The Journal

Top 10s of 2010

2011-01-01T14:54:00.000-08:00

My goal with this thing has always been to produce substantive content, or to keep my mouth shut; an exercise in restraining my own narcissism. Thus the lack of posts in the past few months. I've been back in the United States and, despite a few blips in the flat line, not a whole lot has been going on. If there has been any constant over the past few months, however (aside from boredom), it would be the consumption of media.

So, as I have done on other occasions, the following are my favorite things from over the past year:

Albums

This was an incredible year for music, so this list was difficult to put together, and a separate Honorable Mentions list would be almost as good. 'Brothers' and 'The Suburbs' need to be on the list, but both are overshadowed by superior work in each band's previous releases. Plastic Beach, Crystal Castles, ArchAndroid, Wake Up!, Swim, The Bells Sketch EP, Age of Adz, Odd Blood, Everything in Between, Cosmogramma, Treats... the list goes on. They all deserve a spot.

My number one pick actually surprised me. It would have gone to Kanye, but 'Go' is such a beautiful thing, I think it will end up sticking with me longer than a monolithic pop opera like MBDTF. And I still haven't decided if Joanna Newsom is really the most compelling female vocalist in the game, or if I'm just in love with her (either way, she's in).

Jonsi - Go
Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
The National - High Violet
LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
Big Boi - Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty
The Tallest Man on Earth - Wild Hunt
Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me
Spoon - Transference
The Roots - How I Got Over

Songs

This was easy. It's pretty much just the top 10 most played on my [nerdy not-iTunes music player]. Culled of the embarrassing shit, of course. I swear I don't like Rhianna that much.

Jonsi - Kolnidur
Kanye West (ft. Jay-Z and Swizz Beatz) - Power (Remix)
Kanye West (ft. Jay-Z, Rick Ross and Nikki Minaj) - Monster
Janelle Monae - Cold War
John Legend and The Roots - Hard Times
Spoon - Written in Reverse
LCD Soundsystem - Drunk Girls
Cee Lo Green - Fuck You
Yeasayer - O.N.E.
The Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

Movies

Not a great year for film. 'The Fighter' serves as a good example. It is an excellent film that will almost certainly start winning awards very shortly... and received ZERO help from the studio that produced it until after it started receiving critical acclaim. There's simply not a lot of money for serious, artistic movie-making - not while most Americans just want to watch Narnia and the next Fockers installment. Regardless, there were definitely some flicks worthy of everyone's time.

Two of these, I feel, didn't get the attention that they deserved upon release: Carlos - a 5 1/2 hour monster of a movie that is boring for exactly zero seconds, and Restrepo - a crushing documentary about an Army infantry unit in Afghanistan. See them.

Carlos
True Grit
Winter's Bone
Restrepo
A Profit
Toy Story 3
The Social Network
The American
The Kids Are Alright
127 Hours

What I Won't Miss

2010-07-16T07:36:00.000-07:00

This is an email from a friend who visited for a little over a week. Keep in mind that Casablanca is the most liberal and progressive city in one of the Muslim World's most liberal and progressive countries. This starts minutes after we parted company at a train station:

Sooo....for the blog...je vais t'en raconter.

Imagine me...

*hugs in front of gare* [exit you]

[enter me...seule]

Buys tickets, parks self near bench an starts reading [book] alone. Doesn't look up but remarks that several groups of young men walk past and slow down while walking [Moroccan man code for "look up, I think you're interesting but have no non-creepy way of bothering you at 5:30 in the morning].

Me: Fuck *mumble*

Gets on train, starts to sleep...bothered by a group of two men who routinely pass in the walk way and scream when they get to my seat (to freak me out?... it works)

[Enter other moroccan guy, my ageish] Offers to sit next to me. I refuse (on principle because who knows, he could be friends with the screamers). He takes my bag and guides me to sit with his friends, who include some clueless backpacker Italian guy. I fall asleep, but stay alert... Italian refers to me as a "bella regazza" and continues speaking to one of the moroccans in Italian about how cute i am and how alone i must feel. I "wake up". One moroccan goes into a lengthy discussion about how dumb I am to travel alone, and how i should have brought my sister or my father with me...I say i'm meeting them later...and that my husband i going to meet me in fez.

He says i'm a "menteuse" because it's not possible that I'm married with two kids as I claim. I show a photo, he disputes it...tells me I should get off at the next stop chez lui and cancel my flight. I refuse. He gets angry but eventually apologizes and welcomes me chez lui with my children when I can. Also tells me that he noticed me in the gare, and that when moroccans see a girl like me (no joke) they want to do something bad to me. Because I'm alone, and female and vulnerable. Which i guess is at least honest but also begs the question: "What the FUCK?"

