Avuncular American

Visit Tangier, Send $ to Tucson

We like the new TALIM poster, which made its debut at the AIMS booth at MESA last week in San Diego.  It has a nice '30s travel touch.

Yes, we do hope you visit Tangier and TALIM.  You can experience the '30s - both the 1930s and the 1830s.  The Legation has seen it all.

If you can't yet make it to Tangier, you can still help us carry out our programs in women's literacy, in scholarly research, and in historical preservation.

Dollar-denominated checks qualify for US tax-deductible status, and can be sent to:

Dr. Kerry Adams, Executive Director
AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR MAGHRIB STUDIES (AIMS)
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
University of Arizona
845 North Park Avenue
Marshall Building, Room 470
PO Box 210158B
Tucson, AZ 85721-0185 USA

Checks should be made out to TALIM.  It's not that we don't want your money in Tangier, but we are used to dealing in cash.  The "poor box" variety (contents pictured here).

Send a $100 check, and Dr. Adams will send you a copy of Enchantment.  What a deal!

Gerald Loftus

Mascarades: Lyes Salem

فوضى

Pronunciation: Fwḑá

Definition: chaos

It's one of our favorite words, a way to smile at the confusion that sometimes swirls around us.

Arabic teachers searching for that perfect visual aid to illustrate the fawda that can come to inhabit life in places like Algeria could do no better than show the hilarious opening sequence of Lyes Salem's Mascarades, released in 2008 in Algeria and shown last night at the Middle East Studies Association film festival in San Diego.

The MESA screening, with the director/star Lyes Salem providing commentary, was sponsored by TALIM's mother organization AIMS, the American Institute for Maghrib Studies.  Amidst very serious presentations of papers ("Revisiting Modernity and Heteronormativity in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East," just to cite one with a 50 dollar word), Mascarades provided welcome comic relief.

Not that Lyes Salem does not take his film making seriously.  First of all his choice of colloquial Algerian Arabic (vice the French that often, unrealistically but more commercially, shows up in otherwise excellent Algerian films vying for European financing and audiences).  Such choices are "political," according to Lyes Salem, though Mascarades cannot be said to be overtly political in tone.

There is, however, that running joke of the unseen "Colonel," who provides employment to the principal character Mounir (played by Lyes Salem), and whose convoy of high-powered security SUVs can be rented out for marriage cortèges.  Anyone familiar with Algeria, and with the privileges meted out to those in power, will spot this sly wink at the presence of le pouvoir at the village level. It's just biznes.

Mounir himself is not above using some 50 dollar (or maybe 500 dinar) phrases.  He's a "horticultural engineer" (using the French ingénieur instead of the Arabic), but his friends know that he means gardener.  Mascarades is a good-natured romp through the life of a somewhat dysfunctional but lotsa-fun family, from the six year old son with a soft spot for tortured toads to the narcoleptic bride-to-be sister of Mounir.

Lyes Salem's description of Algerian humor as self-deprecating is on the mark, and he has said that he's tired of the repeated depictions of the difficulties of life in Algeria in much of Maghrebi cinema.  For Mascarades, the director has found inspiration from the zany cinema of Emir Kusturica and the incredibly funny story of life in Italy's shanty towns from 1976, Brutti, sporchi e cattivi, one of the classics of Italian comedy.

Lyes Salem, with such inspiration, is on to a good thing.  I look forward to his next films.

(This commentary also appears on TALIMblog).

Mascarades: Fawda Was Never So Much Fun

فوضى

Pronunciation: Fwḑá

Definition: chaos

It's one of our favorite words, a way to smile at the confusion that sometimes swirls around us.

Arabic teachers searching for that perfect visual aid to illustrate the fawda that can come to inhabit life in places like Algeria could do no better than show the hilarious opening sequence of Lyes Salem's Mascarades, released in 2008 in Algeria and shown last night at the Middle East Studies Association film festival in San Diego.

The MESA screening, with the director/star Lyes Salem providing commentary, was sponsored by TALIM's mother organization AIMS, the American Institute for Maghrib Studies.  Amidst very serious presentations of papers ("Revisiting Modernity and Heteronormativity in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East," just to cite one with a 50 dollar word), Mascarades provided welcome comic relief.

