPATH, who is by all accounts a dedicated and creative genius, has set up his organization of clinics and satellite offices like a MacDonald’s franchise. There is one model for each clinic and you don’t deviate from the model, which is both good and bad. In effect, you leave little room for error, or innovation.
Marina’s NGO is small. She has four employees; AMPATH has dozens and big time grant money. Marina's notion is that there isn’t just one model and that all models need to remain organic, all models must be joint ventures between the NGO and local staff, and of course between doctors or social workers and patients. In effect, it’s the Paul Farmer notion that you give someone what they need and you treat one person as you would treat many and you treat all people as though they were your mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter. As you would if you were in America or Europe.
And so Marina and this woman from AMPATH are standing in the dirt parking lot of the aids wing with the crazy man singing in the background and Marina wants to know if food distribution and drug distribution can be localized. The other woman in an imperious way, responds and right away you can hear her defensiveness. Marina steps toward her and the power dance begins. The other woman says, "well, we’re thinking about it but there’s nothing we can do right now “ And then she adds to leave hope on the table, “we’re continuing to discuss it.” In that tone of organization-speak, which is to say, “mind your own business, we’ll get to it when we goddamn well please.”
But Marina is not put off and having presented her thesis in front of a room full of Yale’s finest minds in the school of public health isn’t going to be deterred by such old and transparent obstacles.
“Okay, but I still don’t quite understand why we can’t get these services to people who have to make several trips, to get drugs in one trip and food in another....”
Marina steps still closer, the other woman backs up. “But we have only a few people coming to these sites and it’s going to be a long time before we reach the critical mass that will make it worth while to....” The other woman is now retreating to her vehicle. “We’re going to keep discussing it but like I said, we just can’t do anything right now.’”
Right now is any time soon,. Right now is in the next few months, by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the patients must get to market today, must get medicine by tomorrow, must get their children tested as soon as possible. The well meaning woman from Iowa, who has herself been in the Peace Corps, is lost in the model, in the diagrams and grant proposals, and the expectations of people far away, who want the atta-a-boy feeling they’re doing something for the world.
But ‘on the ground,’ in the heart of darkness, the heart is your only hope, and once in you’re in, once you’ve made contact, your humanity is all that’s possible.... Nothing else will do, you have no other protection.
At the end of this, I’m thinking, Enough time spent on dialectics, reasons and withdrawals. Too long wandering among interesting ideas and pretty possibilities. Time to commit, to put your money down on something, to engage fully.
May 26, 2006
May 24, 2006
Lake Baringo
We drive north, further up the Rift Valley. We reach Baringo Lake. In the middle there's a lodge. I'm sitting there as we speak. It's 4:20 in the afternoon, hot but cooling. Behind me are two single beds, in a tall tent under a thatched roof. Banjo lake is in the middle of the valley. In front of me, perhaps 20 miles away, are the bluffs that border the northern side of the valley. Directly in front of me is a yellow weaver. I can hear the gurgling coo of a male gray dove enticing its lady love. The sounds of birds are everywhere in the bushes.
Somwhere behind me and above Marina is reading by a pool. She’s reading Aspirin, the story of how Bayer refined the process of taking salicylic acid out of willow bark and turning it into a miracle drug. Four o'clock tea is being served. The only other people at this camp are a father, an investment banker from New York, wit hhis two sons, one in his 20s, and a woman companion. Her role is unclear. She is older, with curly hair and a British accent.
In front of me the sky steches west in a way reminiscent of films made in the 1950s, in cinemascope. The clouds are scattered but they appear flattened, unnatural, surreal. To my left, all objects — mountains, sky, lake and bluff — have turned blue as indigo ink. It’s the beginning of the rainy season, small storms pass by here late every afternoon.
In a few minutes we will set out on a 25-foot skiff. Dixon, the guide will take us around the island. He will point out birds on the shore and as part of the show he’ll whistle for a fishcatcher eagle watching from a branch about a quarter mile away. Then he’ll throw a small fish over the side. The eagle will come running, circle several times, appearing both shy and wary, a reluctant performer, but then finally will tuck wings, dive and without seeming to look, snatch the fish. Then a few rain drops will multiply and the banker and his sons will propose returning to shore. The older woman whose status is unclear will open her umbrella. The boys will open an umbrella, there will be another call to see who would like to return to shore. Marina and I remain quiet, but our vote will not be enough and we will return to shore. When we reach the pier the shower will have passed and one of the boys will say, not a little defensively, that he’s worried about his digital camera getting wet. Marina and I will return to our cabin and we will continue our conversation about Paul Farmer, the icon of all those who come to the developing world, not to evangelize but to help. Farmer teaches two courses at Harvard, runs a clinic in Haiti (see Tracy Kidder’s biography), travels all over the world, answers hundreds of email messages a day himself, and occasionally stops in to see his wife and children in Paris. It’s the A personality run amok but all to the good and Marina recounts pieces of the legend including the time Farmer gave away $4,000 to a returning vet down on his luck, the time he had a boy flown by private plane for expensive surgery from one country to another, at a cost of $20,000 and when critics said, ‘the money would be better spent on prevention or serving a greater number of people,’ Farmer’s reply was to question why the pilot doesn’t give up some of his salary and why don’t all the people involved in this operation sacrifice something so the cost wouldn’t be $20,000. In essence, why is it so hard for people in the West particularly to see all children, as their own?
We will talk about that and Marina will talk about her work and her life, about the metaphorical island she lives on, and we will go to dinner, which will be unexpectedly good, and we will overhear the father at the other table recount stories about his ex-wife and about the expense of New York and one of the sons will talk about living at home. And the proprietor of the lodge, Percy Hennessey, a ‘chap’ if there ever was one, a Brit in early 50s, in full colonial regalia, the shorts, the shirt, the rascally tone, the suggestion of a man who has perhaps lived on islands too much.... he will recast his life, working for various hotels in Africa and how this is the second oldest lodge in Kenya, and then he’ll take us to see his new internet set-up and a photo of his girl friend on the desktop. And then we will go to bed and the next morning wake up just in time to see the sun rising over the bluffs on the horizon and the lake will change colors and we will go out on the skiff again and see the whole island, and crocs, and hippos and more birds, and I will become lost in the bow wave of the skiff filled with electric bolts and scratches from the light. And we will go on over mountains and to the top of the plateau, to Kitale.
But just now, in the middle of the afternoon, with everything uncomfortably still because there is nothing to do, no activity at all, which takes some doing in itself, but in memory it seems like another trait of Africa, more being than doing, listening, waiting for the heat to pass, waiting for the cool to begin and then the hunt.
And just now I notice a crocodile swimming along the shore. It looks very long, about 5 feet. Later we will hear about Shirely, a woman that lives on an adjacent island, separated by a narrow marsh, which is the home of the crocs. A few years ago she went swimming which has been her custom for the last 30 years and was attached by a croc. Her arms were all but torn off, sewn back on later. One, said Mr. Hennessy, is no good, can’t do anything with it, but the other she can still lift a fork. She’s 74 by the way. Shirley Dufrene, the wife of one of the men that originally opened the camp. But he left after a few years and she stayed on. After the crocodile bit her she had a pool built, which was filled with lake water, so it’s the color of mud and when Mr. Hennessey asked her if she wasn’t afraid of going swimming in her pool, she assured him that she always asks the gardener to go in first.
