Space and Place

Biography

2012-01-24T09:35:00.007-07:00

I was born in Minot, North Dakota. But we didn't stay there long. When my Dad's military commitment ended, we moved south (almost 900 miles) to Kansas City.

I went to preschool in Johnson County, Kansas. Just about the only thing I remember is the time we had a fire drill: we all ran outside and watched in excitement as the firemen sprayed some water on the roof.

During my elementary school days, my family moved around a lot and I attended five different primary schools.

I always considered myself very lucky to have attended a six-year high school: Lenox Memorial High School in Lenox, Massachusetts. As a seventh grader, you needed to grow up quickly. And it was the second smallest high school in the state so you got a lot of individual attention and I thrived there. I can't imagine life without the grounding I received there: especially in social sciences with Mary Ann Bakiel and Bob Wiley; humanities and literature with Jim Hurley; and art with Nancy Bruno.

Equally important to the class work was membership on the cross country ski team. After years of football and wrestling, it was a revelation to find a sport where you compete with yourself and get out in the world to explore. Things I learned from coaches Steve Moore and Jan Weiner continue to be important in my daily life. One of my proudest moments was when I was awarded the "Coach Ed Gulligan Award" as the top male athlete in my graduating class.

In college, I pursued a classic New England liberal arts education at Keene State College, Keene, New Hampshire. Majoring in American Studies, with a minor in Geography, gave me the chance to try courses in a great variety of subject areas: history, literature, social sciences, art history, physical sciences, design, and physical education.

Keene was an up-and-coming ski school at that time, having just joined the NCAA Division 1 ski circuit. Under coaches Charlie Beach and Hank Lange, I honed my ski skills and physical fitness while traveling extensively to train and compete. The most memorable experiences include competing in international races in Labrador City, Canada and staying at the Olympic Training Center and racing on the Olympic Trails at Lake Placid, New York.

Sense of Place

2011-05-18T15:00:00.003-06:00

(to download in pdf, see link below)

SENSE OF PLACE

Sense of place refers to subjective human reactions to place/s. Evolved from early forms of humanistic geography (i.e. Wright, Lowenthal), the concept appears in various forms in a considerable body of works expanding on human experience, memory, imagination, emotion and meaning; accordingly, it is a core value in a broad and varied range of endeavors from theory [i.e. placing humans into earth’s time-space continuum] to practice [i.e. building “green” or selling places as commodities]. In sum, sense of place contributes depth and understanding to what it means to be human.

In a myriad of approaches to sense of place, a key strand begins with the individual. Each person brings her/his own personality, background and previous experiences into the process of forming a sense of place. Each person draws on their own use of human senses and their own sense of aesthetics, and their own intellectual and emotional responses they’ve developed in regards to places; these are based on their experiences and perceptions, and the development of cognitive understandings of places. One’s reactions and responses are not static, however, and the way a person looks at places continues to evolve as their life cycle develops and as the landscapes and places around them are transformed. Through those processes, it can be argued that people develop [on varying levels of sophistication] their own landscapes of memory and previous experiences. In some cases this leads to bonding with places - love of place (Tuan 1974), while in others cases it can lead to ambivalence, disinterest and/or rejection; i.e., the placelessness of interchangeable superficial identities that can be found anywhere (Relph). Furthermore, in invoking sense of place, many humanist geographers and others from the humanities are attempting to understand non-reductionist uniqueness of individual responses, as well as distinctiveness that different places possess, and to open the minds of people to the richness of the world through place-based approaches and specifically to think about the role that places play in their lives.

Many individuals share a sense of place with others in a subgroup or across broader social and cultural lines. Within other social and behavioral sciences, and for some geographers as well, there are attempts to understand psychoanalytical aspects of subgroup perceptional and behavioral approaches to sense of place (i.e. Walmsley and Lewis). Some group studies of places come out of the humanities and the cultural landscape school of geography, and they usually involve historically tracing an understanding of places at local and regional levels (Jackson), or through folklore and hand-me-down stories (Ryden).

In contrast, other geographers and some space/environment disciplines tend to look more at the role specific places play in that process, including studying the character of places themselves and why particular places evoke a sense of awe or attachment. Thus the shift is away from studying humans toward a concern for the qualities or attributes of places that move the individual; this has been called genius loci, or the spirit of place (Wilkie 2003). Along this line, most humans have their favorite places [often stemming from their early experiences] as well as a memory bank of their own special landscapes (i.e. Wilkie 2006). Most people are searching ultimately for a place to live that “feels right” to them, and that they can call home (i.e. Buttimer). Some studies of sacred and indigenous places have focused on the concept of the power of place that in some cases has existed through time and many generations (i.e. Abram, Basso).

This focus on the character of special places resonates with many writers (i.e. Stegner, Lopez), poets, filmmakers, artists and others including most people, and the kinds of places they are attracted to range in scale from micro-settings in the natural or cultural landscapes to neighborhoods, lake or river regions, mountain ranges, cities, or even states, nations, and global geopolitical regions. However, the more one moves away from direct experiences and memories involving close human contact with places into a larger generalized framework [especially with how large numbers of people share their thoughts about places] the result is a more general and reductionist perspective. In going well beyond direct gaze, they attempt to factor in a larger cultural milieu involving both natural and cultural landscapes as places of meaning [i.e., a knowledge of climatic, ecological, natural interconnections and built environments] adding layers of depth into the cognitive world of sensing a place.

A particularly apparent and accessible sense of place arena lies in the representations of place; they act to capture and convey senses of place via various media. Imaging places in the visual arts makes powerful use of sense of place [i.e. Robert Capa’s war photography and the 19^th century American landscape paintings of the “Hudson River School”]. Similarly, many writers feature sense of place in literature, poetry and metaphors of place [i.e. Pocock]. As evocative as these may be the media production of place in digital news, entertainment and advertising, through their shear volume and ubiquity, trumps all [i.e. senses of place of – current warzones like Iraq; inaccessible places like North Korea’s capital city Pyongyang; places of desire like television’s “Bay Watch” series; and purpose-built resorts like those in Cancun, Mexico].

Accordingly, sense of place is fertile ground not only for representing and imagining places but for creating and contesting it. Thus, the making of place (Tuan 1991), resistance and place (Creswell), visualizing and performing place (Roberson), designing & building places (i.e. Saarinen) and geopolitics and place (i.e. Hayden) ―to name just a few― are all examples of how geographers and others have sought to employ sense of place to better understand certain spheres of human action and interaction. Furthermore, sense of place, owing to the betweenness of place (Entrikin) can also act as a mediator between a host of analytical binaries, like transposing conservation with profit; evocative sense of place not only pleases it is also good business. Even as an ever increasing placelessness has been identified, new senses of place are also emerging due to human dynamism and creativity. The idea of a global sense of place (i.e. Massey) has been proposed and everyone who’s ever e-mailed, blogged, networked or instant messaged with personal computing and the internet is acquainted with cyberspace - a burgeoning world of new virtual senses of place. Clearly sense of place can be viewed from many different entry points from which individuals can enter into or continue previous intellectual journeys in their studies of place.

Richard Wilkie and George F. Roberson

Article citation, in slightly different format:

Roberson, G and R Wilkie (2010) “Sense of Place” in Encyclopedia of Geography, B Warf, ed. London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, p2532-4. To download in pdf, click here

Readings:

Abram, D. “The Ecology of Magic.” In The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, New York: Pantheon Books, 1996, pp3-29.

Basso, K. “Wisdom Sits in Places: Notes on Western Apache Landscape.” In Senses of Place, S. Feld and K. Basso, eds., Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996, pp53-90.

Buttimer, A. “Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place.” In The Human Experience of Space and Place, A. Buttimer and D. Seamon, eds., New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980.

Cresswell, T. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Entrikin, N. The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.

Hayden, D. The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995.

Jackson, J.B. A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

Lopez, Barry. “The American Geographies.” In About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory, New York: Random House, 1999, pp130-43.

Lowenthal, D. “Geography, Experience, and Imagination: Towards a Geographical Epistemology.” In Annals of the American Association of Geographers, v51, n3, (1961), pp241-60.

Massey, D. “A Global Sense of Place (1991)” In Reading Human Geography: The Poetics and Politics of Inquiry. T. Barnes and D. Gregory, eds. 1999. London: Arnold, pp315-23.

Pocock, D. “Geography and Literature.” In Progress in Human Geography, v12, n1, (1988), pp87-102.

Relph, E. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion Limited, 1976.

Roberson, G. “Tangier: Visualizing the City.” Performing / Picturing Tangier, K. Amine, ed., Tetouan, Morocco: Abdelmalek Essaâdi University and Aberystwyth, Wales: University of Aberystwyth, 2007, pp41-51.

Ryden, K. Mapping the Invisible Landscape: Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993.

Saarinen, T. Environmental Planning, Perception and Behavior. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.

Stegner, W. Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier. New York: Viking Press, 1962.

Tuan, Y. Topophilia: a Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.

______. “Language and the Making of Place: a Narrative-Descriptive Approach.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, v81, n4, (1991), pp684-96.

Walmsley, D. and Lewis, G. Human Geography: Behavioral Approaches. London: Longman, 1984.

Wilkie, R. “’Sense of Place’ and Selected Conceptual Approaches to Place.” CRIT, v55, n1, (2003), pp29-31.

______. “Dangerous Journeys: Mexico City College Students and the Mexican Landscape, 1954-1962.” Bloom, D. ed., Adventures into Mexico. Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006, pp88-115.

Wright, J. “Terrae Incognitae: the Place of the Imagination in Geography.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, v37, n1, (1947), pp1-15.

New initiative: international publishing program

2010-05-16T06:12:00.034-06:00

Local-global shifts, research reform, emerging technologies, positioning for growth: creative-performative opportunities for academics, NGO’s, and community advocates

ICPS / CMI: a case study

(To download full text in pdf, see below)

For more information, including how to order books, click here

[Editor's note: this paper was given on 23 May 2010 at the Annual Tangier International Conference - Performing Tangier 2010: New Perspectives on Site Specific Art in Arabo-Islamic Contexts]

First a little bit of context: my name is George Roberson. I am a cultural geographer with the Human Dimensions Research Group in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

I was in Tangier on a year long Fulbright Scholar research grant in 2008[1] with the International Centre for Performance Studies[2] (ICPS for short – and the producer of these annual conferences). My chief collaborator is Khalid Amine; ICPS Founder, President and Conference Convener. The focus of my ongoing work is international collaboration and education, and more specifically, on theory and praxis of intercultural engagement and processes of change. In a fundamental way, it’s one of the reasons we’re all here at the conference.[3] The world is in another period of great upheaval and reconfiguration, digital communications have even reoriented our sense of the local-global spectrum, and once again Tangier is at the crossroads. Putting theory into practice has never been more important so some of the things we’ve been focusing on include developing these conferences, communications, technology, outreach, mentoring and publishing.[4]

SWOT analysis. Indeed, in applying a SWOT analysis to the situation —that is: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats— the ICPS publishing program is among its greatest strengths. Due to Khalid’s leadership and the contributions of so many volunteer partners —authors, artists, translators, editors, granters, printers, designers, readers, etc— the ICPS library has grown to include many multilingual offerings in a range of genres: drama, literary criticism, conference proceedings, and translations.

However, jumping ahead to threats, we must be realistic: we’re not as well-know as we need to be and building up new institutions and practices upsets the status quo and also competes with differing visions of the future and backlash can result.

Threats notwithstanding and though support has been broad-based, the greatest weakness is a lack of sufficient and stable financial resources to enable ICPS to blossom to full potential. A prime example, although the current publishing program is robust, it is not cheap and so book distribution has always been limited to only within Morocco, plus, whatever our partners have been able to hand-carry home to other places.

A call to action. In short, this paper is a call to develop multiple strategies to move forward: both to begin to shore up ICPS’s fiscal/future viability and also to make sure the dialogue here has staying power and the international reach it deserves.

So I encourage all to think about what opportunities we have. And we'd be happy to hear from you: george.roberson (at) fulbrightmail.com

One opportunity, already being developed, is to extend the publishing program to the international level. By doing so, we hope to generate some income, but much more importantly, with your help we’ll expand our international presence, make Morocco and Moroccan concerns more accessible to outsiders, and make Moroccan works more widely available (which still remain underrepresented at the world level). Equally important, I believe an international oriented publishing program will be crucial in improving our ability to win significant grants to support all the good things that ICPS is doing.

Next I’ll tell you a bit about what we’re doing to develop the program, show you our first three titles, and then conclude by asking you to get involved and support this effort and I’ll give some specific suggestions.

New technology, new systems. Last year ICPS formed a strategic publishing partnership with Collaborative Media International (CMI), that’s my new academic NGO founded specifically to do this work. We’re also working with the largest book distributer in the world: Ingram Books. This gives us access to the largest networks and latest technologies to efficiently and effectively reach readers worldwide. And we bypass only-for-profit publishers entirely so we retain full rights and control.

Rigorous, transparent, democratic processes. In putting together a book, partners volunteer their time, talent and intellectual capital and proceeds go ICPS and to produce more books. Bookstores anywhere can stock the books on their shelves, but as I mentioned at the outset big changes are happening all over the place in how things work and a new reality is that specialty items, like our books, reach their target market best via the internet. So to buy one of our books, most people will order it online from any one of the many online book sellers (Amazon.com has been incredibly successful) and the book is automatically printed and quickly sent anywhere in the world directly to the customer. However, to be clear, this new model should in no way reduce the existing publishing program which has done such a great job of making books available all over Morocco at really great prices.

Testing the system. In selecting our first book to test this new global publishing model, we carefully searched for a book concept with a good chance to succeed. Fortunately both a real need for a new book and a draft book were quickly identified. Here’s how it went. Some Fulbright colleagues who were studying Moroccan Arabic in 2007-2008 told me about the need for more user-oriented resources for learning the language. Furthermore, Aaron Sakulich, one of the Fulbrighters, already had a book-length draft that he had written for his own use. To make a long story short, Rajae Khaloufi and Khalid joined in the project and the first copies of Moroccan Arabic started shipping in August 2009.[5]

You can see here the cover of the book and the members of the collaborative team.

Since it is hoped that this a model that others might emulate, I’ll briefly recount some aspects of the book concept that gave it good potential:

1) people were already saying a book like this was needed;
2) it brings together crucial resources into one inexpensive book (like side-by-side English, transliteration and Arabic);
3) non-fiction always has the best sales potential especially how-to books;
4) we already knew who the main users would be (ourselves and our students, Fulbrighters, Peace Corps, other students, travelers, etc); and importantly,
5) ICPS would claim a stake and some rewards in teaching Darija.

And the back cover with some quotes from the team. There are lots of little details woven in here (i.e. the cover photos were taken here in Tangier and were specifically chosen to reflect the rapid urbanization taken place all over Morocco and also to challenge the typical outsiders visualization of Morocco as just camels, sand and palm trees.)

And the book on Amazon.[6] Note the price: $20 and on sale for $18. A domestic edition could also be done to better reach the tourist market.

Now the reality is that most books published these days don’t sell too many copies. But the initial the response has been good so we are already preparing for a second edition (and we know there are some errors in the original text). So it’s our first international book (and some proceeds are supporting this conference) and it is hoped that it will be just the first in a series of international educational resources.

So the logical next step was to try several international editions of some existing ICPS books and, thinking strategically and looking to the future, to begin to group them into topical series. The first two are:

A Contemporary Voices Series: Shakespeare Lane, by Zoubier Ben Bouchta.[7] Soon we’d like to do the other two plays in the trilogy: The Red Fire and Lalla J’mila (a Moroccan national drama prize winner).

And the back cover. Featuring original production photos and a quote from Marvin Carlson (our conference closing keynote speaker).

“Shakespeare Lane is a most welcome addition to new translations of world drama, not only because the important contributions of Moroccan dramatists are still much under-represented among those translations but also because this play provides a fascinating and moving example of how the European dramatic tradition, here represented by Shakespeare, is today being reworked and given new life and relevance by artists from non-European cultures. It is especially fitting that the play is set in Tangier, so long a crossroads of multiple cultures.”

And for fun, here’s the book on Amazon Japan.[8] Note the price: 2,159 yen – about $15

And the first in an International Collaboration Series: Bowles / Beats / Tangier, edited by Allen Hibbard and Barry Tharaud.[9] This is the conference proceedings from Performing Tangier 2008. And like the Shakespeare Lane cover, these editions incorporate aspects of the graphic designs done by Altopress, the ICPS publishing partner here in Tangier.

And the back cover features a quote from Khalid about the goals of ICPS and these conferences.

“The Tangier conferences are a forum that aims at bridging the gap of difference and connecting cultures, as well as reaching across the divide to the Other. The setting of Tangier makes a perfect home for new intercultural encounters that celebrate and honor our essential humanity. It offers a glimmer of hope during a dark time marked by the hegemony of the post 9/11 discourses of horrorism.”

I’ll conclude with some ideas about how you can help:

Buy the books
Use the books as required reading in your classes
Do a book review, on Amazon.com for example – rate it five stars
Recommend to your networks: students, colleagues, professional organizations
Donate money
Reference in your scholarly work
Write a grant linking your work to ICPS and vice-versa
Propose a manuscript
Recommend an author

Volunteer to join the collaborative team as:

author, editor, translator, peer reviewer, grant writer, talent scout, committee member, promoter, technology expert (who knows about ebooks, Paypal, or can help us with online audio for Darija text?)

And to quickly recap:

Build up a strategic international publishing program
Keep the domestic publishing program going
Sustain and grow our reach a wider / international audience
Move more contributors and collaborators are needed to come forward
And together we’ll improve the position to win significant grants

Special thanks to:

Our partners Margie Kanter, Jose Delgado, Jeffrey Miller, Barry Tharaud and Andrew Hussey who all had invaluable input on publishing.

And to Saadia Maski and MACECE (the Moroccan-American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange) for their support.

This paper and visual elements are available online at:
http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2010/05/pt-2010.html

Follow CMI on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Collaborative-Media-International/194579233009

Article citation:

Roberson, G (2010) “Local-global shifts, research reform, emerging technologies, positioning for growth: creative-performative opportunities for academics, NGO’s, and community advocates” in Performing Cultural Diversity / Critiquing Postcolonialism. B Tharaud, J Manuel Goñi Pérez and G Roberson, eds. Tetouan, Morocco: Université Abdelmalek Essaâdi, p157-62. Download in pdf, click here

Notes

[1] http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/12/contribute.html
[2] http://www.icpsmorocco.org/
[3] http://icpsmorocco.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=114&Itemid=178
[4] http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2008/05/tangier-conference.html
[5] http://collaborativemedia.blogspot.com/2009/03/darija-text.html
[6] http://www.amazon.com/Moroccan-Arabic-Practical-Learning-Dialect/dp/0982440901/
[7] http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2008/02/shakespeare-lane.html
[8] http://www.amazon.co.jp/Shakespeare-Lane-Zoubeir-Ben-Bouchta/dp/098244091X/
[9] http://www.amazon.com/Bowles-Beats-Tangier-Allen-Hibbard/dp/0982440928/
[10] http://iew.state.gov/events/common/popup_event.cfm?event_id=35458

2010-03-29T14:21:00.032-06:00

George F Roberson, PhD

Seeking:

Jobs (international studies / relations, advising, education, social service, research, advocacy -- full-time, term & contract)
Grant opportunities
Collaborators
Manuscripts and film scripts

Locations:

Denver, Amherst, Tangier
USA nationwide
Mediterranean, North Africa, Middle East Regions
Worldwide

Resume / CV below:

Click on the highlighted link below to view fullscreen and to print and download
ROBERSON CV

Tanger des Peintres: Grey Room to Casabarata

2008-10-19T17:20:00.016-06:00

Site-Specific Performance
Opening event of Performing Tangier 2008
May 16 / Chellah Hotel / Tangier, Morocco

Art cannot reveal the truth about art without snatching it away again by turning the revelation into an artistic event.

-- Bourdieu
The Field of Cultural Production

Trailer introduction:

Begins with the mixing of the audience and ensemble / cuts to a preface in Darija featuring a Tanjawi painter adding layers to the canvass as past city images and past conference photos circulate on the screen / then giving way to the dramatic multi-media entry of the Burroughs' character / a postcolonial performative ceation of confrontation, dialogue, analysis, negotiation.

Performance fundamentals:

1. Audience as an essential extension of the performance
2. Screening Tangier throughout history: resisting nostalgia and fixity, forever on the move
3. Re-writing finished texts employing the Beat Generation's “cut-up technique”

Artistic statement:

Posted on an external link, click here

Artistic ensemble:

General Director
Khalid Amine

Artistic Directors & Light Designers
Mustapha Chaouki / Mouhssin Zaroual

Music
Nabil Akbib / Mohammed Mrouji

Reproduction of Tangier’s Paintings
Mohamed Kerrach / Adil Kerrach / Sidi Mohammed El Yamlahi Ouazzani

Photo Design
George F. Roberson / "Yiqing" Cheng Li

Actors
Soumaya Amghar / Nadia Khoumbarek
Badreddin Charab / Mohamed Zin / Abdelillah Fouad

Visual Documentation
"Yiqing" Cheng Li
Abdelaziz Tabit Bensliman / Mustapha Hilal Soussi

Secretariat
Abdellatif Bakkali / Said Salah / Said Allouch

SPECIAL THANKS:
PRINCE CLAUS FUND FOR CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT, THE NETHERLANDS
EDITION TINGIS, TANGIER, MOROCCO

*** This clip is only a trailer -- a more complete version of this event is under preparation.

Film: The Way North

2008-05-29T02:21:00.005-06:00

THE WAY NORTH: MAGHREBI WOMEN IN MARSEILLE

Public screening: May 31st at 19:30 at the beautiful Cinematheque, Tanger.

A film about Fatima Rhazi, North African immigrants in France, and the Women From Here and Afar

From Marseille, come the stories of Fatima Rhazi and North African immigrant women cultivating new lives for themselves and their families in contemporary France.

Riots throughout France in 2005 and the presidential election in 2007 are backdrops to the stories of Fatima Rhazi, Morocco?s first female sports photographer, and the women she works to empower.

LA VOIE DU NORD

"La Voie du Nord est un documentaire qui raconte l'histoire d'une communauté de femmes d'origines maghrébines ayant émigrées à Marseille, la plus grande ville du sud de la France.

La Voie du Nord est un documentaire de style « vérité ». Il suit la vie de Fatima Rhazi, première femme marocaine à voir exercé le métier de photographe de sport dans son pays qui émigra à Marseille
dans les années 1980.

A son arrivée sur Marseille, Fatima créa une association culturelle "Femmes D'Ici et D'Ailleurs" qui vient en aide aux femmes immigrées d'origines magrébines, qu'elles soient artistes, futures jeunes mariées ou simplement nouvellement arrivées sur la ville. Par le biais de Fatima et de son association, la caméra suit les parcours d'Itto, une jeune immigrée qui cherche à s'adapter à sa nouvelle vie tout en élevant sa jeune fille et d'Hadjera une « sans-papier » (immigrante illégale) algérienne à la recherche d'un travail et d'une régularisation."

More at: www.thewaynorth.com

Tangier sensing the city

2008-05-12T11:00:00.012-06:00

Marshana: Words were Shakespeare's guns, but his words resurrect rather than kill.
That is why his power lives on... [1]

--Zoubeir Ben Bouchta, Shakespeare Lane

In Brief

This paper discusses the year long research collaboration of George F Roberson (Cultural Geography, University of Massachusetts – Amherst, USA) and Khalid Amine (Performance Studies, Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan, Morocco). The guiding principles of our work are - 1) to build a variety of lasting collaborations based on the principle of reciprocity. (For example, what if we all try to contribute a little more than we take...?); 2) to engage and empower a broad range of stakeholders, especially by nurturing on the margins; 3) to develop and employ a wide range of media, especially the visual and performative since their vocabularies are more universal and thus provide broader reach; and, 4) to formulate and promote alternative messages and methods – challenging current rhetoric – featuring dialogue, peace, and understanding, using constructive and research informed strategies. The paper expands on five postcolonial horizons on which we have worked, they are: 1) Collaborations; 2) In the “contact zone”; 3) Shifting power; 4) Theory and practice; and, 5) Performing Tangier. We hope our work will provide direction and inspiration for reforming future Fulbright research projects / grants.

▪ ▪ ▪

To download in pdf, see link below

Editor's note: a related paper specifically about my Fulbright senior research grant accomplishments was presented in Rabat, Morocco in April 2008 - to read the paper, click here

▪ ▪ ▪

The titled of our paper today is “Tangier sensing the city”.[2] Broadly, our work concerns ways to better comprehend, or make sense of, the city – Tangier – a special place where we all live or to which we have been drawn. We have quite a number of things we’d like to show, so borrowing from photography we’re tempted to call them “snapshots”, but in checking around we find that does not fit. Our themes are not random, like the now so casual shutter of digital cameras; nor do we mean to connote anything like the haphazard shots of a gun – surprisingly, that’s “snapshots” original 19th century and pre-photography meaning. So instead, we’ll borrow from Tanjawi playwright Zoubier Ben Bouchta’s practice of calling the acts of his plays “lightings.” So with a series of “lightings”, we hope to perform some postcolonial horizons; they are – 1) Collaborations; 2) In the “contact zone”; 3) Shifting power; 4) Theory and practice; and, 5) Performing Tangier.

1st Lighting: Collaborations

I say “our paper” since it focuses on aspects of my yearlong, indeed nearly daily, research collaboration with Khalid Amine. Not only has the collaboration been transnational, Moroccan-U.S. American, but also multi-disciplinary since our core interests expand from Performance Studies and Cultural Geography and reach well beyond.

Our guiding principles include:

1. to build a variety of lasting collaborations based on the principle of reciprocity. (For example, what if we all try to contribute a little more than we take...?)

2. to engage and empower a broad range of stakeholders, especially by nurturing on the margins;

3. to develop and employ a wide range of media, especially the visual and performative since their vocabularies are more universal and thus provide broader reach;

4. and, to formulate and promote alternative messages and methods – challenging current rhetoric – featuring dialogue, peace, and understanding, using constructive and research informed strategies.

It’s been a fruitful and formative experience for me and I’d like to thank Khalid for all the opportunities he’s given me. And I’d also like to acknowledge all my other collaborators,[3] especially Rajae Khaloufi and Mustapha Hillal Sousi with whom I collaborated on the English language publications of Ben Boutcha’s plays Shakespeare Lane and Lalla J’mila. Thank you also to the Moroccan American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (MACECE) for their support of my work this year.

2nd Lighting: In the “contact zone”

Why Tangier?

Everyone attending the conference doubtless has their own unique answer to this question. It would make fascinating reading to assemble the geoautobiographies (that’s spatial rather than temporal) of everyone here as to their encounters with the city: why they choose to live here, what drew them here in the first place, and what sustains their ongoing presence. For example, Khalid was born in Tetouan and raised here. I, on the other hand, first became aware of the city many years ago when a hometown friend’s college roommate was Tanjawi – an American School of Tangier graduate. Meeting this guy, in Boston, before I had ever even visited another country, piqued my curiosity about the city and eventually precipitated my first visit across the straits; today I consider it as my second home.

All this notwithstanding, my reasons for conducting long-term research here – are rather more pragmatic and strategic. Firstly, Tangier is a key meeting point of lands, seas and cultures, or what Pratt (1992) calls the “contact zone” in her groundbreaking study Imperial Eyes.[4] And among cities around the globe, Tangier stands apart. Owing to its location on the Strait of Gibraltar just ten miles from Europe, the city has been a world crossroads since pre-Roman times. A lot is said these days about globalization, and in a sense one could argue that in Tangier it started with the arrival of Phoenician traders more than twenty-five hundred years ago, but conquests have also left deep footprints in the city. Furthermore, the city’s colonial experience, in the first half of the 20th century, was wholly unique and so hotly contested that it wound up in international compromise. Then marginalized for decades following independence, it is now the site of rapid change and major investment: including, among many other things, construction of one of the largest container ports in the world and a Nissan-Renault factory that will employ fifty-thousand workers. It also receives about two million non-resident ship borne arrivals annually; that’s double the city’s population.

