Avuncular American

Thanks For Your Concern, But We're Planting Trees

Last Sunday's demonstrations in several Moroccan cities, Tangier included, went smoothly.  The protest marches themselves, that is - not the immediate aftermath.

In a region marked by violent government repression of civil protest, no less a critical observer than Human Rights Watch lauded the Moroccan authorities for their restraint: "Morocco's calm response to protests today should be the rule, not the exception for tolerating peaceful dissent," said HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson.

The word "maturity" has been used more than once in analysis of recent events in Morocco.  First, on the part of the young Facebook organizers of the protest, who at one point appeared to call for their cancellation, fearing that they would be manipulated by various ideological extremes.  "Maturity" in the Government reaction, which was muted and non-violent.  One Moroccan political scientist, Mohammed Tozy, said that there will be a "before-and-after February 20."

What didn't go so well was the rampage of soccer hooligan-style looting and arson that swept across some cities, Tangier included.  Friends of TALIM - in Tangier, in the US and elsewhere - have expressed their concern about the Legation and its occupants.

We're fine, thank you, with the Legation's rooftop Minzah Room offering a vantage point over the smoke from burning cars and shops wafting across the city last Sunday night.  The looters rushed by the Legation on Rue d'Amérique, seen carrying stolen flat screen TVs and cases of beer.  More on that later.

Police officials stopped by the next day to assure us that they were looking out for us.  Their presence may be so discreet as to be invisible, but we appreciate the concern.  The US Embassy security officer phoned us too, a nice gesture.

Though we are okay, we feel for the employees and small businesses and the families dependent on the modest salaries that now are in danger.

We have heard reports that the police, thanks to surveillance camera tapes on some of the very banks looted or vandalized, performed a targeted roundup in the wee hours of Monday morning.  We further heard that the expeditious trials have led to stiff sentences.  As one wise man said, "look for trouble, and it will find you."  Reap what you sow.

Work began almost immediately to repair the damage, and the word on the street is that His Majesty Mohammed VI is footing the bill.  That regal gesture is something that will be remembered, just like his covering burial expenses for tragic highway accident victims or help to families in other catastrophic occurrences.

With all this going on, we decided to plant some trees.

The Legation's courtyard has had trees before; former Tangier Consul General Harland Eastman, who, with the help of US Marines, Peace Corps Volunteers and staff, and concerned individuals helped restore the historic site from years of neglect remembers having to chop down towering cypress trees that probably threatened to overwhelm the structure.  But that was in the 1970s.

In 1932, the garden was more sedate.  "Four slender cypresses which the gentle breeze seems never to stir from immobility" was the description of the Legation garden by Honor Bigelow in the Foreign Service Journal.  They hadn't become feral yet, but let's say that we're not planting cypress trees again.

We're planting orange trees instead, four of them, Islamic garden style, as this lovely courtyard has also had in the past.  As in our Jewish friends' recent Tu Bishvat feast, we are celebrating spring before it really arrives, planting (we hope) at the most propitious time.

This garden renovation is thanks to a number of people.  Gloria Kirby, longtime Tangier American Legation benefactor, graciously offered to buy us the trees and get them to the medina.  We had a beautiful day in the nursery and lunch afterwards along the sea.  No burning tires or broken banks there.

Offshore, so to speak, we benefitted from expert advice from American landscape architect Bibi Gaston, who has strong Tangier credentials too.  Finally, an old colleague from London's Regent's Park, Winfield House head gardener Stephen Crisp provided useful input for a garden that he has not yet visited.  Thanks to all.

These four orange trees are still little spindly things, saplings that, we hope, will outlive our time in these historic grounds.  That's a long term investment in Morocco, only fitting in a place that was donated to the United States by the Sultan in 1821.

These Legation walls have witnessed far worse than the recent unrest: bubonic plague, Barbary pirates, gunboat diplomacy, wartime occupation... all that is in the past, part of the legacy of more than two centuries of close relations between Morocco and the United States.  A legacy which also includes one of the oldest treaties in force, one of the first countries to host Peace Corps, and a long list of mutually-beneficial initiatives.

Repair the broken glass, plant a few trees, and move on. There's too much to do, in Morocco and at the Legation, to dwell on February 20.

Gerald Loftus

American Presidents, Morocco, and the Legation in Tangier

Today, Presidents Day in the United States, is a nice hook to link a succession of American Presidents - from George Washington to Barack Obama - to Morocco, and, by extension, to the American Legation in Tangier, home of TALIM.