Somwhere behind me and above Marina is reading by a pool. She’s reading Aspirin, the story of how Bayer refined the process of taking salicylic acid out of willow bark and turning it into a miracle drug. Four o'clock tea is being served. The only other people at this camp are a father, an investment banker from New York, wit hhis two sons, one in his 20s, and a woman companion. Her role is unclear. She is older, with curly hair and a British accent.
In front of me the sky steches west in a way reminiscent of films made in the 1950s, in cinemascope. The clouds are scattered but they appear flattened, unnatural, surreal. To my left, all objects — mountains, sky, lake and bluff — have turned blue as indigo ink. It’s the beginning of the rainy season, small storms pass by here late every afternoon.
In a few minutes we will set out on a 25-foot skiff. Dixon, the guide will take us around the island. He will point out birds on the shore and as part of the show he’ll whistle for a fishcatcher eagle watching from a branch about a quarter mile away. Then he’ll throw a small fish over the side. The eagle will come running, circle several times, appearing both shy and wary, a reluctant performer, but then finally will tuck wings, dive and without seeming to look, snatch the fish. Then a few rain drops will multiply and the banker and his sons will propose returning to shore. The older woman whose status is unclear will open her umbrella. The boys will open an umbrella, there will be another call to see who would like to return to shore. Marina and I remain quiet, but our vote will not be enough and we will return to shore. When we reach the pier the shower will have passed and one of the boys will say, not a little defensively, that he’s worried about his digital camera getting wet. Marina and I will return to our cabin and we will continue our conversation about Paul Farmer, the icon of all those who come to the developing world, not to evangelize but to help. Farmer teaches two courses at Harvard, runs a clinic in Haiti (see Tracy Kidder’s biography), travels all over the world, answers hundreds of email messages a day himself, and occasionally stops in to see his wife and children in Paris. It’s the A personality run amok but all to the good and Marina recounts pieces of the legend including the time Farmer gave away $4,000 to a returning vet down on his luck, the time he had a boy flown by private plane for expensive surgery from one country to another, at a cost of $20,000 and when critics said, ‘the money would be better spent on prevention or serving a greater number of people,’ Farmer’s reply was to question why the pilot doesn’t give up some of his salary and why don’t all the people involved in this operation sacrifice something so the cost wouldn’t be $20,000. In essence, why is it so hard for people in the West particularly to see all children, as their own?
We will talk about that and Marina will talk about her work and her life, about the metaphorical island she lives on, and we will go to dinner, which will be unexpectedly good, and we will overhear the father at the other table recount stories about his ex-wife and about the expense of New York and one of the sons will talk about living at home. And the proprietor of the lodge, Percy Hennessey, a ‘chap’ if there ever was one, a Brit in early 50s, in full colonial regalia, the shorts, the shirt, the rascally tone, the suggestion of a man who has perhaps lived on islands too much.... he will recast his life, working for various hotels in Africa and how this is the second oldest lodge in Kenya, and then he’ll take us to see his new internet set-up and a photo of his girl friend on the desktop. And then we will go to bed and the next morning wake up just in time to see the sun rising over the bluffs on the horizon and the lake will change colors and we will go out on the skiff again and see the whole island, and crocs, and hippos and more birds, and I will become lost in the bow wave of the skiff filled with electric bolts and scratches from the light. And we will go on over mountains and to the top of the plateau, to Kitale.
But just now, in the middle of the afternoon, with everything uncomfortably still because there is nothing to do, no activity at all, which takes some doing in itself, but in memory it seems like another trait of Africa, more being than doing, listening, waiting for the heat to pass, waiting for the cool to begin and then the hunt.
And just now I notice a crocodile swimming along the shore. It looks very long, about 5 feet. Later we will hear about Shirely, a woman that lives on an adjacent island, separated by a narrow marsh, which is the home of the crocs. A few years ago she went swimming which has been her custom for the last 30 years and was attached by a croc. Her arms were all but torn off, sewn back on later. One, said Mr. Hennessy, is no good, can’t do anything with it, but the other she can still lift a fork. She’s 74 by the way. Shirley Dufrene, the wife of one of the men that originally opened the camp. But he left after a few years and she stayed on. After the crocodile bit her she had a pool built, which was filled with lake water, so it’s the color of mud and when Mr. Hennessey asked her if she wasn’t afraid of going swimming in her pool, she assured him that she always asks the gardener to go in first.
Nakuru
Nakuru
In the morning we stop at the auditor, which advises Marina’s NGO, Doctors of the World. DOW, which is based in New York, is one half of a French organization that includes Docteurs Sans Frontiers. DOW has a human rights aspect that Docteurs Sans Frontiers doesn’t.
We go on to visit Merlin, an NGO that provides medical services. Marina is ever looking to network. The project director is Lionella, a fiery Italian who after two years is quitting to find another job and to start a cat orphanage.
We go on, in an SUV crammed with bee hives for one of Marina’s friends. The drive is four hours to Nakaru Lake Game preserve. The road out of Nairobi is unbelievably bad. A dirt road after a rain storm is better. As a result of indifference and the relentless pounding of semi trailers, the road is a colander of pot holes. And in the late afternoon, roaring dust and black diesel smoke become a fog bank so thick you can barely see the dim red brake lights of trucks ahead, much less holes to avoid. The road is also narrow and drivers use the shoulders as a lane. They also heard together charging into the gloam with no thought of collision.
We stop in Nakuru, meet some friends of Marina, and then reach the preserve late in the afternoon. We drive thorough it, you're not allowed out of your car as there are lions and leopards, driving past gazelles, white rhinos, dik-diks, water buffalo, giraffes, literally hundreds of thousands of storks, both larger and lesser, we see a leopard in a tree, about 100 yards off the road, lying splayed on a long arching branch, all four legs hanging down.... We spend the night in a lodge overlooking the preserve. The place is jammed with the jowly, heavy bresated people, in their long tight shorts.
In the morning we stop at the auditor, which advises Marina’s NGO, Doctors of the World. DOW, which is based in New York, is one half of a French organization that includes Docteurs Sans Frontiers. DOW has a human rights aspect that Docteurs Sans Frontiers doesn’t.
We go on to visit Merlin, an NGO that provides medical services. Marina is ever looking to network. The project director is Lionella, a fiery Italian who after two years is quitting to find another job and to start a cat orphanage.
We go on, in an SUV crammed with bee hives for one of Marina’s friends. The drive is four hours to Nakaru Lake Game preserve. The road out of Nairobi is unbelievably bad. A dirt road after a rain storm is better. As a result of indifference and the relentless pounding of semi trailers, the road is a colander of pot holes. And in the late afternoon, roaring dust and black diesel smoke become a fog bank so thick you can barely see the dim red brake lights of trucks ahead, much less holes to avoid. The road is also narrow and drivers use the shoulders as a lane. They also heard together charging into the gloam with no thought of collision.
We stop in Nakuru, meet some friends of Marina, and then reach the preserve late in the afternoon. We drive thorough it, you're not allowed out of your car as there are lions and leopards, driving past gazelles, white rhinos, dik-diks, water buffalo, giraffes, literally hundreds of thousands of storks, both larger and lesser, we see a leopard in a tree, about 100 yards off the road, lying splayed on a long arching branch, all four legs hanging down.... We spend the night in a lodge overlooking the preserve. The place is jammed with the jowly, heavy bresated people, in their long tight shorts.