This all adds up to a complex city of keystone negotiations, challenges and opportunities. One particular impact of these histories, geographies, economies, and politics is that outsiders have long played big roles in the city, and some of my research over the past few years has highlighted the pervasiveness and power of their English language stories over and within the city.[5]

3rd Lighting: Shifting power

In order to begin to address the imbalance, (and cognizant that it involves risk), we’ll explain some of our efforts designed to draw more attention to Tanjawi voices. One opportunity is to employ an “autoethnographic sensibility” as suggested by cultural geographers Butz and Besio (2004)[6]. Autoethnography is a concept that Pratt (1992)[7] extends from ethnography or what can also be called 'writing culture'. Citing Pratt, Butz and Besio explain it this way, it is “[w]here members of colonized groups … represent themselves to their colonizers … (using the) … colonizers terms while also remaining faithful to their own self-understandings.”[8] Like Butz and Besio’s work in Pakistan, we’re applying the concept to postcolonial encounters; and, the primary media of contestation is socio-travel oriented. Furthermore, I want to respond to what Butz and Besio argue are “two central responsibilities,” for researchers in post-colonial settings, 1) “to identify and analyze the lingering effects of colonialism”, and 2) “to contribute to processes that dismantle those effects”.[9] Where some postcolonial research has a historical orientation, this concept is informed by the past while primarily re/negotiating the present and the future.

4th Lighting: Theory and practice

As humans, one of our big challenges is to put our ideas –theory– into practice. How can we create the world we want to live in – how can we contribute to making the world a better place? These are high orders, but something we can surely contribute to by devoting ourselves, coming up with new methods, and by working together. With this in mind, our work has centered on developing and growing four interrelated enterprises, they are –

1. The conferences themselves – and to emphasize, these academic conferences for we are not a music or arts festival, this is a great opportunity for the city to present itself to the world. It is also an unrivaled opportunity to bring experts here from around the world to enter into the dialogue and contribute. As Khalid has observed, the conferences and the “setting of Tangier makes a perfect home for new intercultural encounters that celebrate and honor our essential humanity. The conferences provide a glimmer of hope…” Since you’re here today, I hope you agree. Thanks for coming and please plan to return next year, and spread the word to others.

2. The International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS) – this is a potentially powerful new mechanism for synergy, granting, and growth that avoids some educational, governmental, and for-profit constraints. But for it to succeed, it desperately needs paid members, infusions of cash, volunteers, and in-kind donations. Speak to us after to get involved.

3. ICPS website and improved database – these resources provide powerful new tools for promotion, networking and outreach. Although already up and running, reaching around the world with our message and connecting likeminded people, to keep things going we need more help and expertise. Let us know if this is your forte.

4. Publications – this is the backbone of getting our words out into the marketplace of ideas. The publication program has made many books available, particularly in the English language. We’re selling them here at the conference at very low prices, in bookstores all around Morocco, and copies have also been donated to the Legation library. If you want to help on this score, one way to help is to buy some books here and then donate them to your library at home with the stipulation that they be made available via interlibrary loan. We’re also working to develop and deploy new supporting curriculum, including repatriating documents and making source documents more available. We hope people will use these books in their courses.

5th Lighting: Performing Tangier

The site-specific performance featured on the opening day of the conference was one manifestation of the type of creative, collaborative, dialogic, postcolonial, and autoethnographic interventions we’re advocating.[10] Another is the example of Shakespeare Lane,[11] our new play publication from ICPS. It’s the result of a diligent five stage creative / collaborative process. Firstly, working in Darija, Zoubeir wrote, published and performed the play. Then Rajae carefully translated it into English. Khalid followed by doing a side-by-side review checking the two texts. Then I put it into contemporary U.S. American-English parlance. Finally, we all met together to review details as it neared completion. Throughout the process, innumerable phone calls, emails, and conversations further strengthened the web of creative collaboration.

The project posed many unique challenges but also rewarded us with many opportunities. Take for example the footnotes (over 120 in all) they reflect the collaboration: some come from the original play text while others were added during the translating and editing processes. In sum, they contribute significantly to make the story more accessible and also act as a powerful resource of context and factual data about the city.

So, we all have many exciting opportunities now under the ICPS umbrella: these conferences, our collaborative teams, the Shakespeare Lane publication, plus many more – all contributing to performing Tangier. Continuing with the play example and to conclude, let me back up and look ahead, at some of my own synergies stemming from Shakespeare Lane, the conferences and these collaborations. I first saw the play at its premier at last year’s Tangier conference. It was the second of a sort of double-bill exploring the city; first was a screening of German director Peter Goedel’s film, Tangier: Legend of City. The pairing made a wonderful study in perspectives. Whereas the first looks from the outside in ―that is, made by foreigners and primarily featuring expatriates’ experiences of the city, the second looks from the inside in and inside out ―that is, Tanjawi’s looking deeply at themselves and also out at the world. Since I had given a paper at the conference calling for more attention to be drawn to the voices of city-insiders,[12] the play and the book publication project are theory put into practice. Where English language stories about the city have often come from short-term outside perspectives, this translation begins to provide some counter balance as Ben Bouchta looks from an insider’s perspective probing deeply into the lives, histories, concerns, and challenges of contemporary Tanjawi society. Using Bard-like comedy and social commentary set in a magical garden, Shakespeare Lane persistently calls norms into question as it informs, surprises, and challenges the audience again and again. One point stands clear, the famous crossroads city is at a societal crossroads: what will the citizenry choose for their future?

George F Roberson and Khalid Amine
Tangier, May 2008

Article citation:

Roberson, G with K Amine (2009) “Tangier: Sensing the City,” in Tangier at the Crossroads. B Tharaud, J Manuel Goñi Pérez, and G Roberson, eds. Tangier, Morocco: International Centre for Performance Studies, p27-31. To download in pdf, click here

Notes

[1] Ben Bouchta, Z. 2008. Shakespeare Lane. Translated from Arabic by R. Khaloufi, edited by G. Roberson. Tangier: International Centre for Performance Studies, p29.
[2] This paper, in slightly different format, is available online at: http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2008/05/tangier-conference.html
[3] A listing is available online at: http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2008/01/acknowledgments.html
[4] Pratt, M. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge, p6.
[5] “Ephemeral Encounters, Enduring Narratives: Visitor Voices of Tangier” (Roberson 2006) http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/01/tangier-visualizing-city.html
“Re/writing Tourist Tangier: Interrupting Visitor City-Narratives by Empowering Citizen Voices” (Roberson 2007) http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/05/project-introduction.html
“Tangier: Visualizing the City” (Roberson 2007)
http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/01/tangier-visualizing-city.html
Worlds of Tangier, Morocco: Experiential, Narrative, and Place-Based Perspectives (Roberson 2006) http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2006/12/dissertation-abstract.html
[6] Butz, D. and K. Besio. “The Value of Autoethnography for Field Research in Transcultural Settings” in The Professional Geographer, T. Hartshorn, ed., August 2004, v. 56, n. 3, p351.
[7] Pratt, p7.
[8] Butz, D. and K. Besio, p351.
[9] Ibid, p350.
[10] A paper about this performance is linked online at: http://icpsresearch.blogspot.com/2008/04/grey-room.html
[11] Additional information about the play project, along with future updates are available at http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2008/02/shakespeare-lane.html
[12] Read the article at http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/01/tangier-visualizing-city.html

Tangier from inside out

2008-04-10T08:48:00.021-06:00

ABSTRACT

Among Moroccan cities, Tangier stands apart. Owing to its location on the Strait of Gibraltar just ten miles from Europe, the city has been a world crossroads since pre-Roman time. And its colonial experience (in the first half of the 20th century) was wholly unique – so many countries vied for control that it became an influential internationally governed city-state. Marginalized for decades following independence, it is now the site of major investment and is undergoing rapid change. One particular impact of these histories is that outsiders have long played big roles in the city; and my recent research has highlighted the pervasiveness and power of their English language stories over and within the city[1]. In order to begin to address the imbalance, this paper discusses my research and initiatives that have been designed to draw more attention to the voices of city citizens. During the grant, I have worked in collaboration with a variety of stakeholders including writers, artists, academics, and graduate students. Emphasizing process, I will show a sampling of our accomplishments and works-in-progress; these include - book and journal publishing, international conference development, website construction, collaborative outreach, curriculum evelopment, repatriation and accessibility of source documents.

[1] “Ephemeral Encounters, Enduring Narratives: Visitor Voices of Tangier” (Roberson 2006)
(http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/01/tangier-visualizing-city.html)
“Re/writing Tourist Tangier: Interrupting Visitor City-Narratives by Empowering Citizen Voices” (Roberson 2007) (http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/05/project-introduction.html)
“Tangier: Visualizing the City” (Roberson 2007)
(http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/01/tangier-visualizing-city.html)
Worlds of Tangier, Morocco: Experiential, Narrative, and Place-Based Perspectives (Roberson 2006)
(http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2006/12/dissertation-abstract.html)

▪ ▪ ▪

(Editor's note - a related paper about my collaborations (especially with Dr Khalid Amine) was presented in May 2008 at the Performing Tangier 2008 International Conference, to read the paper, click here)

▪ ▪ ▪

First, a big thank you to Saadia and everyone at MACECE for pulling all this together. Having worked on conference planning myself this year, I have a much better appreciation for what a big job it is: thank you.

I’d also like to introduce my discussant, Dr Khalid Amine: he’s a -

Two time senior Fulbrighter to the USA
President and founder the International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS, for short)
Convener of the annual Tangier International Conferences
Recent winner of Helsinki Prize – acknowledging his international contributions to the field of performance studies
And, my chief collaborator, and friend: welcome

Marshana: Words were Shakespeare's guns, but his words resurrect rather than kill. That is why his power lives on...
--Zoubeir Ben Bouchta
Shakespeare Lane

My work is titled “Tangier from inside out”. And the basic idea of my research concerns ways to pay closer attention to citizen voices – the people of the city.

Why Tangier? Why is it an important place to do this research?

Let’s begin with some context. Firstly, Tangier is a key meeting point of lands, seas and cultures, or what Pratt (1992) calls the “contact zone” in her post/colonial study Imperial Eyes.[1] And among Moroccan cities, Tangier stands apart. Owing to its location on the Strait of Gibraltar just ten miles from Europe, the city has been a world crossroads since pre-Roman times. A lot is said these days about globalization, and in a sense one could argue that in Tangier it started with the arrival of Phoenician traders more than twenty-five hundred years ago, but conquests have also left deep footprints in the city. Furthermore, the city’s colonial experience, in the first half of the 20th century, was wholly unique – so many countries vied for control, with no one power ever managing to prevail over the others, that it wound up in compromise: an influential internationally governed city-state (indeed, following World War II, it was even considered for the home of the –then new– United Nations). Then marginalized for decades following independence, it is now the site of rapid change and major investment: including, among many other things, construction of one of the largest container ports in the world and a Nissan-Renault factory that will employ fifty-thousand workers. It also receives about two million non-resident ship borne arrivals annually; that’s double the city’s population.

This all adds up to a city of unique complexity, challenges, and negotiations. One particular impact of these histories, geographies, economies, and politics is that outsiders have long played big roles in the city, and some of my research over the past few years has highlighted the pervasiveness and power of their English language stories over and within the city.[2]

In order to begin to address the imbalance, this paper discusses my research and initiatives designed to draw more attention to Tanjawi voices. The central theme to all these efforts is the concept of autoethnography. This is an emerging qualitative approach that Pratt (1992)[3] extends from ethnography,[4] or "writing culture." Citing Pratt, cultural geographers Butz and Besio (2004) explain it this way, it is “[w]here members of colonized groups … represent themselves to their colonizers … (using the) … colonizers terms while also remaining faithful to their own self-understandings.”[5] Like Butz and Besio’s work in Pakistan, I’m applying the concept to postcolonial encounters; and, the primary media of contestation is socio-travel oriented. Furthermore, I want to respond to what Butz and Besio argue are “two central responsibilities,” for researchers in post-colonial settings, 1) "to identify and analyze the lingering effects of colonialism", and 2) "to contribute to processes that dismantle those effects".[6] Where some post-colonial research has a historical orientation, this concept is informed by the past while primarily negotiating and renegotiating the present and the future.

During the grant, I've worked in collaboration with a variety of stakeholders including writers, academics, and students. Emphasizing process, I'll show some of what we've done, including - NGO and conference development, website construction, collaborative outreach, curriculum design, publishing, promotion, and repatriation and accessibility of source documents. As a specific example of autoethnography, I’ll conclude by explaining in detail the collaborative process that we developed for our new play translation, Shakespeare Lane, published by ICPS.

Website construction

We want people to know about what we’re doing, so I’m building two interrelated Tangier research websites:

Space and Place – to facilitate my work, click here
And a site for ICPS – Khalid’s new NGO, click here

1. They are meant to work together, you can see they have a similar “look” and they have numerous cross links

2. Both have the major links listed along the right hand side bar

This paper, for example, is available here

3. And the ICPS site also has featured links on the opening page

Like upcoming events and new publications

4. Using the web provides many advantages: using them -

has immediate impact, connecting likeminded people and organizations
can be updated quickly, using multiple contributors
can be web searched and accessed worldwide
its cheap and easy and remains in place into the future
facilitates dialogue and interaction
and crucially, it provides a direct challenge to other online sources that often feature “outside” voices exclusively

5. Together these two sites already contain 150 postings / over 400 pages of information

To pull all these things together, I’ve done a lot of -

Collaborative outreach

This is trying to connect the dots between a myriad of stakeholders: Professors, students, writers, artists, web contributors, cultural venues, media companies, publishers, archives, the press, and granting agencies (including trying to find some potential future Fulbrighters). Besides person-to-person contact, I’ve assembled a large email database of allied people and organizations. This allows us to keep in regular touch with hundreds of people worldwide. This database will stay in place in the city to facilitate future ICPS activities. Mentoring activities, besides our translation and promotional efforts, have also included theses development and graduate school applications.

Another important area is -

Curriculum development

Khalid and I are collaborating on a bilingual textbook, English – Darija, titled Tangier: Mindscapes and Dreamscapes. It will make the city's travelscapes more readily available for study and critique by Moroccans. In our search for constructive alternatives, it will include strategies like autoethnography and creative processes like visualization for research and implementation.

Key to this effort is the -

Repatriation and accessibility of source documents

Since many important documents about Morocco only exist outside the country, and since there is a shortage of source documents in general, I’ve compiled a five hundred page reader titled, Reading Tangier: An English Language Introduction; it features a selection of thirty-seven travel oriented city narratives, 1660 to 2006. ICPS has a one copy, all set up for easy zeroxing and distribution; another bound copy is now available at the library at Tangier American Legation Museum. In addition, ICPS has recently donated many of their publications to the library; we also hope that soon they will be available in their bookstore for purchase at a very low price. They also have a copy of my dissertation, Worlds of Tangier, Morocco: Experiential, Narrative, and Place-Based Perspectives, the first to exclusively examine Tangier and its contested cityscapes. Having these materials widely and publicly available will facilitate future autoethnographies and research.

Another cornerstone of my efforts has been on -

Conference development

Next month ICPS will host Performing Tangier 2008; it’s a great opportunity for Tangier to explain itself to the world. As a conference co-convener, I’ve worked all year on things like the CFP, working with speakers, developing programming, lining up venues and doing event promotion. I’ve been particularly involved in growing the event into the future. What began four years ago as a literary conference has now adopted a larger vision, here’s an excerpt from a new position statement we’ve developed:

The conference performs the city – from the actors on stage to those on the streets, everyone contributing to creating the here-and-the-now; the conference explores borders – empowering the margins, challenging political and other divides, and stretching our individual and societal limits; the conference reorients the Beat Generation – searching, resisting and reacting anew, half-way around the world and half a century after the sensation began; and most importantly, the conference negotiates the future – asking, what kind of world do we want to live in and how will we create it?

This year, thanks in part to generous funding from both MACECE and the Embassy, ICPS will welcome well over a hundred presenters from a dozen countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific (including both of my Senior Scholar colleagues: Jim and Vanessa.) In addition to academic papers, it will feature theatre, art, music, and film; the conference will occupy all the major cultural venues of the city. Of the conference series, Khalid explains,

It is a forum that aims at bridging the gap of difference and connecting cultures, as well as reaching across the divide to the Other. The setting of Tangier makes a perfect home for new intercultural encounters that celebrate and honor our essential humanity. It offers a glimmer of hope during a dark time marked by the hegemony of the post 9/11 discourse of horror.

Let me briefly show some highlights from our online program, click here

Finally, I'll turn to our literary initiatives -

Publishing

With limited time today, I will just quickly show our literary portal on the web, click here. One feature is a series of articles contributed by Mohamed Elkouche, a leading literary critic and Bowles and Tangier expert. Another is Zoubeir Ben Bouchta’s Tangier themed play trilogy: Lalla J’mila, Shakespeare Lane, and The Red Fire; translated by Mustapha Hilal Sousi and Rajae Kaloufi, and edited my myself and Pamela Balfanz.

For the final section today, again focusing on process, I’d like to highlight some specific details about how we’ve done our work. I’ll use the example of Shakespeare Lane[7] click here

It’s the result of a diligent five stage creative / collaborative process. Firstly, working in Darija, Ben Bouchta wrote, published and performed the play. Then Rajae translated it into English and Khalid did a side-by-side review of the two texts checking for precision. Then I put the text into contemporary U.S. American-English parlance. Finally, the four of us met together to review details as it neared completion. Throughout the process, innumerable phone calls, emails, and conversations further strengthened the web of creative collaboration.

The editing process is all about details and there were some unique challenges and solutions, for example:

1. To maintain and reflect the richness and polyphony of the city, some non-English words were retained in the text. These words are translated and explained in footnotes at their first appearance.

2. Accordingly, the footnotes (over 120 in all) reflect the collaboration: some come from the original text while others were added during the translating and editing processes. The footnotes also provide a powerful resource of context and factual data about the city.

So, just as the play springs forth from the crossroads city, so too does our collaborative team. A bit of my own geoautobiography[8] (in spatial rather than chronological terms) underscores the centrality and multidimensional significance of the city itself to the project. I first saw the play at its premier at last year’s Tangier conference.[9] It was the second of a sort of double-bill exploring the city; first was a screening of German director Peter Goedel’s film, Tangier: Legend of City. The pairing made a wonderful study in contrasts and perspectives. Whereas the first looks from the outside in ―that is, made by foreigners and primarily featuring expatriates’ experiences of the city, the second looks from the inside in and inside out ―that is, Tanjawi’s looking deeply at themselves and also out at the world. Since I had given a paper at the conference calling for more attention to be drawn to the voices of city-insiders,[10] the play and the present work are theory put into practice.

Furthermore, I first met Rajae at the above mentioned conference. We quickly realized mutual interests and began a transatlantic exchange of ideas and work on another play translation by email. Since I was already familiar with the significance of the play and with the skills of the translator, I was happy to put other things aside to serve as editor; plus, given the play’s post-colonial and autoethnographic[11] qualities, it fit well with my research agenda. Where English language stories about the city have often come from short-term outside perspectives, this translation begins to provide some counter balance as Ben Bouchta looks from an insider’s perspective probing deeply into the lives, histories, concerns, and challenges of contemporary Tanjawi society. Using Bard-like comedy and social commentary set in a magical garden, Shakespeare Lane persistently calls norms into question as it informs, surprises, and challenges the audience again and again. One point stands clear, the famous crossroads city is at a societal crossroads: what will the citizenry choose for their future?

I’d like to invite everyone to join our mailing list, to attend the May conference, and to join ICPS.

I’d like also to acknowledge and thank the following people and organizations, click here

Notes

[1] Pratt, M. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London and New York: Routledge, p6.
[2] “Ephemeral Encounters, Enduring Narratives: Visitor Voices of Tangier” (Roberson 2006)
“Re/writing Tourist Tangier: Interrupting Visitor City-Narratives by Empowering Citizen Voices” (Roberson 2007)
“Tangier: Visualizing the City” (Roberson 2007)
Worlds of Tangier, Morocco: Experiential, Narrative, and Place-Based Perspectives (Roberson 2006)
[3] Pratt, p7.
[4] Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. BasicBooks, A Subsidiary of Perseus Books.
[5] Butz, D. and K. Besio. “The Value of Autoethnography for Field Research in Transcultural Settings” in The Professional Geographer, T. Hartshorn, ed., August 2004, v. 56, n. 3, p350.
[6] Ibid, p351.
[7] Additional information about the play project, along with future updates are available at http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2008/02/shakespeare-lane.html
[8] More about this concept at http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2006/12/dissertation-abstract.html [9] Read about the conferences at http://icpsresearch.blogspot.com/2007/12/welcome.html
[10] Read the article at http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/01/tangier-visualizing-city.html
[11] Read more about this concept at http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/05/project-introduction.html

Zoubeir Ben Bouchta

2008-03-31T08:33:00.003-06:00

Author and Dramaturge

Formation

1985 Dramatic art training (dramaturgy workshop). Maamoura center. Rabat.

1987 Training at The World Cultures House at Paris under the direction of Chérif Khaznadar.

1997 Training of initiation to the production of documentary cinema at VARAN Workshops. Paris.

The production of the film of the end of training “Main basse sur Goussainville” (low hand on Goussainville). Paris.

1999 Dramaturgy training directed by the English dramaturge April De Angelis (The Royal Court Theatre of London), organized by Centro Andaluz de Teatro in Alhambra Theatre. Granada.

Publications

2008 “Shakespeare Lane” (English Translation by: Rajae Khaloufi). Ed. International center for performance studies.

2007 “Lalla J’mila” (English Translation by: Mustafa Hilal Sousi). Ed. International center for performance studies.

2007 “Zanqat Shakespeare” (a theatrical text in Darija). Ed. Bab Bhar. Tangier.

2006 “En-nar L’hamra” (The Red Fire). (a theatrical text in Darija). Ed. Bab Bhar. Tangier.

2004 “Lalla J’mila” (a theatrical text in Darija). Ed. Ibn Khaldoun Theater. Tangier.

2003 “Hiouar” (interview with Mohamed Choukri). Ed. Annajah Aljadida. Casablanca.

2000 “Ya Mouja Ghanni” (O Wave Sing). (a theatrical text in Darija). Ed.UEM.Rabat.

1996 “La cage” (The Cage). (a theatrical text in Darija and classical Arabic). Ed. Slaiki. Tangier

1993 “La pieuvre” (the Octopus). (a text in Classical Arabic). Ed. Union des Ecrivains du Maroc (The Moroccan Writers Union). Rabat

1991 “La Valise et Le Givre” (two plays in Classical Arabic). Dar al Manahil. Rabat.

Theatrical Performances

2007 “Zanqat Shakespeare” (theatrical performance in Darija). Produced by Jilali Ferhati. Bab Bhar Cinémasrah Tangier. Televised broadcasting on the Moroccan First Channel.

2007 “Zanqat Shakespeare” (theatrical performance in Darija). Produced by Jilali Ferhati. Bab Bhar Cinémasrah Tangier. With the support of Le Fond d’Aide pour la Production Théâtrale (The Help Fund for Theatrical Production).

2006 “En-nar L’hamra” (The Red Fire). (theatrical performance in Darija). Produced by Med. Adardour. Bab Bhar Cinémasrah Tangier. With the support of Le Fond d’Aide pour la Production Théâtrale (The Help Fund for Theatrical Production).

2004 “Lalla J’mila” (theatrical performance in Darija). Produced by J. Abrak. Ibn Khaldoun Theatre. Tangier. With the support of Le Fond d’Aide pour la Production Théâtrale (The Help Fund for Theatrical Production), The European Union and The Mediterranean Institute (IMed).

2003 “Ya Mouja Ghanni” (O Wave Sing) (theatrical performance in Darija). Televised broadcasting on 2M. Produced by Mohamed Lighir.

2002 “Ya Mouja Ghanni” (O Wave Sing) (theatrical performance in Darija). Produced by Mohamed Adardour. Appinumm Theatre. Chefchaouen. With the support of Le Fond d’Aide pour la Production Théâtrale (The Help Fund for Theatrical Production).

2000 “The Night Before Thinking” a theatrical adaptation in Darija from a novel of the Moroccan painter Ahmed Yacoubi. Written in English by Paul Bowles. Produced by Ellen Stewart. La Mama Theatre (Of Broadway). New York.

Awards

1990 Honored mention of the jury of the 1st contest of young writers awarded by l’Union des Ecrivains du Maroc (The Moroccan Writers Union) for the play “La Valise” (The Valise).

1993 The Moroccan Writers' Union prize for young writers for the play “la Pieuvre”(The Octopus).

2004 The prize for the best text at the Moroccan National Theatre Festival (Meknes) for the play “Lalla J’mila”.

Dialoguist

2000 The film “A Travers le Miroir” (Through the Mirror) by Mohamed Ulad Mohand.

2001 The film “Une minute de soleil en moins” (One Minute Less Sun) by Nabil Ayouche

2006 The Film "Le café des Pêcheurs" (Fishermen's Cafe) by El Hadi Ulad Mohand. (Court-métrage)

Zoubeir Ben Bouchta

2008-03-31T03:20:00.006-06:00

Auteur Dramaturge

Formation

1985 Stage d’art dramatique (Atelier de la dramaturgie). Centre Maamoura. Rabat
1987 Stage à La Maison Des Cultures Du Monde à Paris sous la Direction de Chérif KHAZNADAR
1997 Stage d’initiation à la réalisation de cinéma documentaire aux Ateliers VARAN. Paris Réalisation du film de fin de stage. « Main basse sur Goussainville». Paris
1999 Stage de dramaturgie dirigé par la dramaturge anglaise April DE ANGELIS (La Royal court Theater de Londres), organisé par Centro Andaluz de Teatro au Théâtre ALAMBRA. Grenade.

Publications

2008 « Shakespeare Lane » (Traduction anglaise par : Rajae Khaloufi). Ed. International center for performance studies.
2007 «Lalla j’mila» (Traduction anglaise par : Mustafa Hilal Soussi). Ed. International center for performance studies.
2007 «Rue Shakespeare » (Texte théâtral en Darija). Ed. Bab Bhar. Tanger
2006 «En-nar L’hamra » . (Texte théâral en Darija). Ed.Bab Bhar. Tanger
2004 «LaLLa J’mila ». (Texte théâtral en Darija). Ed. Théâtre Ibn Khaldoun. Tanger
2003 «Hiouar » .(Interview avec Mohamed Choukri). Ed. Annajah Aljadida. Casablanca
2000 «Ya Mouja Ghanni » <Ô Vague Chante>. (Texte théâtral en Darija). Ed.UEM.Rabat
1996 «La Cage » (Texte théâtral en Darija) et Arabe Classique). Ed. Slaiki. Tanger
1993 «La Pieuvre» ((Texte en Arabe Classique). Ed. Union des Ecrivains du Maroc. Rabat
1991 «La Valise et Le givre » (Deux pièces en Arabe Classique). Dar al Manahil. Rabat

Représentations Théâtrales

2007 «Rue Shakespeare» (Spéctacle théâtral en Darija Mise en scène : Jillali FERHATI Bab Bhar Cinémasrah Tanger Diffusion télévisée sur la Première chaine marocaine.
2007 «Rue Shakespeare» ((Spectacle théâtral en Darija) Mise en scène : Jillali FERHATI Bab Bhar Cinémasrah Tanger avec le soutien du Fond d’Aide pour la Production Théâtrale 2006 «En-nar L’hamra» (Spectacle théâtral en Darija Mise en scène : Med. ADARDOUR. Bab Bhar Cinémasrah. Tanger avec le soutien du Fond d’Aide pour la Production
2004 «LaLLa J’mila» (Spectacle théâtral en Darija Mise en scène : J. ABRAK Théâtre Ibn Khaldoun. Tanger avec le soutien du Fond d’Aide pour la Production Théâtrale, de l’Union Européenne, de l’Institut Méditerranéen (iMed).
2003 «Ya Mouja Ghanni» <Ô Vague Chante>. (Spectacle théâtral en Darija). Diffusion télévisée sur la chaine 2M réalisée par Mohamed LICHIR.
2002 «Ya Mouja Ghanni» <Ô Vague Chante>. (Spectacle théâtral en Darija). Mise en scène : Mohamed ADARDOURE. Théâtre Appinumm Chefchaouen avec le soutien du Fond d’Aide pour la Production Théâtrale.
2000 «The Night Before Thinking» une adaptation théâtrale en Darija d’après un conte de peintre marocain Ahmed Yacoubi transcrit en Anglais par Paul Bowles. Mise en Scène : Ellen Stewart. Théâtre de La Mama (Off Broadway). New York

Prix

1990 Mention du jury du 1er concours des jeunes Ecrivains décerné par l’Union des Ecrivains du Maroc pour la pièce «La Valise»
1992 Prix de l’Union des Ecrivains du Maroc pour les jeunes Ecrivains pour la pièce «La Pieuvre
2004 Prix du meilleur texte au Festival National du Théâtre pour la pièce «Lalla J’mila». Meknes

Dialoguiste

2000 Film «A travers le miroir» de Mohamed Ulad Mohand
2001 Film «Une minute de soleil en moins» de Nabil Ayouche
2006 Film «Le café des Pêcheurs» de El Hadi Ulad Mohand. (Court-métrage)

Tangier Speaks

2008-03-30T11:03:00.008-06:00

A Reading in the Discourses of Some Tanjawi Writers

Tangier has been the site of representation as well as the source of inspiration for several artists and creative authors. The names of many writers—both Westerners like Paul Bowles and Moroccans like Mohamed Choukri—have become associated with this historic and legendary city. But whereas the Western artists often tend to exoticize and to Orientalize Tangier in many of their productions, the Moroccans tend rather to be much more realistic and authentic in their representation of it and the daily harsh realities of its residents. Some Tanjawi writers seem even to ‘write back’ to the West in a more or less conscious attempt to interrogate its misconceptions about the Moslems in general or to assert the dignity and the cultural identity of such an Oriental(ized) city as Tangier.

