Avuncular American

Dress Blues on America Street

The First, The Proud

In the days of Tangier, International Zone, the Legation was guarded by a contingent of US Marines, and by the Tabor or Moroccan gendarme force of the Zone.  But the photo at right might surprise those who don't know the geography of the American Legation in Tangier.  The guards are on the street, a pedestrian street that runs through - and under - the Legation.

Thanks to Legation friend Franklin Koppel for getting us this precious photo.

Older Tangier residents recall the days of Marines-in-the-street, and we love the story told by the father of one of our staff.  As a boy, he would gather up his courage and lung power and race by the Marine every time he had to pass by on Zankat Amrika - America Street, where the Legation is Number 8.  It wasn't just the Marines; he was also afraid of the jinn or spirits who were said to inhabit the place.  Talk about intangible security measures...

So after all these years sans Marines (we assume they moved over to the new US Consulate General Tangier, when it opened in 1961), Zankat Amrika again has Dress Blues.  We even have resurrected a Detex® Watchclock station.  Above and below, the latest addition to our museum's exhibit on the history of Moroccan-American relations, "Corporal TALIM."  Cover (to civilians, the Marine's cap) provided by Staff Sergeant Adam Peerey, Detachment Commander of the new Consulate General Casablanca Marine detachment.

Wikipedia has a very helpful entry on Marine Corps uniforms, and notes that some variants of Dress Blues "because they are considered formal wear, are rarely seen... except on Marine Recruiters and Marine Security Guards."  The gift of the Dress Blues was from Dr. Amin Tarzi (photo at left), director of Middle East Studies at Marine Corps University.

We are particularly happy with Dr. Tarzi's gift, since it includes some of his own history - his belt from his service as a member of the Marine Corps Reserve.  Dr. Tarzi hails from a distinguished Afghan family, and is an internationally-known expert on the Middle East and South Asia.

The Marine Embassy Guard Association - MEGA - is a repository of much of the history and lore of MSGs over the years, and serves as a clearing house for old friends trying to get back in touch.  On MEGA's well-constructed website, we learn that in 1949, at the very outset of the new Marine Security Guard program at US diplomatic missions, "the first fifteen Marines departed Washington on their assignments, 9 of whom went to the Tangier American Legation."  Another first for the Legation.

Tangier had actually seen Marines much earlier; in 1904, during the Perdicaris Affair, US Marines accompanied the Atlantic Fleet for a show of force - in those days, TR's "Big Stick" approach, literally gunboat diplomacy.

These days, Marines are much in demand: security tensions have led to an expansion in the number of MSG detachments.  The American Consulate General in Casablanca has been the recipient of one of those new detachments, and we hope that the Marines in Rabat and Casa - as well as serving and former Marines elsewhere - will stop by and see more about their history in one of the most unique locations for a MSG detachment.

Gerald Loftus, text; photos: Mohammed Jadidi

Detroit to Asilah, Bankruptcy to Vibrancy

Fresh Bread and Vibrancy of Urban Neighborhoods

This guest post is by Andrea Urbiel Goldner, a 2012-2013 US State Department Fulbright researcher in Morocco.  She is a landscape architect, occasional lecturer in landscape architecture at the University of Michigan, writer, and 2013 Kresge Fellow in the Literary Arts.  With Gary Urbiel Goldner as part of Peregrine Workshop, she is also working on a children’s book that grew out of stories they collected while conducting the Fulbright research in Morocco.  Photos and illustrations by the couple.

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Again we have no fresh bread in the house.  This would not have happened in Morocco.  Or if it did, it would have been solved in minutes—24 steps to the neighborhood oven, a quick chat with the baker, 24 steps home, and then our hands would have been negotiating with hot bread in order to get butter on it.  And Gary’s daily peanut butter sandwich would have been made.  Here, home, we have no reasonable walk to fresh bread.

We returned home from Morocco on July 7.  Eleven days later our city declared bankruptcy.  I should say that it asked for bankruptcy protection and restructuring.  We—our city—have been declaring bankruptcy for my entire life.  On my returns from college and graduate school and work in other places, I have been declaring an inability to consistently walk to fresh bread, a particularly painful form of social and constitutional bankruptcy.

We went to Morocco to study “community appliances”—I use this word to describe spaces, facilities, and rituals that serve as neighborhood venues to accomplish domestic tasks such as baking, washing, heating, cooling, communication, and entertainment—and the neighborhood vibrancy they create.