Nairobi
Nairobi, late Tuesday night. The plane arrives after a stopover in Rwanda.
Nairobi is a crime capital of East Africa, although first hand reports are hard to find. We go to the Fairview Lodge, directly across the street from the Israeli Embassy, which is embalmed in barbed wire. The room has an overhead fan. Things are modern and careless.
Kenya presents an interesting comparison with Morocco. Roughly the same population, the same number of square miles, both on a highly commercial ocean, both colonies, both corrupt to the bedrock, both bombed by Islamic fundamentalists, both filled with roadblocks although the police here carry rifles and machine guns, unlike police in Morocco. Both countries present the appearance of democracy.... Yet the most glaring difference in that sense is that Kenya has a true civil society; Morocco, not. If only for The Nation, which compared to Le Matin, is a true newspaper, and filled to the brim with stories of wrongdoing and intrigue. As opposed to the press releases in Le Matin.
In addition, Morocco is above the equator, Kenya is on the equator and below.... All the stereotypes that go with north and south apply. And then culturally of course one is 99 percent Muslim, the other is brackish with various denominations of Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and animists.
One country is homogeneous, the other, heterogeneous. One is a monarchy, the other an oligarchy with old dictators in the wings.
Morocco seems dour by contrast, repressed, more careful, less docile more despairing, more seething. Kenya seems happy go lucky, almost frivolous in a way. The customs agents joke and play with me when I complain about paying $50 for a visa. Moroccan customs agents never laugh, and they would never hear criticism of the country’s parliament, that ‘political souk’ as appointments call it. I asked the Kenyan customs agents if the $50 is to help pay for the salaries of the new parliament which just voted itself an $81,000 annual salary, plus an equal amount in expense money. In addition, they’re given free cars and houses. The annual per capita income in Kenya is $463. “I would not want to venture an opinion,” said one of the agents, a woman, “Yes, but of course, its’ true. And why do we vote them in? That you have to ask yourself. But next year we will try again.”
And here’s one other difference: The swank neighborhoods of Kenya are filled with the signs of NGOs. Morocco, no. The associations, except for a few keep a low profile and perhaps play a different role. And there are fewer of them and fewer from the West. For a moment here you get that impression that everyone in the world has come to help Kenya, and no one more than W’s faith based institutions.
Nairobi is a crime capital of East Africa, although first hand reports are hard to find. We go to the Fairview Lodge, directly across the street from the Israeli Embassy, which is embalmed in barbed wire. The room has an overhead fan. Things are modern and careless.
Kenya presents an interesting comparison with Morocco. Roughly the same population, the same number of square miles, both on a highly commercial ocean, both colonies, both corrupt to the bedrock, both bombed by Islamic fundamentalists, both filled with roadblocks although the police here carry rifles and machine guns, unlike police in Morocco. Both countries present the appearance of democracy.... Yet the most glaring difference in that sense is that Kenya has a true civil society; Morocco, not. If only for The Nation, which compared to Le Matin, is a true newspaper, and filled to the brim with stories of wrongdoing and intrigue. As opposed to the press releases in Le Matin.
In addition, Morocco is above the equator, Kenya is on the equator and below.... All the stereotypes that go with north and south apply. And then culturally of course one is 99 percent Muslim, the other is brackish with various denominations of Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and animists.
One country is homogeneous, the other, heterogeneous. One is a monarchy, the other an oligarchy with old dictators in the wings.
Morocco seems dour by contrast, repressed, more careful, less docile more despairing, more seething. Kenya seems happy go lucky, almost frivolous in a way. The customs agents joke and play with me when I complain about paying $50 for a visa. Moroccan customs agents never laugh, and they would never hear criticism of the country’s parliament, that ‘political souk’ as appointments call it. I asked the Kenyan customs agents if the $50 is to help pay for the salaries of the new parliament which just voted itself an $81,000 annual salary, plus an equal amount in expense money. In addition, they’re given free cars and houses. The annual per capita income in Kenya is $463. “I would not want to venture an opinion,” said one of the agents, a woman, “Yes, but of course, its’ true. And why do we vote them in? That you have to ask yourself. But next year we will try again.”
And here’s one other difference: The swank neighborhoods of Kenya are filled with the signs of NGOs. Morocco, no. The associations, except for a few keep a low profile and perhaps play a different role. And there are fewer of them and fewer from the West. For a moment here you get that impression that everyone in the world has come to help Kenya, and no one more than W’s faith based institutions.
May 23, 2006
transiting through Brussels
On the plane to Brussels, the passengers were returning from an exotic place. The women carried heavy breasts and jowls, and bad skin. They seemed happy to be going home. The men ate quickly and demanded more wine. The stewardesses were blonde and tired. They gave out newspapers in Flemish. The headlines spoke in huge type. The news was dire, stocks all over the world had taken a dive.
The plane descended. The winds were ferocious and the fuselage groaned under the strain. The plane kept sideslipping and then dropping. Passengers grew quiet. The woman next to me held a girl of two or three. The woman had a cheap, worn look. I wondered if she was a prostitute, I don't know why. She was petrified in those last seconds before the plane touched down....
The streets of Brussels seem particularly modern, generic, clean. In the first miles on the train from the airport the only trash was a Kleenex tissue on the rail beds. On the train a nun sat perfectly still, in her perfectly pressed tunic. She wore wire rim glasses and neither a serious expression nor a calm expression. She drew a pen out from beneath her tunic, from a row of pens hanging in a little engineer’s shirt protector. Everything was just so. When the conductor asked for her ticket her left eye shuddered; there was a problem. She drew out a document; the conductor examined it and passed on. The nun sighed in relief.
The place seemed dreamlike in its cleanliness but then after a few miles, the first signs of the city to come — graffiti, in what was one continuous mural running across the side of every coach in the yard, across the ground level of every building, every structure, shed and statue, all the way to gare de nord.
And then, what city were you in? You couldn’t make it out. A squat WTC, some modest 30 story glass buildings, it could be Croydon, the insurance capital of England, or somewhere in the old East Germany, and as drab and dated as an old school tie.
Dinner in a sushi house in the center of town. A dozen tables, with mostly kids, save an older man in the corner and some business men in short sleeved shirts at a table for six. The atmosphere was quiet subdued, sedated, The look of people with everything, not used to working hard, and with not a lot to say about their luck. Another glass of beer perhaps? Not even that. But in the middle of the room, some rough riders. A man in his late 40s, an Asian woman. They stood out. He, blowing smoke rings, she casing the food on other tables. They seemed slightly seedy, up to some small no-good.
In the streets, an occasional horn. In the hotel, staff joked quietly, with nuance. In the internet cafe, only a few monitors were taken. Outside a Cineplex, where no one was coming to see The Da Vinci Code, a woman in a veil stood holding a man up in her arms. He appeared to be drunk or sick. late 20s. She was about his age or a little older. She was holding this man up in the middle of this plaza, in a heavy drizzle. The man in her arms was dressed in black rocker jacket and pants, with a
gold chain. He had the look of the Maghreb as well, someone who had stolen their way into the country a few years ago, or joined cousins and got work, got in the life, and then, like some rare animal from the desert unable to manage in a cold country’s zoo, was dying.