[exit them] [enter women across the aisle, who, I just noticed is staring at me, without looking away...for the next two hours].

I exit the train, exhausted/freaked out.....am further bothered by random ass motherfuckers at the airport...

I'm done with this country.

I've riffed on it before, but women get treated like shit in Morocco. And now that I've left the country, I can expand: Until the hammer blows of modernity can smash away the fringes of theological psychosis (as has been done to Christianity and Judaism), I would not recommend a solo visit for any woman to ANY non-secular Islamic country. It's certainly do-able, and there's a lot to learn, but you should not expect anyone you meet to have an appreciation for your worth as a human being. If that would bother you, don't come alone. [Note: The more conservative, the worse it gets. Example. Example.Example.Example.]

On a lighter note; my friend also got a shitload of creepy Couchsurfing solicitations.

For anyone unfamiliar with it; Couchsurfing.org is essentially a utilitarian Facebook for backpackers. People set up profiles, list whether or not they have a spare couch, and travelers come through and sleep on it. It's a distasteful concept to many (particularly those with hang-ups about privacy and safety). But to others - the people who understand what backpackers are - it's an incredible resource. The expense of accommodation and the apprehension about meeting worthwhile people are two of the most daunting hurtles of any extended journey. Couchsurfing solves both.

I've always been a fan, but I do have a suggestion if anyone associated with the site's management happens to read this:

Get rid of the Creeper Bar.

Whenever you log into your homepage, the system will display a list of people who have recently logged in from a close-by IP address. So... a list of locations and login times linked to the IP-addresses of various travelers. I never thought much of it before now. No one has ever contacted me that way (in 10 months... not a single one). The system is set up so that if you need something - directions, a drink, a couch - you can search for people offering those things and ask them directly. So who would write to a traveler out of the blue and ask for something that clearly wasn't on offer?

Moroccan dudes, apparently.

Aforementioned friend also received a number of correspondences during her stay:

Good evening
I hope your trip went well, and you spend the good times in Morocco, well I would be happy among us t'acceuillir Essaouira on the town or Jimmy hadrix a resident for several years the city or that it y'avais of a hippy then. I hope that my proposal interests you and that it could do that.

First of all, I'm really happy to welcome you in Morocco. You definitely choose a country well known for its hospitality. A country with a diversity of landscapes, cultures and traditions, a warm weather and a uncommon ambient. So I introduce myself, My name is Hicham. I'm originally from Rabat the capital of Morocco I'm learning Hotel management. rabat is a sunny city andwith a lot of parties. I invite you to to live unforgetable moments.To visit the medina, and to enjoy together in a cafe.

*See you later

good morning
it's tarik from italy and i m in long visit to rabat my origine city i would like to have nice talk with you and knowing many friends from all the world
so don't hesit to call me at this number 065440**** if you are in rabat
and then take care

hi [Name] i wish u a good day ...im from casablanca and i dont work this times if u wanna we can make a coffe oe beer around....see yup ....reply my plz

Dear [Name],
I hope you are doing well,
I am Said from Morocco ,it will be pleasure for me to know u more
take care

hi!i am a couchsurfer from casablanca,i am registred on this website to carry my dream to visit all the 4 corners of the world and meet a lot of people!!i know that you are here in morocco so if you want we can meet for a drink or a cooffe and even host you coz my couch is available,an after making knowledge i could visit you in your country.
best wishes.

Hey [Name]

Firstly you are welcome to your second country Morocco !!

Im Zuhair from Casablanca , i see that you are in Casablanca also now , so if you wanna go to a place where you can have a view of the whole Casablaca , let me know i will be pleased to do that , im sure you will love it as all my couchsurfing friends .plz just let me know befor by sending a message , in case im not free or has something to do ok ...

hiloo
how are u hope doinf fine i saw ur profil i try to write to you somme line hope find u well . i live in city of pink calling kela mgouna just 100 km from ouarzazate. i say if you like to discover this perdise welcome

how are you I live in Ouarzazate that is a city in southern Morocco that is also called the gate of the desert, and the chief town of the province of the same name. Located at the meeting of the valleys of the Wadi Wadi Ouarzazate and Dades (from the High Atlas) that make up the Draa river downstream of their confluence, it is the hub of a vast region of southern Morocco . Ouarzazate refers to both the foothills south of the High Atlas and the nearby desert.

if you have a program to visit this city contact me at 0 6 77 15 ****
well come home

welcome in Rabat

And my personal favorite (points for brevity and directness)...

hey

Needless to say, 'opinionated' would be a vast understatement for me on this subject. I'll write more about it later because I've got about 10 months worth of vitriol to get out.