In Morocco think neighborhood oven and everywhere snack cart (baking); hammam (washing, communication, entertainment); teleboutique (communication, entertainment); paseo in the north and corniche elsewhere (communication, entertainment, cooling, heating); and every bakery, man café, or hanout where a shared television shows tonight’s football game.  In America think coin laundry (washing, communication, entertainment), bar showing tonight’s game, and public library.  In both places think wi-fi hot spot.  To contrast think mobile phone, private washing machine (or in the case of Morocco, mom on the roof), and home television. 

Thanks to a US Department of State Fulbright research grant and logistical support from TALIM, my family and I lived in Fes for 3 months and then Asilah for 7 more months in order to experience first-hand the community appliances and particular approaches to urban vibrancy in those cities.

One night, out for a stroll in Asilah, we found ourselves walking behind the baker and the man we affectionately called “moul tourist trinkets.”  (Moul al-hanout—مول الحانوت—is the shopkeeper in Morocco.  Moul fawakih—مول فواكه—is the fruit vendor.  And so on.)  Both had just closed up their respective shops across the street from each other and were conducting an easy-paced cool evening conversation.  They turned in at the neighborhood mosque whose lamp lit a circle of the street in front of it.  As we continued our stroll to the ocean, I tried to quiet my out-of-nowhere inconsolable sob.  It took Gary a few minutes to notice; by then I had figured it out.

Click on the link below to continue reading.

Patton Interpretation: Crash Course

"Morocco in Hollywood," the American Consulate General and Dar America's mini-series of World War II-themed films shot in or depicting Morocco, got a start Saturday evening - with a showing of Franklin Schaffner's award-winning "Patton" - at Casablanca's beautiful Villa des Arts.  To reach a wider audience, we sought out a French-subtitled version of the film, with commentary before and after in French.  This also required a crash course in Patton-ology, thanks to a selective reading of Carlo D'Este's Patton: A Genius for War and other works.

Anyone familiar with the film - and George C. Scott's Oscar-winning performance - will know that his portrayal of Patton was true to life, and that Patton the man and the general was a bundle of contradictions.  Both profane and pious, volcanic and poetic, adjectives to describe Patton include some, like enfant terrible and turbulent, which work nicely in both languages.

Another one is perfectionnist: Patton, who honed his French as America's first tank commander amidst the trenches of World War I France, had a look at the phrase booklet prepared for US troops while crossing the Atlantic en route to the November 1942 Operation Torch landings in North Africa.  He was so infuriated by French spelling and grammar mistakes that he personally oversaw the corrections to the pamphlet.  All while leading the first large-scale amphibious landing that the US attempted in the European theatre of the war.

The complex character of Patton was a natural focus of a group of students in psychology.  Unfortunately, while the students remained respectfully mum in front of their teacher, their prof let loose a diatribe of anti-American shrink-speak, something having to do with torture by US medical doctors in 2005 Iraq.  We firmly led a flanking manouver, getting the audience back to 1945 and Patton.

Patton & Morocco: the scene in the film is quite positive, even the line where Patton tells the Sultan that he sees Morocco as a cross between "Hollywood and the Bible."  Patton is decorated with the Order of Ouissam Alaouite, and the citation reads:

"Les Lions dans leurs tanières tremblent en le voyant approcher" (The lions in their dens tremble at his approach).  From a contemporary Time Magazine article.

Patton wrote - prophetically, and very much in character - to his wife of his encounter with the Sultan: "It was the most colorful thing I have ever seen and would be worth a million in Hollywood."

Offscreen, Patton was not so upbeat on the Maghreb, with disparaging views of "the Arabs" expressed as he traversed Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.  And, despite his knowledge of France from his WW I days, he was not above entertaining ideas of "buying off" senior French officials.  J. Rives Childs, who as Chargé d'Affaires at the Legation in Tangier was the senior US diplomat dealing with Morocco, was appalled: "I don't think I have ever met anyone more repellent... His one obsession was war."

Well, Patton would have to agree with the latter; he was, as Eisenhower said of him, "a born soldier."  And destined to be buried as one: despite his postwar, accidental death, Patton is buried among his soldiers, at the ABMC military cemetery in Luxembourg, scene of much Battle of the Bulge fighting.

Next up: "Morocco in Hollywood," Part Deux.  A showing of Casablanca in Casablanca.  What can I say that they haven't already heard about this legendary film?  Maybe I'll tell them about Dean's Bar in Tangier.

Gerald Loftus

Perdicaris: American Playboy?

