A Glimpse of Daylight

Work papers are coming through. The place looks something like this. Stay tuned.

Someone Else's Idea

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Well alright then.

Productive Staggering, for a Change

Against all odds, I actually got a job!! No small feat in Ithaca, my placid town where being trilingual is not much of a distinction, and even less use. I am happily employed at Ithaca Coffee, where I spent 5 hours today learning how to do a few useful things. There will be more useful hours to come; inshalla'ah I will learn how to use the cash register in time. It's an agreeable place with an excellent beer selection. And it leaves room for the writing gig in a few months: I will be able (if all goes well) to handle both. Cross your fingers.

I am pleased as punch to be useful again. Even if I am the oldest member, even if I work with a girl who was born when I was in high school--it doesn't really bother me. This is all on the way back to where I should be. God bless our every move.

Let the Questions be Answered

Because it's her birthday. She's 21 today. Jalila Benlali, she's awesome. She didn't believe me when I said that her looks would turn heads in New York. But I don't lie about legs like that. Enough mournful drooling.

Summer Jobs Never Again to Be Endured

There were only a few types of doors. The desperate poor resented the intrusion by the bourgeoisie into their jealously guarded space, and were further insulted by another invitation to privileged society commercially rescinded. They would see a cultural foreigner, an unfamiliar creature from another world, divorced from adult responsibility, unconcerned with clipping coupons and the price of gasoline. Shame at their capitalist impotence was palpable. (This was Geneva, NY.) The conservative right happily welcomed the chance to grapple with their ideological adversary, all don’t-tread-on-me, drowned-in-a-bathtub outrage. Bored by their static companionship, their eyes lit up with righteous disagreement. (This was some nameless suburb of East Rochester.) And finally, there were the guilt-stricken bourgeosie, eager for absolution from their industrialist sins. (This was well-heeled Brighton, and would be Ithaca too.) All were amazed at the left’s effrontery. Imagine the nerve, they would mutter inwardly. To approach me on my own property! As if this has anything to do with me! Few saw a person. Most were culturally embedded enough that they saw only a symbol.

But gripped with unwavering optimism, blind to their own inconsistencies, the group would ramble on. Selling indulgences, leaving a path of literature in their wake, pressing each with empty words of solidarity. Stranded thirsty by secularism, they did not see their proselytizing ancestors, nor their distant cousins across the sea. The religious parallels were unheard of. Ignorant of their brethren, they remained numbingly American.

Poor scattered people! All aching for community, for social intimacy, for release from paranoia and anxiety. Many contributions were fed as much by loneliness as by contention. So the organization was sustained by the same qualities it represented against.

Man, I miss Morocco... But I will be in Turkey soon. Close enough for now. I almost made it to Tetouan, but I can count Bursa on the Matt-map.

Stranded Traveler

I found a bat in my kitchen. This is strange enough to be the opener for a very silly joke. A small brown bat, clumsily hugging the floor, a little smaller than one of my old rats. Chauve-souris, indeed! He must have come in through a window, but why? It's far too light outside to be kiting around at this hour. So I scooped the fellow up with a magazine, which he promptly bit enthusiastically. I made it out to the porch, where I happily offered him his freedom. He glared at me, a shred of paper stuck to his teeth. Ungratefully, he bit my knuckle. I cursed at him and flung him into the air. He glided off across the street and landed in a shrub. I have never seen a bat flying during the day. He must have been half-blind.
This was the second wild creature to fly into this house this week. A few days ago, there was a terrified starling in the living room. She looked a little dazed, and then I found out why: no one explained walls to her. When I approached her, she immediately took off for a window, and smacked into a wall. After a little more of this folderol, she allowed me to cup her gently in my hands, though she plainly still thought her end was nigh. She was a lot more excited when I took her outside and pitched her off the porch. Still a bit wobbly, she flew a little too close to the telephone lines, clipping a wing, and nearly crashed again. But she didn't.
I hope the symbolism is clear to you.

Why I Am Not That Concerned

I know, several bombings in Casablanca. The BBC article is here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6555177.stm. I am saddened by the desperation of poverty, painfully exacerbated by its proximity to unreachable affluence. Knowing such hopeless bloodletting only widens this gulf is a bitter truism. Suicidal bombers' desired outcome is not clear to me. Popular support--that is, of the people--has always been an irresistible force. Its lack will cost our fumbling president his career (though in his cynicism, I doubt he cares), overcoming the stained glass walls with which his entourage protect him. People don't stay unhappy for long. Once they find some scrap of sustaining prosperity, they naturally cling to it. Conservatism is like that.


The monarchy has been basically successful so far. Though wealth is poorly distributed, and education has a some distance in front of it, The People are in favor of The King. His status as al-Mumineen, the Leader of the Faithful, places him in charge of the religious community as well as the secular. This is in important contrast to, say, Iran.


Political repression still lingers, and its reporting is transient at best. However, most people (I think) are joyously conservative, but not reactionary. There is no popular push for Wahhabi asceticism. So martyrs (do you still call them martyrs if no one cares about the individuals? I favor "losers".) do not really inspire an Iraqi-style bloodbath of retribution and fatally sanguine heroism. No one admires these poor dupes.

Perhaps September 11th inspired some similarly ignorant cretins, but I think the common reaction is like the Good Kids Meeting Drugs in some After School-Special: Ew, we don't want to be like that. But more strongly dismissive and condemning. This will not spread beyond Casablanca, certainly not to Rabat. (Poor Casaouis blowing up rich ones: not to be disgusting, but I never liked the place much anyway.) The country will not be fractured by sectarian fences. There aren't any, to speak of. It is too much a NFA Kingdom for that.

Perhaps it is more likely that willing candidates will either all blow themselves up (I know there's a hamd'ullah for something bad, the equivalent of God forbid. But it's rarely used: one student told me, "God never wishes something bad to happen." I am still thinking about this.) or else disappear, scuttled into an unmarked makhzen van, then to wake up somewhere uncomfortably near Algeria. Or not.

I am not that concerned because this will not sustain. Of the few serious Islamic sorts that I met, they seemed more likely to stash themselves away somewhere like al-Qaraouine in Fes, calmly murmuring the Qu'ran, quietly sneered at by their peers for not fleecing the tourists. Let us not neglect the influence of Berber culture: the soul of Moroccan conservatism.

If these enraged Casaouis are admirers of al Qaeda, I wonder if they despair of finding an embracing audience. I see a radical Christian, ragged clothes and greasy hair, thumping his Bible on a corner in a jolly 1950s white picket fence town: Repent, you sinners, for the day of the Lord is at hand! Right... Who will stay to be scorned by the madman, and suffer their faith belittled for its tolerance? Or who would rather marry an Anglophone, even a slightly odd one like me? (I'm talking to you, sweetheart.)

It is far too late to try to bend the Kingdom into a separatist culture. Maybe a century or two ago, but not now. Everyone who wants a stable job and a bilingual education, raise your hands.