Homebound

2010-07-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

So, I'm going home in a couple of weeks. But before I bore everyone with that...

Credit to my friend Jeff for this. Yeah; website that sells lion meat: http://www.czimers.com/2.html Also Poussin, Black Bear (!), Antelope and Camel. I can't imagine they ship to Morocco, but needless to say, I will be dropping the folks at Czimer's a line once I get home.

So besides definitely eating some lion (check out the Yelp reviews -- righteous indignation is by far the funniest projected emotion), I will be taking the following route home:

Leaving late July. So if you live on or around any of the red dots, let me know. Drinks.

Parting Shots

2010-06-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

I had a class start-date pushed back and a college roommate flying in for a visit, so I helped myself to an extended vacation this week. Boring story short: Went to Fez on Wednesday afternoon, randomly bumped into two of the Brits I met climbing Toubkal, shared some shisha and managed to insert myself (and Samantha) into their plans to visit a big waterfall.

So, I wound up spending two nights at Ouzoud Falls just NE of Marrakesh (cheapest hostel I've found in the country thus far, btw; ~$2.00/night). Biggest waterfall in the country and home to a large population of Barbary Apes who, having been fed by local Moroccans over the past decade or so, were extremely comfortable around us. As evidence:

And here's the whole album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2030081&id=217700540&l=3df59fd49b

In other news, I'm busily finalizing my schedule for my return to the States. Going to be hectic, but interesting, I think. As of now, it's looking like Casa -> JFK -> ATL -> BWI -> O'Hare -> PDX. If anyone is in any of those neighborhoods in late-July/early-Aug and wants to get a drink, let me know.

I love soccer

2010-06-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

Not really. Soccer is awful. If I wanted to see a bunch of effete metrosexuals running around, throwing tantrums, weeping and groping each other... well, yeah, I’d watch soccer. I saw some of the USA v. Slovenia game earlier today, and the only thing more embarrassing than the fact we tied is that my country participates in this histrionic nonsense at all. "But they came back from a 2 - 0 deficit!" Slovenia has a population of 2 million. I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that makes their World Cup team about 8% of the workforce.

Anyway, one of their guys was running toward the goal when one of ours stole the ball, so the Slovenian hurled himself to the ground, grasping at his ankle like his foot were dangling from his leg by tendons and started crying. So play stopped and his team got the ball.

If I were in charge of soccer, I would implement the following rule changes to make it less awful:

No crying. Crying = red card.
No post-goal celebrating. This rule can be temporary, until the culture of spazzing out like some emotionally-troubled tween has been purged from the soccer community. It’s a goal, not the cure for cancer – and it’s what you’re paid to do.
No make-up. And players are required to have first and last names. I don’t know who the fuck “Ronaldo” is, but if he’s that transvestite with all the eyeliner, I’m not impressed.
New position. One man on each team will assume the title of “striker” (which was misapplied before – the other guys are called ‘forwards’). Like goalies, strikers will abide by a separate rule set. Strikers will not be allowed to touch the ball, and if they do, they’re out for 5 minutes (regular players can, of course, eject the strikers by drilling them with the ball). Strikers are, however, allowed to tackle people. Same rules as rugby; must have the ball, at least one foot on the ground, no headshots.
One fewer defender.
Penalty kicks are awesome. Any infraction whatsoever within the goal box will result in a penalty kick.
Goalies are also allowed to tackle people.
New foul rules. If you have the ball, you’re fair game. Any attack by another player that can reasonably be assumed was directed at the ball is legal. This is a good idea because dangerous slide-tackles are awesome and would become commonplace. Furthermore, play does not stop for injuries. Guys who want to roll around on the group weeping are welcome to, but the game will continue.
If you spread your arms open really wide and look confused or exasperated with something the referee says, the referee is allowed to punch you in the face.

Or they could just let this sort of thing go on happening: http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2010/06/21/dive-of-the-day-ivory-coast-s-abdul-kader-ke-ta.aspx

Me > Nature

2010-06-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

Made it to the top of Toubkal this time (see: previous failure). Apparently it’s easier to ascend things when they aren’t covered in ice. So, yeah; I’m pretty pleased.

The second day was exhausting – almost 4 hours straight up from the refuge, and then another 8 spent in various stages of semi-controlled falling back to the base. I made it back to Casablanca late that night and needed to brace myself against the handrails to make it up the stairs to my apartment. My knees feel like they were on the wrong side of a mobster gambling debt. Despite all that, I’d chalk this one up as a resounding success.