This guest post by Diana Wylie (photo) was inspired by her study of the long-forgotten letters written to Mrs. Perdicaris during and immediately after the kidnapping of her husband in Tangier in 1904.  The incident sparked a brief crisis, and was a world-famous case of President Teddy Roosevelt's "gunboat diplomacy."  Dr. Wylie, who wrote the book - literally - on the Legation's art and map collection (Enchantment), has returned to Morocco on a Fulbright grant, and was pleased to find the Legation after a three-year absence, especially the Perdicaris letters, which TALIM has recently acquired.

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Was Ion Perdicaris really a playboy?  When I was writing Enchantment, I thought so, but now I wonder.   Perdicaris did flout social convention (ran off with a married woman.) He never held a paying job (dabbled in theater and painting.)  He loved living well (built not one but two mansions in Tangier.) He played with facts (neglected to tell anyone he changed his nationality from American to Greek during the American Civil War.)

I hoped a weightier image of the man might emerge from reading letters written to him and his wife Ellen immediately after he was kidnapped by the chief Raisuli on 18 May, 1904.

Many were penned by grateful guests, people on whom Perdicaris and his wife had lavished hospitality at their Tangier home El Minzah, now the site of the eponymous hotel, and their country residence Aidonia, today a ruin in the Parc Perdicaris.   They call Ellen “the Queen of Tangier,” her concert room “magnificent,” and Aidonia a “paradise.”

One letter stands out in depicting Perdicaris, not as a host or playboy, but as a big-hearted man who cared about social justice.  It came from an African-American minister and educator.

In his letter Rev. Matthew Anderson remembered Perdicaris approaching him in the lobby of a Swiss hotel and introducing himself as a “neighbor” because he originally came from Trenton, New Jersey.  (Anderson and his wife, a medical doctor, aimed to uplift their fellow African-Americans by founding the Berean Manual Training and Industrial School in Philadelphia.)

Perdicaris then charmed Anderson by revealing his “intimate knowledge of the progress of the colored people … and the profound confidence he had in the future of the Negro race from his experience in Africa.” Anderson wouldn’t have known that Perdicaris had some youthful exposure to “the Negro race” – his mother’s family had owned slaves in South Carolina – and that his experience of “Africa” was limited to its atypical northwestern tip - Tangier.

Beyond affording glimpses of the wider and deeper concerns of Tangier’s playboy, the letters offer a front row seat on one of the twentieth century’s first media events.  They poured in from places as far afield as Los Angeles and Yorkshire.  Many were written less than two days after the kidnapping.

What led news to spread so far so fast? It flashed under the sea on telegraph cables, thanks to the skills of engineer C. F. Varley, Ellen Perdicaris’ rejected first husband. 

It may prove hard for Perdicaris to shed the “playboy” label entirely.  I invite readers to decide for themselves by visiting the fifth chapter of Enchantment and, in the process, learn how the mishaps of one eccentric figure contributed to the long and terrible slide to World War One.

Diana Wylie

Arab & US Communicators in Tangier

"AUSACE, the Arab-U.S. Association for Communication Educators was established in 1995 to encourage and support the advancement of professional relationships among Arab and U.S. university faculty and students and media professionals."

AUSACE 2013 has convened in Tangier, and the launch was last night at the Legation.  Thanks to our fruitful partnership with the sponsor, Tangier's King Fahd Advanced School of Translation, we hosted communications educators and practictioners from the Arab world, Europe, and the U.S.

Going beyond the inevitable "Arab Spring" analysis, the participants are devoting the week to discussing everything from "hacktivism" to "translation in wartime."  Workshops in participatory democracy and journalism in times of crisis give a practical tilt to what might have otherwise seemed an exercise in paper-presentation.

From the conference rationale, under the theme of "New Horizons of Communication in a Time of Crisis," some key questions:

• Is it possible to think of communication differently so as to be able to better decipher the crisis phenomena and curb them?
• What is the share of responsibility of the professionals from all fields of media, irrespective of their specialization, in the malfunctioning of intercultural communication systems on the global level?
• Along the continuum between the two extremes; collective commitment and individual responsibility, where does freedom of expression fall, liberty begin and auto-censorship end?
• How can we protect reality against the technological manipulation of facts? What would be the appropriate pedagogical approach to adopt for training our novice journalists and communicators?
• What is the impact of crisis on cross-cultural and cross-religious dialogues?  Are there any links between Occupy Wall Street (OWS), Indignados and the Arab Spring?

Some of the conference participants were return visitors to the Legation, but for most, it was a chance to discover TALIM and to add it to their list of "musts" for follow up research (many were captivated, not only by the building and the museum, but by our library).

