Avuncular American

Introducing the New Mudir - John Davison

Almost four years to the day, I wrote about my predecessor Thor Kuniholm and his long tenure at the Legation.  Next week, it will be my successor, John Davison, who will be coming in after Marie Hélène and I head off to greener pastures.

I was an early and strong supporter of John's candidacy, among a very competitive field of applicants for this job.  He had visited us at the Legation after learning of the job opening, and we were impressed with his enthusiasm, imagination, and his knowledge of Morocco.

John has known Morocco since his days in the 1980s as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and has kept his links - and his knowledge of Moroccan Arabic - alive in the intervening decades, when his diplomatic career took him to other countries in the region (Tunisia, Egypt, Niger) and beyond.

This sentiment of leaving the Legation in good hands has only been reinforced by a period of overlap, where we had plenty of time to discuss the range of activities that is TALIM.  And John was able to witness first hand many of these in a particularly busy May and June, meeting many in our network of supporters in the bargain.  It's been optimum preparation for his taking the helm.

So this is not yet goodbye - we'll save that for the "last post" - but rather Welcome to the New Mudir (Arabic for Director).  I daresay John will fall in love with this venerable building as we have.  As those of us who know it best will appreciate, it deserves all the loving care we can give it.

Gerald Loftus

The First Farewell

Drawing by Lawrence Mynott, graphic design by Anthea Pender

The eagle - hats off to artist Lawrence Mynott and his American eagle balloon on our invitation cards - has taken off, or almost.  Actually, we're still here for a couple more weeks, so last night's farewell was the biggest but not the last farewell.

Thanks to the generosity of Madison Cox, we were sent off with full flying colors by our Tangier friends, a cross section of this multidimensional city, with donors, staff members, artists, artisans, academics... everyone who has helped us make this place a livelier, more open venue for our wide range of activities.

Four years seems like a brief snippet of time to many who have made Tangier their home, but we wanted to inject as much activity and innovation into those 48 months as possible, and then leave on a high note.

Speaking of notes, we were also graced by the presence of Gospel ensemble the Campbell Brothers, who joined us prior to their open air concert on the Grand Socco, Tangier's lively square which is the transition between medina and modern city.

"Amazing Grace," sung a capella to a hushed audience, was the perfect preview for what was a rousing performance post-party organized by the US Embassy and the American Language Center.

This is not "the last post," so stay tuned for a few more under this byline in the next couple of weeks.  And heartfelt thanks to Madison Cox for putting on a great party, and helping us celebrate this great institution and our brief moment helping more people get to know it.

Gerald Loftus

TALIM Library Catalog Finds an Online Home

Grecia Álvarez has written the following guest post.

Grecia Álvarez (MLIS) is a librarian and an EFL instructor who specializes in Cataloging and Information Literacy Instruction. Her first encounter with Morocco was in 2010-2011, when she was a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at Abdelmalek Essaâdi University in Tetouan. She has been working on various projects at the Legation since her arrival in Tangier last September, including volunteering as an English teacher in our Arabic literacy program for the women of the medina.

Her librarian work at the Legation has been possible thanks to a generous grant provided by the U.S. Embassy in Rabat.

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We librarians lead pretty exciting lives. We come into daily contact with objects of incalculable value, like books and papers that have played a role in furthering relations between peoples and nations.

Nowhere is this truer than at the Legation. Over the last few months, I have had the singular privilege of ruffling through a myriad of instrumental tomes, some dating back to the 1700s. These are books and original documents that have passed through the hands of local and international celebrities and are, miraculously, still available today for perusal.

Contemplating these collections is all a part of a day’s work for me, as I help to migrate the Legation’s paper-based catalog, that has served the library well since the 1970’s, to its new online home at LibraryThing. While there is still a lot of work to be done, especially in the way of classifying books into the Library of Congress classification system (which means labeling, one-by-one, close to 8,000 books!), my hope is that this new catalog will help researchers the world-over get a clearer picture of our unique holdings. Who knows, maybe with a more discoverable catalog the library will garner more visits from scholars and people interested in Morocco. Nothing makes a librarian’s heart happier than a well-used library.

While my time in Tangier is quickly coming to an end, I hope to continue perfecting our catalog remotely. I invite all of you to get involved too and play a part in enriching our collections. With just a few clicks through to our Amazon Wishlist, you can donate a book (or two!) to fill some of our information needs. Local and international researchers will benefit immensely from your gifts, now and for years to come.

