Avuncular American

A Ramadan Evening To Warm the Heart

Once again, in a long tradition that now is a Tangier-in-Ramadan institution, the American Legation was the venue last night for a concert of Arab-Andalusian music.  And it did not disappoint.  The audience - despite one of the hottest days yet this summer - was fully into the swing of this rythmic music, one of the most precious reminders of a cultural past that spanned the Strait of Gibraltar, from Iberia to the Barbary Coast.

Here we have two of the ten members of an ensemble put together by Nabil Akbib, who has a busy musical life in many dimensions, including the group Arabesque. We see the oud on the left, and the zither-like qanun on the right.

All of the musicians are well-known in their own right, and justifiably so.  The lead vocalist, whose range goes from tenor to an Andalusian alto that has to be experienced, was a real crowd-pleaser.  And he knew when to let the audience take over, as they did quite often, with gusto.

One guest commented that the atmosphere was perfect for the assembled Tangerois.  They "felt at home, could meet friends" during the month of Ramadan.  The comment, as well as the reflections of other guests, show that there is an important underlying sociological aspect to this music as well.

We've met a number of Moroccan Muslims who feel that their open, tolerant version of Islam is under assault by radical imported varieties.  The signs are many, but most audibly through muezzins who seem to stress the raucous, the discordant, and the aggressive in their calls to prayer.  Where are the melodious, even beautiful, voices that were on center stage last night?  Listen closely through the nightly din, and you may hear them, gently chanting.

Part of the problem may be willful ignorance on the rightful place of music in Muslim society.  Cities of Light, an interesting website dedicated to Andalusia in the time of the Arabs says that

Performance art and music theory came together in the royal courts of Al-Andalus throughout the period of Muslim rule. Ziryab was a musician who represented the courtly arts and cultivated society. He established a music conservatory in Córdoba that trained young musicians, spreading his influence to other courts. His talent and influence included ideas about harmony, rhythm, and composition. Scholars of music history trace many later styles of song composition and performance to Ziryab. Certainly, his influence brought eastern styles as well as classical Greek and Arab musical ideas to Al-Andalus, but once there, they combined with North African and indigenous Iberian styles over time to create a distinctive Andalusian musical tradition. The tradition continued even after the end of Muslim rule on the Iberian Peninsula.

So, the tradition established by Ziryab continues to this day, encouraged in Morocco by cultural organizations dedicated to preserving the rich musical heritage of this country.

At TALIM, we too are happy to support this tradition, and to bring our own contribution to preserving Morocco's musical heritage.  This year, the centenary of the birth of Tangier American writer, composer, and man of culture Paul Bowles, we hope to bring attention to his efforts at cultural preservation.

In 1959, with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Bowles crisscrossed newly independent Morocco in a VW Beetle filled with heavy sound recording equipment.  The result is some 70 hours of reel-to-reel tapes, safely stored in the vaults of the Library of Congress.

With a little help from Moroccans and Americans eager to bring this unique musical heritage to light, we hope to use this year's Bowles Centenary to "repatriate" this repository of music.

Ziryab, I think, would approve.

Gerald Loftus

Enchanting Book On America's Legation

It's out.  Diana Wylie's book Enchantment: Pictures From the Tangier American Legation Museum.  And it's a beauty.  At left, Diana shows me a chapter on Tangier's International Zone era, from the galley proof of her book.

In the book world, you shouldn't judge solely by covers.  Not only is Boston University Professor Wylie's book full of crystal-clear full-color illustrations, but her text is an education about the world's only living Legation, and its place in the history of American-Moroccan relations.

I say crystal-clear photography, thanks to Spanish photographer Manuel Valdivieso, even down to the unfortunate spots caused by our ultra-high humidity.  And here is the link: Diana Wylie's book sales will help preserve the very art that it describes so well.  All proceeds will go to the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, with its museum, research library, conferences, and Arabic language programs.

Diane's pro-bono labor of love was made possible by the generosity of donors Brett Phaneuf and Gregg Cook of the John Brown Cook Foundation, supplemented by a grant from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, CAORC.

Until Amazon gets the book in its stock, the only place it will be available will be at the TALIM bookshop.  Sorry, we don't have mail order.  You'll have to visit us in the medina of Tangier, where we have been since 1821.

Gerald Loftus

Scheherazade Tell Me a Story

It’s men – not the veil – that are the women’s main concern in life.  Or, if this weren't a film from a predominantly Muslim country, their main cross to bear.

The women are the guests on Hebba's TV talk show, and they run the gamut of Egyptian society, from meek murderesses to mighty media stars.  The men in their lives, whether ministers or minions, are uniformly trouble for the women.  That’s Scheherazade Tell Me A Story in a nutshell.