The plane descended. The winds were ferocious and the fuselage groaned under the strain. The plane kept sideslipping and then dropping. Passengers grew quiet. The woman next to me held a girl of two or three. The woman had a cheap, worn look. I wondered if she was a prostitute, I don't know why. She was petrified in those last seconds before the plane touched down....
The streets of Brussels seem particularly modern, generic, clean. In the first miles on the train from the airport the only trash was a Kleenex tissue on the rail beds. On the train a nun sat perfectly still, in her perfectly pressed tunic. She wore wire rim glasses and neither a serious expression nor a calm expression. She drew a pen out from beneath her tunic, from a row of pens hanging in a little engineer’s shirt protector. Everything was just so. When the conductor asked for her ticket her left eye shuddered; there was a problem. She drew out a document; the conductor examined it and passed on. The nun sighed in relief.
The place seemed dreamlike in its cleanliness but then after a few miles, the first signs of the city to come — graffiti, in what was one continuous mural running across the side of every coach in the yard, across the ground level of every building, every structure, shed and statue, all the way to gare de nord.
And then, what city were you in? You couldn’t make it out. A squat WTC, some modest 30 story glass buildings, it could be Croydon, the insurance capital of England, or somewhere in the old East Germany, and as drab and dated as an old school tie.
Dinner in a sushi house in the center of town. A dozen tables, with mostly kids, save an older man in the corner and some business men in short sleeved shirts at a table for six. The atmosphere was quiet subdued, sedated, The look of people with everything, not used to working hard, and with not a lot to say about their luck. Another glass of beer perhaps? Not even that. But in the middle of the room, some rough riders. A man in his late 40s, an Asian woman. They stood out. He, blowing smoke rings, she casing the food on other tables. They seemed slightly seedy, up to some small no-good.
In the streets, an occasional horn. In the hotel, staff joked quietly, with nuance. In the internet cafe, only a few monitors were taken. Outside a Cineplex, where no one was coming to see The Da Vinci Code, a woman in a veil stood holding a man up in her arms. He appeared to be drunk or sick. late 20s. She was about his age or a little older. She was holding this man up in the middle of this plaza, in a heavy drizzle. The man in her arms was dressed in black rocker jacket and pants, with a
gold chain. He had the look of the Maghreb as well, someone who had stolen their way into the country a few years ago, or joined cousins and got work, got in the life, and then, like some rare animal from the desert unable to manage in a cold country’s zoo, was dying.
May 18, 2006
May 13, 2006
May 6, 2006
93 and cloudy
This is where we are. Neither here nor there. Suddenly, I feel like a child urged to come back indoors when it's so much more interesting at someone else's house. On the other hand, this is always a love-hate relationship. The "culture of despair" is eventually an illness that even a foreigner catches. Mohamed Choukri, the great novelist (For Bread Alone is his best) once accused Paul Bowles of loving Morocco but hating Moroccans. I may have mentioned this before. Asked to respond Bowles claimed, not entirely with humor, that his once close friend had lost his mind. Whether accurate or not I've felt that sense. The endless road blocks, the nuances of corruption, large and small, personal and professional, and as a teacher the relentless resistance of students to work, to examine, to question. For each there is a but, a qualification, a counter argument or scene, and of course the country itself, the place itself, that undeniable exoticism which is the like the arable land, being slowly dried up globalization, by the new Marjane's in Meknes, by "Notre Maisons" Magazine, a color glossy home and garden magazine, by the relentlessness of TV, by the constant contrast between proof of despair here and the promise of hope in Europe or America, by a trillion little nuances moving like locusts through the country.... By us, in part, despairing this and that.
And so I, we, are caught. The other reason to return, the one we keep repeating is that we want a better education for Dash. That he's been beaten up now and then — and that his class of six includes one psychopath (who recently did a science experiment to see how fast crayfish died in boiling water and is rumored to have burned up two kittens) and one porn addict (a character from Morocco's South Street), both 12 — of course, this could also happen in America but there is something else, more than when we arrived, a hostility. You feel in the marche. You hear of it from students talking of parents who wish the university would get rid of the American teachers, and the American style of education as well. The smiles are in tact; the motion to cover the heart as a sign of good will. But the threads are wearing thin. You can see through now.
For sure, the country is turning inward a little. Arranged marriages are all the rage in Fez these days. That wasn't true a few years ago. The Islamicists are expected to win big next year. I have the sense the Arab Awakening has reached the end of the day. So time to go. Better to pull back.
And yet....
And so I, we, are caught. The other reason to return, the one we keep repeating is that we want a better education for Dash. That he's been beaten up now and then — and that his class of six includes one psychopath (who recently did a science experiment to see how fast crayfish died in boiling water and is rumored to have burned up two kittens) and one porn addict (a character from Morocco's South Street), both 12 — of course, this could also happen in America but there is something else, more than when we arrived, a hostility. You feel in the marche. You hear of it from students talking of parents who wish the university would get rid of the American teachers, and the American style of education as well. The smiles are in tact; the motion to cover the heart as a sign of good will. But the threads are wearing thin. You can see through now.
For sure, the country is turning inward a little. Arranged marriages are all the rage in Fez these days. That wasn't true a few years ago. The Islamicists are expected to win big next year. I have the sense the Arab Awakening has reached the end of the day. So time to go. Better to pull back.
And yet....
May 2, 2006
Arabian Nights
B is tutoring the princess. Lala Naizir, 16, is not quite pretty, more ungainly, smart, a hard worker, and the grand daughter of Hassan II, who presided over 'the black years.' She goes to school in Casa and missed a month this winter because of depression. Her family came to the mountains for a week and thought perhaps she might get some remedial help from ASI. She is sincere, particularly when the subject of poverty in America came up. "I've heard that it exists," she said, "but I don't believe it." She may be only dimmly aware of poverty in this countr as well, as she rides in her limo, behind tinted glass marveling at all the red flags put on the road into Ifrane, every hundred yards a flag, and a police man at every intersection, and shock and awe among all that see her car.
Apr 21, 2006
School for Scandal
There was a much needed scandal last month when Mr. J, a math teacher at the Ifrane School felt insulted by his 12th grade students, demanded they be punished, and threatened to quit even if they were. The punishment he wanted was forfeiture of their graduation ceremony. The head of school, Ms. W., a stick figured New Yorker, and a stick by any measure, readily agreed. Dr. O. the university's aging matinee idol and VP of student affairs agreed. For a moment, it looked as though Mr. J. who spent 20 years in the Canadian Navy, had won a great victory over 'the kids.' Actually, they didn't seem to care much but their parents did. Unfortunately, the problem was resolved. Mr. J. didn't quit. The graduation ceremony will go on. But there was a catty little post script, which was that one of the students who particpated in the insult, which was laughing through Mr. J.'s lecture, laughing behind his back, and laughing to his face, was accepted to Brown. This is the biggest thing to happen here since, as my father used to say, since 'night baseball.' Or, 'since Grandpa stopped drinking his bath water.' So the other day the girl's father, Mr. L., who is somehow connected to the palace, came to a teacher conference to talk to Barbara about his sacred daughter. He had just come from talking to sailor. J. who he had told off. "I don't think he realized," said O, "how close he came to destroying so much.' O went on to say that his daugther's glory was not just hers but his, and his family's, and the Ifrane school's, and even by extension the university's. "Everyone shares in my daughter's accomplishment," he said. "It's a shame it might have been all taken away by this idiot."