Grecia Álvarez; photo Gerald Loftus

Arabic Literacy and Much More

Hundreds of Tangier medina women have graduated from the literacy program which TALIM does in partnership with FTAM, the Fondation Tanger al-Madina, a Moroccan NGO.  The basis is teaching them to read and write in Arabic, but we also offer cooking, sewing, and foreign language classes, thanks to a number of volunteers from the expatriate community.

Recently we hosted two more events with the women, where their horizons were further widened.  The above photo shows Mitchell Chanelis of Stories Exchange, where, thanks to a hookup organized by Rachid El Mziryahi of the American Language Center, and interpretation provided by two student interns from the Fahd School of Translation, the women were able to converse with American playwright and storytelling coach Robbie McCauley, currently doing a residency at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Here is a video link to the storytelling session.

"Our women" - we tend to say that in reference to the students in the literacy program - represent rich ground for the storyteller, and Robbie's and Mitch's encouragement elicited a number of touching tales of parental loss, early marriage, divorce... the stuff of life.

One woman, who hesitated because "she didn't have anything interesting to say," turned out to have a fascinating story.  There we were, sitting in a room we've begun to set up as a "community museum" (within our own museum), dedicated to the women's stories of living in the medina.  And the woman who had nothing to say proceeded to show us a photo on our wall which featured her grandfather, who was an official in the employ of the pre-independence Sultan of Morocco!

The women also participated in a presentation by Mohammed Abid, director of research at the Institut Pasteur in Tangier.  Abid had given a presentation on food safety at the AIMS Public Health conference in Tunis in 2011, and this time it was tailored to the concerns of women trying to keep their families safe and healthy.

Abid - who brought along two medical colleagues to form a panel for the questions that followed - was very impressed with the level of awareness of the women.  He wants to return to take up other subjects of interest: diabetes, hypertension, gynecology.  This is really of great benefit to the women, who don't always have the possibility of getting expert advice - for free.

Gerald Loftus

The Legation in ICOM News

Dr. Carol Malt, museologist and longtime friend of the Legation, has published the following article in ICOM News, the magazine of the International Council of Museums.  We are thrilled that Carol has brought our modest efforts to the attention of museum professionals worldwide, especially timely on the eve of International Museum Day.

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de Leth (H. and A.), Nieuwe Paskaert vant Naau van de Straat... 1726, hand-colored, 18" x 22", Amsterdam, c. 1740

The Tangier American Legation Museum (TALIM*) represents more than bricks and mortar, beauty and craftsmanship. Its multi-media, multidisciplinary collections focus on the history of the relationship between the United States and Morocco. Its collections visually reinforce the historical relationship between these two nations and reflect the history of Tangier, while its library holds important political, social and historical documents from both countries.

In 1777, Morocco was the first foreign country to recognise the US when it declared independence. The Legation building that houses the museum was a gift from Moroccan Sultan Moulay Suleiman in 1821. Located in the old medina of Tangier, Morocco, it is the first diplomatic mission acquired by the US, the oldest continually occupied American diplomatic property and the only US National Historic Landmark located outside the country.

The building housed US diplomats for 140 years. By 1976, however, the legation had fallen into disrepair and a group of former diplomats, Peace Corps volunteers, US ambassadors to Morocco, historians and academics formed the Tangier American Legation Society to restore it. The Tangier American Museum opened its doors on 4 July, 1976 and now serves as a museum, historic house, research library, art gallery, classroom and conference centre.

The collection of paintings, drawings, graphics, maps, rare books and other artefacts focuses on artists who worked in or depicted Morocco and historical documents of Tangier. Over the years, many artists who lived in Tangier, including James and Marguerite McBey (Scotland and US, respectively), Claudio Bravo (Chile) and Elena Prentice (US) have added to Donald Angus’ (US) initial gift of over 300 maps, paintings, carpets, furniture and Moroccan memorabilia to TALIM’s permanent collection.

Connecting through art

The permanent collection is used in many ways. Tours are tailored to audiences of tourists, school children, residents, historians and special interest groups. Local women who participate in TALIM’s free literacy classes also benefit from it, as objects from the collection can be integrated into their lesson plans. The reference library, which contains approximately 8,000 volumes of literature, history and statistics about the region, is another major asset to the community.

Every work of art contains an interesting story, but among the hundreds of paintings in the collection, one by Ion Perdicaris reflects dramatic international connections. "Arab Groom and Horse" might be just another massive, competent genre painting were it not for the history of the artist. Perdicaris came to Tangier in 1872, having had some formal artistic training in Paris, when he was kidnapped by the Berber bandit Raisuli in 1904 and held ransom for USD 70,000. American president Theodore Roosevelt sent US battleships and the Marines into the Tangier harbour to secure his release, wrongly assuming that he was still an American citizen. A romantic version of this story was made into the 1975 film The Wind and the Lion. Thus, this 19th century painting, like many others in the collection, engages different audiences including contemporary movie-goers, art connoisseurs and historians.