But this 2009 film by Yousry Nasrallah is more than that.  Like The Yacoubian Building a few years ago, Scheherazade (the French title is, not inaccurately, Les Femmes du Caire) is a sprawling, over-long soap on the wide screen.  The usual Egyptian cinematic traits – melodrama verging on the hysterical – are present.  But the talents of screenwriter Wahid Hamid, who painted the string of portraits that made The Yacoubian Buiding so gripping, save this from being just another "Egyptian movie."

As does, of course, the director's fine political sense, recently revealed in a Jeune Afrique interview

For women, the problem isn't really the fondamentalists, it's with the predominant mindset that men's interests count for more than those of women.  From the 1930s throught the Eighties, Egyptian cinema was centered on its actresses.  Now that has changed, in large part due to Saudi financing.  That's why I have always done coproductions with France.

When I showed up at the Tangier Cinémathèque, the ticket person first tried to steer me away to a free documentary showing that evening.  “There aren’t any subtitles,” she said of Scheherazade, as if that were an impediment to my enjoyment of the film.  I did give the documentary a try – a series of interviews with minor rockers using mobile phone cameras – but it really wasn’t for me.  No subtitles? Well, I'd lived in Egypt a couple of years, and my rusty Arabic is still tinged with not a little masri...  Still time to catch the beginning of Scheherazade - off I go.  I wasn’t disappointed.

The film is full of attractive young Egyptians: there’s the yuppy leading couple, Hebba and her hubby, both on career tracks that appear to be onward and upward.  But then the seed of fear – or is it jealousy? – makes hubby pressure his TV host wife to move away from political talking heads to the “safer” ground of a women’s talk show.

Well, if that’s what you want...  Hebba gives it her best shot, and what ensues is a series of vignettes of women brought down by men, or rather women refusing to be debased by men.  The ways are many: neighborhood heartthrob woos, in rapid succession, three sisters in a poor working class neighborhood.  Three-timer ends up badly when the eldest sister realizes what he’s been doing.

On the other side of town, successful dentist is taken off her feet by a patient, who becomes a minister after they wed.  But then Prince Charming becomes Count Dracula (or at least a Robber Baron) – inexplicably, in relatively short order.  Turns out that he’s more interested in the dentist’s earnings than in earning her love.

The vignettes are maybe two too many – the film’s 134 minutes do make you want to check your watch – but there could have been many more.  One, only hinted at but surely a daily ritual repeated across the world, shows a beauty in an expensive perfume boutique donning a veil to make the trek home on public transport to her shaabi neighborhood.

Which brings us to the veil.  As Mona El-Naggar, Egyptian journalist, remarked in the August 10 New York Times, young women and girls in her country now wear the veil at a rate of some 89%.  Peer pressure – which might also be said to be man pressure (fathers, brothers, boyfriends and spouses all expect this outward manifestation of piety/chastity/obedience) – is a powerful force.  Despite the "measure of respectability," offered by the veil, El-Naggar states that it "no longer protects or prevents harassment on the street."

But remember, as Yousry Nasrallah told us, it's not only the fundamentalists - it's the men, and their all-encompassing desire to dominate.  Scheherazade comes down on the side of the resisters: they may be battered, but they keep their dignity.

Ramadan Karim, Ramadan Karcher

Usually, I content myself with wishing everyone a happy month of Ramadan and proceeding to other matters.  This time, living in the medina of Tangier and observing the month of Ramadan as respectfully as a non-Muslim can, I want to carry it a step further.  Which is why we carried out a Big Clean of the street that runs through the American Legation, home of TALIM.

That high-pressure hose that Abdallah is wielding on the left is a Karcher®, the wonderful French gadget that President Sarkozy managed to turn into a household word.  Abdallah's brother Ahmed has scrubbed away something unmentionable, hence the brand new rubber boots versus the usual sandals.  Ramadan or not, street people still view the pedestrian walkway as a convenient open-air toilet.

None of this would do for our traditional distribution of tickets for a Ramadan food hamper, done in association with two Moroccan charities, FTAM (Fondation Tanger Al-Medina) and Fès-Saiss, a group of philanthropists with roots in the ancient city of Fez.

Thanks to the organizational skills of FTAM President Adil Alaoui (photo, with Ramadan food hamper tickets), TALIM was host to today's Ramadan distribution.  From earlier, unhappier experiences of mass confusion when the actual food parcels were distributed from our streetside door, the presentation of a card to each family has been deemed to be the winning formula.  Families are chosen for their degree of need (number of children, whether there is a father, are the parents employed? etc.), and they are notified in advance.

This longstanding tradition is well worth continuing, and is yet another manifestation of TALIM's links with its surrounding neighborhood.  One of the primary helpers in organizing today's little event was Fatima Gharbaoui, mentioned in these pages before for her prodigious artistic talents.  Fatima was a Women's Literacy program participant, and honed her "naive" artistic skills as part of the battery of courses on offer.