Not that Lyes Salem does not take his film making seriously.  First of all his choice of colloquial Algerian Arabic (vice the French that often, unrealistically but more commercially, shows up in otherwise excellent Algerian films vying for European financing and audiences).  Such choices are "political," according to Lyes Salem, though Mascarades cannot be said to be overtly political in tone.

There is, however, that running joke of the unseen "Colonel," who provides employment to the principal character Mounir (played by Lyes Salem), and whose convoy of high-powered security SUVs can be rented out for marriage cortèges.  Anyone familiar with Algeria, and with the privileges meted out to those in power, will spot this sly wink at the presence of le pouvoir at the village level. It's just biznes.

Mounir himself is not above using some 50 dollar (or maybe 500 dinar) phrases.  He's a "horticultural engineer" (using the French ingénieur instead of the Arabic), but his friends know that he means gardener.  Mascarades is a good-natured romp through the life of a somewhat dysfunctional but lotsa-fun family, from the six year old son with a soft spot for tortured toads to the narcoleptic bride-to-be sister of Mounir.

Lyes Salem's description of Algerian humor as self-deprecating is on the mark, and he has said that he's tired of the repeated depictions of the difficulties of life in Algeria in much of Maghrebi cinema.  For Mascarades, the director has found inspiration from the zany cinema of Emir Kusturica and the incredibly funny story of life in Italy's shanty towns from 1976, Brutti, sporchi e cattivi, one of the classics of Italian comedy.

Lyes Salem, with such inspiration, is on to a good thing.  I look forward to his next films.

Gerald Loftus

Washington's Piece of the Tangier American Legation

That's me in front of one of the Legation's many doors, or doors-within-gates.  Only it's not in the medina of Tangier, but in DACOR Bacon House, the HQ of Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired.

DACOR has a small but wonderful museum, open to the public.  But why this massive artifact from America's oldest diplomatic establishment?  From the DACOR Bulletin:

When the Legation building underwent renovations in the 1980s, the gate was removed and was about to be discarded.  Ken Rogers, U.S. Consul General in Tangier 1980-1985, recognized that the distinctive gate was too important to be abandoned.  He obtained approval to salvage it for eventual donation to an appropriate U.S. location.  Fortunately for DACOR, Ken has decided that the perfect location would be among the Foreign Service artifacts in the new Art Museum.

When I first learned of this piece of the Legation in Washington and told some Americans and Moroccans in Tangier, some thought that the gate should really be back "home" in its original medina location.

I am not so sure.  First of all, the Legation has many such doors, though I wish they were as well preserved as this one at DACOR.  As Ken Rogers found during the Eighties restoration, there wasn't any place for it, and I think that could still be said.

Its setting in Washington is, I think, very appropriate.  DACOR Bacon House is a lovely island of green in Washington's IMF, World Bank, OAS neighborhood.  Harking back to the diplomacy of another age.

Along with the State Department's US Diplomacy Center, DACOR's display of memorabilia shows visitors - Americans who might not know much about diplomacy - that their country has a rich history of engagement with the world.  "Engagement" not in the short, sharp battle sense of the word (though American history is replete with that too).  But engagement of the type still practiced at the Legation in Tangier.

TALIM, in the heart of an Arab medina, is a low-key way of daily engagement with its neighbors, whether they are women learning to read and write in Arabic or students touring the TALIM Museum.

We'll take care of showing people around in Tangier.  If DACOR can open a few American eyes to the world of diplomacy by showing people our gate, then I say keep that door open.

Gerald Loftus

Tangier is Enchanted by Diana Wylie's Book

Vicariously, I experienced the First Regional Book Fair in Tangier through updates from TALIM's Associate Director.  According to Yhtimad Bouziane (here with Tangier's new mayor Fouad El Omari and Book Fair organizer Rachid Amahjour as they visited the Legation stand), it was a great opportunity to network and do lots of outreach, while selling a few books.

Actually, to sell one title: Enchantment: Pictures from the Tangier American Legation Museum, by Diana Wylie (here's the Amazon link).

Ever since we received our first copies, Enchantment has been a very popular book at the Legation's newly upscaled bookshop. As the only book about the Legation and its art collection, it's something visitors can return to and continue to learn about the artists and their times, long after they leave this city on the Strait.