Which tells you something about the ummah, about how the poor girl that got into Brown has little claim to her success.
Which tells you something about the ummah, about how the poor girl that got into Brown has little claim to her success.
Apr 16, 2006
Unpainted
Third floor, just past 4, at the Palais cafe:
The scent of minted tea, and in the plasma,
Amateur men's basketball, from Casa;
Along with some empty glasses,
A chattering heel.... The waiter disappears below.
Over there three men huddle by a window,
Looking down on the street, pointing.
Otherwise, nobody, save a cleaning lady,
Seated by water bucket and mop.
Veiled and ageless. As though waiting
For a 19th Century English portrait painter,
Who will look around and note the fake tree with plastic boughs,
The old plaster rock, the silver yellow fish,
hanging dead in an algae-dark tank,
And the startling colours of a high-pitched laugh.
The scent of minted tea, and in the plasma,
Amateur men's basketball, from Casa;
Along with some empty glasses,
A chattering heel.... The waiter disappears below.
Over there three men huddle by a window,
Looking down on the street, pointing.
Otherwise, nobody, save a cleaning lady,
Seated by water bucket and mop.
Veiled and ageless. As though waiting
For a 19th Century English portrait painter,
Who will look around and note the fake tree with plastic boughs,
The old plaster rock, the silver yellow fish,
hanging dead in an algae-dark tank,
And the startling colours of a high-pitched laugh.
Apr 13, 2006
Apr 9, 2006
Mountain
We had a birthday party for Dash on Saturday night. We invited three families, including the people next door. They never came. The mother is a doctor, and a politician, from a small town east of Malaga. Last fall, she rented a chalet here for two of her young children. They're in the 6th grade with Dash. The mother is getting a divorce. The children live with a Moroccan housekeeper. The mother appears every few weeks. The father appears when the mother doesn't. He drives a lemon yellow sports utility vehicle and likes to follow the road rallys from Europe to West Africa. He wears dark glassses, I've never seen his face. The eldest child, an 18-year-old boy, has Down Syndrome. He doesn't live here, but Dash tells me he was here over the weekend, playing with tiny trucks, laughing like a child. Once I asked the two children, Guillermo and Violetta, why they came here. They said they didn't know but at the other school they went to before there was a lot of violence. Apparently, they live in a Wild West part of the costa del sol.
The night of the party, when we reached dessert, I went to invite the mother once more. I saw her in her kitchen window that looks out of the back of her chalet at the valley of Ifrane and the forest beyond. The mother is tall, big boned, and strikingly beautiful but in this moment. just after dusk, looking out the window but not looking, as though staring life full in the face, she was a portrait of tremendous grief. I let her be.
The other guests included a lawyer from Azrou. He came alone; there was some medical problem with one of her children and his wife remained at home. She also speaks English, he doesn't. I wrote about him once before; he spent three years in prison here in Ifrane during les annees noires.
A couple from the university also came. He's Iraqi, she's Mexican. She teaches economics, he teaches finance.
All tolled, three men, two women. B and the woman from Mexico disappeared into the garden, the three men fell into conversation — which was interesting just for this. These two men, one a Moroccan lawyer, K., the other an Iraqi professor of finance, M., are perhaps typical of well educated people we have met here. The lawyer spent three years in jail during les annees noires yet he's very defensive of the monarchy, the son of the man who imprisoned him. He's also remarkably anti-American. For his part, the professor is more critical of the government here and is more pro American. He often tells the story of the letter he wrote to George Bush congratulating him on his decision to liberate Iraq.
But now that's changed. His family in Baghdad hasn't had electricity in more than a week. None at all. Before they had some, even if only for an hour a day. Now there is nothing. Food is hard to find. Water is erratic. They are terrified of using the phone for fear it's tapped They are Sunni. The mother recently went to Mosul to visit relatives and it was harrowing journey. As far as they are concerned it's not a question of whether there is a civil war but a question of survival. And so M. has now changed his mind on the war. He believes the Americans should install another dictator. "Isn't it so Mark? We agree. We always agree don't we. I'm telling you we are 500 years behind the West. What can you do? There is no other way to see it. Five hundred years, you cannot make that up over night. These people only understand power. It's survival of the fittest."
K., the lawyer, agrees, although he is more thoughtful and more refined in his expression. He speaks in Arabic, which M translates. "If I were Bush I wouldn't defend what America is doing in Iraq with a policy. I would just say, 'we have the power, we need the oil, and we are going to take it.' There is no reason to create this fascade."
K. also believes the trial of Saddam Hussein is nonsense. "Everyone knows what he did. There is no point to documenting the crimes, it just gives hope to those who hope he will return."
It was a strange thing for a defense attorney to say. M. agreed. "This is what I am telling you. These people only understand force. This trial is a nuance of democracy no one cares about."
Asked whether America should withdraw from Iraq, M shook his head, K shook his shoulders. And if America pulls up its draw bridge I said, will the world be better for it?
"America is always threatening the world with its isolation," said K, "but it never happens."
* * * * *
You can make the argument these days, the evidence is becoming a mountain, that the clash of these two civilizations, which happens every century, has rarely been more thunderous, that the war in Iraq is lost and democratic reform from here to the Tigris with it. Everywhere you look, everything you read, everyone you speak to, all the most subtle stories suggest that things are turning sour, even here, on the fringes. Power is in; the populace is out. The US is increasingly seen as impotent, Bush as lame. There are no incentives left for democratic reform, no possibility of carrot and stick. Iran's raised nuclear fist is proof of that. And so the Arab awakening seems to have gone as far as it can for the moment. Now back to sleep, to a nap at least, to a forgetting. The light has been too much, too unbelievable, too untrustworthy. Now the only option for the West is to withdraw, wait, and resist the extremists until the ummah awakens again. The danger of fundamentalism will pass. Materialism is already undermining it, and if you say, 'well yes but materialism has been undermining it for centuries,' that's true, but this last burst, which seems to some like an effort to take over the world is a death rattle.
"No one believes anymore." People are always telling me that. Middle class people to be sure, but even poor taxi drivers and maids will tell you. The reason Islam prevails is because it provides basic services, which the government doesn't. It offers refuge from globalization which no other structure can do. But the message is being lost. It's becoming like so many other organized religions, a sentimental hope in fearful times, a source of order amidst chaos.
And so all that can be done if you are in this sea is to make the smallest gesture. Pick up a hitchhiker, put an extra dihram in an old woman's palm, complement the policeman on his uniform, stop for people crossing the road, and assure people you are leaving, but that they live in a rich and beautiful country and you wish you could stay but home is home, and your family needs you. Better to fall back on gentle deceptions and the white lies that keep appearances up because hope is on hold.
The night of the party, when we reached dessert, I went to invite the mother once more. I saw her in her kitchen window that looks out of the back of her chalet at the valley of Ifrane and the forest beyond. The mother is tall, big boned, and strikingly beautiful but in this moment. just after dusk, looking out the window but not looking, as though staring life full in the face, she was a portrait of tremendous grief. I let her be.