For TALIM, welcoming the AUSACE participants was a chance not only to introduce the Legation and the various facets of TALIM, but to highlight our core theme of communication between Americans and Moroccans from the outset of the US in the 1770s.

Gerald Loftus

Al-Halqa: In the Storyteller's Circle

Please don't call Al-Halqa, as one audience member tried to during the Q&A with film maker Thomas Ladenburger, part of Morocco's "begging" scene.  No, as Simon-Pierre Hamelin, writer and manager of Tangier's Librairie des Colonnes bookstore responded, it is an art form that predates the written word by thousands of years, and is a respectable - if dying - occupation.  The film showing at Tangier's Cinémathèque was sponsored by the Fondation Jardin Majorelle.

As depicted in this award-winning documentary, storyteller Abderahim would be highly offended to be called a beggar.  His efforts to coach his son in the art and business of Al-Halqa make clear that he applies the same care and preparation to his work as any standup comedian or one-man-show artist.  Timing, cadence, choice of "script," audience - it all goes into making this an occupation that puts food on the table for his photogenic family of six.

Working the crowd at the famous Marrakesh square of Jamaa Al-Fna, Abderahim is in competition with snake charmers, fire-eaters, Gnaoua musicians, and, in a first for this film viewer, a man who gulps down boiling water directly from a kettle.  These people, though they pass around the hat, are no more beggars than me, when I plead for donations to our museum "poor box."  You gotta pay for culture, right?

The problem with Al-Halqa artists is that the competition is not just the other shows of the public square, but all the other distractions of modern life.  Telling stories that date back centuries - as colorful as the setting might be, will a 17 year old take his eyes off his damn tablet?

And despite being anointed with UNESCO Intangible Heritage status, Morocco's Halqa street performers are not above being swept away to make room for other, noisier or more "picturesque" acts.

Thomas Ladenburger has provided us a loving portrait of these people who guard an ancient tradition, despite the challenges of modern life.  Watch Al-Halqa: In the Storyteller's Circle for a glimpse at a Morocco that few tourists can penetrate, and which may soon go the way of other lost treasures of the intangible kind.

Gerald Loftus

The Moroccan Network in America

The visit to the Legation by the Honorary Consuls of Morocco in the United States sparked some thought about the considerable presence of this North African country in the US.  With honorary consuls in nine states, from Hawaii to Massachusetts, Morocco extends its reach beyond its Embassy in Washington and its Consulate and UN Mission in New York.

Hailing from sectors as diverse as academia, business, and public affairs, these Americans representing Morocco were a particularly focused audience for the Legation's story of more than two centuries of close relations between Morocco and the US.  Bravo to the Moroccan Embassy in Washington for bringing them to TALIM.

Morocco's network of institutions is wide and diverse.  In Washington, "Morocco On the Move" - a public affairs portal - is an initiative of the Moroccan American Center

a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco.

TALIM has been a recipient of a grant from the MACC to mount its forthcoming permanent exhibit of "Moroccans in America," a nice counterpoint to our longtime interest in documenting the contribution of Tangier Americans to the cultural life of this city.  Shortly there will be Moroccan-Americans on our walls, whose contributions to American life range from academia to outer space.

Speaking of Moroccan-Americans, a plethora of associations show the verve of this growing community: AMPA, representing professionals in various fields; Moroccan American Network, celebrating entrepreneurs; Wafin, a sort of webzine where Moroccan-Americans can meet each other and keep up with the news from home; and local associations, like Boston's Moroccan American Cultural & Community Center, whose members are so proud they've designed a button.

Morocco's formal and informal networks in the United States are a clear illustration of a country that has figured out that, important as diplomacy is, it's not sufficient to check the box of embassy contacts with the State Department's Morocco Desk.  Morocco is active within and beyond the Beltway - all the way to Honolulu.

Gerald Loftus

a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco. - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

the Moroccan American Center, a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco. - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

of the Moroccan American Center, a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

of the Moroccan American Center, a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

of the Moroccan American Center, a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

of the Moroccan American Center, a group of three NGOs – The Moroccan American Center for Policy, The Moroccan American Trade and Investment Center, and The Moroccan American Cultural Center – which work to promote relations and mutual understanding between the United States and Morocco - See more at: http://moroccoonthemove.com/about-us/#sthash.sm0pXLwv.dpuf

Tangier, Morocco's Next Casablanca

In the days of Tangier, International Zone, Coca Cola's new customers in this city on the Strait were encouraged to "Tome Coca Cola," as in this 1950 ad in the Tangier Gazette.  Sign of the times: Spanish was the primary language among the foreign community of Tangier.  The company has been in Tangier since the postwar days, when a shipboard war surplus bottling operation was brought on shore in 1947.  Now, Coca Cola is to open Africa's largest production plant in Tangier, where it first came ashore more than sixty years ago.