Of all American Presidents who have interacted with their Moroccan counterparts, it is probably George Washington's correspondence with Sultan Muhammad ibn Abdallah, resulting in one of America's longest standing treaties, that is the most significant.

Washington was the first (portrait from EarlyAmerica.com).  But other Presidents are linked to the Legation and to Morocco.

We want to see Theodore Roosevelt's rifle, presented to the Cherif of Wazzan.  One of the latter's relatives living here in Tangier has, and it would be wonderful to see (I might even hope to display) this token of Presidential friendship.

Then there's James Monroe, who received the gift of this building in 1821 from Sultan Moulay Slimane.  After the building came the famous lions, a gift to Andrew Jackson in 1833.

In our central staircase, thanks to a donation from the Tangier-linked Forbes family, there is the hand written American Consulate General Tangier announcement, dated 28 April 1865, of the "lamentable news of the death by assassination of Abraham Lincoln."

Further on, there is a Moroccan poster from the late 1950s, showing Dwight Eisenhower and King Mohammed V, who led Morocco's return to independence.

And then there is Franklin Roosevelt, who appears in numerous photos taken in Casablanca, during the conference of that name in January 1943, after the successful American-led landings in Vichy-occupied North Africa of November 1942, Operation Torch.  Roosevelt met with Mohammed V, who little more than a decade later resumed his rightful place on the throne of an independent Morocco.  There's a great photo on the Legation website showing the Tangier American Legation staff greeting the King on his return from exile.

I have often been asked if any American President has been to the Legation.  To my knowledge, the answer is no.  But it need not remain unvisited forever.

Here's a thought: even if Cairo won the "sweepstakes" for the first Presidential speech in the Arab/Muslim world by then newly-inaugurated President Obama (despite a Moroccan movement to petition that it be made here), there's still a chance to get President Obama to Tangier and the Legation.

In 2021.  What, you say, 2021?  Isn't that well after a first or even second term?

But Former Presidents are still called Mr. President.  And I say, with his family ties to Africa, what better person to lead an American delegation in 2021 to this continent's first country to recognize the United States, whose Sultan intervened with American authorities to free Muslim slaves in the antebellum South, and whose first modern King was honored for his role in protecting Moroccan Jews from Nazi persecution?

All of these stories have their place within the Legation's historic walls.  Which will celebrate its Bicentennial in 2021. It's only ten years away.

Obama in Tangier, in 2021.  Who will head the Committee to Draft the President?

Happy Presidents Day.

Gerald Loftus

Shop Casa Barata! Don't Expect Receipts

Years ago, approaching the coast on a French car ferry on my way to a diplomatic posting in Algiers, I shared a table with a few other passengers.  One of them, a young man who may have assumed that I was already familiar with the term, told me that his profession was in trabendo.  He was a trabendiste, i.e., making a living from trading in contraband.  He probably would have liked me to hide some of his goods in my almost-empty station wagon.  ("Is this American crazy, coming to Algeria with an empty car?").

Those crafty Algerians, inventing great new words in Arabic from French or Spanish (maybe now even English) roots.  In Tangier, with its rich history of foreign influence from north of the Strait, sometimes people just say it in Spanish or French.  Like contrabando.

That is what they sell in Casa Barata, where the Legation shops.  Along with the rest of the population of Tangier in search of good prices, or things that you might have trouble finding in standard shops.  We were there yesterday, and the place is, as the French might call it, folklo.  One enterprising artist has even turned some pieces of Casa Barata detritus into works of art.

In her campaign to install new curtains throughout the Legation (if the place has some 45 rooms, how many windows - and pairs of curtains - does it have?), my wife has been a frequent visitor to the House of Cheap.  Actually, "house" doesn't begin to describe this sprawling warren of shanties and more substantial buildings, criss-crossed by alleys of dubious footing (don't go there when it's raining).

Wanting to Do The Right Thing, paying and then presenting a receipt for possible (if our teeny budget allows) reimbursement, my wife asked the man selling the curtain material for a receipt.  Receipt?  "Sorry, Madame, but we sell contraband.  We don't have receipts."  Oh well, this whole job is a labor of love, and maybe my wife's free labor in sewing curtains is just part of the Loftus legacy.  But we will have to recoup our money spent on curtain material, maybe with a notarized, sworn statement "No receipts are available in Casa Barata, because it all comes to Morocco semi-clandestinely through Ceuta, the tax-free paradise."