But just as much as tourists picking up a serious souvenir, Tanjawis - both Moroccan and expat - have sought out Diana Wylie's book.  We had queries even before we put the book on sale, and several people have stocked up on presents.

But more than pretty pictures (the quality of reproduction is top notch), Diana Wylie's Enchantment provides context.  Thematic chapters that take the reader through that fascinating place called the Interzone, when Tangier was a kind of Shanghai West, "the Powers" running the city as a Western diplomatic outpost, separate from the rest of Morocco.

It's all about context.  As we move toward providing more of that for the visitor to the Legation Museum, Diana Wylie's book will be an invaluable resource.  Thanks to her, to donors Brett Phaneuf and Gregg Cook, and to my predecessor Thor Kuniholm for conceiving of the project, Enchantment is the gift that keeps on giving.

Gerald Loftus

New York #1 - Tangier Number Two

It's official: Lonely Planet has ranked the World's Top Ten Cities for 2011, and this city on the tip of Africa has made it to runner-up position, just after the Big Apple.  Here's what they say:

From its extraordinary position perched on the northwestern-most tip of Africa, Tangier looks in two directions: one face towards Spain and Europe, and the other into Africa. The ‘white city’ announces a culture excitingly different from that of its close cousins across the water. With the recent arrival of a new city governor, the town beach now sparkles, the hustlers are off the streets and even the taxi drivers are polite. A stylish new Tangier is being created with a dynamic arts community, renovated buildings, great shopping and chic new restaurants.

While we locals appreciate the plug, the hype might have gone a bit overboard, especially that bit about the hustlers.  But there is a definite "buzz" about Ibn Battuta's home town.

Local Woman Hits Big Time

Another bit of news is the selection of Yto Barrada, Tangier woman of culture (Cinémathèque, photographer, educator), as Deutsche Bank's Artist of the Year 2011.  Yto, who was interviewed the other day on Tangier's international radio "Médi 1," was modest about her achievement, but passionate about her devotion to cinema and the visual arts.

I knew we were fortunate to have the Cinémathèque, which shows classics, new releases, and documentaries, a 5-minute walk from the Legation.  What I didn't know was what a rare institution this is on the south side of the Med.  We are very happy for Yto, and see this prize as just recognition of her talents.

Tangier rules!

(Strait of Gibraltar image: NASA)

Gerald Loftus

Reclaiming America's Legation: One Roof, One Room At a Time

Americans, when they hear the term "roofing," may think of flimsy shingles nailed into plywood.  A weekend project for do-it-yourself carpenters.

Not Tangier.

Think concrete.  Think layers.  Many layers, like those encountered by an archeologist digging down into a Middle Eastern tell.  Unearthing layers of valiant attempts to combat Tangier's notorious rains, which, as novelist Paul Bowles once wrote, fill interiors with water every winter.

The man in the photo with a jackhammer is uncovering our own rooftop tell.  Over a foot's worth of concrete and tiles, covered over with more concrete and tiles.  Enough to give a structural engineer a heart attack.  We are, after all, in a seismic zone, and this is a building that includes 18th century sections.  Like putting a brick on top of a toothpick castle.

But the noise, vibrations, and dust are worth the inconvenience.  America's only National Historic Landmark overseas needs conserving, and it starts at the top.  Roof by roof.

Illustration: American Legation cross-section, courtesy State Department Overseas Building Operations (OBO, our "landlord").

Under our many roofs are lots of rooms, 45 I am told.  If it sounds like a lot, think again.  What constitutes a room?  Is a walk-in closet, or a storeroom, a "room?"  We have had several of these forgotten spaces, filling up with the detritus of the years.

Reclaiming these spaces is vital to the work going on up top.  The roofs are getting waterproofed, and the ceilings and walls under them refurbished.  But where does our art collection go in the meantime, especially those works not on exhibit?  Into those reclaimed spaces, of course.  So I have declared every underutilized space a priority zone, to be cleaned and painted.

Roof by roof, room by room.  It's very slow going, and requires lots of coordination and patience.  Thankfully my kids have named me "Step by Step."  In the meantime, my ears reverberate to the rhythm of the jackhammers.

Gerald Loftus