This paper aims chiefly to illustrate how Tangier is strongly present in the literary texts of a number of Tanjawi writers and how it often seems to speak for and about itself through such native authors. But in addition to this, the paper seeks also to touch upon an important related topic which consists in the fact that nearly all the writers to be discussed exhibit a heightned urge to self-expression and self-assertion —a characteristic that entitles them to function, metaphorically, as a ‘tongue’ whereby Tangier is able to speak and to assert itself. These writers are respectively: Mohamed Choukri, Mohamed Mrabet, Abdellatif Akbib and Zoubeir Ben Bouchta—the last couple being representative of the young generation of Tanjawi writers.

Choukri Speaks/Choukri Defies

The phrase ‘Tangier Speaks’ in the main title of this paper is deliberately intended to evoke and to echo the title of a famous radio programme—namely, ‘Choukri Speaks’ (in Arabic pronunciation ‘Choukri Yatahaddath’)—which the late Mohamed Choukri used to broadcast from the Tangier Radio Station. This programme dealt with various literary and critical matters; and among its distinctive features, one might cite the sharp appealing voice and the notably assertive and authoritative tone of its broadcaster: M. Choukri. Indeed, the latter’s commanding stance is inscribed in the very structure of his programme’s title which suggests not only that Choukri was capable of speaking about the subjects and issues he raised but also that one ought to listen to what he chose to say, as if a monarch or a wise man was delivering his discourse.

In the aforementioned programme’s title ‘Choukri Yatahadath’ (‘Choukri Speaks’) one can also read ‘Choukri Yatahadda’ (Choukri defies or challenges). As a matter of fact, the notion of challenge was quite vital and central to his whole career and in his enterprise as a self-made Moroccan writer and intellectual. This can be well understood if one takes into consideration the fact that Choukri could not get the opportunity to go to school until the age of twenty. Owing to the ignorance of his parents as well as their abject poverty, Choukri seemed to be fated to remain uneducated and illiterate, like countless Moroccans of his age and social background. But something within his adolescent self alarmed him suddenly and urged him to engage in a ruthless and defiant struggle against his hostile and uninspiring circumstances. As his friend Mohamed Berrada has remarked:

It was possible that Choukri could have stayed among those living-dead Moroccans whom society has condemned to marginality and exclusion, deprived of any chance to make their voice heard and to find a place for their discourses that are quite at odds with the official authoritarian discourses (...). Can we call it a coincidence, that sudden turn-about that led him to school at about the age of twenty?[1]

As if Choukri had suddenly become aware that he was endowed with a great literary potential, he immediately sought to enter the world of literacy by deciding to go to school. His next step was to read voraciously so as to learn how to deploy his artistic and critical talents. He himself reported in one of his books that reading was for him an obsessive and engrossing activity: “I used to read anything written: a loaned or stollen book, a written paper picked up from the ground (...). I was speeding up my learning process in spite of all my hard circumstances.”[2] At a later stage, Choukri was even able to meet and learn from the literary experiences of such illustrious writers as Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and Gean Genet. All these facts are highly indicative of how Choukri was consciously struggling not only to extricate himself from the cluches of ignorance and oblivion but also to assert himself as a writer and to give expression to his latent artistic talents. As Kevin Lacey has noted: “Choukri deliberately sought to be a writer of stories. He consciously and painstakingly studied how one might write in artful and distinctive fashion with maximum effect. He read voraciously with this goal in mind and gave deep thought as to how he might establish a unique voice as a writer...”[3]

Needless to say, Choukri managed in fact to establish himself as a writer with a unique voice and international standing. His autobiographical novel For Bread Alone was translated into more than fifteen different languages, and his other books also enjoyed nearly the same international renown. What generally characterizes these books—and most notably his autobiography—is the frankness with which he expressed himself and the kind of subject-matters he daringly dwelt on. Basing essentially on his own experiences, Choukri dedicated most of his creative energies to the demolition of a lot of taboos and the exposition of the ugly and deformed face of Moroccan society. Themes like deviant sexual behaviour, the taking of drugs and the bitter experience of life in Tangier’s underworld are predominant throughout his novels and short stories. In For Bread Alone, he even went to the extent of severely attacking his father, whom he saw as the symbol of harsh authority and blind injustice. And despite the sensitivity and the unprecedented quality of such taboo questions in Moroccan literature, Choukri did not hesitate to tackle them with stunning openness and complete avoidance of tarnished style or euphemistic expressions. Indeed, as Abdellatif Akbib has commented,

Choukri does not employ eupheunism: he calls a spade, and no power in the world would convince him to call it otherwise, not even the attempts to marginalize his work (...); his aim is to shock the reader into full awareness of reality as it is, not as the reader wants to see it. He wants the reader to take the bitter pill and taste its bitterness; Choukri is not the one to provide sugar coating.[4]

What is remarkable about all Choukri’s narratives is the frequent and conspicuous presence of Tangier, not only as a setting or inert backdrop, but also as a voluble protagonist whose voice reaches the reader through the numerous miserable and suffering characters who people these stories. Being himself the “man who devoted his life to writing Tangier,”[5] Choukri was in fact able to give us the feel of this city and the full significance of leading a marginal life within it. Unlike those Western artists and visitors whose relation with Tangier was based on sheer caprice and Orientalist desire, as he himself once remarked, Choukri was an ‘original’ settler of its underworld; and this fact really entitled him to be more sensitive than anyone else to the painful—and sometimes tragic— lives and fates of its residents.

Another remarkable feature of his narratives consists in their heavily autobiographical nature. The Moroccan critic Naguib El Oufi has noted in this respect that Choukri’s narrative books—including both novels and collections of short stories—constitute a single autobiography wherein each book sheds light on a specific period of his life in Tangier.[6] This autobiographical quality of his fiction can well be sensed through his frequent use of first-person narration. But even when the speaker or narrator is not Choukri himself, the reader is often given the impression that this author is drawing directly upon his personal life and experiences or those of the people who are—like him—the residents of what Mohamed Berrada has defined as Morocco’s “secret geography.” This is what makes of Choukri the spokesman par excellence of this marginal and officially uncharted ‘dirty’ space which is populated by countless suffering Moroccans—most of whom are destitute children, homeless and unemployed adults, prostitutes and the like. In bravely exposing his own miseries and those of such forsaken and downtrodden folks, Choukri can actually be regarded as an authnetic and subversively eloquent ‘voice’ whereby the identities of these silenced and marginalized Moroccans have been charted and rescued from unjust and systematic oblivion.

Mrabet and the “Struggle for Authorial Control”

Another Tanjawi ‘writer’ who equally managed to assert his voice and to speak on behalf of those poor, forgotten and oppressed Moroccans is Mohamed Mrabet. This fabulous man is not even a writer, in the proper sense of the term; for he is almost completely illiterate. He is rather a talented story-teller, whose success in publishing more than a dozen books is partly attributable to his collaboration with the American writer Paul Bowles. But was not Bowles a mere medium whereby Mrabet gave written form to the wide repertoire of oral tales that crammed within his memory or were conjured up by his rich and fertile imagination?

Whatever the answer to this question might be, the point that should be stressed here is that Mrabet, like nearly all gifted and self-actualizing artists, was bound to publish some of his narratives even without the help of P.Bowles. In fact, as Mrabet himself confirmed in an interview with Abdelaziz Jadir, even prior to his contact with this American writer, he had attempted to publish one of his long narratives in collaboration with another Westerner. This latter, who was assisted by a friend of his, actually managed to translate and type more than four hundred pages of Mrabet’s oral account. But when Mrabet realized later that he would get no money in return, he angrily reacted by burning the whole lot.[7] This incident is suggestive of not only how Mrabet was striving for self-expression but also of his great desire (perhaps an unconscious one) to assert himself practically as a real and recognized author, despite his illiteracy.

In his introduction to Mrabet’s Love with A Few Hairs, Brian Edwards has made the observation this Moroccan illiterate writer has often a tendency to “assert (his) authorial primacy” and “authorial control” in and through his written narratives. As a matter of fact, even while collaborating with Bowles, he managed to do so by “asserting his untranstability.”[8] This cultural untranslatability can be well sensed and perceived from the very titles which Mrabet chose for some of his novels and short stories like M’hashish, Hdidan Aharam, ‘Baraka’, ‘The Ghoula’ and ‘Behloul’. It is true that some of such titles are just proper nouns that refer directly to the protagonists’ names, yet it must be noted that these are names which are loaded with a cultural significance whose real or symbolic implication can hardly be grasped or appreciated by the Western reader.
In some of Mrabet’s texts, such untranslatable words or concepts are so foregrounded that one might find more than two or three in the same page. For instance, in the second page of his story entitled ‘The Witch of Bouiba Del Hallouf’ one reads sentences like: “Qaqo put his mother to bed and made her a little harira,” “There are no affarits any more,” and “Then he bought enough kif to fill his mottoui”(italics added).[9] In these sentences, the italicized words are really alien to the English language; and though some of them have synonyms in this language, Bowles seemed to be reluctant to use translated English words lest Mrabet’s tales could lose their sense of authenticity and local colour. One can even assert that Bowles was often so overpowered by the compelling and mesmerizing effect of Mrabet’s tales that he simply transcribed such words instead of attempting to translate them. What is more, Bowles seemed to be so deeply influenced by Mrabet, and the other Tanjawi storytellers, that he frequently found himself tempted to use their proper diction and to imitate their ways of thinking while composing his own narratives. Can this influence on Bowles be regarded as an effect of Mrabet’s counter-hegemonic resistance and his struggle “to assert authorial primacy”?

At any rate, this question of resistance and self-assertion is a major motif that features in many of Mrabet’s narratives that deal, directly or indirectly, with the cultural encounters between Moroccans and Westerners, as in the case of ‘A Woman from New York’, Love with a Few Hairs, and ‘What Happened in Granada’. In the latter short story, for example, Mrabet himself functions as the protagonist who engages in a series of incidental clashes with some Westerners during a short visit to Spain. Instead of feeling embarrassed or being at least calmly polite as a guest or foreigner there in Granada, he rather adopts a self-assertive and potentially counter-hegemonic attitude vis-à-vis all the people he meets there. For example, when he is offered wine during a family reunion, he decidedly refuses it in a conscious desire to stress his identity as a Moslem: “I don’t drink, I said. I’ll take a glass of water.”[10] And when he went into a Spanish café and is “frowned at” by all customers there in addition to being contemptuously served bad coffee, his reaction is described as follows: “I held up the coffee and poured it out so that it fell near my feet (...). I stood in the doorway, looked at everybody in the café, and laughed.”[11] Later on, when an English ethnographer asks Mrabet to provide him with some information about his native Rif region, he responds accusingly by saying: “I see. You’re writing a book (...) I can’t tell you anything (...). I’m writing a book about the Rif myself. I need to know some things too before I can finish mine.”[12] The story also dramatizes several other encounters wherein Mrabet’s attitude is much more openly aggressive and subversively self-assertive. Once, he even threatens an English lady by brandishing “an Arab sword” and saying to her angrily: “I’m going to finish you off. You and your race! [...] You’re only an English whore and I’m a Riffian!”[13] In another scene, Mrabet is surrounded by a crowd of protesting Spaniards who want to blame him for his reckless and dangerous driving of a hired car. His response is the following:

I yelled at them: I shit on your ancestors and your whole race! I kept walking along, pushing through them. Barking dogs don’t bite, I told them. A very fat woman came by. She called me a moro, and I called her a Christian pig.[14] (line space) In another scene, Mrabet even resorts to the Arabic language to insult some Spanish people by saying: “Inaal din d’babakum.”[15]

From all these examples one can see clearly Mrabet’s determined attempt to assert himself in the midst of what he apparently conceives as a hostile and alien Western environment. Being aware that he might be seen as Other or inferior while there in Spain, he himself indulges in adopting the challenging attitude of a “bad kind of Riffian- the kind that always looks for trouble wherever he goes.”[16] Even though such aggressive attitude is apparently not honourable or sophisticated, it remains strategically expedient insofar as it constitutes a sort of ‘response’ to the West’s traditional ethnocentric attitude towards its cultural Others. Whether consciously or not, Mrabet has created here a type of counter-hegemonic discourse whose importance and cultural significance resides in showing how ‘the subaltern can speak’ and assert his identity.

Akbib: The Crying Generations

It is in Abdellatif Akbib’s travel book Tangier’s Eyes on America that we can find a much more mature and sophisticated resisting discourse that consciously seeks to ‘write back’ to the West. Indeed, the book’s title is itself skilfully designed to underline this subversive and counter-hegemonic post-colonial attitude of the author. For if Tangier has been for a long time the object of the colonial gaze and the hegemonic cultural representation of many Westerners—both Americans and Europeans—now this city is significantly endowed with eyesight as well as with a voice by means of which it can actively engage in a kind of counter-discourse against its former representers. As a matter of fact, Akbib’s title indicates quite unambiguously that Tangier has already assumed the role of subject rather than object and that it is now projecting its scrutinizing ‘eyes on America’ (as well as on the whole Western world, by implication).[17]

Since the book is based on the author’s real visit to America in1999, the story of this cross-cultural experience is recounted entirely in first person narration, as is the case with nearly all travel books. But what is worth stressing here, insofar as the topic of this paper is concerned, is the fact that the narrator (i.e. Akbib himself) is functioning not simply as an individual traveller but also as symbolically the ‘eyes’ and the ‘voice’ of Tangier. Being himself a native of this historic post-colonial city, Akbib has responsibly taken it upon himself to operate metonymically as its tongue and as the spokesman of its long silenced and misrepresented citizens. So the counter-hegemonic voice or discourse that informs Akbib’s travel book is not his own, so to speak; it is rather that of the whole Tangier—a resurgent and decolonizing Tangier that has strategically and adamantly decided to speak and to assert itself through one of its conscientious intellectuals.

In many of Akbib’s short stories, as well as his novel Hearts of Embers, Tangier is also conspicuously present and throbbing with voices and actions. In his three collections of stories —namely, Graffitti (1997), Between the Lines (1998) and The Lost Generation (2000)—this city, along with its neighbouring villages and peripheries, constitutes the main stage and social background on which this author’s tales are dramatized. In most of these stories Tangier is referred to either directly by name or else by some of its recognizable locations like Malabata, M’Sallah, Gran Socco and Sour Meâgazine (or even, alternatively, through such suggestive words as plaza, the ocean and the Mediterranean). But even when this is not the case, the reader is often given the impression that this city is Akbib’s basic and central frame of reference, as it can be judged from such stories as ‘We are the Ones’, ‘T’Lata W’Dama’ and ‘One of Those Days’.

These details concerning the notable presence of Tangier in Akbib’s stories are mentioned here so as to draw attention to the way this city also seems to speak through the author in all the three collections. Just as Dublin has spoken through James Joyce in his Dubliners, or Ohio through Sherwood Anderson in his Winesburg, Ohio, so it can be said that Tangier has spoken through Akbib in most of his short—as well as his long—narratives. But how can the reader hear the voice or voices of Tangier through these narratives, and how can he comprehend and construe their meanings?

Though each of Akbib’s collections, not to say each single story, deserves a special study and close analysis, I might venture here to generalize and say that all these short stories combine to present us with the variegated graffitti forms and inscriptions that artistically seek to portray a harsh Tangerian—and, by extension, a harsh Moroccan— reality. It is, in fact, a peculiar and very symbolic type of graffitti whose total text requires a careful reading between the lines so that the reader can make sense of the complex problems and crises of Morocco’s lost generations. I say ‘generations’ in the plural because the characters who people Akbib’s stories range from lost babies and small children to suffering adults and helpless elderly man and women. Take, for example, the case of the numerous helpless illegitimate infants in the story entitled ‘Barren Fertility’, or that of the miserable children in ‘One of Those Days’—small and very hungry children who fight for a mouthful of bread under the scorching sun of the city (ironically, during ‘the International Day of the Child’). Take also the example of the young Abdeslam and the group of native youth who attempt to cross illegally to Spain but find themselves practically dying in ‘the middle of nowhere’; or the example of the older Ab’slam, whose sebsi and radio set are the sole objects whereby he manages to give some meaning to his deeply bleak, lonely and insignificant existence. In ‘When Men Cry’, we are presented with yet a much older protagonist who is mercilessly drained and agonizingly impoverished by an unjust educational system. After serving devoutedly and selflessly as a school-teacher for forty years, Si Allal retires from work and soon grows helplessly moneyless because of the irresponsible delay of his pension. After several months of vain and impatient waiting for his due, and after getting tired of his exasperating loitering at the streets and cafés of Tangier, he eventually dies “of a broken heart.”[18]

Underlying all these stories, and most of the other ones in the three collections, is a deep criticism of the policies and the socio-political institutions that are responsible for such miseries, injustices and endemic losses. This criticism is often mediated discreetly via a deep and pervasive sense of humour —a black humour that is highly expressive of the author’s inditing and sarcastic attitude. For instance, in one revealing scene in ‘When Men Cry’, Si Allal becomes aware that holes have started to appear gradually all over his clothes—including his shoes and underpants—and that he has got to mend all these holes as he has no money to buy new ones. The narrator comments sardonically as follows: “After forty years as a primary school teacher, he had to mend holes in his clothes to keep himself presentable! What a life! Why not turn into a seamster, then?”[19] Shortly afterwards, Si Allal seems to be faced with a little, but fantastic, crisis: he needs to sit at a café to seek shelter from the rain, but which one should be choose as there are countless neighbouring cafés in Tangier? To put it in the narrator’s words:

Which café? There is nothing in Tangier but cafés and cafés and cafés —and cafés. Between two cafés there is a café, and between this one and the next —another café. Building entrances have been turned into cafés. Flights of stairs too. Bookstores ... schools next. There is reason to be proud of Tangier. So much the better for its inhabitants: they have a panoply of choices, so there is no risk of boredom.[20]

From such a deeply ironical and sarcastic passage, one can see how Akbib looks critically at Tangier and its suffering population. Rather than exoticizing or idealizing this ‘magic’ and ‘dream city’—to use the words of Paul Bowles, who is among the many Western writers who have romanticized it—Akbib has conversely and subversively chosen to tackle its harsh realities and to make us hear the voice of its poor and downtrodden humans. This is Akbib’s typical mode of writing Tangier —a mode that is also suggestive and illustrative of how this city is, metaphorically, able to speak through this native author.

If we now proceed to Akbib’s novel Hearts of Embers, we canot fail to find again Tangier speaking to us —but in a method that differs a little from that of the short stories. If all the stories in the three collections can be visualized as forming a single polyphonic text or graffitti portrait wherein each story functions as a constitutive unit of a large mosaic design, the novel presents us rather with a kind of monologic film that coherently projects a series of inter-connected episodes from the life story of a tormented Tanjawi protagonist, named Said. This Tangerian identity of the central character, coupled with the fact that he is the sole narrator of the whole story from beginning to end, points forcefully to how Tangier is again both present and voluble in Akbib’s text. But what has Tangier to say this time; and how is its discourse articulated?

As has been just pointed out, Akbib’s novel is monologic in structure; which means that the whole narration is cast in the form of a long monologue, or snatches of monologue, during which Saïd makes a lot of confessions about his past experiences. The author has staged these confessions in a superbly coherent and closely-knit narrative, wherein events and psychological motivation are highly convincing. His main strategy consists in confining his narrator/protagonist to his deathbed in a clinic, where some last, but desperate, attempts to cure him from a prostate cancer are made. But since Said is keenly aware that his death is quickly approaching, he cannot help “communing with the past,”[21] as he himself puts it, and uttering all these confessions.

If one needs a clue to Said’s complex psychological situation, one should have recourse to Akbib’s story ‘The Middle of Nowhere’ and right towards its ending where Abdeslam is drowning. In the midst of his tragic crisis, we are told, “Snapshots of key moments in his life flitted in rapid succession through his mind, mingled with the picture of his mother and sisters awaiting his return from a successful journey.”[22] This is exactly the same situation which the protagonist of Hearts of Embers is facing. As Said lays dying, snapshots of his past life keep forcing themselves into his very active memory. As if he wants to free his conscience and to expiate the sins and burden of his accursed past, he readily gives full vent to his secrets and memories in such impassioned monologue that constitutes the entire novel.

Looked at from another perspective, one can affirm that Said’s life and fate are not much dissimilar from those of Si Allal, the protagonist of ‘When Men Cry’. Indeed, like this poor Tanjawi teacher, Said is another one of Akbib’s ‘crying men’ who has come to realize that all his life has been ‘wasted” and that he has “practically no foreseeable future to plan for.”[23] The only thing he is left with now is his accursed past and what he calls his “heroic defeat”, about which he feels a sore and irresistible “need to talk” just before his death.[24] But in speaking about his own bitter experiences, one has to bear in mind that the experiences of many other Tanjawi people are involved, and the history of Tangier itself as well as its geography are by no means out of the scene of all that is remembered. Hence the idea that Tangier is again speaking through the ‘tattoed memory’ and the embittered consciousness of Akbib’s narrator and protagonist.

As a matter of fact, Said’s past experiences are so intertwined with those of other Tanjawi residents that his personal history can be seen as a representative ingredient of the history of Tangier. Even if he is not a microcosm of the whole city, one can still get through him revealing glimpses at the life of Tangier and the daily activities and sufferings of its people. For instance, this narrator refers to such socio-historical matters as the suffering of the Tanjawis at the hand of the Spanish colonizers, the bitter disillusionment that came with independence, and the growth of what he calls the “parvenus culture”[25] among some residents of the city. Furthermore, the narrator speaks about the lives, fates or attitudes of a number of representative Tanjawi people like the prostitute Batoul, the upstart smuggler Abdelkrim and the corrupt and corruptive traitor Caïd M’Saffar, whose name is suggestive of his moral emptiness and spiritual bankruptcy. The stories, or rather the histories, of all such natives are inextrically connected with the narrator’s “cursed past”[26] —a past which he is belatedly and desperately reviewing with an “irking question” in mind: “could I have been a different man?”[27]

This hypothetical question is not a simple or idle speculation, as it might appear at first sight. Indeed, since the life story of Said is not so much personal as symbolically communal, the author is obviously raising the more pertinent and strategic question: Couldn’t the history of Tangier and the whole Morocco be different and less dismal than it was and has always been?

Ben Bouchta: Oppressed Voices Erupting

Zoubeir Ben Bouchta is a young Tanjawi dramatist whose literary and theatrical fame is steadily increasing with the publication or staging of each new play of his. He has so far written seven plays, including his latest one: The Red Fire (which is probably not yet published). One of the major and the most recurrent themes in nearly all these plays is that of injustice or oppression and the quest of victimized subjects for justice, emancipation and self-assertion.

In dealing with this crucial and significant theme, Ben Bouchta usually deploys a notable variety of techniques and literary/theatrical devices that help his characters/actors to express themselves efficiently and to externalize their innermost repressed feelings. Being himself very sensitive to the suffering and the complex plights of oppressed subjects, Ben Bouchta characteristically and purposefully devotes his talents to open up ample spaces for these people to express themselves, not only verbally but also via other means of symbolic communication which dramatic art makes possible like the use of masks, songs and dance. In Ben Bouchta’s plays, silence itself and dumbness are at times meant to function as eloquent means whereby some deep thoughts and pregnant meanings are ingeniously articulated.

In such a play as Al Qafas (The Cage), one’s attention is from the outset drawn to the peculiar fact that even a foetus in its mother’s womb is given a role as an actor and apparently one of the most symbolic protagonists. It is this Foetus, as a matter of fact, that significantly opens the whole play by uttering a pregnant “speech that is bigger than (Foetus) itself”, as the mother Ahlam has astonishingly noticed.[28] From that opening conversation between the two, it becomes clear that Foetus has an irresistible urge to come out of Ahlam’s womb so that it could help its father in his bitter struggle against his oppressive and scheming rivals. Can Foetus be thus metaphorically seen as the embodiment of the repressed justice that is now erupting to restore order and redress the prevalent sense of tyranny and lawlessness? But how and why is this Foetus itself mysteriously metamorphosed at the end of the play into a wild and frightening mythical creature that seems to augur unspeakable evil and apocalyptic anarchy?

Aside from these loaded symbolic opening and closing scenes of the play, the entire middle part is essentially reserved to the exciting dramatization of the subtle antagonism between Foetus’ father Al-Khattat (the Planner or Designer) and the Patron. The latter is presented as the despotic victimizer who relentlessly seeks to subjugate the whole town by using money, masks and brute force against any protester. Al-Khattat, whose own father has been unjustly killed by the Patron, resorts to some clever strategies in a desperate attempt to defeat him and avoid his merciless oppression. As an antidote to the Patron’s enslaving and terroristic masks, he deploys (alphabetic) letters as weapons to expose the mean tactics and the vile aspirations of his foe. He significantly considers these letters as his ‘tongue’ and as “the letters of truth” that are capable of changing the situation for the better: “My letters, my letters, they are my tongue! The tongue which will force these masks to speak!”[29]

When the Patron himself becomes aware of the pervading adverse influence of these letters in the streets, he grows instantly alarmed and prompts his gansters to urgent action by stating: (I)The letters are his weapon, if we don’t strip him of them he will use them against us... the fiercest and deadliest of all wars is the war of the letter. The most ignoble and humiliating defeat is the defeat before the letter.[30]

The play thus metaphorically transforms the stage into a battlefield where ‘masks’ and ‘letters’ are deployed as two opposite symbolic languages whereby each of the two conflicting sides attempts to defeat the other. While the masks clearly stand for the forces of evil and oppression which the Patron is gearing to serve his power and domination, the letters symbolize the voice of truth and justice that has come to challenge this tyrannical authority. And though the play tends to end pessimistically with the defeat of Al-Khattat, who seems to find himself ultimately powerless vis-à-vis the Patron’s overwhelming evil and magic forces, he still believes in the possibility of freedom from his oppressive cage and in the power of words, or what he calls ‘the story’, to reveal truth and restore the violated rights and justice.

In another play entitled Al-Okhtobout (The Octopus), Ben Bouchta makes use of a different symbolic language to tell another ‘story’ of struggle against the powers of corruption and cruel injustice. Now the chief dictator is a man called the Octopus and his main victims are a young couple: Khalid and Khouloud, whom he atrociously separate from each other at the night of their wedding. Just because Khalid has been concerned with the welfare of his townsfolk, the Octopus orders his gang to kidnap him and throw him in a pit. Later on, he even rapes Khouloud and thwarts her attempts to find her husband. As a reaction, this girl (who seems to be dumb) decides to resist and challenge her tormentors’ oppression by means of her expressive dancing. The Narrator himself has from the outset explaind to the audience that: “our tales tonight will narrate themselves by means of body and dance. Have you ever heard of a body that speaks?”[31]

As in the earlier example of Al-Khattat’s letters, Khouloud’s symbolic dances prove to be a very effective weapon that causes much disturbance for the Octopus and his gang as it threatens to reveal their secrets and to undermine their authoritarian policies. What is more, Khalid too adopts this strategy or language of dance, and he even wishes that he and Khouloud could give birth to a child that would inherit their dances. So, as soon as he manages to escape from his prison in the pit, he secretly joins Khouloud in a symbolic ‘sexual’ dance that soon results in the birth of a peculiar immaterial offspring: a haunting and subversive voice which Octopus and his gangsters keep hearing everywhere. The Octopus himself is alarmingly prompted to recognize that it is “a terrifying voice that is bound to expose truths” that could subvert and undermine his whole policy.[32] All his strenuous attempts to silence this voice or even to detect its source prove ultimately futile, for how can he stop or defeat the voice of justice that has suddenly erupted to undermine his cruel authority?