The other guests included a lawyer from Azrou. He came alone; there was some medical problem with one of her children and his wife remained at home. She also speaks English, he doesn't. I wrote about him once before; he spent three years in prison here in Ifrane during les annees noires.
A couple from the university also came. He's Iraqi, she's Mexican. She teaches economics, he teaches finance.
All tolled, three men, two women. B and the woman from Mexico disappeared into the garden, the three men fell into conversation — which was interesting just for this. These two men, one a Moroccan lawyer, K., the other an Iraqi professor of finance, M., are perhaps typical of well educated people we have met here. The lawyer spent three years in jail during les annees noires yet he's very defensive of the monarchy, the son of the man who imprisoned him. He's also remarkably anti-American. For his part, the professor is more critical of the government here and is more pro American. He often tells the story of the letter he wrote to George Bush congratulating him on his decision to liberate Iraq.
But now that's changed. His family in Baghdad hasn't had electricity in more than a week. None at all. Before they had some, even if only for an hour a day. Now there is nothing. Food is hard to find. Water is erratic. They are terrified of using the phone for fear it's tapped They are Sunni. The mother recently went to Mosul to visit relatives and it was harrowing journey. As far as they are concerned it's not a question of whether there is a civil war but a question of survival. And so M. has now changed his mind on the war. He believes the Americans should install another dictator. "Isn't it so Mark? We agree. We always agree don't we. I'm telling you we are 500 years behind the West. What can you do? There is no other way to see it. Five hundred years, you cannot make that up over night. These people only understand power. It's survival of the fittest."
K., the lawyer, agrees, although he is more thoughtful and more refined in his expression. He speaks in Arabic, which M translates. "If I were Bush I wouldn't defend what America is doing in Iraq with a policy. I would just say, 'we have the power, we need the oil, and we are going to take it.' There is no reason to create this fascade."
K. also believes the trial of Saddam Hussein is nonsense. "Everyone knows what he did. There is no point to documenting the crimes, it just gives hope to those who hope he will return."
It was a strange thing for a defense attorney to say. M. agreed. "This is what I am telling you. These people only understand force. This trial is a nuance of democracy no one cares about."
Asked whether America should withdraw from Iraq, M shook his head, K shook his shoulders. And if America pulls up its draw bridge I said, will the world be better for it?
"America is always threatening the world with its isolation," said K, "but it never happens."
* * * * *
You can make the argument these days, the evidence is becoming a mountain, that the clash of these two civilizations, which happens every century, has rarely been more thunderous, that the war in Iraq is lost and democratic reform from here to the Tigris with it. Everywhere you look, everything you read, everyone you speak to, all the most subtle stories suggest that things are turning sour, even here, on the fringes. Power is in; the populace is out. The US is increasingly seen as impotent, Bush as lame. There are no incentives left for democratic reform, no possibility of carrot and stick. Iran's raised nuclear fist is proof of that. And so the Arab awakening seems to have gone as far as it can for the moment. Now back to sleep, to a nap at least, to a forgetting. The light has been too much, too unbelievable, too untrustworthy. Now the only option for the West is to withdraw, wait, and resist the extremists until the ummah awakens again. The danger of fundamentalism will pass. Materialism is already undermining it, and if you say, 'well yes but materialism has been undermining it for centuries,' that's true, but this last burst, which seems to some like an effort to take over the world is a death rattle.
"No one believes anymore." People are always telling me that. Middle class people to be sure, but even poor taxi drivers and maids will tell you. The reason Islam prevails is because it provides basic services, which the government doesn't. It offers refuge from globalization which no other structure can do. But the message is being lost. It's becoming like so many other organized religions, a sentimental hope in fearful times, a source of order amidst chaos.
And so all that can be done if you are in this sea is to make the smallest gesture. Pick up a hitchhiker, put an extra dihram in an old woman's palm, complement the policeman on his uniform, stop for people crossing the road, and assure people you are leaving, but that they live in a rich and beautiful country and you wish you could stay but home is home, and your family needs you. Better to fall back on gentle deceptions and the white lies that keep appearances up because hope is on hold.
Apr 4, 2006
Underneath
I have kept my 'office' in the library, on the 3rd floor, among the stacks. I was given a regular office to share but I have never seen it. I understand there's a desk and a chair, a shelf for books and a computer. I don't even know the name of the secret sharer. So I am on the third floor of the library, seated along a darkly varnished table built into the steep sloping roof. At my end of this crucifix-shaped room is a view of three tennis courts and a soccer field beyond. At the other end of the cross, where say His left hand is nailed, there's a dramatic view of the university's mosque, perhaps 30 yards away. Close enough to see the paint peeling around the high windows. After just ten years the university is showing signs of wear and tear.
Students visit me, we whisper or not, depending upon whether others are studying nearly. Usually, there are not many other students on the 3rd floor, if any. The library is solitude and refuge, and as I wrote once before those who spend time here regularly are singled out and singed in various social circles. There is a derogatory word for both those that often work in the library and those who expose.
This afternoon a student from my public speaking class came to talk about her 'informative' speech. She wears a veil. She is an odd mixture of conservative and liberal. She confided in me that her family is connected to the palace, through her mother, but her family has fallen on hard times. Her father was in the military for many years, he was stationed in the Sahara, but he receives almost no pension. He is now 68 and ill. About a year ago she started wearing the veil, against her family's wishes. Her family, particularly an uncle, were not treated well during les annees noires, and this progressive spirit continues. But at 21 she was tired of being regarded for her looks. "I am quite beautiful under this, and everyone was telling me how I looked but I wanted to see if anyone would see me just for my mind."
Her hypothesis was verified. Not as many people talk to her now as before.
"Also," she went on, smiling with braces gleaming, "I want to marry a man who will want me for my mind and I want only him to see the shape of my body."
Then she asked me to listen to Islamic rock, particlarly the songs of a young man from Azerbaijan. The music sounds remarkably like Christian rock. The songs are in both English and Arabic. She particularly wanted me to hear a song about Ummah, because I had asked her why that concept doesn't exist, although it is so central to Islam.
"Yes, but you can't have a community if you can't apologize," she said, "and we can't do that, we can't apologize, it's too hard. I don't know. Pride. But this is also why we can't love. We don't really have that capacity."
She went on to say that it's best not to have deep feelings, to show vulernability. There is too much risk and then if you don't practice what ability there is, disappears.
I've heard all this before, but I am forever trying to confirm it, becuase if true it would explain so much.
"But I want to play you another song," she said, If you hear these really good Islamic singers you will understand how we can find a way around what we don't feel...." And then she played a folky plaintive song whose sentimentality, I suppose, is what she meant.
Students visit me, we whisper or not, depending upon whether others are studying nearly. Usually, there are not many other students on the 3rd floor, if any. The library is solitude and refuge, and as I wrote once before those who spend time here regularly are singled out and singed in various social circles. There is a derogatory word for both those that often work in the library and those who expose.
This afternoon a student from my public speaking class came to talk about her 'informative' speech. She wears a veil. She is an odd mixture of conservative and liberal. She confided in me that her family is connected to the palace, through her mother, but her family has fallen on hard times. Her father was in the military for many years, he was stationed in the Sahara, but he receives almost no pension. He is now 68 and ill. About a year ago she started wearing the veil, against her family's wishes. Her family, particularly an uncle, were not treated well during les annees noires, and this progressive spirit continues. But at 21 she was tired of being regarded for her looks. "I am quite beautiful under this, and everyone was telling me how I looked but I wanted to see if anyone would see me just for my mind."
