Avuncular American

Professorial Performance: Cain-Asbury in Tangier

Almost a year after his much-appreciated solo Legation guitar concert, Dr. David Asbury was back in Tangier with fellow Southwestern University prof Dr. Bruce Cain, tenor.  Actually, despite the tautogrammatic title of this post, the duo was anything but staidly professorial.

True to their university's paideia (or interdisciplinary) philosophy, Asbury and Cain explained their repertoire's origins, including the "River of Words" program, which promotes environmental literacy through the arts among schoolchildren.  "ROW" has illustrious connections, including American poet-laureates and the Library of Congress.  Its annual poetry and art contest - now worldwide - "inspires children ages 5 to 19 to translate their observations into creative expression." 

In fact, the first two selections from Cain & Asbury's River of Words collection were from poems written by a seven-year old and an eleven-year old.  Asbury and Cain have pioneered setting the children's poetry to music in their "River of Words Song Cycle," and there is something magical about primary school verse set to modern vocal music for an adult audience - nothing childish about it at all.

With works in English and Spanish (including those of Federico Garcia Lorca) and compositions by Native Americans, the Cain-Asbury concert was truly appreciated by the Legation's multinational audience.

Southwestern University certainly got value out of their professional development investment in Professors Cain and Asbury's trip to Morocco.  Prior to their pro-bono Legation concert, they had performed in Rabat's "Festival International des Cordes Pincées," the 20th edition of this gathering for "plucked instruments," as the sole American offering.

We were honored to introduce them and "River of Words" to the Tangier audience.

Gerald Loftus

The Legation's Last Wedding

Early this month, the Legation had the honor of special visitors, Ron & Sydney Crawford, pictured above.  They had preceded their visit with this email:

My husband and I were married at the American Consulate on October 3, 1956. The Consul at the time said that we were one of the last to be able to be married under the laws of the United States.  We are returning to Tangier this October and staying for several days.  Would like to visit the building as it is our understanding that this was the home of the Consulate those many years ago.  We will bring our marriage certificate with us and perhaps will be able to remember the room where we had the ceremony.  

 

If you click on the "Certificate of Witness to Marriage," you can make out the name of Vice Consul Charles J. Konya, who officiated.  Tangier was just about to begin its long transition from International Zone to Moroccan city, with independence just weeks later.  The University of Miami students were all of 20 and 21 years old.

Back to the Crawfords:

We had sailed from Miami in July, 1956 on a 92 ft schooner, working as crew as well as making a film for the skipper of the boat.  Traveling down the coast of Spain we thought how wonderful to be married and have the rest of the sailing trip as part of our honeymoon.  

We learned that Tangier was the only place in Europe where we could have a ceremony under US law. The Consul General, who arranged the wedding explained that we would be one of the last couples able to do this as their "Extraterritorial Rights" were ending the same week. That may have been the time that the Embassy changed its status.

Yes, Tangier was officially reintegrated into Morocco on October 29, 1956.  The Legation had already reverted to Consulate General status in June 1956.

Click on the University of Miami newsletter story for a better image of the young couple, whose time in Tangier was a complicated way to start out a marriage:

"Visiting Monaco, the couple decided to elope, and flew to Tangiers, Africa, where they were married for $16.  Immediately after the wedding, Ronny discovered that he was broke.  The only solution was to leave Sydney in a hotel and rush back to Europe for some more money.  All this took place on their wedding night.  Moaned Sydney: 'I'll bet we were the only couple in history separated by two continents on their wedding night.'" 

  

57 years later, the experience doesn't seem to have harmed their relationship.  Wrote Sydney: "It was such a dream come true to have been able to return to the place of our wedding."  Happy anniversary, Ron and Sydney!

Ron Crawford on IMDb.

Gerald Loftus

They Were Promised the Sea

The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) film fest screening in New Orleans of Kathy Wazana's beautiful documentary "They Were Promised the Sea" was my chance to see the film I had missed when it was shown at Tangier's 2012 Moroccan National Film Festival.  There, it was shown under its French title, "Pour Une Nouvelle Séville," which gives an excellent indication of the story line.

The Seville of the French title is that of Moorish Spain, when Muslim al-Andalus was the "Ornament of the World," and home to coexisting communities of Muslims, Christians, and Jews.  This convivencia ended when Jews and Muslims were expelled starting in the late 15th century.  For many Jews, Morocco provided refuge for centuries, and it is from this transplanted population that filmmaker Kathy Wazana hails, growing up in Casablanca and moving to Canada as a little girl.

Filmed in Morocco and Israel, Wazana interviews Jews and Muslims about their respective memories of each other.  We are used to imagining urban Jews from Casablanca and Tangier finding new homes from Tel Aviv to Toronto, but They Were Promised the Sea takes us to places like isolated, mountainous Illigh, whose mellah or deserted Jewish quarter is now in ruins.

From the wilds of the Atlas mountains to... the borderlands of Israel.  The sea that Moroccan Jews were promised was the Mediterranean, perhaps a new home in Haifa.  Instead, many were shunted off to communities exposed to hostile fire from neighboring Arab countries.

Many of the Moroccan Muslims interviewed express regret at the loss of their former neighbors.  The numbers are astounding: Morocco lost upwards of 300,000 of its people to Israel, France, Canada, Venezuela and a number of other destinations in the space of a few years.  Essaouira lost half of its population.