Yesterday, the American Chamber of Commerce in Morocco, AMCHAM, recognized Tangier's new economic reality and potential by convening its country-wide meeting in Tangier.  We were happy at TALIM to welcome the group for a closing reception at the Legation.

Beyond Coca Cola's historic and expanding presence, Tangier has attracted a certain number of US companies, many of which are in the automotive industry: Delphi, Polydesign, Lear.  Bathroom fixture giant Kohler has a large plant in Tangier.  And Tangier is proud to have not only one, but two of the McDonalds with the absolutely best views in the world, overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar over to Spain.

With the new Tangier Med transshipment port and the major remake of the city port of Tangier - not to mention the construction of the TGV high speed rail line linking Tangier with Rabat and Casablanca - the city is Boomtown Morocco.

We're glad that AMCHAM recognizes this, and that it chose to announce the formation of a new northern Morocco grouping under the wing of Polydesign's director Julianne Furman, a longtime Morocco hand.  And we welcome them whenever AMCHAM wants to host events in America's first and oldest property abroad.

Gerald Loftus 

Tanjawis Take a History Lesson

As part of our ongoing effort to move history from the closed pages of our library's books and onto our walls and into people's lives, we put together a slide presentation last night for a heterogeneous group of Tangier residents, both Moroccan and expat.  The event was sponsored by the Rotary club of Tanger Détroit.

The reaction was enthusiastic, and a highlight of the evening was the gift to the Legation of a signed photo of President Theodore Roosevelt, presented to us by a descendant of Emily Cherifa of Wazzan.

The handwritten inscription reads "To Her Highness The Cherifa of Wazan with the high respect of Theodore Roosevelt, Jan 12th 1904."

Emily Keene, the "British Bride of Tangier," was married to the Cherif of Wazzan, ally of the Sultan and an intermediary in the Legation's negotiations to free kidnapped American Ion Perdicaris in 1904.

The photo has been a prized family possession for over a century, and we are honored that Asmaa Cherif Ouazzane has deemed that it should reside at the Legation, where it will join our exhibit on this important episode of Roosevelt's "Big Stick" gunboat diplomacy.

It's always heartening to hear native Tanjawis say that they learned about their own history at the Legation - "I had always thought this was just a museum" said one woman.  Well, yes, and here's why there is a museum.  The art helps us provide the historic context to over two centuries of Moroccan - American ties.

Our discussion of the "protégé" system, where foreign powers extended protection to Moroccan subjects, often in exchange for services rendered, also generated discussion.  The US played the protégé card too, sometimes controversially, leading to sparks flying in the 1880s between Perdicaris and the Matthews, father and son, respectively Consul General and Vice Consul in Tangier.  Accusations of trafficking in protection included according an entire village of 300 "protégé" status in exchange for their services as beaters during wild boar hunts, which the villagers then used to avoid the Sultan's taxpayers.  Not a high point in the annals of American diplomatic history.

Great interest too in the Legation's role during World War II: Operation Torch, the intervention of the Chargé d'Affaires to save Jews during the Holocaust, and the delicate balancing act dealing with Franco's Spain and its occupation of Tangier, Vichy French authorities, and Moroccan nationalists.  President Franklin Roosevelt's reaching out to then-Sultan (and future King of independent Morocco) Mohammed V was a story that Moroccan audiences like hearing.

And we enjoy recounting the Peace Corps' role in the transition of the Legation during the 1970s, when Peace Corps Morocco training was centered here.  The story of the "Cistern Chapel" (the Volunteers' disco in an empty water cistern under the Legation kitchen) is always good for a few laughs.

But we were especially happy to have in the audience a distinguished lawyer who learned his English thanks to a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher, one of that same cohort who hung out at the Legation and discoed at the Cistern Chapel.

And that's what made yesterday's program such a joy.  Photo identification by members of the audience, helping us determine who might be The Man in the Bicorne, for example (the latest hint is that he is pictured in front of what was the Danish Legation).

Tanjawis reliving their own city's - and country's - history, via this sole vestige - the Legation - of the time when Tangier was Morocco's diplomatic capital.  It's a rich history, and we're happy to share it with our growing public.

Gerald Loftus