Her hypothesis was verified. Not as many people talk to her now as before.
"Also," she went on, smiling with braces gleaming, "I want to marry a man who will want me for my mind and I want only him to see the shape of my body."
Then she asked me to listen to Islamic rock, particlarly the songs of a young man from Azerbaijan. The music sounds remarkably like Christian rock. The songs are in both English and Arabic. She particularly wanted me to hear a song about Ummah, because I had asked her why that concept doesn't exist, although it is so central to Islam.
"Yes, but you can't have a community if you can't apologize," she said, "and we can't do that, we can't apologize, it's too hard. I don't know. Pride. But this is also why we can't love. We don't really have that capacity."
She went on to say that it's best not to have deep feelings, to show vulernability. There is too much risk and then if you don't practice what ability there is, disappears.
I've heard all this before, but I am forever trying to confirm it, becuase if true it would explain so much.
"But I want to play you another song," she said, If you hear these really good Islamic singers you will understand how we can find a way around what we don't feel...." And then she played a folky plaintive song whose sentimentality, I suppose, is what she meant.
Mar 31, 2006
End Games
On days like this with blooms roaring, you wonder why you would ever want to leave. Where will you ever find such a blue sky, such clear air, and a sunset even memory cannot enhance, not to mention a large house with a bristling garden. And the bleating of sheep, and the dog stretched out on hot bricks, the call of the muezzin, all the developing part of this world out of feel and touch. All the possibilities still to come. Not to mention a measure of security.
Earlier in the day I went to try to finish registering the car. It has taken days to get this far. I should have done it a year ago, but I thought somehow it had happened, that by transfering ownership and sending off papers to God knows where I had put the matter in other hands that would hand me back what I needed. Meanwhile, the papers sat in the trunk which at times was filled with snow and slush. Now the signatures and stamps have washed away. There are 31 pages of documents but now they're useless. When I realized the mistake I had forgotten what was involved, how many offices you need to go to, to collect all the documents and then each must be legalized and copied and the copies legalized. The last step was to legalize a copy of my carte de sejour, which has taken four months to renew.
The legalizers work in the old Hotel Bellvue, a colonial Hotel Marienbab, with long narrow corridors and what once must have been a lavish entry. Now, the walls are cracked, the paint has flaked, nothing works, the radiators are unhooked, the rooms which must have seemed grand in the 1930s now seem like former interrogatoires. The garden is dry and dry and dead. Occasionally, a light bulb hangs ominously. You'd think the interior was designed by torturers. The floors are swept but the dirt is so old, so enameled in the walls and floors and ceilings that nothing could get it out. In fact, it is no longer something to get out. It is the place itself.
In the tiny office of the legalizers three men sit in no particular place. And never in the same place. One is always quiet. The other two are always quibbling. There is a small L-shaped counter. On the left, along a short wall there is an old cupboard filled with records. The records are canvass binders marked by month and number. Inside, each page holds thirty entries, with the name of a person, a description of a transaction, the date, and a stamp.
But today the legalizers are gone. And not just here, in Azrou as well. Throughout the province they're on strike. To protest the lack of heat last winter. The strike is a week old. They're coming back on Monday because there is no strike fund. Ironically, the termperature now is in the 80s. The teachers did the same thing. Every Friday they would not show up. There is no heat in the schools. Teachers are rarely paid. They go for months unpaid. And you wonder, how can that be? This is a developing country — and my students do not like to hear of it described as a 'less developed' country — education is a solution as well as a promise. Everyone mentions that education is no. 1.
Some days B. wants to stay. Today, for example. But other days she would rather teach in her own country. It's her Midwestern nationalism at work. If this country doesn't want it, and as there is no heat in the public schools, there are corresponding lacks in the private schools, then let it all go. Let the sights and sounds of Africa go. Be done with it. It's one revelation of living in the Arab Middle East. If people ask you for help, in some minor way, then do it. Otherwise, go away. Let them sort it out themselves. It's like a woman in child birth. At a certain point you can't do anything. You can swab her brow, you can encourage, you can just sit there, be present, but in the end you have to give up to nature and let it take its course.
Earlier in the day I went to try to finish registering the car. It has taken days to get this far. I should have done it a year ago, but I thought somehow it had happened, that by transfering ownership and sending off papers to God knows where I had put the matter in other hands that would hand me back what I needed. Meanwhile, the papers sat in the trunk which at times was filled with snow and slush. Now the signatures and stamps have washed away. There are 31 pages of documents but now they're useless. When I realized the mistake I had forgotten what was involved, how many offices you need to go to, to collect all the documents and then each must be legalized and copied and the copies legalized. The last step was to legalize a copy of my carte de sejour, which has taken four months to renew.
The legalizers work in the old Hotel Bellvue, a colonial Hotel Marienbab, with long narrow corridors and what once must have been a lavish entry. Now, the walls are cracked, the paint has flaked, nothing works, the radiators are unhooked, the rooms which must have seemed grand in the 1930s now seem like former interrogatoires. The garden is dry and dry and dead. Occasionally, a light bulb hangs ominously. You'd think the interior was designed by torturers. The floors are swept but the dirt is so old, so enameled in the walls and floors and ceilings that nothing could get it out. In fact, it is no longer something to get out. It is the place itself.
In the tiny office of the legalizers three men sit in no particular place. And never in the same place. One is always quiet. The other two are always quibbling. There is a small L-shaped counter. On the left, along a short wall there is an old cupboard filled with records. The records are canvass binders marked by month and number. Inside, each page holds thirty entries, with the name of a person, a description of a transaction, the date, and a stamp.
But today the legalizers are gone. And not just here, in Azrou as well. Throughout the province they're on strike. To protest the lack of heat last winter. The strike is a week old. They're coming back on Monday because there is no strike fund. Ironically, the termperature now is in the 80s. The teachers did the same thing. Every Friday they would not show up. There is no heat in the schools. Teachers are rarely paid. They go for months unpaid. And you wonder, how can that be? This is a developing country — and my students do not like to hear of it described as a 'less developed' country — education is a solution as well as a promise. Everyone mentions that education is no. 1.
Some days B. wants to stay. Today, for example. But other days she would rather teach in her own country. It's her Midwestern nationalism at work. If this country doesn't want it, and as there is no heat in the public schools, there are corresponding lacks in the private schools, then let it all go. Let the sights and sounds of Africa go. Be done with it. It's one revelation of living in the Arab Middle East. If people ask you for help, in some minor way, then do it. Otherwise, go away. Let them sort it out themselves. It's like a woman in child birth. At a certain point you can't do anything. You can swab her brow, you can encourage, you can just sit there, be present, but in the end you have to give up to nature and let it take its course.
Mar 30, 2006
Mar 16, 2006
But Not The King...