With neighbors like these women, we at TALIM feel that we're part of an effort - with FTAM and Fès-Saiss - to develop people, and not just to distribute charitable donations.  Just like "motor-voter" registration in some US states, this "handout" comes with a price: you might just have to sign up to learn how to read and write, at TALIM.

Ramadan Karim!

Gerald Loftus

The Scholars of Summer

Right now it's Ramadan, and the month of August, so it's supposed to be quiet, right?  The faithful are too tired, hungry, or thirsty to stay awake over books, and the un-Islamic or non-Muslim are expected to stay in Europe, perhaps awaiting better weather and the assurance of daytime food come mid-September.

So why is it so busy here at the AIMS Morocco research center?  TALIM does have a respected library, a collection particularly rich in pre-independence Moroccan materials.  And there is the fact that Morocco is by far the favored destination of AIMS Maghribi scholars.

But not all our library patrons are here because they have to tick a box or pick up grant money.  Take Philip Abensur.  A Paris pediatrician, Abensur was born in Tangier and has written a lovely volume published by historical publisher Alan Sutton - Tanger, Entre Orient et Occident.  Abensur was back in our library this week, seeking information on the area of the medina where the American Legation is situated, and where his family lived for 150 years.

Last week I reported on the American woman who found lots of information about her 19th century great-great uncle David N. Burke, Consul General in Tangier in 1896-97.  Today, Bibi Gaston, Tangier native, landscape architect and author of an acclaimed family history, showed me documents - photos, unpublished manuscript - from her parents' time in Tangier as American expats after World War II, materials for another family memoir.

"Does the TALIM library hold anything on this man?"  From a 5 August 1992 obituary in the London Independent by Alan Rush:

Bruce Chalmers (Bruce Alfsono Bourbon de Conde), officer, philatelist and royal pretender, born California 5 December 1913, died Tangier 20 July 1992.

A royalist, philatelist, Muslim and former US officer, Bruce Conde (alias Alfonso Yorba, Hajji Abdurrahman and General Bruce Alfonso de Bourbon, Prince of Conde) was a prominent figure in monarchist and Arabist circles.

So wanted to know an American geneologist visiting Tangier.  I mentioned his interest to some Middle East scholars at a conference in Istanbul last week, and though the whole royal pretender thing is always a bit hard to prove, there is no doubt that "Conde" was an adventurer, described by some as "the American Lawrence of Arabia" for his service in the lost cause of Yemeni monarchy.

It wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility that "Conde's" memoirs are floating around in some Tangier attic or flea market box.  My predecessor stumbled upon a fascinating collection of postcards written to longtime Tangier resident Paul Bowles (whose centenary Tangier is marking this year).  They were for sale in a dusty antique shop, probably having been pinched from Bowles' apartment as he lay ill or dying.

But TALIM is not just about history.  We do gardens, too.  Oran university architecture professor Amara Bekkouche, AIMS Maghribi scholar in 2009 and return Getty/Fulbright scholar in 2010, presented her study of an urban garden in Casablanca (image, Parc Murdoch or ISESCO) to a rapt audience of fellow architects, landscape designers, and reforestation experts this summer.  Bekkouche and company dissected the question of what makes some urban green spaces successful - high level patronage, local buy-in - and what makes some of them turn into downtown trash dumps.

We end this mid-summer roundup of scholarship with an art historian, AIMS scholar Holiday Powers, whom I'd met at the AIMS 2010 conference in Oran.  Holiday provided much-appreciated insights into our museum program, much in need of, as the French would say, un coup de jeune.  Connecting with young artists in Morocco, who apparently have few venues in which to show their works, might be a way of ensuring that TALIM's "Old Legation Museum" stays in the minds of the 60% of Tangerines who are under 25.

Who says scholars can't offer tangible assistance?

Gerald Loftus

From Mexico to Mongolia: The CAORC World

What do Ulan Bator, Tangier, and Mexico City have in common?  Great weather?  Safe water?  The best pizza?  Some of the above, certainly, though not all the time.

Staffers from Bangladesh (AIBS), Jordan (ACOR), Mongolia (ACMS) and Pakistan (AIPS)

No, what joins us with places like Tunis, Amman, and Phnom Penh is our membership in CAORC, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.  This geographically disparate group with much in common met last week in Istanbul, Turkey, and it was by all accounts a phenomenally successful conference.

What serves as the common ground among the centers is a dedication to scholarship, hosting American researchers and host country and third country scholars, in areas as widely apart as archeology and zoology.  Through CAORC, several also administer US government language scholarships, and all compete for grant money from governmental, private, and charitable institutions.