Describing his efforts to enhance the museum’s programming and collections in a recent correspondence, TALIM Director Jerry Loftus wrote: “I have created crossovers from our collections and stories and images from the research library that feed museum exhibits and blog articles. Those in turn spark interest among researchers to delve further into our archives. We have amazing maps and works of art, so we find themes and bring them together on our walls, providing texts to explain the historical context.”

Through its collections and programmes, TALIM aims to connect with an array of different visitors, helping them gain insight into the historical, political and cultural relationship between the US and Morocco. In a 2013 interview, Associate Director Ytimad Bouziane said of this challenge: “ I want TALIM to be a light, a beacon of knowledge for the entire region. I want it not only for the intellectuals but also for everyone, and it should portray the real American culture, not the superficial one.”

* The museum recently changed its name to the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM) because of its association with the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS). The acronym TALIM also means ‘education’ in Arabic.

Carol Malt

Tangier Seen Through Different Lenses

Is Tangier still the haven of The Aesthetes, as Andrew O'Hagen of the NY Times Magazine would like us to believe?

Much as many of the individuals depicted in "The Aesthetes" are talented and likeable people, and in many ways represent the concentration of culture and creativity that has typified Tangier for decades, there is nevertheless a ring of the recycled in Mr. O'Hagen's piece.

"It’s an old story — as old as sailing and sex..." so begins this umpteenth ode to Tangier's collection of expatriates.  At least we have O'Hagen's fine writing, and nice photography of what are quintessentially cozy interiors, rich in color and light.

But we've read this before, in fact, writers have been churning this out for decades, The Lost World of Naughty Tangier.  Get a new story line, please.

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Le Parisien's recent travel piece gives a plug to the Legation, and it is nicely illustrated with drawings by Reno Marca (though they depict a building other than ours).  This is straightforward travel writing.

TV5 Canada's "Ports d'Attache" episode on Tangier can be seen through 29 April.  Though aficionados will recognize scenes shot at the Legation, we don't get mentioned as such.  The program (in French) is nevertheless well done, and shows Tangier, warts and all, as it is today.

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Perhaps Tangier is simply a good place to do research for budding US scholars, of the likes of Ayla Amon (George Washington University), Graham Cornwell (Georgetown U.), and Emily Albrecht (Dartmouth College), who have recently written about their experiences at the Legation.

So over to our young Americans.

Ayla Amon, former TALIM intern, has done double duty, first by writing a comprehensive piece on the Legation and its library and museum collections in the art and architecture blog Stambouline, and then with Graham Cornwell (who did research for his dissertation at TALIM), a podcast in "Tajine."

Amon and Cornwell discuss the challenges of maintaining the TALIM collection, and present the myriad opportunities for scholars which our holdings represent.  This is very helpful for people contemplating research in Morocco.

Finally, Emily Albrecht reports on her Dartmouth group's time at TALIM, where they were able to attend our anniversary lecture on Sultan Mohammed V's historic speech in Tangier in 1947.

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There's room for every kind of coverage of Tangier, and while we like exposure for this city and for our unique institution, it's gratifying that of the recent articles devoted to Tangier, those with the most depth come from our young scholars.

Gerald Loftus; photo of Legation door detail by Christiane Delongueville

Showing the Consular Flag in Tangier

It's been a while since there were American Consuls in Tangier.  The US Consular Flag (left) dates back to 1777, which happens to be the year that the Moroccan Sultan took note of "les américains" among Morocco's trading partners.  The first American consuls appeared in Tangier in the 1790s.

The Consulate General of Tangier closed in the 1980s, so the American community of Tangier was pleased to attend the Town Hall meeting at the Legation last Thursday, where Casablanca Consul General Brian Shukan brought Consul Mark Ellis and Regional Security Officer (RSO) Stefan Merino to explain services offered to American citizens.

The Legation also served as a venue for the meeting of OSAC, the Morocco chapter of the Overseas Security Advisory Council, a State Department initiative which serves as a clearinghouse for security information and best practice for American companies and institutions abroad.  For the American citizens he addressed afterwards, the RSO offered advice on security awareness for the generally safe streets of Tangier.

Consul Mark Ellis briefed the group on the wide range of services offered to American citizens in Morocco, and even did a few notarizations for attendees.  The American community here is very heterogeneous, and ranges from young NGO volunteers to business professionals to retirees, some of whom have lived here for decades.  An important segment of the community includes Moroccan-Americans.