In his subsequent plays: Ya Mouja Ghanni (Sing, Sing Wave) and Lalla J’mila Ben Bouchta dramatizes again his favourite theme of “speaking truth to power,”[33] but significant technical changes have now occurred. One of the most noticeable changes consists in that both plays are written almost entirely in Moroccan Arabic, the Darija (of Tangier’s region) instead of classical Arabic. Another related important change consists in the powerful presence of Tangier as the essential setting and backdrop of both plays. But unlike the above writers’ method of writing Tangier, Ben Bouchta chooses to speak about this city and to look at it through the lenses of its Mediterranean coast. For each of the two plays is set in a limited rocky area by the beach, and in each of them action is artistically directed to shed light on significant moments of Tangier’s history and the harsh life of its marginal(ized) residents.

In Ya Mouja Ghanni, a poor Tanjawi seaman called Al-Wannas finds a rare occasion to settle his account with Azzalt, a corrupt rich man who has previously wronged him. In addition to being the root cause of Al- Wannas’ destitution after expropriating him unjustly of his boat ‘Mouja’, this man also used to collaborate with the colonizers and has been responsible for the assassination of Al-Wannas’ friend—Hmidou, the Nationalist. So when they now, by chance, find themselves alone on a big rock by the sea, Al Wannas seizes the opportunity to take revenge on him in a slow ritualistic manner which culminates in drowning him. But before his death, Azzalt is skilfully made to reveal some of his secrets by means of Al-Wannas’ cheap alcoholic drink. These secrets, along with the facts which Al-Wannas himself reveals during their conversation, provide valuable pieces of information whereby the audience is meant to look retrospectively at the history of Tangier and the hard life of its people, especially during this city’s ‘international era’.[34]

Lalla J’mila, on the other hand, concentrates basically on the problem of women’s oppression by men and their painful quest for freedom and self-assertion. The protagonists of this real masterpiece are themselves two suffering girls/women, Lalla J’mila and Itto, who have just come to know that they are sisters and whose mutual confessions lead them to a better understanding of their wretched situation and, eventually, to a strong belief in the possibility of change and the necessity for full emancipation.

Lalla J’mila has suffered a lot at the hand of her step-father, Bahaddou, another collaborator with the Spanish colonizers and the stark incarnation of a cruel and unscupulous patriarch. This man has, in fact, been so sadistically cruel that he punishes Lalla J’mila and her mother by compelling them to thresh thorny weeds with naked and bleeding feet.[35] He is also so rudely authoritative that he obliges Lalla J’mila to get married to an old polygamous puppet Cheikh, threatening to kill her if she objects to his decision. To escape from such hostile and oppressive milieu, she masquerades as a man and deserts the whole village. This masquerade enables her to see practically how men are incomparably freer than women and to express thus her revolt against the unjust social order where the latter are mere suffering prisoners:

The woman’s precinct is the house. During all her life, a woman can go outside just twice: first, when she is carried on Al-Ammaria from her father’s home to that of her husband; and later when she is carried in a coffin from her husband’s home to the grave (...) when I was man [referring to her masquerade], I was walking on the road like a prince, holding my head high, moving with determined steps freely and without fear (...) Nobody to order you: veil your head/cover your legs/wear a Djellaba/add a lithan (...) I’m tired/I’m exhausted by these commands. Everything is forbidden for woman/everything she does is a sin...[36]

Such outburst of protest is given further momentum by Itto’s account of her own tragic plight and her final determination to break loose from all forms of man’s domination.

Like Lalla J’mila, Itto has been subject to untold suffering ever since her tyrannous arrest at a place which is ironically named the ‘Freedom Avenue’. While still in custody, she undergoes an atrocious systematic rape by a police officer, who turns out to be her brother (begotten illegitimately through Bahaddou’s fornication with the notorious Gllassa). Besides raping her, Ould L’Gllassa doubles her tragedy by his direct complicity in the torture and murder of her beloved fiancé L’Mahdi. Later on, the trauma of her bitter ordeal pushes her to cherish the illusion that she can still find this lover; that is why she passionately engages in a mad search for him everywhere. This search, however, proves to be just a metaphor of her quest for justice and freedom. At the end of the play, she is even described symbolically as being capable of flying like a bird, after discovering that she—as a woman—actually has wings. Inspired by the sight, Lalla J’mila too decides to follow suit and fly freely in the air.

From this highly symbolic ending of the play, one can see how Ben Bouchta characteristically excels at dramatizing his favourite theme of quest for freedom and the condemnation of any form of oppression and social or political injustice. Though this theme is obviously recurrent in his works, the dramatic techniques and strategies he deploys in its treatment always vary as he moves from one play to another. His messages also vary according to the identities and the social or political status of both the victims and the victimizers he intends to portray. But on the whole, Ben Bouchta is always on the side of the victims and the oppressed, as it can be judged from the way he typically opens up to them wide symbolic stages for free expression and brave resistance to their oppressors.

In a revealing footnote which Ben Bouchta includes in Lalla J’mila to refer to the significane of his use of of ‘Hammam Franco’ as part of his setting, he writes that this place is “a traditional public bath situated in the ancient district of Dar l’Baroud in Tangier. I chose it due to the symbolism of its name which refers to the period of the Spanish colonization of Tangier (1940-1945) during the rule of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco.”[37]

This statement is very illuminating indeed because in addition to suggesting how Tangier often functions as a vital and significant background in Ben Bouchta’s plays, it illustrates how this dramatist usually relies on symbolism to invest his plots artistically with various socio-cultural, historical and political implications. It also indicates how the personal dramas or tragedies of his individual characters are interlinked with the fate and history of the whole town or nation.[38] This implies that most of Ben Bouchta’s protagonists are symbolic and representative characters through whom one can view the situations and dilemmas of many Tanjawi (or Moroccan) people. Some of his victims—both male and female—can even be said to stand for Tangier itself, given that this city has historically suffered enormously and has been “prostituted” by diverse international colonial powers.[39] Hence the idea that their protesting voices are in a sense representative of Tangier’s resisting voice.

Thus we come to the conclusion that ‘Tangier speaks’ indeed in and through most of the literary texts of all the four Tanjawi writers dealt with here. Whether these writers speak directly in their names, as in many instances of Choukri’s and Mrabet’s autobiographical narratives, or else they choose to speak through the artistic medium of a narrator or symbolic protagonist, as is the case with many of Akbib’s fictions or Ben Bouchta’s plays, they all embody Tangier’s voice and they collectively testify to how Tangier can speak and has spoken.

Mohamed Elkouche
Faculty of Oujda

Source:

“Tangier Speaks: A Reading in the Discourses of Some Tanjawi Writers,” in (abbreviated format) in Voices of Tangier, Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan, 2006.

Notes:

[1] Mohamed Berrada, ‘Mohamed Choukri: the Transparent Self...,’ (My translation from the Arabic language), Afaq, Review of Moroccan Writers', Union, 148.
[2] Mohamed Choukri, The Time of Errors, (Casablanca: Annajah Aljadida, 1992) 49. (My translation from the Arabic language).
[3] R. Kevin Lacey, ‘The Writers/Storytellers of Morocco and Paul Bowles: Some Observations and Afterthoughts’, Writing Tangier —Conference Proceedings: Tangier, 26-28 November 2004— (Tangier: ALTOPRESS,2005) 98.
[4] Abdellatif Akbib, ‘Bankruptcy in Mohamed Choukri’s “The Flower Freak”’, Writing Tangier, 84.
[5] ‘Bankruptcy in Mohamed Choukri’s “The Flower Freak”,’ 83.
[6] Naguib El Oufi, Textual Phenomena —Written in Arabic— (Casablanca: Annajah Aljadida, 1992) 121.
[7] See Abdelaziz Jadir, ‘A Narrator’s Life: An Interview with Mohamed Mrabet’ (in Arabic), Afaq, Review of Moroccan Writers’ Union, 53-54 , 1993, 334.
[8] Brian Edwards, ‘Introduction’ to M. Mrabet’s Love with a Few Hairs, Trans. Paul Bowles (Casablanca: Najah Al Jadida, 2004) IX.
[9] Mohamed Mrabet, ‘The Witch of Bouiba Del Hallouf,’ The Boy Who Set the Fire and Other Stories, trans. P. Bowles (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1989) 42.
[10] M. Mrabet, ‘What Happened in Granada’, Mohamed Mrabet: Collected Stories, trans. P. Bowles (Casablanca: Annajah Aljadida, 2004) 9.
[11] ‘What Happened in Granada’, 12.
[12] ‘What Happened in Granada’, 14.
[13] ‘What Happened in Granada’ 19.
[14] ‘What Happened in Granada’, 14.
[15] ‘What Happened in Granada’, 21.
[16] ‘What Happened in Granada’, 15.
[17] See my article ‘Eye For Eye: A Reading in the Travel Accounts of P. Bowles and A. Akbib’, Theories of Margins and Margins of Theory, Tetouan Conference Proceedings, 2002 (Tanger: ALTOPRESS, 2003) 137-157.
[18] A. Akbib, ‘When Men Cry’, The Lost Generation:Collected Short Stories (Tangier: Slaiki Brothers, 1998) 15.
[19] ‘When Men Cry’, 8.
[20] ‘When Men Cry’, 8.
[21] Akbib, Hearts of Embers, (Tangier: ALTOPRESS,2004) 11.
[22] Akbib, ‘Ihe Middle of Nowhere’, Between The Lines, (Tangier: Slaiki Brothers, 1998) 54. [23] Hearts of Embers, 11.
[24] See Hearts of Embers, 160.
[25] Hearts of Embers, 99.
[26] Hearts of Embers, 143.
[27] Hearts of Embers, 12.
[28] Z. Ben Bouchta, Al-Qafas (Tangier: Slaiki Brothers, 1996) 12. This and all subsequent quotations from Ben Bouchta’s plays are my translations from the Arabic.
[29] Al-Qafas, 40.
[30] Al-Qafas, 69-70.
[31] Z. Ben Bouchta, Al-Okhtobout, (Rabat: Almaarif Aljadida, 1992) 17.
[32] Al-Okhtobout, 102.
[33] This is Edward Said’s phrase which he used as the title of one of his articles collected in Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Vintage Books, 1994) 85.
[34] Notice, for example, the socio-political significance of Al-Wannas’ ‘story’ about his unjust imprisonment by colonial authorities and his prevention from raising a Moroccan flag on his boat (pp. 47-50).
[35] See pp. 35-38. Ben Bouchta explains in a footnote that his portrait of Bahaddou is based on the character of a real dispotic official—Ahmed Bahaddou— who reportedly subjected a whole Riffian tribe to such a punishment.
[36] Lalla J’mila, 70-71.
[37] Lalla J’mila, 31.
[38] Khalid Amine has noted, in this connection, that Lalla J’mila “shows how struggles of national liberation and private battles of self-assertion are linked in a variety of ways.” See his ‘Review of Lalla J’mila’ (in English), Lalla J’mila, 85. [39]Edmondo De Amicis has noted that Tangier was “considered by its sister cities as having been ‘prostituted to the Christians’.” See Morocco: Its People and Places, trans. C. Rollin-Tilton (London: Darf Publishers Limited, 1985, [first pub. 1882] 24.

Picturing the Interzone

2008-03-28T09:25:00.006-06:00

Tangier in P. Bowles' Let It Come Down
and A. Majid’s Si Yussef

In both Paul Bowles’ Let It Come Down and Anouar Majid’s Si Yussef, Tangier figures as the main setting and the basic stage on which nearly all the events are dramatized. In both novels, this city is further portrayed and ‘celebrated’ in such a way that it appears as a protagonist in its own right. But while Bowles’ portrait of Tangier is obviously tainted with the hegemonic ideology of his Western culture, Majid’s portrayal tends to be rather postcolonial and anti-hegemonic. The chief aim of this paper consists in drawing a brief comparison between these opposite discursive representations by an American who was living in Tangier and a Tanjawi who is still living in America.

If we start with Bowles’ Let It Come Down, we can say straightway that in spite of the remarkable ambivalence of this novel’s discourse, its representation of the city of Tangier hardly deviates from the ideological structures and the discursive tropes and strategies that generally characterize traditional Orientalist writings. To support this central idea, it may be worth illustrating first how Tangier is depicted throughout as an Oriental and ‘other’ space that can be easily appropriated and exploited by Bowles’ Western protagonists. Then we shall look at the ideology inherent in this American writer’s imaginative recreation of the ‘International Zone’ in the form of a realistic picture or document so that he could celebrate and wishfully perpetuate the peculiar image of that bygone colonial period.

From the beginning of Bowles’ novel, one can see clearly how Tangier is conceived of in terms of the large distinction between the Oriental world and its Occidental counterpart. This significant division can be in fact perceived through the protagonist’s—Nelson Dyar’s—travel from New York to Tangier. Dyar has of course planned and wished that this symbolic journey from the West to the East will save him from his deep feelings of anxiety, boredom and vast existential emptiness which, he thinks, are engendered by the sophisticated and over-civilized quality of life in his American metropolitan milieu. That is why he has abandoned for good his ‘cage’ or job as a clerk in a New York bank and has come to Tangier in quest for some ‘other’ and simpler mode of existence as well as for therapeutic regeneration in the Orient’s ‘natural’ and exotic universe. In this respect, Dyar’s experience is quite analogous to that of the protagonist of Bowles’ first novel The Sheltering Sky—namely Port Moresby, whose complaint about what he sees as “the mechanized age”[1] of his Western civilization prompts him to seek for a restorative alternative in the North African primeval Sahara.

Yet, instead of a simple and serene life, Dyar has found in Tangier only another cage and more complex and corruptive human relationships. For this city has lost much of its pre-colonial innocence, especially after its transformation into an ‘International Zone’. It has been prostituted, metaphorically speaking,[2] because in addition to its being the object of greedy imperial desire and appropriation by nearly a dozen Western countries, this so-called ‘International Zone’ used to serve also as a private colony of limitless freedom and “a sanctuary of non-interference” [3] for any Western individual. This means that Tangier could be colonized and exploited not only by imperial nations but also by Western individuals—these latter who could come there to indulge in such practices as homosexuality, drug-taking, espionage and illicit transactions. As a matter of fact, Bowles’ novel itself provides a vivid portrayal of that atmosphere of moral decadence and socio-political corruption in which Dyar himself soon gets enmeshed. Indeed, no sooner has this protagonist set foot in the Interzone than Daisy de Valverde tries to prepare him for its crazy mode of life, promising that he too will certainly appreciate it:

"…how do you like our little International Zone?” [asked Daisy] “Well, I haven’t seen anything of it yet...” “Of course. You just came today, didn’t you? My dear, you’ve got so much ahead of you! So much ahead of you! You can’t know. But you’ll love it, that I promise you. It’s a madhouse, of course. A complete, utter madhouse. I only hope to God it remains one.” “You like it a lot?” he was beginning to feel the drinks. “Adore it”, she said, leaning toward him. “Absolutely worship the place.”[4]

While this passage hints generally at how the Western residents of Tangier take pride in living there and derive great pleasure and satisfaction from its unusual form of life, Daisy’s use of the possessive ‘our’ in her reference to the Interzone is highly suggestive of how this space has been appropriated and ‘colonized’ not only formally by states but by individuals as well. Such appropriative discursive pronoun—just like the appellation ‘International Zone’ itself—has the symbolic effect of denying the city of Tangier all sense of belonging to Morocco’s geography and cultural identity; it ideologically serves to map out this city as a mere ‘blank space’ or uncharted romantic island which is unproblematically fitted for the personal fantastic pleasure, as well as the geo-political interests, of its foreign occupants.

Parallel with this idea of a colonized Tangier is the image of its Moroccan natives as helpless subjects who are either marginalized or exploited by their colonizers. In Bowles’ novel, one can easily notice that except for a couple of Moroccans, the natives’ presence is hardly felt on account of their systematic seclusion or marginalization within the old Arab medina. It might be true that these natives have willingly chosen not to get in contact with those foreigners because, as one of them has bluntly put it, “only bad things can happen when Nazarenes and Moslems come together.”[5] All the same, such apartheid condition within the same city crystallizes the basic cultural difference between the Western colonizers and their dominated Others. As a matter of fact, even in the case of Thami and Hadija—the two Tanjawis with a lot of contacts with those Westerners—one can see clearly how they are both regarded as Others, and thus as exploitable subjects. For instance, Thami is exploited by Dyar when this latter sends him in a risky mission to smuggle his stolen money into the Spanish Zone. At the end, this Moroccan is even gratuitously murdered by his American ‘friend’, who has been under the effect of too much kif and majoun. As for Hadija, she too is exploited not only by Madame Papaconstante, who employs her as a prostitute in her Bar Lucifer, but also by Eunice Goode, who wants to appropriate her totally for the sake of satisfying her deviant lesbian desires. Later on, Dyar himself attempts to exploit her sexually after being attracted by her youth and beauty. In this sense, the native Hadija can be considered as an apt symbol of the prostituted Tangier.

Bowles’ representation of Tangier and its natives is particularly ideological and Orientalist because in spite of the striking eccentricity and decadence of that international colonial era, he undoubtedly looks at it nostalgically as a good and golden period in the city’s history. Indeed, he himself was in practice one of the Western expatriates who used to indulge in the boundless freedom of the interzone and its pleasurable anarchic life.[6] Daisy seems to express Bowles’ own vision when she says, as already quoted, that Tangier is an adorable “utter madhouse. I only hope to God it remains one.” For it was actually his wish that Tangier could never evolve from its colonial era to the post-independence one. But as this wish could not materialize, he felt the need at least to celebrate that era and to commemorate it by writing Let It Come Down, as it might be understood from its introduction in which he states that the book

was first published early in 1952, at the very moment of the riots which presaged the end of the International Zone of Morocco. Thus even at the time of publication the book already treated a bygone era, for Tangier was never the same after the 30th of March 1952. The city celebrated in these pages has long ago ceased to exist, and the events recounted in them would now be inconceivable. Like a photograph, the tale is a document relating to a specific place at a given point in time, illumined by the light of that particular moment.[7]

The writer’s use here of the words ‘photograph’ and ‘document’ is greatly important for the discussion of the Orientalist ideology inherent in his picturing of the Interzone. For if we examine these terms in the light of Edward Said’s notion that Orientalism is “a form of radical realism’ that maps out a sort of “imaginative geography” so as to subjugate the West’s cultural Others,[8] we cannot but conclude that Bowles’ novel is by no means immune from the ‘twin’ realistic/Orientalist ideology.

In this connection, it should be pointed out that even though Bowles’ representation is heavily realistic, it remains basically imaginary[9] and it doubtlessly partakes of that ‘imaginative geography’ that has traditionally served to keep the Orient under the West’s hegemonic dominance. The amount of realism in Bowles’ novel can be glimpsed from the above extract from its introduction where there is a clear focus on “solidity of specification”[10] through the reference to a real place and a real time: “Tangier”, “March 1952”, “the end of the International Zone of Morocco.” Such realistic evocation of geography and history certainly permits the author to create an aura of vraisemblance and a sense of objectivity and authenticity that ideologically prepare the reader from the very beginning to presume the ‘factuality’ of the ensuing story. Furthermore, as if intent on investing his story with as much sense of realism and credibility as possible, Bowles likens it to “a photograph” or “a document” that is closely related with the reality of the Interzone. In fact, both words are suggestive of factuality and objective reportage because just as a photograph is assumed to capture a given external object or spectacle in the image in which it appears to exist objectively, a document or documentary report is also usually thought to be something authentic and closely related to verifiable facts or evidence.

Nevertheless, it must be stressed here that such things as a photograph, a document or a novel itself are at bottom no more than cultural texts and ideological representational products. They are all sheer discursive practices that create the world they speak about rather than being authentic representations or passive linguistic transcriptions of it. In other words, all such cultural products are mere “texts within discourses of power”, and what they usually reflect “is not given, objective reality... but an epistemological field constructed as much linguistically as visually.” [11]

Indeed, the very presence of the observer or viewer who determines what is to be ‘documented’, ‘photographed’ or ‘reported’—that is to say, what is to be included in or excluded from the representation—rules out the possibility of any objective or neutral reportage; for the latter then instantly becomes a sort of interpretation or cultural text, in which both the language and the eye (or rather the ‘I’ and subjectivity) of the representer/interpreter plays a decisive discursive role.[12] With reference to Bowles’ introductory passage quoted above, one might raise such questions as: Why did he choose exactly the ‘bygone era’ of the ‘International Zone’ rather than any other period or other place? Then why did he want to ‘celebrate’ this era instead of criticizing it or condemning it, for instance? Is not his desire to devote a whole novel to the eulogy and commemoration of the ‘International Zone’ tantamount to an avowed regret for the passing off of that notorious colonial order?

At any rate, Bowles’ intention to produce a commemorative picture or photograph about that queer era bespeaks his nostalgic desire to perpetuate it by means of his work of art. Such discursive practice amounts to mythologizing that specific period of history and attests obliquely to his adherence and affiliation to the Western Orientalist tradition—a tradition wherein the Orient is conceptualized in terms of an ‘imaginative geography’ which systematically constitutes it as a cultural Other that can be subjected to the West’s hegemonic dominance and colonial appropriation.

If Bowles’ portrayal of Tangier in Let It Come Down thus boils down to a fixed mythological and Orientalist picture that celebrates a “bygone [colonial] era”, Anouar Majid’s representation of the same city in Si Yussef is almost in complete antithesis to it. For instead of the myth of a glorious ‘internationalized’ Tangier whose image or identity “becomes vitrified [and frozen] into an eternal reference meant to establish [and commemorate Western] imperiality,”[13] Majid attempts rather to demythologize and subvert such hegemonic and Orientalist compartmentalization of his native city. He does so chiefly by showing the Interzone as an ambivalent interstitial space—a third space where all identities get hybridized and all essentialist dichotomies become problematically uncertain

But before supporting and illustrating this view, it should be first mentioned that in Bowles’ novel too there are some instances of deep ambivalence that might be regarded as being expressive of Tangier’s third space conditions. But, insofar as this novel is concerned these are rather revealing instances that significantly problematize and undermine Bowles’ underlying Orientalist discourse from within itself. For instance, when Dyar comes to Tangier in quest for a change, he soon realizes that he has just changed his cage in New York by a new one in this Oriental city. Dasy has even explained to him that “Tangier is more New York than New York.”[14] This reveals how much the essentialist distinction between the East and the West is illusory and a mere discursive construct.

Another example of such subversive blurring of distinctions between the two worlds can be found at the end of the novel where we see that it is Dyar, the Westerner, who murders his Moroccan companion Thami, and not the opposite. For, according to Orientalist prejudices, it is always the Orientals who are savage, brutal and untrustworthy. Dyar himself has given voice to such a deep-seated stereotype when he suspiciously thinks of Thami as “an Arab” on whose face he can discern “the very essence of Oriental deviousness and cunning.”[15] The word ‘Oriental’ in this quotation underscores the whole underlying Orientalist ideology in Bowles’ novel; but Dyar’s criminal act of killing the sleeping Thami by driving a big nail into his ear undermines quite profoundly the pre-established assumptions of this ideology. Hence the key notion that the novel’s Orientalism is unwittingly subverted and interrogated from within its proper discourse.

Conversely, in Majid’s Si Yussef, the act of critical subversion is a technique or strategy that is intentionally adopted by the author himself. This means that the text is consciously designed to interrogate some apparently settled hegemonic assumptions and to foreground the uncertainty and the constant flux of all identities in such an interstitial space as the Interzone. Tangier and its history—both past and present—are not dealt with in such a close realistic fashion that seeks to present a neat picture or homogeneous discursive document as is the case with Bowles’ novel. Majid rather makes use of a number of deconstructive techniques and a variety of heterogeneous discourses that range from the realistic to the magical and mythical ones. A brief look at these various discourses and narrative strategies will help to shed light on how Majid’s portrayal of the Interzone is significantly different from that of Paul Bowles.

Though there is a considerable amount of realism in Si Yussef, this realism is strategically ‘abused’ by the writer’s use of deconstructive devices and subversive elements like magic realism, myth and legend. In the fashion of postmodernist writers Majid attempts in effect to both ‘use’ and ‘abuse’ the conventions of realistic novelistic discourse[16] in an attempt to render the complex reality of Tangier’s “contact zone”[17] and to problematize some facile or biased hegemonic constructions of this Interzone. Accordingly, Si Yussef can be generally classified as a postcolonial novel owing to its tacit resisting spirit and its subversive evocation and treatment of issues pertaining to both a place and a history that are replete with socio-political significance and cross-cultural complexities.

Among the diverse clashing layers of discourse in Majid’s novel, the realistic discourse is obviously the dominant one. From the opening pages, the reader can in fact notice how the narrative starts quite realistically as the space of Tangier is evoked through Lamin’s description of his first meeting with Si Yussef in Ashab’s café. This café might be just imaginary, but its centrality in the novel suggests that it is meant to function as a symbolic site from which the reader is made to see many aspects of Tangier’s reality. In fact, from the activities and speeches of the different people who come there one can form a good idea about the way of life of many Tanjawis and their cross-cultural relations with the visitors of their cosmopolitan city. One can also get a glimpse at the secret geography of this Interzone through the hints at the activities of its smugglers, spies, prostitutes and so forth.

But the most important source of information about Tangier in Majid’s novel is Si Yussef himself. This seventy-seven-year old protagonist is a Tanjawi, who mysteriously feels a certain compulsion to tell his long story to Lamin, the young Tanjawi narrator. So during twelve meetings in Ashab’s café, this old man divulges a series of confessions and memories which have to do not only with his own life-story but also with the history of his native city. Indeed, when he speaks about his experiences as a tourist guide or as a worker in a Frenchman’s factory in Tangier or about his happy marriage with the Spanish Lucia, one can see a lot of features that characterize Tangier’s cosmopolitan life. Some of his references tend to be closely historical as when he refers to the Sultan’s visit to Tangier in 1947 and the rise of the nationalist movement in this city:

We started demanding our independence. Men started burning the shops of the nassara, stabbing French and Spanish officers in the streets. We started hearing of stone-throwing in the Rif.…our dear sultan arrived in our town which he called a jewel, calling for national unity, and ah! what a feeling! my chest was pounding with joy and hope…[18]

Nevertheless, intersecting with such realistic details, that help to draw a seemingly true picture of Tangier, are a number of fantastic or mythical allusions which seriously challenge and destabilize that apparent aura of factuality and verisimilitude. A sense of mystery is in fact suggested since the first paragraph of the novel when, in the process of describing the atmosphere within and outside Ashab’s café, Lamin invokes the notion of ‘apocalypse’: “It had rained in Tangier all day, and, on that December afternoon, one had the impression that the apocalypse was finally at hand.”[19] Later on, this sense of fantasy is intensified by his reference to Hercules:

Days like this reminded me of the myth I always believed: Hercules, standing on top of the caves he carved after separating the continents of Europe and Africa, saying ‘Let the winds and the tempests blow forever on this land’….[20]

This invocation of the name is not quite irrelevant, as it might appear at first sight; for Tangier itself is associated with this mythical name, as the actual existence of the Cave of Hercules on its territory testifies. The myth has it in fact that Hercules did really play a central role in the existence of this strategic city when he separated Europe from Africa. Another myth has it that during the apocalyptic deluge the ship of Prophet Noah rested on the high mountain of Tangier; and from there he sent a pigeon to test the depth of water at the region. And when the pigeon soon returned with a lump of earth in its beak, Noah shouted happily: “Tin ja!”, and from this statement came the name of the city of ‘Tanja’ (in Arabic) or Tangier (in English).[21]

Majid makes allusion to the latter myth as well, first when he writes— perhaps ironically—that “Si Yussef reflected the power of a new Noah...”[22], and later when he speculates about the name of Tangier and notes that:

Noah landed on our shores… Tin ja! Tin ja! and the Romans and probably other nations calling it Tingis, and now, you know, Tanja, Tangier, Tanger, ta ta ta ta…[23]

These mythical references, however, do not mean that Majid is trying “to assert such myths of origin;”[24] on the contrary he seems to problematize and interrogate them, as his implicit ironic tone forcefully indicates. Instead of just reproducing the tales and myths that are associated with the name of Tangier, he obviously tries to put them to question and to subvert them discursively.