Bobby Parks (Director CEMA-Algeria) and Mary Ellen Lane (CAORC Executive Director)

At TALIM, we come to CAORC through the American Institute of Maghrib Studies.  AIMS has three centers in North Africa: TALIM in Tangier, Morocco, CEMA in Oran, Algeria, and CEMAT in Tunis, Tunisia.  All three differ somewhat in history and scope, but again, the common ground is scholarship.

Staffers from Tunis (CEMAT), Washington (PARC), and Tucson (AIMS)

Usually my blog posts are of the content-rich or, as old Foreign Service hands would say, "substantive," variety.  Here I've decided to go for the photo ops.  Istanbul was beautiful in the pre-Ramadan evening air, and the Bosphorus was full of festive Turks and foreign visitors absorbing the beauty of one of the world's great cities.

A fitting end to a serious discussion of grants, reporting, accounting, and tax filing.  The nuts and bolts of scholarship.

Gerald Loftus

Arabic: Speaking 5, Reading 0

Imagine this: you reach the age of, say, 35, and you’re driving down the expressway with the kids in the back seat.

You get hopelessly lost a half hour from home.  You decide, then and there, to sign up at the program offered by the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, TALIM.

The course?  GPS navigation?  No.  Map reading?  Not quite.  Reading, period.  And writing.  Our lost housewife is among the new illiterate, and she has decided to join the ranks of hundreds of women from the medina who have gone through a program that garners little publicity, but which has become a cornerstone of this institution.

The woman speaking above is Fatima Benguerch, who has taught the program for several years.  She and TALIM Associate Director Yhtimad Bouziane (standing in the background), know the life-changing value that readin’ and ritin’ can bring a person.  Fatima, probably the first person in her medina entourage to have obtained a university degree, shared her experiences with a group of American university students and their teachers at the just-concluded Critical Language Scholarship (CLS, State Department funded, CAORC-administered through AIMS-TALIM) course in Tangier.  Academic director Abdelhak Akjeje is seated at the left.

When you’ve always been literate – our American students having mastered their native English from their pre-school days – it’s kind of hard to imagine an adult woman having to learn how to hold a pencil.  Then applying that pencil to a straight line on the page, then progressing to letters and words.  That’s what Fatima does with her beginning students, who then go through four levels of written classical Arabic.  Via the literacy classes, they can also enroll in handicraft, sewing, or cooking classes, and volunteers also teach English, French, and Spanish.

Another neighborhood Fatima, Fatima Gharbaoui, attended literacy classes a few years ago.  TALIM Associate Director Bouziane, seeing a budding artistic talent, encouraged Gharbaoui to develop her skill.  The result: an art exhibition of her “naive” portrayals of urban and bucolic scenes, garnering much-needed income.  And what did Gharbaoui do with her proceeds?  She had electricity and running water connected to her modest medina home.  Life changing indeed.

This September we’ll have the latest class of beginners start to learn how to hold that pencil.  One of the enrollees was born in 1929.  You do the math.

- - - - - -

Note on this post's title: the widely used Foreign Service Institute (FSI) language scale runs from 0 (no knowledge) to 5 (native fluency), in both Speaking (S) and Reading (R). Most students manage to get similar scores ("3/3") in both areas.

Gerald Loftus

Resurrecting Her 19th Century Tangier Consular Uncle

One of the joys of this job - a mix of citizen cultural diplomat, curator, and tour guide - is meeting some of the Americans who make their way to the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies.  TALIM, which means education in Arabic, is primarily a research center for scholars (we are the AIMS center in Morocco), but there's no reason family members can't use the library to locate their long-lost relatives.

Which is what Ilona Zsolnay (photo, with great-great uncle David Burke and partner Karen Morian) was able to do, armed only with the knowledge that her 19th century relative had spent a couple of years here at the American Legation. Not only had we, completely serependitiously, uncovered David N. Burke's portrait from 1896-97, but Ilona and Karen were able to research the Tangier Gazette from the same period.

The Tangier Gazette, a multi-lingual gossip sheet of enormous interest to historians (TALIM has leather-bound copies dating back to the 19th century), was a treasure trove for Consul Burke's descendant.  She learned that he had suffered from a tummy bug early on in his assignment, that his brother joined him as Vice Consul, and that for "political reasons" (losing party affiliation?), his assignment in Tangier was cut short.  Burke was apparently missed by the Tangerois, who deplored the short-sightedness of his Washington superiors.

The American Legation ceased to be a Legation when Morocco regained its independence in 1956, but its history is the story of America's long relationship with Morocco.  Glad that our archives yielded this personal story to Ilona, and I hope that more diplomatic descendants descend upon us here on the Strait of Gibraltar.  Scholarly research can be fun, too: our sleuths were rewarded not only with documentary evidence of a long-departed uncle, but we also enjoyed a Ramadan nightcap on the roof terrace looking over to Spain.

Maybe just like uncle David Burke would have done, over a century ago.

Gerald Loftus