And so we had the debate over Darwin's theory of evolution. Be it resolved that: Man did not descend from apes. Those arguing for the proposition narrowly won, largely because the lead off debater arguing against the proposition was very stressed and had to be prompted several times to continue her argument. Immediately after the debate she threw on her designer sun glasses and fled. I was judge and audience. I suggested that we do this again to sharpen their skills and offered the topic BIRT: Morocco should not have a king. That drew wails of protest. "We will be arrested," said a business major. "We can't do it." I reassured them that les annees noires are behind them. They were not to be reassured. "We cannot mention these topics," another girl noted. "We are forbidden."
The reaction is ironic when you consider that these are the children of those, certainly some of them, who loyally and joyfully carried out the will of Hassan II. Incidentally, in recent years, Hassan has apparently has acquired renewed awe. Such is the trick of memory here. The good son is forgotten against the backdrop of his pragmatic father, the charmistic cold war king who once noted that sometimes it was necessary, if you are king, to do away with human rights.... for the good of the people. And there are times when I am ashamed to say, I've come to agree.
My friend, M, an Iraqi, is forever telling me that Iraq is lost, that the best they can hope for is a benevolent dictator. It has come to that there. But this is perhaps a truth that extends through this culture. I should not say.
The reaction is ironic when you consider that these are the children of those, certainly some of them, who loyally and joyfully carried out the will of Hassan II. Incidentally, in recent years, Hassan has apparently has acquired renewed awe. Such is the trick of memory here. The good son is forgotten against the backdrop of his pragmatic father, the charmistic cold war king who once noted that sometimes it was necessary, if you are king, to do away with human rights.... for the good of the people. And there are times when I am ashamed to say, I've come to agree.
My friend, M, an Iraqi, is forever telling me that Iraq is lost, that the best they can hope for is a benevolent dictator. It has come to that there. But this is perhaps a truth that extends through this culture. I should not say.
Mar 8, 2006
Fix
Time is running down. Already, memories are under review. I realize now I can only take a few back. The rest are for burning. Meanwhile, I go see Rachid in Azrou. He's become my metaphysician. He doesn't speak French or English; I don't speak Arabic. He's 24, a Bottisatva, my size, runs a two-bay garage in a back alley down the hill from the bus station. Outside, the street is littered with car bones. Inside, he's eating tagine set out on the slanted end of an ancient gear box. His hands are black, his uniform is black. He looks like a coal miner. His face is round and muscled, from solid stock.
He makes me remember the names of his mechanics. Omar, the quiet. Hicham, the unsmiling. Sallal, the tall lanky electrician who frankly should be in some other profession. Mohammed, the foreman. Mohammed speaks French, runs the runners, turns away the beggars that happen by. He's first violin, the go-to guy and kidder. Sometimes, I ride with him to pick up parts in this demi monde of lower Azrou. Everything is on a slant. Even the uphill legs of dogs seem shorter. In this part of town there are few connections. Buildings are not built side by side. Your building, a space and then mine. No windows except front and rear. No light from the side. Vines grow out of thick cement. There are no public spaces. The mountains hang over all.
Rachid gives me a stool to sit on. He places it next to the bay. Lately, this nitch is in the sun. He always brings me tea. I have a book of dharma poems and stories that I read and then find some spec of glass in the dust to meditate on. I'm finally getting the mind to slow down. It's like a badly tuned engine. Les bougis sont mal. Everything here is a metaphor.
Rachid is just back from Meknes, just on his way to Fez. He's got a long line of customers. Nobody is more easy going. You look at him and you say, 'this is a kind man.' You watch him work and you think, this is somebody that knows what he's doing. He's in no hurry. He enjoys the puzzle. He likes to look at the magazine pages taped to the wall, with the newest Audi or the newest Ferrari. He's been running this shop since he was 14. It's all he ever wanted to do. He found a new engine for the 405 after I tore it up and put it in for less than $100 in labor. It works like a charm.
Meanwhile, Rachid never stops working. He's forever torquing, adjusting, unscrewing, tightening, he talks to me with his head down in somebody's engine. Or with his smiling eyes. I like to read when he's working. I like to be around that place. Things are getting fixed, repairs are under way.
He makes me remember the names of his mechanics. Omar, the quiet. Hicham, the unsmiling. Sallal, the tall lanky electrician who frankly should be in some other profession. Mohammed, the foreman. Mohammed speaks French, runs the runners, turns away the beggars that happen by. He's first violin, the go-to guy and kidder. Sometimes, I ride with him to pick up parts in this demi monde of lower Azrou. Everything is on a slant. Even the uphill legs of dogs seem shorter. In this part of town there are few connections. Buildings are not built side by side. Your building, a space and then mine. No windows except front and rear. No light from the side. Vines grow out of thick cement. There are no public spaces. The mountains hang over all.
Rachid gives me a stool to sit on. He places it next to the bay. Lately, this nitch is in the sun. He always brings me tea. I have a book of dharma poems and stories that I read and then find some spec of glass in the dust to meditate on. I'm finally getting the mind to slow down. It's like a badly tuned engine. Les bougis sont mal. Everything here is a metaphor.
Rachid is just back from Meknes, just on his way to Fez. He's got a long line of customers. Nobody is more easy going. You look at him and you say, 'this is a kind man.' You watch him work and you think, this is somebody that knows what he's doing. He's in no hurry. He enjoys the puzzle. He likes to look at the magazine pages taped to the wall, with the newest Audi or the newest Ferrari. He's been running this shop since he was 14. It's all he ever wanted to do. He found a new engine for the 405 after I tore it up and put it in for less than $100 in labor. It works like a charm.
Meanwhile, Rachid never stops working. He's forever torquing, adjusting, unscrewing, tightening, he talks to me with his head down in somebody's engine. Or with his smiling eyes. I like to read when he's working. I like to be around that place. Things are getting fixed, repairs are under way.
Mar 3, 2006
Blankspot
We have decided to leave Lucy behind. There is no point taking her to a city so full of animal advocates and yet so resistant to dogs. But what is the alternative. Who will take her? How will she manage? How much is sentimentality at issue? She become accustomed to this life. We will now betray her, but what does that mean? Mohammed has offered to get her a job with his father on the other side of the volcano, minding sheep. She's on emotional welfare now, how will that be? Sleeping outside. Becoming an animal again. We've sanded that down. She's gotten used to her chair, to attention, to easy refuge. On the other hand she disappeared for two months, and only came back because Mohammed found her wandering. Don't think about it so much, I'm thinking. And then I wonder how this will work.
Mar 1, 2006
Natual, not monkey, selection
Five of six students in a public speaking class raised their hand in response to the question, how many do not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. One student, the brightest and an economics major, raised her hand to half staff, then brought it down. A suppression more than a conviction. And so began a discussion. Why not? I asked. Well, because it is not in the Koran. Which lead to an alley chat on the difference between Koranic pragmatism, a book authored by someone with no education they were quick to point out, and western science, the scientific method. Platonism. Reason, which has many corrollaires in Islamic philosophy. Many. But why? I asked again. In the end it came to monkeys. My students refuse to be associated with monkeys, no matter how distantly, no matter how benignly. "It is disgusting," one student said. "I don't even want to think about it." But what then, if not monkeys.... Slime is better they said. Out of bacteria, but not monkeys.
And why is that? In no small part, I'm told, it has to do with the way in which children are criticized often by parents and as being like monkeys. There is no worse ridicule.
And why is that? In no small part, I'm told, it has to do with the way in which children are criticized often by parents and as being like monkeys. There is no worse ridicule.
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