This subversive strategy becomes clearer when Si Yussef is made to speak about such magic or supernatural agents as the jinn, the affarit, Aicha Kandisha, and hajjouj and majjouj. These agents, he says, used to live somewhere there in Tangier, and he himself has been on the verge of being victimized by “Aicha Kandisha, the woman-goat who seduced more than a hundred fishermen at night.”[25] Paul Bowles himself was fond of this legendary woman, whom he conceived as a part of his exotic Oriental Tangier, or Morocco in general. But rather than using it as an exotic element in Si Yussef, Majid is apparently invoking all such supernatural beings and mythical names as a strategy that aims to shake and to unsettle some time-honoured local or Orientalist constructions.

“Magical realism”, says Brenda Cooper, “at its best opposes fundamentalism and purity; it is at odds with racism, ethnicity and the quest for tap roots, origins and homogeneity…”[26] Accordingly, one can say that Majid deploys some elements of this subversive narrative mode to contest or problematize all attempts to essentialize the reality of Tangier and its history by means of discourses that might be hegemonic, nationalistic or otherwise. So instead of creating a fixed, monolithic or mythological image of Tangier, he deliberately accentuates many features that display the instability, hybridity and heterogeneity of this “City-on-two-Seas.”[27] Such things as culture, identity, history and geography itself are all re-viewed from an interrogating postcolonial perspective that is quite at odds with the one from which Bowles has gazed at his ‘magic’ city. Thus Tangier is not seen as a simple geographical entity with a well-defined history and a homogeneous cultural identity; it is rather represented as “a place which is in continual process of being ‘written’,” a sort of “palimpsest... on which successive generations have inscribed and reinscribed history.”[28] Indeed, the writer’s reference to the diverse names of the city—i.e. Tingis, Tanja, Tanger and Tangier—is itself meant to suggest how its history has been created through ages by both natives and foreigners like the Romans, the French and the British. This history is shown to be a complex amalgam of myths, facts, legends, lies and personal views or memories like those of Si Yussef and Lamin.

But cannot the history voiced or narrated by Si Yussef be a mere “story after all. His story”?[29] Is it, in other words, a reliable history or a worthless fiction, or perhaps a mere “fantastic fabrication by a deluded young man”[30] —i.e. Lamin (or Anouar Majid himself, for that matter)? What about the other ‘histories’ and personal views expressed by other characters all along the narrative? Are they all part of that ongoing process of writing and re-creating Tangier? Then what about that picture of Tangier and the controversy it has aroused “about whether [it] was indeed a photograph of Tangier, or whether it was just another satanic deception”?[31] Does the author want to suggest that no photograph is able to capture authentically the reality of a city like Tangier, owing to the deceptive and discursive nature of such a representational medium, as well as the fluidity and complexity of that reality? Why is Lamin/Majid so doubtful about the very existence of his hometown that he states towards the end of his narrative that “Tangier was left behind; it was no more?”[32] Is geography itself “a lie” or fiction as history seems to be?

All the preceding questions point to the subversive and deconstructive strategy of Majid’s representation of Tangier in Si Yussef. At the end, the reader is even left with the impression that this author has deliberately aimed, not to ‘picture’ the Interzone as Bowles has attempted to do, but rather to show the difficulty—nay, the impossibility—of doing so. As Chourouq Nasri has noted, in this regard, rather than evoking a “lost homeland” in a nostalgic or realistic way, Majid has attempted to “articulate its absence.” Thus, in her opinion, the Tangier that emerges from the pages of Si Yussef, 28(I)is partly an idea, a myth, as well as a dominant presence….What we have is an imaginary Tangier. Si Yussef’s remembrances participate not in an act of nostalgia but of forgetting. His is a subterfuge in which Tangier is not so much recovered but invented, made and unmade. Instead of writing up his native space, Majid is striving to show the impossibility of his task.[33]

If Majid’s evocation of Tangier’s history and geography is thus clearly at variance with Bowles’ realistic and Orientalist treatment, the two authors also differ in picturing the socio-cultural reality of this Interzone. For while Bowles cannot help looking at this reality with the Orientalist’s lens of binary opposition between East and West, as already mentioned, Majid tries rather to blur and to question such essentialist and ethnocentric distinction. The marriage of the Moslem Si Yussef with the Spanish catholic Lucia Maria Mendez provides in effect a vivid illustration of how cultures are interconnected and how identities are hybridized in such a ‘contact zone’ as Tangier. This marital relationship is, on the one hand, remarkably successful and harmonious; indeed, Si Yussef is even proud to confirm that Lucia has “given him the relief of one thousand years.”[34] Yet, on the other hand, this harmony is strongly problematized by Si Yussef’s realization that this marriage has engendered the loss of his Arabic and Moslem identity as he finds himself continually speaking Spanish and failing to perform his prayers:

And this is why I regret not having performed my prayers… My good life didn’t help me for my encounter with my creator… A man like me needs more than a good woman; he needs a Muslim. I mostly speak Spanish at home; the pleasure to speak my soul was denied me all these years. As you know, the soul of man lives in his language.[35]

This attitude of deep ambivalence and uncertainty on the part of Si Yussef reveals clearly how the purity of one’s cultural identity cannot be maintained in Tangier’s interstitial space. Si Yussef seems doomed to live in this condition of in-betweeness, and he cannot help being what he now is. For, even if he tends to regret his failure to stick to his Islamic faith and Arabic language, he never really regrets his deep love for Lucia and his marriage with her. Hence Lamin’s comment that Si Yussef is “divided between his absolute loyalty to the woman he loved and his pride for the culture that made him.”[36] —a division that makes of him a good image of the hybrid postcolonial subject.

“One way of re-thinking the Empire in a post-colonial frame,” Catherine Hall notes, “might be to focus on the inter-connections between the histories of ‘metropolis’ and ‘peripheries’ and refuse the simple binary of coloniser and colonised.”[37] This is what Majid has actually managed to do, in his own way, through his portrayal of a number of cross-cultural relations and situations in different parts of his novel. As his treatment of Si Yussef’s relation with Lucia well illustrates, Majid’s view is that the cultures and histories of the Interzone residents are so intricately intertwined that one cannot think of them simply in terms of the ideological polarity between East and West or colonised and coloniser. For the forces of hybridity that reign in such an open and cosmopolitan space destabilize all borderlines between self and Other, rendering thus one’s cultural identity uncertain and highly ambivalent.

It can be then asserted, in conclusion, that Bowles and Majid differ quite remarkably in their manners of picturing the Interzone in their respective novels. While the picture presented by the former writer is obviously informed by the hegemonic and Orientalist ideology of his Western culture, Majid’s picture is, on the contrary, tinged with a certain subversive and counter-hegemonic spirit that generally characterizes postcolonial literature. Thus if Bowles has depicted Tangier as a site of Otherness and colonial appropriation, Majid has rather tried to portray it as a site of deep ambivalence and hybrid identities. And while Bowles has relied totally on the realistic mode of representation and the monologic voice of his omniscient narrator, Majid has deployed both realistic and fantastic modes, in addition to a variety of narrators with diverse dialogic perspectives. Since most of these narrators are Tanjawi natives—e.g. Si Yussef, Lamin, Mamun, Tribaq and Ashab—one can say that Majid has subversively confirmed that the native (or subaltern) can really speak. This means that in contrast to Bowles’ strategy of marginalizing the natives and suppressing their voices throughout his narrative, Majid has managed to show through Si Yussef that these natives have not only substantial presence as full-fledged protagonists, they also have compelling voices, stories and histories by dint of which they are able to contest or subvert the Western hegemonic (mis)representations of both Tangier and Tanjawi people.

Mohamed Elkouche

Faculty of Oujda

Source:

“Picturing the Interzone: Tangier in P. Bowles' Let It Come Down and A. Majid's Si Yussef,” in Performing/Picturing Tangier, Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan, 2007.

Notes:

[1] Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky (London: HarperCollins Publisher, 1949-1977), 13.
[2] Edmondo De Amicis has noted in his travelogue that Tangier was “considered by its sister cities as having been ‘prostituted to the Christians’,” Morocco: Its People And Places, trans. C. Rollin-Tilton (London: Darf Publishers Limited, 1985 (first pub. 1882], 24.
[3] This phrase is used by William Burroughs in his essay ‘International Zone,’ see ‘Tangier and the Beats: “Sanctuary of Noninterference’, by Francis Poole, Tanger: Espace imaginaire (Casablanca, Imprimerie Annajah Aljadida, 1992) 25.
[4] P. Bowles, Let It Come Down, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1952, 2000) 21.
[5] Bowles, Let It Come Down, 284.
[6] In an interview, Bowles once stated nostalgically: “When Morocco was still colonial it was a place where any European could have anything. You could do anything, because you ran it. Americans used to go up to the police and take hold of them and slap them in the face. The police couldn’t do anything about it,” interview with Michael Rogers, ‘Conversation in Morocco: The Rolling Stone Interview’, Conversation with Paul Bowles, ed. Gena Dagel Caponi [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993) 41.
[7] P. Bowles, Let It Come Down, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1952, 2000) VII. (NB. The ‘Introduction’ was added in 1980).
[8] Edward Said, Orientalism, (Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, 1978) 72-73.
[9] Bowles himself recognized that the Tangier of Let It Come Down is an imaginative ‘creation’. About his first decision to write this novel, he said: “I began to write that on a freighter as I went past Tangier one night. I was on my way from Antwerp to Colombo, in Ceylon, and we went past Tangier and I felt very nostalgic –I could see faint lights in the fog and I knew that was Tangier. I wanted very much to stop in and see it, but not being able to, since the boat went right on past, I created my own Tangier”, ‘Interview with Paul Bowles”, D. Halpern, Conversations with Paul Bowles, 88.
[10] See Henry James, ‘The Art of Fiction,’ The American Tradition in Literature, ed Sculley Bradley (New York: Random House, 1981) 1153.
[11] Quoted in ‘Introduction: Representing the place of culture’, J. Duncan and D. Ley, eds. Place/Culture/Representation, (London: Routledge, 1993) 5-7.
[12] See J. Duncan and D. Ley, ‘Introduction: Representing the place of culture’, Place/Culture/Representation, 2-3.
[13] See Roland Barthes, Mythologies (New York : The Noonday Press, 1972) 125. He says this while commenting on the picture on a Paris-Match cover of a Negro soldier saluting the French flag. (NB. I use here the term ‘mythology’ in the sense in which Barthes has used it in this book).
[14] Bowles, Let It Come Down, 126-7.
[15] Bowles, Let It Come Down, 262-3.
[16] See Linda Hucheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism : History, Theory, Fiction, (London: Routledge, 1988) XIII.
[17] See Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Writing and Transculturation (London : Routledge, 1992) 6.
[18] Anouar Majid, Si Yussef, (London : Quartet Books, 1992) 117.
[19] Majid, Si Yussef, 3.
[20] Majid, Si Yussef, 7.
[21] See Ahmad Tawfiq, ‘On the Meaning of the Name of Tangier’ (in Arabic) Tanger 1800-1956: Contribution à l’histoire récente du Maroc (Rabat: Les Editions Arabo-Africaines, 1991) 34.
[22] Majid, Si Yussef, 13.
[23] Majid, Si Yussef, 116.
[24] Bill Ashcroft et al. Eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, (London, New York: Routledge, 1995) 183.
[25] Majid, Si Yussef,, 41-2.
[26] Brenda Cooper, Magical Realism in West African Fiction: Seeing With a Third Eye, (London, New York: Routledge, 1998) 22.
[27] Majid, Si Yussef, 39.
[28] Bill Ashcroft et al. Eds. The Post-Colonial Studies: Reader, 392.
[29] Majid, Si Yussef, 121.
[30] Majid, Si Yussef, 72.
[31] Majid, Si Yussef, 94.
[32] Majid, Si Yussef, 144.
[33] Chourouq Nasri, ‘Tangier : A Place Reinvented, Made and Unmade by Anouar Majid in Si Yussef,’ Representing Minorities: Studies in Literature and Criticism, eds. Larbi Touaf and Soumia Boutkhil (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006) 36.
[34] Majid, Si Yussef, 16.
[35] Majid, Si Yussef, 142.
[36] Majid, Si Yussef, 112.
[37] Catherine Hall, ‘Histories, Empires and the Post-Colonial Moment’, The Post-Colonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons, ed. Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti, (London and New York: Routledge, 1996) 70

Paul Bowles’ Tangier and Fez

2008-03-28T08:54:00.004-06:00

The Agony of Transition from Colonial to Post-colonial Times

As an American literary expatriate who lived in Tangier since 1947 up till his death in 1999, Paul Bowles can well be regarded as a good witness of the drastic changes which this city in particular and Morocco in general underwent during this important span of history. What mostly entitles him to be such a witness is the fact that he was avowedly very much interested in this country and its Arabo-Islamic culture, which he took as the main subject of several of his travel or journalistic accounts and literary discursive representations. Indeed, Lawrence D. Stewart has even gone to the extent of describing this writer as “the chronicler of Moroccan life.”[1] Yet, the question which imposes itself in this respect is: to what extent can a literary artist be actually a ‘chronicler’ or objective witness, given that all his writings are no more than subjective linguistic products and discursive cultural constructs? In other words, can Bowles reflect an authentic picture about Moroccan history and reality through his textual representations without being generally ideological and without reproducing the hegemonic tropes and structures of Orientalist discourses?

This paper is a modest attempt to tackle such problematic questions through a brief study of the language and strategies which Bowles deployed in his portrayal and representation of his most admired and fascinating Moroccan cities: Tangier and Fez. Since he wrote on these two historic cities both before and after Morocco’s Independence, the focus here is laid on how he perceived and ‘chronicled’ the great transformations which they underwent as they passed from colonial to post-colonial times. In addition to shedding some light on the general pictures Bowles reflected about both cities during these antithetical periods, this discussion aims at unveiling this author’s ideological position by illustrating how he was looking at Morocco’s process of decolonization with an Orientalist spirit and agonized ‘Western eyes’.

If we start with Bowles’ image of Tangier, the first passage worth quoting here is the one which records his first impressions as he first set foot on this city during his first visit in 1931. In his autobiography he writes:

If I said that Tangier struck we as a dream city, I should mean it in the strict sense. Its topography was rich in prototypal dream scenes: covered streets like corridors with doors opening into rooms on each side, hidden terraces high above the sea, streets consisting only of steps, dark impasses, small squares built on sloping terrain so that they looked like ballet sets designed in false perspective, with alleys leading off in several directions; as well as the classical dream equipment of tunnels, ramparts, ruins, dungeons, and cliffs. The climate was both violent and languorous.[2]

Thus, from the beginning one can se clearly how Tangier is romanticized as it is not only generally associated with dreams but also labelled literally “a dream city”. Here, the exotic topographical scenery and architectural features of Tangier combine with its mysterious and ‘languorous’ climate to impress upon its American visitor a lasting sense of wonder and magic fascination. One can even positively assert that Bowles fell in love with Tangier ever since that first visit, and that is what motivated him to choose it as the place of his fifty-two years’ self-exile. He himself repeatedly declared this love, as when he once said: “I loved it more than any place I’d ever seen in my life. In fact, I’d never liked any place strongly, I realized, until I came here. I’d always felt negatively about places before.”[3]

But along with the distinctive topographical and climactic characteristics of Tangier, there are certainly other reasons behind Bowles’ infatuation with this city. When he first came there, he explained,

Tangier had not yet entered the dirty era of automotive traffic [...]. The city was self-sufficient and clean [...]. There was no crime; no one yet thought of not respecting the European, whose presence was considered an asset to the community.[4]

This was in 1931; but even when he later came to reside there in 1947, Tangier was still a very calm and pleasant place, where many Westerner visitors flooded in:

In the beginning everybody came here because you could live for nothing and get whatever you wanted. Right after the war Tangier was extremely cheap; you never asked the price of anything, you just took what you saw. It was amazing [...]. And also it was a very beautiful place to live.[5]

In the last two quotations, it can be seen that among the things that enticed Bowles to make of Tangier his permanent “home”[6] are its cleanliness and cheap prices or expenses. But in addition to this, the presence of a lot of Westerners seems also to be an important factor in this regard, especially as many of them were artists and literary expatriates like Bowles himself. These visitors and expatriates found in Tangier a space of almost limitless freedom and self-indulgence—“a sanctuary of non-interference,” as William Burroughs termed it.[7] For this city was internationalized, and its international status “prostituted” it, as it were, and made of it a site of great decadence where drugs, homosexuality, and intrigue of all sorts were rampant.[8] Bowles himself used to indulge deeply in such a peculiar moral atmosphere, and he even devoted one of his novels to the commemoration of that “bygone era” of the International Zone. Indeed, Let It Come Down is a thrilling narrative that provides a vivid picture of the decadent life that characterized the Tangier of that period—a colonial period which Bowles would have liked never to come to an end. His nostalgic attitude towards that era can be glimpsed in the very ‘Introduction’ which he added retrospectively to this novel in 1980. “The novel”, he said,

was first published early in 1952, at the very moment of the riots which presaged the end of the International Zone of Morocco. Thus, even at the time of publication the book already treated of a bygone era, for Tangier was never the same after the 30th March 1952. The city celebrated in these pages has long ago ceased to exist, and the events recounted in them would now be inconceivable.[9]

The word ‘celebrate’ in this passage reveals clearly Bowles’ ideological standpoint and his nostalgic desire for that ‘bygone’ international/colonial order. His statement “that the events recounted in [his novel] would be now inconceivable” also points out to the huge socio-political metamorphosis which Tangier underwent as Morocco regained its independence in 1956.

When asked in 1979 about the difference between the post-colonial Tangier and that of the International Zone, Bowles replied:

They have very little in common really. The Tangier of those days was very small, a quarter of its size today. It was run by Europeans, the embassies, so it was spic [sic] and span, beautiful trees, flowers everywhere. Now it seems just a huge slum to me, the whole city. Makes me sad.[10]

In a 1981 interview, Bowles confirmed that Tangier is “a very dull city now.” He went on to explain that:

By the sixties, it had calmed down considerably, although it was still a good deal livelier than it is these days [...]. In general, Moroccans have a slightly higher standard of living than they did, by European criteria. That is, they have television, cars, and a certain amount of plumbing in their houses...[11]

As if the ‘dullness’ and the monotony of Tangier’s post-colonial times impinged negatively on the vision and the talent of Bowles, this writer was not inspired to write or speak enthusiastically about this city in the era of its independence. It is true that he used it as the setting of some of the last stories he collected in Midnight Mass, and he even wrote a diary entitled Days: Tangier Journal 1987-1989, but these texts provide no important information about the post-colonial realities of this city. This is what R. Kevin Lacey has also remarked as he commented on Bowles’ diary by confirming that “from the pages of Paul Bowles’s Tangier journal, there emerges only the briefest of descriptions vis-à-vis Tangier, Morocco, and Moroccans (Tangerines or otherwise).”[12]

Nevertheless, Bowles remained faithful to Tangier till the last, as though he was deriving his capacity for his faith from his excessive love of that ‘bygone’ colonial period of the International Zone. As a matter of fact, he even tended to overlook the frustrating changes which his beloved city witnessed, as it can be inferred from his assertion in 1975 that: “It’s changed less than the rest of the world, and continues to seem less a part of this particular era than most cities. It’s a pocket outside the mainstream.”[13] Furthermore, at the end of his autobiography he even attempts to express his gratitude for the splendour and the exotic uniqueness of this Moroccan city:

In defense of the city I can say that so far it has been touched by fewer of the negative aspects of contemporary civilization than most cities of its size. More important than that, I relish the idea than in the night, all around me in my sleep, sorcery is burrowing its invisible tunnels in every direction, from thousands of senders to thousands of unsuspecting recipients. Spells are being cast, poison is running its course; souls are being dispossessed of parasitic pseudo-consciousness that lurk in the unguarded recesses of the mind.

There is drumming out there most nights. It never awakens me; I hear the drums and incorporate them into my dream, like the nightly cries of the muezzins. Even if in the dream I am in New York; the first Allah akbar! Effaces the backdrop and carries whatever comes next to North Africa, and the dream goes on.[14]

This passage is quite reminiscent of the one with which we have opened this discussion. Here again, Bowles speaks of dreams and depicts Tangier as a magic city that is exerting an overpowering fascinating effect upon him. As Edward Said would say, this portrayal amounts to ‘orientalizing’ this Oriental city, and the germs or echoes of this Orientalist discursive practice are inherent in the very way Bowles permeates this city with a sense of mystery and Otherness. Not only is Tangier located outside the precincts of civilization, it is also described as a place that throbs with magic and strangeness. Bowles speaks of ‘sorcery’, ‘spells’; ‘poison’ and ‘drumming’, and each of these elements is an emblematic feature that sets this city apart and enhances its exotic specificity and cultural difference. Significantly enough, Bowles’ description here loudly echoes the statement of his compatriot Mark Twain, who declared on first visiting Morocco (more than sixty years before Bowles’ first visit): “Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time... we wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign... and lo! In Tangier we have found it.”[15] Given that this view reflects not so much Twain’s personal cross-cultural experience as a collective one that must have been undergone by several Western artists—as the pronoun ‘we’ suggests—one can see clearly how Bowles is affiliated to the Orientalist tradition and how his discourses generally reproduce the hegemonic ideology of Orientalism.

Yet it would be simplistic to stigmatize Bowles as an Orientalist unproblematically and without due reservation. For, as the above extract from his autobiography well illustrates, his identity is highly problematized and hybridized by his prolonged residence in Tangier. In that passage, Bowles’ strong desire for Otherness as well as the seductive assimilation of his ‘civilized’ self in the alien and quasi-‘primeval’ environment of Morocco are quite evident. The magnetic charm which Tangier is secretly emitting from some hidden sources is so enchanting and overpowering that it denies him even the chance of indulging in a transient ‘dream’ visit to his hometown, New York. In this context, the untranslated Arabic religious call ‘Allah akbar’, which decisively transfers his dreams from New York back to Tangier, is itself a potent hybridizing emblem that symbolizes the hovering of his identity amid the interstices of two distinct cultures. This implies, in the last analysis, that Tangier embodies here what Homi Bhabha calls a ‘third space’, where Bowles is transformed into a cultural hybrid: a person who is neither American nor Moroccan—or rather simultaneously American and Moroccan, both an outsider and an insider.

If we now proceed to the study of Bowles’ representation of Fez, we will not fail to find nearly the same ideological stand on the part of this author and the same discursive structures and implications as the previously-mentioned ones. Indeed, even if his relation to Fez is apparently much less profound and his references to it are less frequent than in the case of Tangier, such differences remain negligible when it comes to the final assessment of his overall discursive practice.

Underscoring the difference of his personal attitude to each of these two historic Moroccan cities, Bowles once stated: “Well, Tangier was an amusing place to live in, and Fez was fascinating, not to live in, but to explore, I spent much time wandering in the Medina.”[16] Though Bowles is referring here specifically to colonial times, as his use of the past tense suggests, his outlook to both cities did not alter up till his death. For he continued to reside in Tangier during the long period of his exile, and Fez was, for him, a mere object of admiration and exploration. This is what he himself confirmed in one of his last interviews as he stated: “I wouldn’t want to live in Fez. [...] I think it is an unhealthy city, unfortunately. I love to look at it. I love to wander. I love to spend months there, but I always get out in the end and come back here.”[17] In his autobiography, he also stressed that his “taste for Fez was a touristic one.”[18]

If Bowles fell in love with Tangier while he first came there in 1931, as already pointed out, his discovery of Fez and his immediate fascination with it also took place during that first visit to Morocco. His first impressions about this ‘medieval city’ are recorded in his autobiography as follows:

We arrived in Fez at sunset and took a carriage through the Mellah to Fez-Djedid. Tangier had by no means prepared me for the experience of Fez, where everything was ten times stranger and bigger and brighter. I felt that at last I had left the world behind, and the resulting excitement was well-nigh unbearable.[19]

If Bowles felt that Fez “was ten times stranger” than Tangier and that he “had left the world behind,” this implies that he reached a site that can be regarded as the locus of absolute mystery and radical Otherness. And since his “curiosity about alien cultures was avid and obsessive,” as he himself confessed,[20] it follows that his interest in Fez cannot but be immense and very exceptional. Yet such interest is by no means innocent or ideologically neutral; it is rather a clear manifestation of what is known as colonial/Orientalist desire.[21]

That Bowles’ romantic attitude towards Fez and his desire for it are actually expressive of his Orientalist/hegemonic tendencies is a matter that can well be proved from his novelistic discourse in The Spider’s House. For this very long narrative, which is set entirely in Fez, treats of a very decisive moment in the history of this city and reflects thus a lot of the author’s ideological viewpoints and ethnocentric stereotypes. The germs of this Orientalist ideology can be discerned from the very beginning as one starts to read Bowles’ ‘Preface’ (which he also added retrospectively in 1981):

I wanted to write a novel using as backdrop the traditional daily life of Fez, because it was a medieval city functioning in the twentieth century. If I had started it only a year sooner, it would have been an entirely different book’. I intended to describe Fez, as it existed at the moment of writing about it, but even as I started to write, events that could not be ignored had begun to occur there. I soon say that I was going to have to write, not about the traditional pattern of life in Fez, but about its dissolution.[22]

Bowles is referring here to the year 1955 when he wrote The Spider’s House, just one year before Morocco’s independence. By that time, the Moroccan Nationalist movement was already under way, and Bowles’ greatest fear was that the Nationalists might be the cause of the transformation of this city, as well as the whole country, from its ‘medieval’ aspect to a modern and ‘civilized’ phase. He came to realize, with a great disappointment, that

if Morocco was still a largely medieval land, it was because the French themselves, and not the Moroccans wanted it that way.

The Nationalists were not interested in ridding Morocco of all traces of European civilization and restoring it to its pre-colonial state, on the contrary, their aim was to make it even more “European” than the French had made it.[23]

Bowles’ use of the word ‘medieval’ in both quotations above is highly indicative of how he symbolically associates Fez, as well as Morocco in general with the Middle Ages—and possibly with primitiveness itself. But apart from the ideological and ethnocentric implications of such association, this author is confessedly aggrieved and disappointed at the impending loss of this dark era and the advent of the tide of modernity and decolonisation. What is more, Bowles is openly against the Nationalists’ efforts to bring about any change, whereas he tends to be grateful to the French colonizers for managing to preserve the medieval ‘virginity’ of his enchanting city. This attitude is expressed more explicitly in the narrative proper through the chief protagonist, John Stenham, who can be largely considered as Bowles’ mouthpiece and representative.[24] For instance, we are told that this protagonist believes that the young generation in Fez

were ashamed of its alleys and tunnels and mud and straw, they complained of the damp, the dirt and the disease [...]. Fortunately the French, having declared the entire city a monument historique, had made their aims temporarily unattainable...

“One thing you must give the French credit for,” he was fond of saying, “is that they’ve at least managed to preserve Fez intact.[25]

Such thoughts certainly amount to a frank glorification of the colonizers’ policy and a tacit condemnation of the native’s aspiration for progress and renovation. They are clearly symptomatic of Stenham’s/Bowles’ desire or wish that these colonizers would never be defeated so that he could continue forever to gratify his romantic self and to enthuse permanently over his idea/ideal of an ‘intact’ medieval Fez. But is it not a reactionary and wishful thinking to believe thus is the possibility of freezing time and stopping the inexorable progress of history?

If Stenham—or Bowles, for that matter—has apparently never cared to think of such a question, now he could perceive how the post-colonial changes are really imminent and quite inevitable:

The great medieval city [...] would cease for all time being what it was. A few bombs would transform its delicate hand-molded walls into piles of white dust; it would no longer be the enchanted labyrinth sheltered from time, where as he wandered mindlessly, what his eyes saw told him that he had at last found the way back. When this city fell, the past would be finished. The thousand-year gap would be bridged in a split second, as the first bomb thundered; from that instant until the later date when the transformed metropolis lay shining with its boulevards and garages, everything would have happened mechanically.[26]

Here the vision or prospect of a post-colonial Fez is extremely agonizing for Stenham because, in his view, the collapse of this ancient city is tantamount to the death of the glorious past and the end of real, natural and non-mechanical existence. In the absence of those “hand-molded walls”, labyrinthine alleys and simple, medieval-like residents, he could no longer find his “way back” to that ideal(ized) past, for his Western “eyes” would be too dazzled by the “shining” artificial metropolitan innovations to discern any inscription of ‘medieval’ life or detect any sign of Otherness and primitiveness!