Economia, the very serious bi-monthly published by Morocco's CESEM, the think tank of the HEM graduate business school, devoted a recent issue to the informal economy, with an amazing portrait of the traffic - the word in all of its nuances - between the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and the Morocco which surrounds it.  One statistic stands out: the low-cost European supermarket chain Lidl in Ceuta, with its population of around 50,000, has the same sales turnover as the Lidl's of Barcelona - with its population of 5 million.

Maghrib Triangulation: Guelma-Tunis-Tangier

Three profs from orient did come.  West, to Tangier.  Our visitors: three Algerian professors from the University of Guelma.

Guelma, located in Algeria's Far East, is about as far from Tangier as you can get in Algeria.  The University's name - 08 Mai 1945 - is a giveaway to its location, near the town of Setif, which on VE Day 1945 saw a massacre of Algerian nationalists demanding rights from the France they had just fought to defend.  It was the spark that a decade later launched Algeria's war for independence.

It was thanks to a suggestion by a former director of our sister research center in Tunis that Professors Ladi Toulgui, Hamid Boudechiche, and Abdelhak Elaggoune, of the University's American Studies program, sought out TALIM.

Always on the lookout for networking opportunities, we set up an impromptu brainstorming session on inter-Maghrib exchanges and the use of TALIM's research facilities by Moroccan, Algerian, and other scholars.

Responding to the chance to interact with their Algerian colleagues was an impressive gathering of Moroccan and American academics, based in both Tangier and Tetouan.  Familiar as they are with the Legation's strengths and weaknesses, we wanted to hear from them where we could improve.  Provide more research materials in Arabic (one of our interlocutors, Dr. Mhammed Benabboud and his Asmir Association, has an entire library of cultural preservation titles).  Reach out more to Tetouan, the half of Tangier/Tetouan's Abdelmalek Essaadi University where there is more of a concentration of the disciplines - history, art, social sciences - that have resonance at TALIM.

For us, the stress on inter-Maghrib exchange was a chance to encourage more Moroccan applicants for the AIMS Maghribi Grant program, which tends to see Morocco as a favored destination for Algerian, Tunisian, and other Maghribi scholars, but which has traditionally seen a disproportionately low number of Moroccan applications.

In the case of the Algerian professors, it was the University of Guelma which sent them to Morocco, without the benefit of AIMS or other international grants.  Guelma to Tangier, via Tunis - not the most direct route, but certainly an encouraging opening to the world of American Studies programs in the Maghrib, which should be a natural counterpart to study of the Maghrib by American scholars.

We thank Doctors Elaggoune, Boudechiche, and Toulgui for making the trek to Tangier and TALIM, but also for helping us focus on that rich area of potential collaboration, using one of our main strengths: our history, our building, and its original purpose.

American studies at TALIM... at the historic Legation which saw the first overtures by Revolutionary-era America to the Arab and Muslim world.  American studies with a difference: Maghribi scholars examining the long history of American involvement in Morocco and North Africa.

Sometimes it takes outsiders looking in to shine a light on a potentially rich stream of research topics.  TALIM welcomes Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Libyan, Mauritanian - and American! - researchers in American studies.  We've got the stories - lots of them.

Gerald Loftus

End of Mubarak, End of Maalesh

The old joke about Egyptian society ruled by the IBM ethic - Inshallah, Boukra, Maalesh (God willing, mañana, It doesn't matter) - needs a bit of revision after the resignation under popular pressure of Hosni Mubarak.

God willing, democracy will come to take root.  Note the word democracy, not elections, though credible electoral processes are certainly welcome. Inshallah.

Tomorrow - boukra or mañana - in a more democratic Egypt may bring stability and prosperity, but the danger for now is a letdown after the euphoria.

But maalesh, that fatalistic default position where today's woes are regrettable but will certainly be there tomorrow, has suffered a serious blow.  Despairing Egyptians, faced with the stultifyingly corrupt practices of a civil service that could turn the simplest of administrative procedures into a lifelong quest, used to jump off the roof of the infamous Mogamaa Building off Tahrir Square.

Maybe that was urban legend, but the truth is that they summoned up the courage not only to block access to the all-powerful Mogamaa, but also to block a President-for-life, and his hereditary plans for a "republic" in name only.

Mubarak and his sons, no doubt, counted on the famous Egyptian quality of contentment or qanaa, a tranquility of the spirit that put up with three decades of impunity.  But every good quality, when abused, has its limits.  Maalesh - no more.