Some of the Moroccan Israelis talk about their departure in terms of "everybody is going," often prompted by the Jewish Agency's enticements.  These are not the sophisticated urban "palace Jews" that Ralph Toledano writes about in his recent novel "Un Prince à Casablanca," but people who provided Morocco with a range of skilled trades and occupations across the entire country.

Probably the most fascinating aspect of the film is the commitment of some of Israel's second and third generation Moroccan Jews to maintain links with their parents' and grandparents' homeland.  Moroccan cuisine and music have a home in Israel, and many of these young Israelis embrace their roots.  A visit to a windswept Jewish cemetery in Tetouan provides one of the most touching images, a young Israeli woman conversing with the Moroccan custodian whose care for his charges is evident.

The same young woman gets a political tongue-lashing from the late Simon Levy, then director of the Moroccan Jewish Museum in Casablanca.  Perhaps the only jarring moment in an otherwise elegiac film, Levy takes strong issue with Zionism, and includes the earnest young non-Zionist in with all Israelis in what he sees as the ending of what had been Jews' home for centuries.

Fortunately, the films closes with another great image, and with some lovely music featuring a Moroccan Andalusian orchestra - with a rabbi providing vocals.  Echoes of convivencia. 

The MESA screening, with filmmaker Kathy Wazana present, was sponsored by AIMS, the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, of which TALIM is the research center in Morocco.

Gerald Loftus

Telling the Legation's Story

"The Storyteller," James McBey, etching, 1912: TALIM Museum

Vision - and the resources to back it up

What's our Legation "elevator pitch?" (that minute-or-less sound bite introduction everyone should have handy). How's this:

"The Tangier American Legation is America's only National Historic Landmark located outside the US, where we tell the story of America's first diplomatic property and our relations with Morocco dating back to the American Revolution."

Of course, there are many other aspects to TALIM, the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies.  An "elevator pitch" that hopes to raise us some funds might add:

"TALIM is a nonprofit cultural center dependent on grants and donations, which help us in our efforts to preserve America's oldest diplomatic building and to continue our program in Arabic literacy for the women of Tangier's medina."

For an even fuller picture, that elevator speech might require a trip up to the 18th floor:

"As the research center in Morocco of AIMS, the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, TALIM fosters educational exchange, hosts scholars, and organizes seminars and conferences on a wide range of subjects."

So now the pitch requires things like paragraphs, pictures, and links.  It's beginning to resemble a blog!  Which is sort of my point, and this post is in response to questions I've received about my "vision" for this institution.  With applications coming in to fill my job next year, I would like to share some ideas that have guided my work here in the last few years.

The unifying theme has been "make the most of what we have, and tell the stories that make this place unique."  Unlike James McBey's "The Storyteller," you can't be content with just waiting until people sidle up to tell them a tale or two.  This job requires reaching out, hence blog and other media platforms.  We're set to feature again in the New York Times this coming weekend.

"Women's literacy" may sound worthy, but perhaps a bit generic.  How about the story of Fatima Gharbaoui, who also showed artistic talent, and whose sale of paintings earned her enough to have electricity and running water installed in her home?  That story of changing one person's life always manages to inspire people.

And that thing about being the first US diplomatic property?  Isn't it pretty amazing that this particular American first occurred in Morocco, thanks to the sultan reaching out to the US during its Revolution, the first such head of state to do so?  America's sole National Historic Landmark outside the US is in Africa, in a Muslim country, one of the Arab world's most stable powers.  If that is not a story of topical relevance two-plus centuries on, I don't know what is.

The trick to making this institution fit together is the realization that its component parts - museum, research library, etc. - aren't separate from each other, but that all can feed each other.  Take stories out of the archives and put them on the walls - and in the press.  Like a series of vignettes from the Legation's long diplomatic history, including a great Civil War story that was just in the NY Times.

Archives to museum, leading to research that in turns enriches the research library.  Look at every piece of this edifice - literally and figuratively - as linked to the rest.  A group of architects and engineers chronicles the history of the Legation in the State Department's "Historic Structure Report" (above right, an isometric image of Legation buildings from the HSR).  Display their blueprint history as a timeline of the Legation's metamorphosis across the centuries.

Preaching to the choir is necessary - many of the Legation's stakeholders are unaware of aspects of TALIM outside their particular professional field - and building new relationships is a constant effort.  The Legation should be much better known in American historic preservation circles, but so far the National Trust for Historic Preservation insists on ignoring America's only overseas National Historic Landmark.

And on the academic side, even though we continue to draw scholars of the Maghreb, we are also of increasing interest to people looking the opposite direction: scholars in the Maghreb and beyond who study America's long history in this region.  Stay tuned for the founding meeting at the Legation of the Moroccan American Studies Association.

So, to sum up a vision for this unique historic institution:

"Make the Tangier American Legation - TALIM - a centerpiece for American cultural engagement with Morocco, capitalizing on the Legation's historic presence and involvement with the community, and ensure that Americans, Moroccans, and others learn about the institution and help garner it the support and resources it deserves."

That last bit - support and resources.  Very, very important.  As one wit aptly put it, "Vison without resources is hallucination."  Everything is linked: TALIM activities, public relations, building a network of supporters, and programs and donations flowing from that network.

Gerald Loftus