In this connection, it is worth stressing that even if Bowles has concentrated throughout his novel on the representation of the (pre-) colonial Fez, the post-colonial era of this city is also substantially present through his prescient awareness of what the nascent Nationalist uprising could lead to. Indeed, much of the post-colonial policy and its revolutionary impact is prefigured and inscribed in that portrayal of the impending doom that is about to wreak havoc with the “sheltered” ancient city. As the previous quotation—and most notably its last sentence—hints at, the fall of this city will apocalyptically engender a dramatic extinction of all that is natural and a subsequent growth of a ‘bastard’ civilization where everything will be just ‘mechanical’ and artificial. Indeed, according to Bowles, all that the Nationalists are keen to achieve is ‘Europeanizing’ Morocco; and by doing so, they are just corrupting it and transforming it into “a kind of bastard culture.”[27] Hence, his vehement disgust and dissatisfaction with all the changes that have been introduced to Morocco ever since its independence.

In a significant allusion to his ideological standpoint, Bowles writes in the Introduction of his travel book, Their Heads Are Green:

he visitor to a place whose charm is a result of its backwardness is inclined to hope it will remain that way, regardless of how those who live in it may feel. The seeker of the picturesque sees the spread of improved techniques as an unalloyed abomination.[28]

Though Bowles is generalizing here on the attitude of any passionate tourist or traveler, this view is primarily applicable to his own case. For he always conceived of himself as an outsider whose interest in “far away places and backward people”[29] engendered his life-long fascination with the alien Moroccan culture and prompted him to explore it with excessive passion and enthusiasm. Yet, the gradual disintegration of the traditional way of life, which started at the eve of this country’s independence alarmed him immensely and filled him with bitter distaste for all the post-colonial innovations and modernizing policies. His only wish was that Morocco could never evolve or even win its independence so that his ideal image of it as a ‘backward’ and ‘medieval’ country would never be spoilt.

In a very nostalgic remembrance of his ‘glorious’ days in colonial Tangier, Bowles once stated:

When Morocco was still colonial it was a place where any European could have anything. You could do anything, because you ran it. Americans used to go up to the police and take hold of them and slap them in the face. The police couldn’t do anything about it.[30]

In a similar blunt confession, he stated in one of his last interviews that he “regretted to see that Morocco could no longer be medieval, that it would share certain things with Europe.”[31] Thus one cannot but conclude that Bowles was greatly agonized by witnessing the transition of his beloved cities, Tangier and Fez, from colonial to post-colonial eras. The very fact that he sacrificed two of the four novels he ever wrote to the commemoration of the (pre) colonial past of these two cities—namely, Tangier in Let It Come Down and Fez in The Spider’s House—is itself a testimony to his nostalgic glorification of this past and his Orientalist/reactionary objection to any decolonizing measure that could affect or jeopardize its ‘medieval sanctity’.

Mohamed Elkouche
Faculty of Oujda

Source:

“Paul Bowles' Tangier and Fez: The Agony of Transition from Colonial to Post-colonial Times,” in Urban Generations: Post-Colonial Cities, Mohamed V University, Rabat, 2005.

Notes:

[1] Lawrence D. Stewart, Paul Bowles: The Illumination of North Africa [Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974] 2.
[2] Paul Bowles, Without Stopping: An Autobiography [New York: The Ecco Press, 1985] 128.
[3] Bowles, Interview with Oliver Evans, ‘An Interview with Paul Bowles’, Conversations with Paul Bowles, ed. Gena Dagel Caponi [Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993] 41.
[4] Bowles, Without Stopping: An Autobiography, 129.
[5] Bowles, Interview with Stephen Davis, ‘Interview: Paul Bowles’, Conversations With Paul Bowles, 108.
[6] Bowles once declared that Tangier is “my home”. See his interview with Jeffrey Bailey, ‘The Art of Fiction LXVII: Paul Bowles’, Conversations with Paul Bowles. In another interview, he confessed that: “When I travel I get homesick for Tangier […]. Can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather live.” See his interview with Stephen Davis, 107.
[7] See Francis Poole’s epigraph in his article ‘Tangier and the Beats: “Sanctuary of Noninterference”’, Tanger: Espace Imaginaire [Casablanca: Imprimerie Annajah, 1992], 25.
[8] In her book, The Dream At the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier [New York: Harper Collins, 1991], Michelle Green notes: “To expatriates who landed there after World War II, the International Zone of Tangier was an enigmatic, exotic and deliciously depraved version of Eden […] it offered a free money market and a moral climate in which only murder and rape were forbidden. Fleeing an angst-ridden Western culture, European émigrés found a haven where homosexuality was accepted, drugs were readily available and eccentricity was a social asset”, XI.
[9] Bowles, Introduction, Let It Come Down, [Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1952-2000], VII.
[10] Bowles, Interview with Stephen Davis, 108.
[11] Bowles, Interview with Jeffrey Bailey, 128-29.
[12] R. Kevin Lacey, ‘Days, Tangier Journal:, 1987-1989; the text, the context, and the closing circle in Paul Bowles’s impressions of Tangier’, Langues et Littératures, Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines –Rabat. Volume X, 1992, 110.
[13] Bowles, Interview with Daniel Halpern, ‘Interview with Paul Bowles’ Conversations with Paul Bowles, 86. [14] Bowles, Without Stopping, 366.
[15] Mark Twain, quoted by Priscilla H. Roberts, ‘Nineteenth Century Tangier: Its American Visitors: Who They Were, Why They Came, What They Wrote’, Tanger 1800-1956: Contribution à l’histoire récente du Maroc [Rabat: Les Editions Arabo-Africaines, 1991] 138.
[16] Bowles, Interview with Karim Bejjit, ‘An American in Morocco’ [Rabat: Les Editions Arabo-Africaines, 1991] 138.Tangier: Interview with Paul Bowles’, MCSJ, Moroccan Cultural Studies Journal, V.1, N° 1. Spring 1999, 116
[17] Bowles, Interview with Abdelhak Elghandour, ‘Atavism and Civilization: An Interview with Paul Bowles’, A.R.I.E.L. A Review of International English Literature, V. 25, N° 2, April 1994.
[18] Bowles, Without Stopping, 284.
[19] Bowles, Without Stopping, 130.
[20] Bowles, Without Stopping, 297.
[21] See Robert Young’s Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race [London: Routledge, 1995] and Ali Behdad’s Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution [Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994]
[22] Bowles, ‘Preface’ to The Spider’s House, [Santa Rosa: Black Sparrow Press, 1996]} (page not mentioned). [23] Bowles, ‘Preface’ to The Spider’s House.
[24] Like Bowles, Stenham is an American writer who has spent many years in Morocco and is greatly fascinated by the city of Fez.
[25] Bowles, The Spider’s House [London: Abacus, Sphere Books, 1991], 168.
[26] Bowles, The Spider’s House, 167.
[27] Bowles, Interview with K. Bejjit, 117.
[28] Bowles, Their Heads Are Green, [London: Sphere Books Ltd, 1990], 7.
[29] Bowles, Interview with Oliver Evans, 45.
[30] Bowles, Interview with Michael Rogers, ‘Conversation in Morocco: The Rolling Stone Interview’, Conversation with Paul Bowles, 80.
[31]Bowles, Interview with K. Bejjit, 117.

Paul Bowles’ Tangier

2008-03-28T07:48:00.007-06:00

Earthly Paradise or Symbolic Panopticon?

In one of his interviews, Bowles defined broadly the nature of his exceptional relationship with Tangier by stating: “I loved it more than any place I’d ever seen in my life. In fact, I’d never liked any place strongly, I realized, until I came here. I’d always felt negatively about places before.” [1] Even though Bowles was referring here to his first impressions during his first visit to this Moroccan city in 1931, his judgement about it remained generally the same up till his death in 1999. Indeed, as his fifty-two years’ expatriation in Tangier well indicates, his love and admiration for it never abated, despite what he considered regrettably as the negative change it underwent after its independence and the end of its glamorous international era.

Nevertheless, Bowles’ special attachment to Tangier should not be seen as a fact to be taken for granted; it must be rather probed and put in its right cultural and ideological perspective as a matter that may have something to do with the Western desire for the Orient or what is commonly known as the phenomenon of Orientalism. In other words, this American’s relation with this city and his discourses on it need to be deconstructed and problematized in such a way as to seek for possible answers to a number of complicated pertinent questions such as the following: What are the real motives behind Bowles’ prolonged and self-imposed exile in Tangier? Why did he abandon his family, society and culture just to opt for a totally alien civilization? Why did he not choose Europe after the fashion of the vast majority of the other American expatriates? Is there any possible relation between Bowles’ expatriation and his vocation as a creative writer? To what extent did this expatriation impinge upon his art as well as his ideological outlook? Was Tangier for him an earthly paradise or rather a symbolic hegemonic Panopticon from which he was surveying and representing his cultural Others in a classic Orientalist manner?

To answer these and other related questions, it might be very needful and helpful to have recourse to some (auto)biographical data and to some revelatory statements expressed by Bowles himself. So through a brief interpretative examination of a number of relevant passages from his autobiography, Without Stopping, along with some pronouncements from his different interviews, an attempt is made here to dispel the enigma which has often surrounded the notable and unique experience of this American writer in Tangier. In addition to revealing how this experience of self-exile was mainly necessitated by Bowles’—perhaps unconscious—desire to establish himself as a writer of some renown and distinction, this paper equally aims at shedding some light on the cross-cultural and ideological implications of his expatriation.

One of the most significant statements that is worth citing first, in this context, is the following autobiographic one which alludes to the moment of Bowles’ ‘discovery’ of Tangier. “Like any Romantic,” he writes, “I had always been vaguely certain that sometimes during my life I should come into a magic place which in disclosing its secrets would give me wisdom and ecstasy—perhaps even death.” [2] This quotation is illuminating in more than one important respect. In the first place, it serves to prove how Bowles’ approach to North Africa, in general, and to Tangier, in particular, was basically romantic. In fact, even if this author is just likening himself here to “any Romantic”, he personally is quite worthy of being regarded as a powerful adherent to the trend of romanticism. His very belief in the existence of “a magic place,” like the one mentioned here, as well as his feeling that he finally found it are symptomatic of his romantic faith and sensibility. Secondly, ‘the magic place’ referred to here is obviously Tangier, which Bowles actually regarded as “the magic city.” [3] His use of the word ‘magic’ shows, on the one hand, how Tangier was a source of great fascination and inspiration for him. On the other hand, this word hints at how this city was perceived from the outset as a site of radical Otherness and Oriental mystery. Last but not least, his assertion that “in disclosing its secrets” to him, this place “would give [him] wisdom and ecstasy —perhaps even death” does not only highlight his romantic spirit and his faith in the inspiring influence of outward surroundings; it also prophetically anticipates his actual death in Tangier. This prophesy is further suggestive of how his lasting attachment to this city and his prolonged residence in it seem to be not so much a result of a conscious choice as that of a romantically sub-conscious desire (or even predetermination).

But before coming to Tangier, Bowles had to seek for a congenial place of exile in Europe; and, of course, Paris was his favourite destination, given that several American expatriates and visitors were already streaming there at that time. “Everyone wanted to come to Europe in those days”, Bowles notes in his autobiography, “It was the intellectual and artistic center. Paris specifically seemed to be the center, not just Europe. After all, it was the end of the twenties and just about everyone was in Paris.” [4] Thus, whether consciously or not, Bowles was following in the footsteps of such reputable American literary artists as T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, who all seemed to find in post-war Paris a kind of sweet alternative home. It was perhaps his unconscious desire for identification with these expatriates that made him even visualize Paris as holy site of pilgrimage that ought to be visited at all costs:

Paris was the centre of all existence; I could feel its glow when I faced eastward as a Moslem feels the light from Mecca, and I knew that some day, with luck, I should go there and stand on the sacred spots. [5]

But if Paris was for Bowles no more than a sacred place, like Mecca for the Moslems, he was yet to find in Tangier a real ‘earthly paradise’. For when Gertrude Stein recommended him to visit this Moroccan city, he fell in love with it at first sight. Moreover, he decided immediately that it should be his permanent expatriation home, and he even grew later so infatuated with it that he suffered from homesickness as soon as he went somewhere else. “When I travel”, he once confessed, “I get homesick for Tangier. Why, I really don’t know [...]. Can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather live, so why not stay where you are if you have a pleasant life?” [6] So it can be understood from this statement that Bowles was quite satisfied with his “pleasant life” in Tangier and that his affection for this city is beyond any doubt or question. All the same, one is tempted to wonder: what really enticed him to this city so that he came to regard it as his earthly paradise and his only favourite place all over the world?

Though the motivations for Bowles’ strong infatuation with Tangier might be diverse and multiple, the above question can be convincingly answered through a brief discussion under these three main headlines: 1) Tangier as a (formerly) ‘free’ colonial space, 2) Tangier as Bowles’ greatest source of inspiration, and 3) Tangier as a site of exoticism and Otherness.

1- Tangier as a ‘Free’ Colonial Space:

When Bowles first came to this Moroccan city in 1931, it was still functioning as an ‘International Zone’, and it continued to do so virtually up till Morocco’s independence in 1956. This means that this American writer arrived there at a time of notable peculiarity on both political and socio-cultural planes, because Tangier was transformed into a queer open space where the Western visitors or settlers could enjoy complete freedom and practise all forms of aberrant and eccentric behaviour. Apart from the widespread use of different drugs (including kif and maajoun, of course), Tangier was reputed for sexual promiscuity and intrigues of all sorts. Bowles himself indulged whole-heartedly in such a decadent moral atmosphere, and he even devoted one of his novels—Let It Come Down, namely—to the celebration and commemoration of this “bygone era” of the International Zone. [7] 11In her book, Paul Bowles and The Literary Renegades in Tangier, Michelle Green writes:

To expatriates who landed there after World War II, the International Zone of Tangier was an enigmatic, exotic and deliciously depraved version of Eden. A sun-beached, sybaritic outpost set against the verdant hills of North Africa, it offered a free money market and a moral climate in which only murder and rape were forbidden. Fleeing an angst-ridden Western culture, European émigrés found a haven where homosexuality was accepted, drugs were readily available and eccentricity was a social asset. [8]

In this exotic ‘haven’ of pleasures and depravities, Bowles was probably the most conspicuous figure among all those ‘literary renegades’, who came there in quest for more freedom and self-indulgence. Stephen Davis has described him as the patron saint of the Beats —Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burrough—who flocked to Tangier” in the 1950s. [9] He used to enjoy not only the wonders of Moroccan hashish and maajoun but also the perverse passions of homosexual intimacies with some natives. [10] On the other hand, he appreciated very much the cheap prices of the International Zone and its general ambience of limitless freedom. “Right after the war”, he once said, “Tangier was extremely cheap; you never asked the price of anything, you just took what you saw. It was amazing.” [11] And in a very nostalgic remembrance of that peculiar era, he states elsewhere:

When Morocco was still colonial it was a place where any European could have anything. You could do anything because you ran it. Americans used to go up to the police and take hold of them and slap them in the face. The police couldn’t do anything about it... [12]

The note of nostalgic yearning for that ‘free’ and ‘agreeable’ colonial past is almost unmistakable in the last two statements. Such nostalgia on the part of Bowles is highly expressive of how immensely he admired the strange and delinquent life of the International Zone. As a matter of fact, even after the collapse of that ‘international’ status quo in the aftermath of Morocco’s independence, that admiration did not only survive but it also seemed to nourish Bowles with the desire to go on living in Tangier, despite his avowed dislike of all the post-colonial changes that this city underwent.

2- Tangier as Bowles’ Greatest Source of Inspiration:

As pointed out earlier, when Bowles spoke of “a magic place” that could disclose “its secrets” to him and provide him with both “wisdom and ecstasy,” he was implicitly referring to the congenial space and socio-cultural milieu that could best inspire him to invest his literary talents and to establish himself as a notable artist. This place was, of course, none other than Tangier —the city with which his name has become associated and where most of his literary (as well as musical) works were produced. But what could have happened to those artistic talents if he never had the chance to visit and reside in Tangier?

While it is not judiciously possible to answer such a hypothetical question convincingly, one can still assume that without Tangier Bowles might not become a writer at all, or at best he might be a very different and less famous literary artist. After all, this is what he himself confirmed while confessing to one of his interviewers: “Probably if I hadn’t had some contact with what you call ‘exotic’ places, it couldn’t have occurred to me to write at all.” [13] This statement reveals clearly how the exotic element was quite prerequisite for Bowles’ literary inspiration; and since Tangier proved to be the most ideal of all the exotic places he might have known or visited, this magic city thus became virtually the sole fountain-head whence his imagination could derive its creative power. This is probably the reason why Bowles had decided from the outset that “Tangier must be the place I wanted to be more than anywhere else.” [14]

In this connection, it is worth noting that even if Bowles idealized Paris to such an extent that the described it as a ‘holy’ place where he yearned to make his pilgrimage, this French city was soon relegated after his discovery of Tangier. As a matter of fact, Paris could not provide him with an inspiring atmosphere for his creative activities as Tangier did. This is because Paris was not exotic or ‘other’ enough for him, since it was part of the same Western civilization to which he belonged, just like any other European or American city. For, as Bowles himself once wondered, “what’s the difference between American culture and French or German culture? Isn’t it all the same thing? [...] I mean that Western Europe and America are really the same.” [15] 20If Western Europe and America, which are presumed to be the ‘centre’ and the locus of civilization, are thus identical, in Bowles vision, it follows that he had to seek for exoticism and for inspiration somewhere else, in a place where the light of ‘civilization’ had not yet started to shine. The golden opportunity soon presented itself incidentally: from Paris, Gertrude Stein recommended that he should visit Tangier; and from his first visit there, Bowles knew that he finally found the “magic” place which would give him not only “wisdom and ecstasy” but literary inspiration as well.

3- Tangier as a site of exoticism and Otherness:

Bowles’ references to Tangier as a ‘magic place’ and a ‘magic city’ are highly suggestive of how he regarded this threshold of the Orient as mysterious, fantastic and ‘other’. These labels—which are classic in the West’s repertoire of representing the Orient, as Edward Said would confirm—are underscored by Bowles himself in the following passage from his autobiography. Expressing his feelings about his exile experience in Tangier, he says in a significantly romantic fashion:

In defense of the city I can say that so far it has been touched by fewer of the negative aspects of contemporary civilization than most cities of its size. More important than that, I relish the idea that in the night, all around me in my sleep, sorcery is burrowing its invisible tunnels in every direction, from thousands of senders to thousands of unsuspecting recipients. Spells are being cast, poison is running its course; souls are being dispossessed of parasitic pseudo-consciousness that lurk in the unguarded recesses of the mind.

There is drumming out there most nights. It never awakens me; I hear the drums and incorporate them into my dream, like the nightly cries of the muezzins. Even if in the dream I am in New York; the first Allah akbar! Effaces the backdrop and carries whatever comes next to North Africa, and the dream goes on. [16]

Even though Bowles is speaking here ‘in defense’ of Tangier, his description is not devoid of Orientalist clichés and stereotypes. For example, Tangier is located quite outside the precincts of contemporary civilization and is represented as a sort of unique enclave that is still in a state of raw naturalness or ‘noble savagery’. Bowles also speaks of ‘sorcery’, ‘spells’, ‘poison’ and ‘drumming’, and each of these elements is an emblematic feature that serves to permeate this city with a sense of mystery and magic and to enhance thus its cultural Otherness.
The last sentences in the above quotation illustrate vividly how Bowles readily adapted himself to that magic atmosphere of Tangier. As a matter of fact, he even “relishes” the charm of getting immersed in such a fantastic universe, which seems to deny him even a dream visit to his native town, New York. This suggests that his identity as an American is fading away in this ‘third space’ where he is transformed into a cultural hybrid who is neither American nor Moroccan—or, perhaps, both American and Moroccan at the same time.

Yet, in spite of Bowles’ romantic attraction and attachment to the space and the social life of Tangier, he was always considering himself an outsider and “an American” [17], since he found it too retrograde to get consciously integrated into a barbarous culture and a helplessly primitive community. “[T]here is no such thing as going backwards, really,” Bowles once said,

You can’t identify with a culture that is several centuries behind what you know. If you were able to become part of a truly archaic culture, it would imply something wrong with the psychic organism, I’m afraid. If a Westerner encounters an archaic culture with the idea of learning from it, I think he can succeed. He wants to absorb the alien for his own benefit. But to lose oneself in it is not a normal desire. A romantic desire, yes, but actually to try and do it is disastrous. [18]

This assertion attests clearly to how Bowles’ approach to Moroccan culture was purely pragmatic and opportunistic. In his ethnocentric opinion, such an ‘archaic culture’ is important just insofar as it gives him or any other interested Westerner the opportunity to ‘learn’ something or to gratify his romantic self. But apart from this, it is so retrograde and potentially pernicious that no reasonable Westerner can attempt to get integrated into it.

“Romantic Orientalism,” Eric Meyer has noted, “is predicated on the assertion of hegemony of West over East through the implicit privilege it assumes in placing the imperial observer in a position of metacritical superiority toward the colonial terrain that he surveys.” [19] This is exactly the position that Bowles adopted vis-à-vis Morocco and its culture and society: the position of a ‘romantic Orientalist’. This fact is spelled out by Bowles himself in the following statement which further proves how Tangier was for him a mere symbolic Panopticon from which he was representing Morocco, North Africa and the whole Moslem world in a classic Orientalist manner:

right away when I got here [in Morocco] I said to myself ‘Ah, this is the way people used to be, the way my own ancestors were thousands of years ago. The Natural Man. Basic Humanity. Let’s see how they are.’ It all seemed quite natural to me. They haven’t evolved the same way, so far, as we have and I wasn’t surprised to find that there were whole sections missing in their ‘psyche’... [20] (italics added)

Needless to say, Bowles’ reference to Moroccans as “Natural” and “Basic” humans, who have not yet evolved in the same way as Westerners, is quite racist and full of the ideological reverberations of the Darwinian evolutionary theory. But what is more significant and pertinent to our topic is his statement, “right away” after arriving in Tangier, “Let’s see how they are.” For this statement reveals quite unambiguously how Bowles put himself from the outset in the position of what Mary Louise Pratt calls “the ‘seeing man’ [...] whose imperial eyes passively look out and possess.” [21] Such “positional superiority,” [22] as Edward Said aptly labels it, implies that Bowles was functioning throughout his literary career as the observer or ‘representer’, whereas his cultural Others were mere passive objects of his observation and discursive representation.

Thus, given the strategic geographical location of Tangier, as the door or gateway of the West to North Africa and the Moslem world, it can be concluded that this city served Bowles rather as a symbolic Panopticon or look-out from which he was representing Morocco, North Africa and the Orient in general in a typically Orientalist fashion. Most of his short stories, novels and travel accounts testify to this important fact, but time will not allow us to give some illuminating illustrations.

Mohamed Elkouche

Faculty of Oujda

Source:

“Paul Bowle's Tangier: Earthly Paradise or Symbolic Panopticon?” in Writing Tangier, Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan, 2004.

Notes:

[1] Paul Bowles, interview with Oliver Evans, ‘An Interview with Paul Bowles’, Conversations with Paul Bowles, ed. Gena Dagel Caponi [Jackson: University Press of Mississipi, 1993], 41.
[2] Bowles, Without Stopping: An Autobiography [New York: The Ecco Press, 1985] 125.
[3] Bowles writes in his autobiography: “... I realized with a jolt that the magic city really existed. It was Tangier”, 274.
[4] Bowles, Without Stopping, 70.
[5] Bowles, Without Stopping, 70.
[6] Bowles, interview with Stephen Davis, ‘Interview: Paul Bowles’, Conversations with Paul Bowles, 107.
[7] In the ‘Introduction he added retrospectively to Let It Come Down (in 1980), Bowles notes that this novel “was first published early in 1952, at the very moment of the riots which presaged the end of the International Zone of Morocco. Thus even at the time of publication the book already treated a bygone era, for Tangier was never the same after the 30th of March 1952. The city celebrated in these pages has long ago ceased to exist, and the events recounted in them would now be inconceivable,” ‘Introduction’ of Let It Come Down [Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1952-2000] VII.
[8] Michelle Green, The Dream At the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier [New York: Harper Collins, 1991], XI.
[9] S. Davis, ‘Interview: Paul Bowles’.
[10] For instance, Michelle Green refers to Bowles homosexual relationship with his friend Ahmed Yacoubi by confirming that “Paul became enmeshed in such amours –the most painful of which was with a young painter who conceived was passions for wealthy European women,” The Dream At the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier,” XIV.
[11] Bowles, interview with Stephen Davis, ‘Interview: Paul Bowles’, Conversations with Paul Bowles, 108.
[12] Bowles, interview with Michael Rogers, Conversations in Morocco: The Rolling Stone Interview', Conversations with Paul Bowles, 80.
[13] Bowles, interview with Jeffrey Bailey, ‘The Art of Fiction LXVII: Paul Bowles’, Conversations with Paul Bowles, 123.
[14] Bowles, Without Stopping, 274.
[15] Bowles, Interview with Karen La Londe Alenier et al., ‘An Interview with Paul Bowles’, Conversations with Paul Bowles, 169.
[16] Bowles, Without Stopping, 366.
[17] Bowles was asked by Soledad Alameda in 1990 (after more than 40 years of his exile in Morocco) if he still felt to be an American, he answered with no hesitation: “ I am an American,” ‘ Paul Bowles: Touched by Magic,’ Conversations with Paul Bowles, 218.
[18] Bowles, interview with Michael Rogers, Conversations with Paul Bowles, 77.
[19] Eric Meyer, ‘ “I Know Thee Not, I Loathe Thy Race”: Romantic Orientalism in the Eye of the Other’, ELH The Johns Hopkins University Press, V.58 (1991) 557-699.
[20] Bowles, interview with Jeffrey Bailey, 130.
[21] Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes : Travel Writing and Transculturation [ London : Routledge, 1992] 7.
[22] Edward Said, Orientalism, [Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978] 7.

Eye for Eye?

2008-03-28T02:25:00.008-06:00

A Reading in the Travel accounts of P. Bowles and A. Akbib

(Editor's note: the article below is an abbreviated version of the original paper - the full length version is available for download, click here)

This paper aims at drawing a brief contrast between two travel books by two different writers: Their Heads Are Green by the American Paul Bowles and Tangier’s Eyes on America by the Moroccan Abdellatif Akbib. This juxtaposition is justified, in my opinion, by at least one important reason. Regardless of their respective close personal relations to Tangier, these two writers can, to a large extent, be regarded as representing two opposite trends in the field of cultural studies and discourse. For while Bowles is undeniably one of the most conspicuous American Orientalists, whose diverse literary texts place him squarely at the centre of what is known as hegemonic colonial discourse, Akbib is certainly one of the emerging post-colonial voices or figures that have just started to ‘write back’ to the metropolitan Centre. The difference between these trends can be well illustrated by the way each of the two writers ‘appropriates’, so to speak, the city of Tangier to articulate symbolic meanings that are inextricably associated with the cross-cultural relation between the Centre and its peripheries. In Bowles’ case, Tangier has for a long time been the object of his Orientalist gaze and the site of his representations of cultural Otherness. Not only has it served as the indispensable source of inspiration without which he could not become a creative writer, as he himself once confessed, it has also been itself deployed as a rich material for many of his discursive products like his famous novel Let It Come Down. In addition to this, Tangier has also served him, metaphorically speaking, as a private Panopticon or look-out from which he has systematically observed and represented Morocco as well as the rest of North Africa and the Moslem world. Conversely, while Tangier is for Akbib also an important source of literary inspiration, his travel book has unequivocally declared and advocated for this strategic city the active role of a subject rather than merely an object of representation. The book’s title itself, as it will be soon clarified, endows Tangier with eyesight and, by implication, with insight and agency by means of which it has started to resist and subvert the West’s hegemonic constructions.

But is Akbib simply confronting the traditional discourse of Orientalism by an opposite or oppositional discourse of Occidentalism? This is what the following reading will attempt to discuss and elucidate.

Unlike Bowles’ Their Heads Are Green, which is composed almost entirely of completely independent accounts, most of which are set distantly from each other in both space and time, Akbib’s Tangier’s Eyes on America lends itself readily to perusal and classification as both a unified travelogue and a collection of independent travel narratives. On the one hand, given the fact that it relates the events of a single and specific travel experience in the States during a period of no more than three months, and given the fact that its accounts are generally ordered in what seems a strict chronological sequence starting with the author’s departure from his homeland and developing to end with his return to it, these seemingly separate accounts are highly readable as interconnected chapters or episodes in a closely-knit travelogue. On the other hand, since each of the included accounts enjoys a great deal of autonomy and can be thus read quite independently and nearly without any reference to the other ones, the whole book is equally readable in the way a collection of autonomous short stories is read, as Mohamed Laâmiri has noted while stressing the aesthetic distinctiveness of this travelogue.