As Consul General Shukan - active in AMCHAM, the American Chamber of Commerce in Morocco - outlined, with the growth of major industrial infrastructure linked to Tangier Med Port, the Free Zone, and the forthcoming high speed train (TGV) line, the concentration of Americans in Tangier is likely to increase.

We're glad that the Legation can still serve as a meeting place for "AMCITS," and that the US Embassy in Rabat and the Consulate General in Casablanca see the Legation as a natural venue for a wide variety of programs, from cultural to commercial to consular.

Gerald Loftus 

Calling All QR Readers

I have the QR app, but I don't have a smart phone to test it.  Maybe you do.

Okay, here it is: Mozilla Firefox offered a nice "add-on" in the form of a gizmo to generate those neat little QR codes from selected text or URLs.  I've been wanting to do this, so that we could link our museum exhibits to related articles on TALIMblog.  All those visitors with smartphones, zapping away at our static displays.  21st century technology in the cause of 18th century history.

Who knows? There might even be a "crowd-sourcing" way to generate mini-donations using this thing.  Don't have a spare $5.00 bill in your pocket or a 50 dirham note handy, but you want to help our worthy cause?  Zap that QR code on our "poor box."  You'll be making more exhibits possible, funding further book acquisitions for our research library, or helping us teach Arabic literacy to the women of Tangier's medina.

So here's my experiment: those of you out there who do have the smartphone ability to scan QR codes, please stick your phone against the screen and ID this QR.  Does it work?  And then write me a Comment on the blog.  You might even want to read the entire post that this - hopefully - will link you to.  Thanks in advance.

Gerald Loftus

Al Jazeera: the Legation "Min Washington"

TALIM Director Gerald Loftus (left) and Abderrahim Foukara (right)

"Min Washington," the Al Jazeera Arabic weekly news magazine hosted by Washington Bureau Chief (and Moroccan-American) Abderrahim Foukara, aired yesterday worldwide (it will be repeated throughout this week; see local listings).

The Tangier American Legation was featured, a full 10 minutes of interviews, exhibits, and lots of history.  Moroccans are proud of Foukara, whose clear style and serious interviews cover the gamut of current events, but also touch on cultural subjects like ours.  Here, the focus was on the longevity of US-Moroccan relations, and the accent on the fact that the American diplomatic post in Tangier was the pioneer permanent presence of the newly independent United States on African soil.

Abderrahim Foukara was moved by his visit to the Legation, and we have former Tanjawi Said Temsamani, now in the United States and a guest on the same "Min Washington" show, to thank for putting us in touch.  Here's Foukara on the Legation:

Visiting the American Legation in the heart of Tangier, a city where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, I could not help seeing, with my mind's eye, both Spain and America. To me, the bridges of co-existence and friendship often begin at the crossings of the future, the present and the past.

You can see the Legation segment on this link, approximately at minutes 35 through 45 (there's also a short soundbite "tease" at the outset).

Text: Gerald Loftus; photos courtesy of Al Jazeera

Wish List Brings Results

Thanks to the generosity of donors Renee Payne, James Henkel, and Caitlyn Olsen, we have just received five of our eleven Amazon Wish List titles for our research library.  We now have:

- "The Reichmanns," which provides a wealth of information on Tangier during World War II as a haven for Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.

- "Prince Among Slaves," involving a case of mistaken identity, where a Muslim prince is emancipated from slavery, thanks to the interest expressed by the Sultan of Morocco.

- "The Architecture and Memory of the Minority Quarter in the Muslim Mediterranean City," especially longtime Legation scholar Susan Gilson Miller's chapter on our neighborhood, Beni Ider.

- "The Time In Between" by Maria Duenas, which, hinting at its content, is entitled "L'Espionne de Tanger" in French.  Picture of Tangier during the interwar period.

- "Tangier: A Literary Guide for Travellers," Josh Shoemake's new look, street by street, quarter by quarter, at Tangier's rich literary past.

Though these five books are but a beginning - and we'll add more - they show that our community of researchers (Caitlyn Olsen conducted part of her Fulbright year at TALIM and wrote us a nice guest post on Moroccans in the Spanish Civil War, and we hope to carry another in the near future from Renee Payne, researching her uncle's story, a former Tangier schoolteacher shot by Germans as a Resistance fighter in wartime France) and visitors (James Henkel, who has a soft spot for books and for "storied port cities" - combined in his Valparaiso, Chile bookstore).

As always, TALIM is greatly appreciative of all the help given by our fan club, whether it is of books (former TALIM President Bill Zartman has just sent us another chunk of his voluminous North Africa-centered personal collection), of money, or of their time and effort.  Thanks to all and Happy New Year.

Gerald Loftus