But if Akbib has succeeded in producing a travel book, one thing is certain: he himself is not a real traveler –at least in the sense in which P. Bowles and the classical travel writers have been. According to Bowles’ own definition, Akbib seems to be more a tourist than a traveler. In his famous novel The Sheltering Sky, Bowles writes the following about his protagonist Port Moresby, who is also a writer:

He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.

What Bowles wants to suggest here is that the traveler seems to be always homeless and constantly on the move through the different regions of the world. By comparison the tourist is always attached to his country and can never pass a very long time away from it. This is precisely the case of Akbib, who not only entitles his last account ‘Home Sweet Home’ but also goes on to confess that his three-month absence from home is too much for him and that: “I had never been away from home for so long! (…) And the countdown actually began the moment I left my home that early August morning.”

Nevertheless, my contention is that if Akbib is not a traveler, he certainly is not a tourist. What he actually is is a promising post-colonial intellectual, who has self-consciously taken advantage of his academic visit to America, to inaugurate (at a national level) a counter-hegemonic discourse whose main objective is the interrogation of the West’s cultural stereotypes against its ‘marginal’ Others. What the author of Tangier’s Eyes On America wants to do is, in other words, to “write back” to the centre so as to contest and even subvert its imperialist and ethnocentric ideology. In fact, the very title of the book bespeaks of this subversive intention as Tangier, which stands here for the whole Orient and the rest of the marginal and formerly colonized world, is endowed with agency by dint of which it is forcing the West –symbolized by America- to assume the role of the object of its observation and surveillance. If Tangier –and the world it stands for- has for so long been subjected to the systematic mis-representation of Western hegemony, now it is its turn to be both a viewer and a representer, just as it is her duty to show that it is quite capable of declaring its revenge if a more balanced and cosmopolitan dialogue is not substituted for the West’s denigrating discourse of power and Otherness.

As a matter of fact, the entire book is informed by this counter-hegemonic spirit, and most of its accounts can be read as a series of confrontations that combine to dramatize the author’s conviction that a more rational alternative discourse is much needed. The book seems to be generally structured in such a way as to reflect the author’s growing disillusionment and awareness that it is his duty and that of all post-colonial subjects/intellectuals to engage in an open criticism and challenge of Western ethnocentrism so that a real decolonization could be attained. In the following pages, I discuss very briefly how the author has waged his criticism and how he has attempted to proclaim implicitly the need for overcoming such ideological binaries as Occident/Orient or Centre/margins.

In ‘An Early Flight-of Imagination’, the author attempts from the very beginning to create the impression that he is about to cross the threshold of a universe that seems somehow fantastic and incomparably different from the one he is accustomed to. Though he has already visited the States a dozen of years earlier, he is quite sure that a great civilizational transformation has taken place there; his only curiosity now is to see the nature of this metamorphosis and to assess its inevitable great “impact on the American people in terms of attitudes and lifestyle.”

So it is important to notice here how the author is already positioning himself as an ‘observer’, who is very interested to discover and broaden his knowledge about America and its people. More important than this is the fact that he is going to look at America with critical eyes, rather than with any sense of amazement or exotic wonder. For this introductory account is really full of significant details which not only help to set the ironical tone of the whole book but also reveal that the author has already started his criticism of America and its civilization. In fact, his allusions to such diverse matters as: Nagasaki, Hiroshima, cowboys, and Depleted-Uranium are clearly meant to condemn, from an early stage, the violence –if not in reality the barbarism- inherent in this civilization. Such other references as: Hollywood, Dolly, and unnatural procreation point out, on the other hand, to the shallowness and artificiality that inform the life and culture of Uncle Sam’s dream-like world. So when the author ends this opening account with his tongue-in-cheek statement: “Patience. America was now only a flight away”, the reader must construe its implicit irony as a warning that America will not be spared the pungent criticism and the uncompromising gaze of its prospective visitor.

In his next account, the author describes his transatlantic flight and arrival at the New York airport metaphorically as a crossing of the cultural boundaries that separate the metropolitan West from its under-developed margins. ‘Marocain à New York’, with its displaced French title, is in effect a splendid evocation of the author’s sense of displacement and cultural alienation as soon as he sets foot on the first American airport. For his eye is quick to discover that he and all the other non-natives are ill-treated and discriminated against. While still queuing up to have his passport checked, he cannot help feeling immensely overwhelmed with unease and estrangement as a result of what could observe:

I looked about me and realized that though theoretically I was on American soil, practically I was not. This feeling was engendered by the architecture of the place: the sinuous queue was checked by a line of demarcation that no one had the right to cross without permission, and between this line and the immigration services (…) there was a no man’s land, symbolically significant although only about a couple of yards wide.

In this highly symbolic passage, the author depicts in microcosm the great unbridgeable gap –indeed, the absurd “no man’s land”- that seems to have been created intently to demarcate the borderline between the centre and its peripheries. As an Oriental subject, who has just begun to tread in the New World, the author seems to be faced from the outset with the invisible catchword inscribed on the thick walls of that magical borderline echoing again and again: “Eat is East, West is West” (as E. M. Forster has written in A Passage To India). Nonetheless, being intent on letting no such clichés pass unchallenged, he soon starts his series of defying confrontations. The first duel is with the very airport officer who has been fumbling with his passport in a haughty and snobbishly provoking manner. When the officer asks him: “What do you do in your country?” he replies not with a direct answer but with his own question:

“Do you speak Arabic?” I asked.
“No.” “French?”
“Only English.”
“Pity. It’s written there. In both Arabic and French.”

Here, instead of being put on the defensive, the author is tactfully turning the tables on his apparently racist interlocutor, who is significantly obliged to recognize his ignorance of all languages except his own. The author’s last expression of ‘pity’ is thus an eloquent subversive comment that is aptly directed to destabilize the complacent hegemonic stance of that American.

When finally released by that officer to have his “share [of] the American dream”, as he sarcastically puts it (17), much of what he finds is, as a matter of fact, something of a ghastly American nightmare. First comes the prehistoric gift –a rotten, inedible meal, offered to him exclusively as ‘a distinguished dinner’ by a shameless stewardess. Not only does he respond by promptly remonstrating with that Havishamian lady; the incident itself is strategically set against a background that is counter-discursively impregnated with the loud ironic echoes of the pompous, ethnocentric phrase: “This is America.” This idiomatic epithet is implicitly subverted in such a way as to mean: “This is only America,” and not a paradise of freedom, justice and equality; so if you meet with any act of racism, discrimination or violence, you have but to accept it as a matter of course, especially if you are a mere ‘trespasser’ from the peripheries. Immediately after this shocking incident, the author finds himself face to face with the nightmare incarnate, during that ‘midnight duel’, when his whole life is put at stake by the careless mistake of a hotel receptionist. As he trespasses innocently on the room of a ‘cow-boyish’ man, the latter mercilessly aims his weapon at him and cries out menacingly: ‘Hands up, son of a bitch. Move an inch, and I’ll blow up your brains” (28). The author has but to attempt some narrow escape, for no explanations or apologies could avail in a moral jungle where “the survival [is] for the quickest” (30), and where “weapons [are] sold like a gastronomic commodity” (31). The author’s implicit question here is: Does not barbarism, after all, lurk just beneath the polished surface of the ‘civilized’ West?

At any rate, if an armed duel is the last thing an academic visitor to the States can conceive of implicating himself in, now in both ‘A Dogtail Party’ and ‘Camels to the university’ the atmosphere is ripe for engaging in open –but fruitful- contests with his fellow intellectuals. In the former account, the author is disconcerted by the request of having to describe to the Americans present in that party what Moroccan people are like. Sensing that the question is not free of racial and ethnocentric implications, he cannot help thinking that the man who has asked it is a “professor of Natural History”, who “wanted to check my description with Darwin’s theory of the origin of species in case there was a new evolution.” (41) His temptation at first is to reply that man simply by saying: “You should go and see them yourself!” but he finally faces him with the more tactful answer: “look at me” (42).

This defiant reply is highly strategic indeed as its implicit ideological import is equivalent to asking: “Do you really believe that you are better or more human than me and the rest of your cultural Others?” In evoking Darwin’s evolutionary theory the author is in effect aiming at taking issue not only with that man’s stereotypical attitude but also with the Western textual archives that have nurtured the racial assumption that the Westerners occupy a higher (indeed the highest) stage in the scale of humankind’s evolution from lower species, and hence the apex of human civilization. He wants to show precisely that such concepts as progress, culture and civilization are quite relative issues and that human beings are not to be judged collectively in terms of their racial or geographical origins. That is why when the same questioner notes irrelevantly that people in Tunisia eat dogs in their birthdays, the author comments that even if such an allegation is supposed to be true, then it must be only “a matter of taste” (43). For what on earth makes dog-eaters in any marginal country less human or less civilized than their pig-and frog-eater counterparts in the metropolitan West?

In ‘Camels to the University’ the author likewise launches a vehement challenge at the same ethnocentric attitude he has observed in his audience while discussing a video presentation on Morocco. All of them seem to have expected to find in Morocco no more than an exotic field where the semi-primitive residents are engaged in eccentric practices like riding ‘camels to the university’. What seems striking is that even though that audience has been constituted of academics from different Western countries, they all seem to share the same denigrating view of whatever is culturally Other. This has prompted the author to realize that “the ‘camels to the university’ expression was not restricted to American students; it was a universal expression –reflected in, and confirmed by, the universal questions asked after the video show.” (46)

What is shocking for the author here is the way groundless cultural prejudices can be so unquestioningly elevated to the status of eternal and universal truths. Still more shocking is the amount of those people’s ignorance and misunderstanding of their Others’ culture and social reality in spite of their own academic background. One of the things he discovers, for instance, is that “[e]verything they knew about Islam was either exaggerated, distorted, or altogether wrong”. (46-7).

Yet the author does not lay the blame for such distortion and misrepresentation on the Westerners alone; indeed the subaltern intellectuals have the greatest share of responsibility for the Othering ideology that is hegemonically perpetrated against their nations:

Of course it is our duty to see to it that the other should receive the correct image of ourselves and ours. Are we doing this? I asked myself. And if we are, are we doing it the way it ought to be done? (47).

Such awareness of his role and responsibility later drives the author to engage in a series of polemical duels with those Westerners in an attempt to correct their biased attitudes and to prompt them to adopt a “cosmopolitan outlook”. The result seems to be promising, since he succeeds at least:

in challenging what they had hitherto considered universal truths. In the course of subsequent meetings, I could descry on their faces signs of internal debates deliberating the ethics of the stereotypes and prejudices they had so far held as sacred and definite. (48)

After these climactic assertions, in which there is a powerful message to all post-colonial intellectuals, the author’s narrative strategy alters noticeably from a dramatization of duels and polemical contests to the portrayal of some aspects of the American socio-political life and civilizational achievement. These descriptions attempt significantly to capture both positive and negative features. Thus without generalizing on the American character, he shows in such a piece as ‘A Poe-tic Invitation’ how an American can be as vulgarly snobbish and incredibly uncivil as ‘the quarter-muffin lady’, or else as admirably generous and decently ‘poe-tic’ as El. Hartman. In ‘The Speakers’ Corner’ he also shows that Americans can be so consciously committed as to defend such a noble cause as anti-abortion, yet what about their reaction to more urgent and frequent crimes like those related to drug, sex and racism? And what about the imperialistic crimes perpetrated internationally against America’s cultural Others like the notorious case –mentioned in ‘Home Sweet Home- of the Egyptian plane, whose catastrophic crash is patently attributable to political reasons?

In ‘The Road to Missoula’, the author holds in high esteem the practicality of the Americans and the efficiency of their ‘team-work’. In ‘Dreamland’, however, he launches a sweeping attack on the racism, injustice and inequality that still bulk large on the face of the presumed civilized American life. Neither the Red Indians nor the black Afro-Americans have yet been treated fairly according to the ideal advocations of “the declaration of Independence, which solemnly declares that all men are created equal!” (72) The author himself cannot conceal his great frustration and disappointment at finding that he is likewise not fully entitled to share, even for a while, the American Dream given that he is a mere intruder from the West’s margins. But his shock does not seem to be unexpected because he knows beforehand that his otherness may not let him fare quite freely and enjoyably in Uncle Sam’s dream world. Yet in punning on the word ‘dream’, the underlying suggestion is that the ‘American Dream’ is nothing more than a big lie and a fantastic mirage which no scrutinizing eyes –especially Tangier’s eyes- can fail to detect in that actual dream-world.

From the foregoing discussion then, it becomes obvious that A. Akbib has attempted to kill two birds with one stone, as the saying goes. On the one hand, he has deliberately aimed at levelling a deep criticism of the American society and civilization. This is clear from the way he systematically pokes fun at the American Dream by revealing both implicitly and explicitly how the American’s idealism is profoundly violated by the spread of violence and the reign of injustice and inequality among all the citizens of the United States. More than this, through his depiction of such people as the ‘quarter-muffin lady’, the professor with the swelling “bags under his light green eyes”, and the woman who is so helplessly illiterate that she asks: “whereabout is Morocco in the United States?” (37), the author wants to warn that an American as well can be ‘othered’ and subjected to cultural stereotyping. On the other hand, from this latter warning he strategically intends to show to the Westerners that their former victims are quite capable of striking back and resisting or subverting their hegemonic ideology. But instead of lapsing to such policy of tit for tit, Akbib seems to say, let us rather engage in a more fruitful and alternative discourse –an edifying dialogue whose key resides in the adoption of an enlightened cosmopolitan worldview. This is what the author himself has tried to underscore towards the end of his book when he succinctly states in the ‘Afterword’ that:

it is a misconception to suppose that only the West is capable of nourishing stereotypes vis à vis the East, we are capable of that, too. But as it is our duty to stem the tide of such negative attitudes, we can’t afford to deal with the other by adopting what we want him to get rid of. (85)

This suggests, in the last analysis, that Tangier’s Eyes on America is a warning and an invitation at the same time. Its author seems to spell out his message to the Centre in the following words: The borderline between such constructed binaries as Self/Other and Centre/Margins is not difficult to cross or subvert; so if it must be ‘eye for eye’, we are quite capable of it. Yet, is it not better for all of us to dispense altogether with all discourses of Orientalism and Occidentalism so that we could create and establish a more rational and edifying inter-cultural dialogue?

Mohamed Elkouche
Faculty of Oujda

Source:

“Eye For Eye? A Reading in the Travel Accounts of P. Bowles and A. Akbib,” in Margins of Theory and Theories of Margins, Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan, 2003.

Brief Biography: Rajae Khaloufi

2008-03-19T03:50:00.005-06:00

Rajae Khaloufi, is a Primary cycle professor of Arabic and French.

She is a graduate of the American Language Centre in Tangier (1997); the centre de formation des instituteurs et Institutrices in Tangier (1998); and Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan, Morocco (English literature, with distinction, 2006). She has completed a thesis (a play translation and analysis, supervised by Dr. Khalid Amine) titled, “The kitchen Oracle” by Mohammed Timoud.

Her Tangier roots run deep: born and raised in the city, her parents and grandparents are also Tanjawi and her father's family is from Marshan and Alqasba neighborhoods.

Her current works include “Coming from The South” by Youssef Rayhani, a play translation concerning the theme of illegal immigration.

“Shakespeare Lane” (by Zoubeir Ben Bouchta, edited by Dr. George F. Roberson), an Arabic to English play translation, is her first book; it was published by The International Centre for Performance Studies, Tangier (2008).

Rajae (above, left) with her students in Ksar Seghir
(a small town just east of Tangier)

Rajae Khaloufi est professeur bilingue du cycle primaire, d’origine Tangeroise.

Sortie de l’American Language Centre de Tanger (1997); du centre de formation des Instituteurs et Institutrices de Tanger (1998); et de Université Abdelmalek Essaadi, Tetouan, (littérature Anglaise, avec mention)-)2006). Elle a achevé une thèse (analyse et traduction d’une pièce théâtrale, supervisée par Dr. Khalid Amine, titrée « The Kitchen Oracle » (كاهنة المطبخ) par Mohamed Timoud.

Ses œuvres en cours comprennent « Coming from the South »آت من الجنوب) ) par Youssef Rayhani, traduction d’une pièce théâtrale concernant le thème de l’immigration clandestine.

« Shakespeare Lane » (زنقة شكسبير) (par Zoubeir Ben Bouchta, édité par by Dr. George F. Roberson), traduction de l’arabe à l’anglais d’une pièce théâtrale, c’est son premier livre, publié par The International Centre for Performance Studies, Tanger (2008).

سيرة ذاتية مختصرة

رجاء الخلوفي، أستاذة التعليم الابتدائي المزدوجة (عربية- فرنسية)، من أصل طنجاوي.

تخرجت من المركز اللغوي الأمريكي (1997)؛ مركز تكوين المعلمين والمعلمات بطنجة (1998)؛ وجامعة عبد المالك السعدي، بتطوان (الأدب الإنجليزي، بميزة مستحسن، 2006). أنهت إنجاز أطروحة تخرج (تحليل وترجمة مسرحية) تحت إشراف د. خالد أمين، معنونة ب: “The Kitchen Oracle” (كاهنة المطبخ) بقلم محمد تيمد.

أعمالها الحالية تشمل:"Coming from the South” (آت من الجنوب)، بقلم د. يوسف الريحاني ،(ترجمة مسرحية). تعالج المسرحية قضية الهجرة السرية.

“Shakespeare Lane” (زنقة شكسبير)، بقلم الزبير بنبوشتى، (ترجمة مسرحية)، تنقيح د. جورج روبرسن. إنه أول كتاب لها، وهو من نشر المركز الدولي لدراسات الفرجة، طنجة (2008).

Shakespeare and Tangier

2008-03-15T15:11:00.002-06:00

Albarrani: Shakespeare?! He’s only a soldier… whose name was given to this lane where we live (motioning to the street.)

Marshana: A soldier?! What soldier in this world is named Shakespeare?

Albarrani: …I thought he was a soldier. Why else would foreigners name this street after him? Who is your Shakespeare, if not a noble soldier?

Marshana: …the most renowned theatre poet in England. (a pause) Roads aren’t only named for soldiers.

Albarrani: If he wasn’t a soldier, then he was somehow working like a soldier. Something in his work must have resembled guns… this is a famous Tangier street, without such power the English would never have named it for him.

Marshana: Words were Shakespeare’s guns, but his words resurrect rather than kill. That is why his power lives on…

Albarrani: But roads are named to honor the dead…

Marshana: No, this one’ll never die.

(Shakespeare Lane, 2008: p29)

The Red Fire

2008-03-15T14:10:00.003-06:00

Available: Summer 2008

A new play translation from the International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS)

By Zoubeir Ben Bouchta

Translated from Arabic by Mustapha Hilal Soussi

Co-edited by Pamela Balfanz and George F. Roberson

To order books, contact:

Mustapha Hilal Sousi
ICPS Archivist
email: mhsousi (at) yahoo (dot) com

This page is still under construction, please check back later for additional information.

Qasbah and medina walls

2008-03-12T05:52:00.005-06:00

Tangier's Qasbah and medina walls are in crisis. Originally dating from pre Roman times, the walls have been built and rebuilt many times, but are now in dire need of professional structural remediation.

The following photos show, even to the casual observer, the degradation and looming crisis.

These photos are taken from just outside the walls at place de la Qasbah. The port is visible at the left.

The silhouetted people at the left provide perspective on the precarious tilt of the wall.

A detail image shows deep and widening cracks at the base of the wall.

The steep hillside appears to be slowly slumping into the sea far below --

acting to pull these and other cracks wider and wider.

Zanqat Shakespeare: list of performances

2008-03-11T14:24:00.004-06:00

Play premiere,
Tangier, February 2007

Tanger: Salle Dawliz, 9 Février 2007, Avant Première
Rabat: Théâtre National Mohamed V, 22 Février 2007, Première
Casablanca: Théâtre Mohamed VI, Avril 2007 Festival Théâtre et Cultures Méditerranée
Tetouan: Salle Maison de la Culture, 23 Avril 2007, Pour les étudiant
Tétouan: Salle Maison de la Culture, 24 Avril 2007
Tanger: Salle Beckett, 7 Juin 2007, Spectacle de la réouverture de la salle S. Beckett IF du Nord
Fes: Théâtre Al Hourrya, Juin 2007, Festival théâtral
Tanger: Salle Dawliz, 27 Juin 2007, Spectacle d’ouverture du Festival de Tanger-Tetouan
Casablanca: Théâtre Ben Msik, 17 Juillet 2007, Tournage pour la pièce pour le profit de la 1ère chaine marocaine
Meknes: Théâtre de l’IFançais, 23 Juillet 2007, Festival National de théâtre Marocain
Chefchaouen: Théâtre de la Kasbah, 1 Août 2007, Spectacle d’ouverture du Festival de Chefchaouen
Tétouan: Salle Maison de la Culture, 25 Octobre 2007, I F du Nord
Tunis: Théâtre Med Bouzyane, 5 Novembre 2007, Journées théâtrales de Carthage13 ème édition
Tunis: Théâtre Med Bouzyane, 6 Novembre 2007, Journées théâtrales de Carthage13 ème édition
Rabat: Théâtre Med V, 11 Décembre 2007, Festival des deux Rives
Tanger: Salle Severo Ochoa, 14 Décembre 2007, Festival des deux Rives

Editor's Preface

2008-03-11T08:33:00.003-06:00

The present work, Shakespeare Lane, is an English language version of Zoubeir Ben Bouchta’s play Zanqat Shakespeare. It is the result of a diligent five stage creative / collaborative process. Firstly, working in Arabic, Ben Bouchta wrote, published and performed the play. Then working from the original script, Rajae Khaloufi completed an English translation in the autumn of 2007. Dr. Khalid Amine then did a side-by-side review of the two texts for precision and clarity of meaning. Then I put the text into contemporary U.S. American-English parlance to ensure that it was accessible and to retain its original lively character. Finally, the four of us met together to review details and to discuss the evolving product as it neared completion. Throughout the process, innumerable phone calls, emails, and conversations further strengthened the web of creative collaboration.[1]

Just as the play springs forth from the crossroads city of Tangier, so too does our collaborative team. A bit of my own geoautobiography[2] (in spatial rather than chronological terms) underscores the centrality and multidimensional significance of the city itself to the project. I was first exposed to the play when I was in the audience for a live performance presented by the Performing and Picturing Tangier International Conference[3] in February 2007. It was the second of a sort of double-bill exploring the city; first was a screening of German director Peter Goedel’s Tangier: Legend of City. The pairing made a wonderful study in contrasts and perspectives. Whereas the first looks from the outside in ―that is, made by foreigners and primarily featuring expatriates’ experiences of the city, the second looks from the inside in and inside out ―that is, Tanjawi’s looking deeply at themselves and also out at the world. Since I had given a paper at the conference calling for more attention to be drawn (especially in English) to the voices of city-insiders,[4] the play and the present work are theory put into practice.

Furthermore, I first met Rajae at the above mentioned conference. We quickly realized mutual interests and began a transatlantic exchange of ideas and work on another play translation by email. Since I was already familiar with the significance of the play and with the skills of the translator, I jumped at the chance to serve as editor. Consequently, I was formally invited into the project by Dr. Khalid Amine, my friend and chief collaborator during my one year tenure in Tangier as the Senior Fulbright Scholar to Morocco (2007-2008). Given the play’s post-colonial and autoethnographic[5] qualities, it fit well with my research agenda. Where English language stories about the city have often come from short-term outside perspectives, this translation begins to provide some counter balance as Ben Bouchta looks from an insider’s perspective probing deeply into the lives, histories, concerns, and challenges of contemporary Tanjawi society. Using Bard-like comedy and social commentary set in a magical garden, Shakespeare Lane persistently calls norms into question as it informs, surprises, and challenges the audience again and again. One point stands clear, the famous crossroads city is at a societal crossroads: what will the citizenry choose for their future?

▪ ▪ ▪

The editing process posed some unique challenges. To maintain and reflect the richness and polyphony of the city, some non-English words have been retained in the text. These words are translated and explained in footnotes at their first appearance. Accordingly, the footnotes reflect the collaboration: some come from the original text while others were added during the translating and editing process. There are also instances where the original grammar and word choice were irregular, i.e. "Let me merge from my own eyelids" (p17) suggesting multiple meanings and interpretations; these too have been purposely retained.

I am indebted to the Moroccan American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (MACECE) in Rabat for funding my Fulbright research grant, to the International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS) for funding the publication of this book, and to our collaborative team for their trust in me and their dedication to the project.

―George F. Roberson, PhD
Editor

[1] Additional information about the play project, along with future updates are available at http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2008/02/shakespeare-lane.html
[2 ]More about this concept at http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2006/12/dissertation-abstract.html [3] Information at http://icpsresearch.blogspot.com/2007/12/welcome.html
[4] Read the article at http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/01/tangier-visualizing-city.html
[5] Read more about this concept at http://interactive-worlds.blogspot.com/2007/05/project-introduction.html

Translator's Preface

2008-03-11T08:21:00.003-06:00

The open geographic nature of Tangier, in addition to the city’s historical marvels, make the city an attractive place to visit and a rich cultural and poetic spring that quenches any inspirational thirst. It is not a wonder, therefore, that artists from all over the world have chosen the city as a retreat for enhancing their creative talents. Artists of different fields and trends such as Eugene Delacroix, Henri Matisse and Paul Bowles flourished in this wonderful city. Others like Alexandre Dumas, Pierre Loti and Edmondo de Amicis wrote striking literary texts about the city they had visited but never forgotten. A number of Moroccan writers as well deem the city as their source of inspiration like Tahar Ben Jelloun, Mohamed El-Mrabet and Mohamed Timoud. Having been for decades a nest for artists of varying fields, Tangier constantly generates prominent artists like the father of Moroccan oil painting Mohamed Ben Ali Rebati, the prominent writer Mohamed Choukri and more recently the young promising playwright Zoubeir Ben Bouchta.

Such artists create various valuable works that spread gradually all over the Arab world. Ben Bouchta, for instance, wrote a number of plays like Lalla J’mila and Ennar Elhamra that have been recently translated into English. Shakespeare Lane, however, had never been translated. The play was a real success on stage, and the fact that the first show was performed in Tangier is in itself an outstanding merit. I was drawn to Shakespeare Lane since it broadly highlights the intricate realities of Moroccan society ―from the city’s historical background right up to the main features of modern Tangier― yet it has universal relevance addressing world-wide issues such as social and political corruption and terrorism threatening peace and security the world over.

The richness of the play not only concerns the formalist aspects such as events and characters, but it mainly involves the historical and social themes reaching deep into consciousness in a subtle and indirect manner. Thus, the very nature of the work, as a literary text as well as a performance, provided great motivation for me to tackle the translation of the play. Furthermore, having read and watched thoroughly the play a number of times and having realized the genuine value of the work, I have deemed it as a moral obligation to translate such impressive work and to transmit it, thus, to a larger range of recipients all over the world. From another perspective, I have deemed the translation of this play as a modest contribution to the great work Dr. Khalid Amine presents through his different activities in the field of performance studies, and especially through the remarkable Annual Tangier International Conferences. I also aim to give my moral support to our ambitious eminent playwright Ben Bouchta, sparking thus the recent cultural resurgence of our charming city – Tangier. Hence, Shakespeare Lane interests me as a translator, as a Tanjawi, and a lover and student of this fascinating city.

Translating Shakespeare Lane was a thorny task but a most agreeable journey. The difficulties I faced translating the play are mainly associated with the special intricacy of Moroccan dialectical Arabic, as well as with the very nature of the work as a genuine artistic depiction of Moroccan and Tanjawi society throughout many different eras. The translation of the play is the core of this work. It shall be preceded by two additional prefaces: by the editor, Dr. Roberson and by the playwright, Mr. Ben Bouchta. These statements serve to further explain our collaborative efforts and to contextualize and summarize the historical, cultural and social background of the play.

―Rajae Khaloufi
Translator

Author's Preface

2008-03-11T07:35:00.005-06:00

Shakespeare Lane is only a fragment of the history of a city: some overlapping lives climbing the walls of memory like winterberry, some characters living to narrate their lives, and others to live their elapsed epochs again in the future.

Shakespeare Lane is also the third part of a trilogy all encompassed under the title uti:l Tanja.[1] I dreamed of realizing the trilogy after I finished the first part titled ya: mu:ja Ranni:.[2] My desire grew even greater after the second part, Lalla J’mila, was finished. A tie exists among the three parts: it is not a story, nor a character, nor a flourishing event; rather, it is simply the history of a city and of its people and visitors; a collective memory living and breathing with the characters playfully telling the story.

Shakespeare Lane is, simply put, a hopeless and difficult love story. Lovers meet and share the space of a garden of an English-styled house where one can breathe love without contact or carnality. Conflicts and hereditary rancor transform the tangled emotions into a hopeless love. Some words well out from particular sites in Tangier. They make of the past the geography of the present: a text that carves the characters’ stories out of the soil of portrayal and the chemistry of flashback.

Does Marshana[3] reciprocate love with Albarrani?[4] Hesitancy is the ongoing response to this question. Her state of affairs is constantly asking, "do I love him or not? That is the question." Yet the presence of Albarrani – who works for her as a gardener – is as life’s essential flower. Most important of all is her struggle to control this attraction. She doesn’t want people to know about these emotions, not even Albarrani himself. Since she is married, and the mother of a child suffering from a chronic illness, she rebukes and blames herself for this love.

Submitting to the will of her departed father Si Istanbuli, Marshana married Elmehdi;[5] but, it was a marriage of convenience and although she gave up the relationship with Albarrani she never managed to forget him. It is hopeless love due to her torn emotions, it is made worse by the historical enmity between the grandfathers and the parents of Marshana and Albarrani. Within this background, replete with the ebb and flow of emotions, the storms of the rancor are deviously blown stronger by Lady R’himu (the nurse) against the secret lovers (Marshana and Albarrani). R’himu plays a scheme: she provokes Marshana against Albarrani, then Elmehdi (Marshana’s husband) against them by feigning slander. Eventually an illusive love letter provokes a scandal.

Shakespeare Lane is not only a two or threefold love story, it is also characters springing from the ashes of memory to shine on stage bearing the elegance of the past in the raiment of the present. Bu Mwaret,[6] the Fqih,[7] is appointed by law to settle the estate of Lady Scott. Cabesota,[8] with a country guitar, clings to the hippie utopianism he had absorbed in the Petit Socco[9] when throngs of hippies went to Tangier in the sixties and seventies. Elmehdi was the son of a risqué dancer who worked for Barbara Hutton at her garden soirées in the Qasbah neighborhood. He pretends political strife and confinement while juggling titles and positions to defraud and steal from individuals and city-society. He is a disciplined clown who masters playing with procedures and laws and despite his clownish dancing manages to keep his legal equilibrium. He is also a professional fraud who knows well how to benefit from democracy.

Yet how relevant is Shakespeare to Shakespeare Lane? First, it is the name of a street in the Marshan neighborhood; during Tangier’s international era it held an eminent and magical supremacy for the English people. Second, Shakespeare universally symbolizes the essential themes of the tragedies Hamlet, Othello and Romeo and Juliet. These themes take their human dimension, in a century other than the sixteenth and seventeenth, with the characters and stories of this Tangier street that boasts the name of Shakespeare.

Hence, conflicts of power and hopeless love, along with slander, jealousy, envy, hatred, vengeance, fortune of Shakespeare Lane reflect a contemporary reading of Tanjawi society springing from a pen never touched by Shakespeare’s fingertips.

―Zoubeir Ben Bouchta
Playwright

(Translated from Arabic by Rajae Khaloufi)

[1] Hotel Tangier.
[2] O Wave Sing.
[3] Derived from the name of a neighborhood, "the Marshan", where Zanqat Shakespeare is located; "shan" and "mershan" are also used by Moroccan’s to refer to people of high social standing.
[4] Meaning "the stranger", a Moroccan word; it is an ironic name since he turns out to be the rightful owner of the villa despite his blue-collar social standing.
[5] The name is ironic; it simultaneously refers to supposed virtue while also reflecting limitation and shortcoming.
[6] A name ironically related to the division of inheritance.
[7] The legist: someone versed in legal matters.
[8] A name that combines the Spanish word "cabeza" meaning "head" and "sota" from a popular card game; the character is like a Shakespearean jester.
[9] su:q adda:khil.

Shakespeare Lane

2008-02-18T02:13:00.046-07:00

A new play translation: Arabic to English

Published by International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS)
Tangier, Morocco

By Zoubeir Ben Bouchta
Translated by Rajae Khaloufi
Edited by George F. Roberson
With the invaluable support of Khalid Amine

I have two memories: my personal memory and that of Shakespeare, who is partially me. I would rather say: two memories possess me. There is an area where they merge. There is a woman’s face; I do not know to which century it belongs.

―Jorge Luis Borges
The Memory of Shakespeare

Albarrani: If he wasn’t a soldier, then he was somehow working like a soldier. Something in his work must have resembled guns… this is a famous Tangier street, without such power the English would never have named it for him.

Marshana: Words were Shakespeare’s guns, but his words resurrect rather than kill. That is why his power lives on…

Read an excerpt, click here

Back cover
click on the image above to view it in a larger format

To order books, contact:

Visit Amazon.com, click here

See below for: analysis, prefaces, play premiere, acknowledgments, external link

Shakespeare universally symbolizes the essential themes of the tragedies Hamlet, Othello and Romeo and Juliet. With conflicts of power and hopeless love ―along with slander, jealousy, envy, hatred, vengeance, and fortune― Shakespeare Lane reflects a contemporary reading of Tanjawi society springing from a pen never touched by Shakespeare’s fingertips.

―Zoubeir Ben Bouchta

Playwright

Read the author's full book preface, click here
Read the author's professional biography, click here (French) and here (English)

Shakespeare Lane broadly highlights the intricate realities of Moroccan society ―from the city’s historical background right up to the main features of modern Tangier― yet it has universal relevance addressing world-wide issues such as social and political corruptness and terrorism threatening peace and security the world over.

―Rajae Khaloufi
Translator

Read the Translator's full book preface, click here
Read the Translator's brief biography, click here

Using Bard-like comedy and social commentary set in a magical garden, Shakespeare Lane persistently calls norms into question as it informs, surprises, and challenges the audience again and again. One point stands clear, the famous crossroads city is at a societal crossroads: what will the citizenry choose for their future?

―Dr George F. Roberson
Editor

Read the editor's full book preface, click here
Read the editor's brief biography, click here

Zanqat Shakespeare

Premiere in Tangier, February 2007

Read and view information about it, click here
See photographs, click here
List of performances in Morocco and Tunisia, click here

Translator's Acknowledgments

The present work is the fruit of the collaborative efforts of a number of people. I am especially obliged, of course, to the author of Zanqat[1] Shakespeare, Zoubeir Ben Bouchta. I would like to offer him my sincerest thanks for writing such a unique masterwork and for giving me the permission to commence the translation of the play to render it accessible for the first time to Anglophone readers.

I would like to offer my deep gratitude to Dr. George F. Roberson, the Senior Fulbright Research Scholar in Tangier, who has supported me throughout my work with his friendliness, patience, knowledge and hard-work. I attribute the magnitude and refinement of the English version of this play to his efforts and endless encouragement. One simply could not find a better or a friendlier editor.

I’m particularly indebted to my mentor Dr. Khalid Amine. He not only provided me with the source text, but was from the very beginning of the project, and constantly throughout, an invaluable connecting link between me and Dr. Roberson. He faithfully and continuously offered his advice and hints, along with sincere encouragement, that helped me achieve this work.

I wish to fully acknowledge the brotherly assistance and kindness offered to me by Dr. Mustapha El Ghachi. I wish to thank him as well for supplying a great deal of valuable historical data together with unmatched friendliness, kind support, and a motivating worthy smile.

In a word, I can not overstate how sincere is my gratitude to all those people who have earnestly helped me bring into existence the English version of Zanqat Shakespeare. This work would not have seen the light of existence without the collaborative efforts, support and assistance of such noteworthy people. This publication was funded by the International Centre for Performance Studies: thank you ICPS.

―Rajae Khaloufi

[1] Meaning "street" in Arabic.

To order books, contact

2008-01-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

Mustapha Hilal Soussi
ICPS Archivist
mhsousi (at) yahoo (dot) com

Return to: Lalla J'mila

Acknowledgments

2008-01-03T16:23:00.002-07:00

This project would never have been possible without the efforts and support of many people. As a tentative start, I'd like to acknowledge and thank the following:

Chief Collaborator

Dr. Khalid Amine

Organizations and Groups

The International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS), Tangier Morocco
The Tangier International Conferences, Tangier, Morocco
The citizens of the city of Tangier, Morocco

Individuals (alphabetical order)

Mr. Zoubeir Ben Bouchta
Ms Yhtimad Bouziane
Mr. Mitchell A. Cohn
Dr. Mohammad Elkouche
Mohammed Jadidi
Ms Rajae Khaloufi
Dr. Cheng Li
Dr. Carol Malt
Ms Saadia Maski
Ms Vanessa Paloma
Dr. Elizabeth Petroff
Mr. Mustapha Hillal Sousi
Dr. Barry Tharaud
Dr. Robert Vaughan
Dr. Richard Wilkie

Institutional Support (alphabetical order)

Abdelmalek Essaâdi University, Tetouan, Morocco
Cultural Affairs Section, USA Embassy, Rabat, Morocco
Moroccan American Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange (MACECE), Rabat, Morocco
Tangier American Legation Museum Society, Tangier, Morocco

This page remains under construction, please check back later as the projects develop.

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My online publication links

2007-12-31T09:09:00.025-07:00

Major themes: Colorado, Tangier, tourism, place, visualization, workforce, women and more

Full texts available online and/or downloadable in pdf format (as indicated for each) by clicking the titles below, listed alphabetically:

Author Research Biography

Full citations and additional listings, click here

To return to the Space and Place welcome page, click here

Tangier Conferences

2007-12-31T09:04:00.000-07:00

Space and Place is a collaboration with the Tangier International Conferences. Use the links below for additional information.

Performing Tangier 2008: Borders, Beats & Beyond

Presented by the International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS), Tangier (external link)

Past Conference Retrospectives

Picturing and Performing Tangier - Feb 2007

Call for Papers

Voices of Tangier - Jan 2006
Writing Tangier - Nov 2004

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Contribute

2007-12-31T08:58:00.001-07:00

New - resources now available at the Tangier American Legation Museum Society (TALMS) Library:

Worlds of Tangier, Morocco:
Experiential, Narrative, and Place-Based Perspectives
A dissertation. See also here

Reading Tangier: an English Language Introduction
A selection of thirty-seven travel oriented city narratives, 1660 to 2006.

Coming soon -

Tangier: Mindscapes and Dreamscapes
A compact bilingual textbook on place-making and the city's travelscapes - past, present and future.

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Experiential interventions

2007-12-31T08:12:00.002-07:00

▪ Field Trip: Visit to the Grave of Jean Genet
▪ Field Trip: Nightime Visit to the Kasbah Museum
▪ Observation: Strategic Geography
▪ Observation: Qasbah and Medina Wall Crisis
▪ Observation: Spaces of Faith
▪ Sensing the City:
▪ Reading the Cityscape:

This page remains under construction, please check back later as the projects develop.

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Visualization (visual interventions)

2007-12-31T08:10:00.001-07:00

▪ Snapshot: School's Out
▪ Expressing the City: Street Murals
▪ Expressing the City: A Day in the Life...
▪ Film:

This page remains under construction, please check back later as the projects develop.

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Artistic interventions

2007-12-31T08:08:00.000-07:00

▪ Artist: Rachid Bouselham
▪ Artist: Ikram Kabbaj
▪ Galleries:
▪ Musuems:
▪ Architecture:

This page remains under construction, please check back later as the projects develop.

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Literary interventions

2007-12-31T08:06:00.030-07:00

▪ Academia: conferences, publishing, and curriculum development

International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS)

“A forum that aims at bridging the gap of difference and connecting cultures, as well as reaching across the divide to the Other. The setting of Tangier makes a perfect home for new intercultural encounters that celebrate and honor our essential humanity. It offers a glimmer of hope during a dark time marked by the hegemony of the post 9/11 discourses of horrorism.”

--Dr Khalid Amine, Conference Convener

Tangier International Conferences Published Proceedings

Writing Tangier (2004), Voices of Tangier (2006), Performing / Picturing Tangier (2007)

▪ Play Translations: from the original Arabic by Zoubeir Ben Bouchta, Tanjawi writer

Shakespeare Lane, translated to English by Rajae Kaloufi (pictured below, left)
Lalla J'mila, translated to English by Mustapha Hilal Soussi (pictured below, center)
The Red Fire , translated to English by Mustapha Hilal Soussi (pictured below, center) Summer 2008 release

▪ Literary Criticism: by Mohamed Elkouche, Faculty of Oujda

"Eye for Eye?" A Reading in the Travel accounts of P. Bowles and A. Akbib

“Akbib is certainly one of the emerging post-colonial voices (that have) … started to ‘write back’ to the metropolitan Centre”, El Kouche argues; he concludes by asking, “…is it not better for all of us to dispense altogether with all discourses of Orientalism and Occidentalism so that we could create and establish a more rational and edifying inter-cultural dialogue?"

"Paul Bowles' Tangier" Earthly Paradise or Symbolic Panopticon?

“Thus,” El Kouche argues,” given the strategic geographical location of Tangier, as the door or gateway of the West to North Africa and the Moslem world, it can be concluded that this city served Bowles rather as a symbolic Panopticon or look-out from which he was representing Morocco, North Africa and the Orient in general in a typically Orientalist fashion.”

"Paul Bowles' Tangier and Fez" The Agony of Transition from Colonial to Post-colonial Times

El Kouche argues “that Bowles was greatly agonized by witnessing the transition of his beloved cities, Tangier and Fez, from colonial to post-colonial eras.”

"Tangier Speaks" A Reading in the Discourses of Some Tanjawi Writers

“Some Tanjawi writers seem even to ‘write back’ to the West in a more or less conscious attempt to interrogate its misconceptions about the Moslems in general or to assert the dignity and the cultural identity of such an Oriental(ized) city as Tangier,” El Kouche oberves. Ben Bouchta, for example, “is always on the side of the victims and the oppressed” and his “masterpiece”, Lalla J’mila, concentrates “on the problem of women’s oppression by men and their painful quest for freedom and self-assertion.”

"Picturing the Interzone" Tangier in P. Bowles' Let It Come Down and A. Majid's Si Yussef

“In both novels, this city is … portrayed and ‘celebrated’ in such a way that it appears as a protagonist in its own right.” But, as El Kouche argues, Bowles’ and Majid’s treatment of Tanjawis' as “full-fledged protagonists” is in stark contrast: where the latter features them with “compelling voices, stories and histories” and in doing so, they “contest or subvert” hegemonic discourse."

▪ The City: Expo 2012 Bid Materials (topic for future research and postings)

▪ The Nation: City Tourist Promotion (topic for future research and postings)

This page remains under construction, please check back later as the projects develop.

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Performative interventions

2007-12-31T07:45:00.009-07:00

▪ Concert: Paloma and Botbul

Tangier American Legation Museum

▪ Concert: Glantzer, Kadiri (pictured at right) and Paloma

Tangier American Legation Museum

▪ Theatre: Rue Shakespeare

Premier, Tangier, February 2007 -- Dawliz Theatre

▪ The City: Expo 2012 selection committee reception

"Routes of the World, Cultures Connecting. For a more United World"

▪ Academia: Tangier International Conferences

▪ Public Pastimes: paseo, Salon de Thé, sport, public spaces, more... (topics for future research and postings)

▪ Perspective on "performance": by Robert Lepage (UNESCO Courrier), click here

This page remains under construction, please check back later as the projects develop.

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Introduction

2007-12-31T07:40:00.000-07:00

Tangier from inside out works to draw more attention to the "voices" of city insiders.

Five interrelated human spheres are highlighted: 1) performance, 2) literature, 3) art, 4) visualization, and 5) experience. These links provide further explanation, examples, and information. At a time of great dynamism in the city, these interventions are meant to encourage alternative place-narratives and empower more stakeholders in the re/making of the city.

What are shown are works in progress. They range from: new books, events, and art; to broader perspectives and observations; to suggestions and alternatives for further elaboration. In all cases they are meant to invite collaboration, dialogue, and additional partners / contributions.

This is the practical application of a variety of social theories (post-colonial, feminist, art) and a featured method is the concept of autoethnography. These ideas (and much more) are discussed in great detail in the links below "Tangier dialogue" on the right sidebar of the website.

Acknowledgments

This project would never have been possible without the efforts and support of many people - to read about it, click here

This page remains under construction, please check back later as the projects develop.

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Botbol Biography

2007-12-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

Issu d’une famille de musiciens, Marcel Botbol est né en 1945 dans la capitale culturelle du Maroc, Fès. Dès son jeune age, il rejoint l’orchestre de son père Jacob Botbol au foyer culturel de al Batha avec son frère aîné Haim. Cet artiste avéré passera sa vie en troubadour en errant d’une ville à une autre : Tanger Casablanca, Paris, Montréal… en emmenant comme seul bagage son violon et son âme d’artiste.

Il jouera avec les anciens grands maîtres marocains et algériens de confession juive et musulmane comme l’accordéoniste Ilyas l’Oujdi, le clarinettiste, Maurice Ouzaglo le qanunji, Salim Azra, le pianiste, David Ben Soussen, et le qanunji tunisien Brahim Salah. Après un long séjour en France, Marcel revient à Tanger ou il crée le restaurant Marcello qui devient l’un des lieux de rencontre culturels de la ville. A travers le chant religieux juif ou piutims qui se base sur la musique arabo-andalouse, le legs des séfarades contenu dans les vieilles chansons jalousement sauvegardées à Tanger et Tétouan, les airs de la chanson moderne marocaine, maghrébine et orientale, Marcel sera le compagnon de route de grands artistes comme l’incontournable Samy El Maghribi, l’exceptionnel Salim Hilali, Bouhadana, Haim Melouk, ainsi que beaucoup de musiciens algériens comme Skandrani et Abdelkader Chaou.

Dans la synagogue des tournelles à Paris, Marcel donnera un concert mémorable avec les plus grands ténors juifs à travers le monde. Ce concert a été organisé par une mélomane et réalisatrice de documentaires très intéressants sur la vie musicale traditionnelle du Maroc, Isa Guenini. Marcel se rappelle avec nostalgie son enfance a Fès et la famille musulmane qui vivait juste face de leur maison et qui respectait et partageait leurs rites du Shabbat et autres. Témoin vivant de l’harmonie, la convivialité et la tolérance qui régnaient au Maroc entre les communautés appartenant aux diverses confessions, Marcel incarne une époque de symbiose dont le monde devrait copier le modèle. Loin du mythe c’est une réalité tangible à Tanger.

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Join the conversation

2007-12-23T03:20:00.016-07:00

The Strait of Gibraltar

crossroads of lands, seas and cultures

Space and Place editor, George F Roberson, seeks jobs + collaborators, etc -- for information, click here
Annual international conference: Performing Tangier 2011, click here
Collaborative Media International: Morocco-themed books: 1) Moroccan Arabic, 2) Bowles / Beats / Tangier, 3) Shakespeare Lane, click here
Past Performing Tangier Conference video trailers, click here and here

Image source: www.uca.es/otros/anasim_gibraltar/fotossatelites.html

Paloma Biography

2007-12-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

Vanessa Paloma is active as a soloist, performance artist and lecturer. She founded and co-directs Flor de Serena, a Judeo-Spanish ensemble. Recent performances were at the International Association for Jewish Studies Conference, UC Berkeley, the San Fernando Mission, the Craft and Folk Art Museum, the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre as part of the World Festival for Sacred Music, at the Southern Theatre in Minneapolis and at Cal State Long Beach’s Daniel Recital Hall. Paloma has toured her most recent solo project throughout California, Sephardic Songs of the Sea, a solo show combining Ladino songs and kabbalistic teachings. She was Artist in Residence at Milken Community High School during 2004-2005 and currently directs “Los Bilbilicos” Sephardic Community Choir of Los Angeles. Paloma has appeared on National television on the Hallmark Channel and was interviewed for a Passover Special by Public Radio International (PRI) that is airing throughout the United States. Paloma has published in OLAM magazine and in Hadassah’s anthology on women’s prayer: Pray Tell. She presented at the Association for Jewish Studies on Ladino music as a women’s parallel to medieval Hebrew mystical poetry and in 2006 on Ladino romances in the Romancero of Latin America and remnants of this as a cultural remain of converso background. Ms. Paloma leads workshops and gives classes on Jewish mysticism, Sephardic culture and women’s religious expression.

In addition to being the Founding Artistic Director of the SYNERGY ensemble and its leader until 2003, Paloma was a soloist with Long Beach Opera, Camerata Pacifica Baroque, Ensemble Nuance (Jerusalem) and the St. Paul Early Music Society among others. Grantors such as the Righteous Persons Foundation, The Maurice Amado Foundation, American Sephardi Federation, the United States State Department, American Friends of the Marranos and the California Council for the Humanities have funded her projects. In 2007 she was invited to Portugal to perform, teach and do research with Crypto-Jewish communities in Porto, Lisbon and Belmonte.

Paloma began her musical studies at a young age at the San Juan Children’s Choir in Puerto Rico and later continued at the Andes University in her native Bogotá, Colombia. After moving to the United States, Paloma studied at Indiana University’s School of Music where she received a Master of Music in Early Music performance, specializing in the music of medieval Spain. She studied Jewish Mysticism in the Old City of Jerusalem and continues her studies with Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh.

Paloma’s recent projects are focusing on the connections between women, spirituality and creativity. She is currently writing a book on Ladino music as traditional women’s creative and spiritual expression.

310-909-8501• cantos@vanessapaloma.com • www.flordeserena.com
P.O. Box 35455, Los Angeles 90035
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Concert Invitation

2007-12-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

M. Thor Kuniholm, Directeur
Du Tangier American Legation Musuem
8 zankat America, Tanger

Le Bureau des Affaires Culturelles
de L’Ambassade des Etats Unis à Rabat

au concert de Musique Ladino
avec Vanessa Paloma
Sous le thème : Eveil d’essences

Le mardi 13 novembre à 18h30 au Musée de la Légation Américaine àTanger

Le Ladino, est la langue des Juifs d’Espagne, il porte la mémoire, le Passé

il est chargé d’histoires et d’allégories de la diaspora juive méditerranéenne Un espagnol médiéval, écrit en hébreu avec des mots et des expressions urc, arabe et grec, mélange qui traduit les identités et les expériences caractérisant l’expérience juive. Les chansons du répertoire orales nous sont parvenues grâce aux femmes Sépharades des Souvenirs et des Voix.
Vanessa Paloma , américaine d’origine colombienne est chanteuse, écrivain, conférencière. Elle est spécialiste dans le répertoire judéo-espagnol. Elle est boursiére de la commission Maroco-Americaine (Fulbright) Research Award au Maroc. C’est une artiste internationale,elle a joué au Festival mondial des musiques sacrées à Los Angeles, sur l’ensemble des Etats-Unis en Amérique du Sud, au Portugal et en Israël, Elle a un Master de l’Institut Early de musique de l’université Indiana, et est chercheur du Mysticisme juif. Les travaux de Vanessa Paloma combinent les questions de musique, du mysticisme et l’expression des femmes.

Conference media

2007-11-26T04:37:00.003-07:00

Announcements regarding "Performing Tangier 2008: Borders Beats and Beyond" have been placed in numerous newsletters across many academic disciplines.

Several examples include: "Urban News", "Past Place" and "Place and Culture". They are specialty groups of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) serving thousands of urbanists, historians and culture researchers worldwide.

Click the pages below in a new window to view them full size:

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Medina murals

2007-11-26T04:35:00.000-07:00

This page is still under construction, please check back later for additional information.

Strategic geography

2007-11-26T04:32:00.000-07:00

This page is still under construction, please check back later for additional information.

Concert: Tangier American Legation Museum

2007-11-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

Concert Program

Madre de la Gracia – Turkey
Ya vendrá – Tangier
Yo m’enamorí d’un aire – Egypt
La Comida La Mañana – Turkey
¿Por qué no cantáis, la bella? – Tetuan
Los Japones – Los Angeles/Jack Mayesh
¿Onde Fuites Joya Mía? – Sofia
Primo Rabi – New Mexico/Isabel Medina Sandoval
Hazeremos una merenda – Adrianopoli
Vayehi Miketz Burmuelos con Miel – Jerusalem
Avram Avinu

*See also program notes below.

To view the concert invitation, click here

According to Paloma, "The program tonight hopes to achieve the awakening of our essence through music. Music is the gate to enter the deep and mysterious chambers of our selves. It is a suprarational invitation, beyond words and even beyond thoughts. Allow yourself to be taken by melodies, history and words. They are the vestibule to our essence: ancient, modern and future. In a world where time is not linear but spiral, all experiences exist in the same moment."

For Paloma's brief bio, click here

For Botbol's brief bio, click here

For more information about Paloma's current research, click here

— click on any image on this page to view it in a larger format —

Program notes:

• Madre de la Gracia is a song about the experience of the ephemeral. The chasing after an experience one had and is constantly trying to relive.

• Ya vendrá is a Messianic song composed in 1600 in Tangiers that traveled to Amsterdam and to the Spanish and Portuguese congregation in New York.

Ya vendrá el Señor de la Redención

Para dezir a todos, vamos a Sión.

• Yo m’enamorí d’un aire laments falling in love with a beauty that one did not see well. Next time I hope to fall in love not at night, but during a sunny day.

• La Comida La Mañana, based on a popular Turkish melody, is a dialogue between a mother and her daughter about love and marriage.

• ¿Por qué no cantáis la bella?, a metaphor for the Shechina, the feminine presence of Gd fighting for her beloved: the souls that are in the war of life.

• Los Japones was composed by a Turkish cantor living in Los Angeles during World War II lamenting the disappearance of Japanese into internment camps.

• ¿Onde Fuites Joya Mia? Where did you go my jewel? I searched for you in a dark street and the moon, looking like a fiery presence shone. I asked, where does love start? Love starts in the eyes, then descends to the lungs and after that there is no escaping!

• Primo Rabi is written by a descendant of Jews forced to convert during the time of the expulsion from Spain and Inquisition. She is trying to remove years of walls and hiding imposed by their secret heritage.

• Hazeremos una merenda is a recipe for burmuelos in song.

• Vayehi Miketz is the weekly reading of the Torah that falls during Chanuka and refers to the battle between light and darkness.

• Avram Avinu is a circumsicion song that has become one of the most popular songs of the Judeo-Spanish repertoire, it tells about the birth of Abraham. This melody is also sung upon arriving to the home on Friday evening before the meal.

The City: Expo 2012

2007-11-26T04:27:00.000-07:00

Tangier poses for international media

Last week, Tangier hosted the Expo 2012 selection committee for a final "walk through" the city. If selected it will be the first EXPO held in an African, Arab, Muslim country. The city's official bid website is available by clicking here.

Porcession from the port heading down le corniche

Thousands of school children joined in the show. They carried white flags with the multi color Expo symbol and were dressed in white T-shirts and white baseball caps.

The video above (you might need to click on the icon to play) shows some scenes along the historic route: starting above at the Catholic Church, down past the old cemeteries to the Grand Socco, through the medina walls and further down the hill to the Zoco Chico (the city center since before Roman times), past the old Grand Mosque and out to the port, and finally, along the beach front for the finale of music, flags, marshal arts, parading ships and rollerbladers.

Soon a vote will be taken to select from the three final candidates: Tangier and cities in Poland and Korea.

Update Korea was the winner. In the end, their themes of high technology and global warming were insurmountable.

Space and Place

Biography

Sense of Place

New initiative: international publishing program

Tanger des Peintres: Grey Room to Casabarata

Film: The Way North

Tangier sensing the city

Tangier from inside out

Zoubeir Ben Bouchta

Zoubeir Ben Bouchta

Tangier Speaks

Picturing the Interzone

Paul Bowles’ Tangier and Fez

Paul Bowles’ Tangier

Eye for Eye?

Brief Biography: Rajae Khaloufi

Shakespeare and Tangier

The Red Fire

Qasbah and medina walls

Zanqat Shakespeare: list of performances

Editor's Preface

Translator's Preface

Author's Preface

Shakespeare Lane

To order books, contact

Acknowledgments

My online publication links

Tangier Conferences

Contribute

Experiential interventions

Visualization (visual interventions)

Artistic interventions

Literary interventions

Performative interventions

Introduction

Botbol Biography

Related links

Join the conversation

Paloma Biography

Concert Invitation

Conference media

Medina murals

Strategic geography

Concert: Tangier American Legation Museum

The City: Expo 2012