I ended up going with two backpackers I met on Saturday. Anthony was going to come, but anorexic girls aren’t allowed on the trail (some kind of liability thing). The backpackers – Mike and Bryan - were both in good shape though and we managed to harass one another into making fairly good time up the mountain. So aside from a lot of exhausted/awe-struck cursing, there wasn’t a whole lot of drama.

Actually... The mountain did try to murder us once. We were traversing a scree (loose rocks) field on the way down from the summit and two big rocks broke off a cliff above us. Pretty horrific timing to say the least, as Mike, Andy (a British guy we met) and I were all directly below them. One of the rocks ricocheted off to the side, but the second – a little smaller than a beach ball – came right for us. Seeing a rock that probably weighed 150 pounds bouncing six feet in the air and moving faster than a car barrelling down at you is disconcerting to say the least. Andy handled it best, in exceptionally English fashion:

“Heads up, lads.”

It was difficult to judge the rock’s path, so we were all stuck, standing in place, waiting for the last minute to gauge whether evasive action was necessary. Luckily, it bounced about four feet wide of Andy’s chest and fell harmlessly down a cliff.

So you had your shot, Nature. Had your shot and you missed.

Seasonal Differences

2010-06-16T03:37:00.000-07:00

I was going through my photos from my two trips up Toubkal, and a few of them are taken from similar angles. Kinda neat to see how much the landscape changes between April and June. (Full albums are on Facebook).

Looking down the valley from the refuge:

The Berber village at the trailhead:

The last valley before the refuge:

Round Two

2010-06-11T12:41:00.001-07:00

A few months back my buddy Jeff and I took a stab at summiting a little hill called J'bel Toubkal. We failed. Since I won't be going to Palestine, I have all of next week off to poke around in Morocco/Spain. Time for a rematch.

I'll be heading up with three other guys, taking roughly the same approach as before (except, ideally, without screwing up the route). The weather should be a bit more agreeable this time around, so I'll be able to swap out the winter jacket and extra layers for a [considerably] lighter tube of sunscreen.

Unfortunately, I think the snow will be gone as well, so it will be a little less epic. Oh well. Good to get out of Casa.

If any of y'all need to get ahold of me, hit the FB or email.

WTFsForDinner

2010-06-08T09:39:00.000-07:00

I've got a lot of downtime in the evenings here. As of last month, a lot of that was filled watching old episodes of Hell's Kitchen. Hell's Kitchen is a television show about a guy named Gordon who cooks delicious food and helps teach other people to do the same. This is accomplished with a lot of yelling. Sensing in Ramsay a kindred instructional spirit, the show inspired me to learn how to cook. This is Chef Ramsay with an animal he's about 90 seconds from eating. -->

Part of my cooking philosophy is that there exists a culinary trifecta - booze, meat, explosions

- which, if satisfied, renders positive results regardless of the chef's skill, experience, intelligence or personal hygiene. Why booze, meat and explosions? Stupid question, but I will explain anyway:

Booze: I've read quite a bit that the right beer/wine/spirit will compliment a dish. The only surprising thing there is that anyone would go through the effort of writing it. "Compliments" means "makes better". So, yeah... no shit. The only thing I would like to point out here is that anyone who says that the quality of a cooking wine doesn't matter isn't using enough of it.

Meat: Because this is America. (And by "this" I mean "the internet" which, like the moon, is owned by America). Do you know what kinds of people don't eat meat? North Koreans.

North Koreans are, on average, six inches shorter than South Koreans (who are also pretty short). The North Koreans say it's because they are ethnically purer than South Koreans (which is racist). But it's actually because they're a bunch of retards who don't get enough protein.

In conclusion, Americans eat meat and racist midgets don't.

Explosions: This is so obvious it borders on intuition and is difficult to articulate an explanation for. Why does 2 + 2 = 4? It just does. The beauty here is that explosions can be integrally related to booze (which explodes). Or even meat. It is widely acknowledged that animals who were killed by explosions taste better than those who weren't.

Of course, if there were a way to integrate gratuitous female nudity into this equation, I would. But for now, it remains a trifecta. ...Also, I'm not sure quadfecta is a word. I'm working on it.

So, here's the recipe for what I ate yesterday:

Sangria, Pizza and Spicy Fruit Desert

Ingredients (primary)

1.5 pounds of ground beef (approximately a baby's head size.
Two fists-full of Mozzarella cheese
2 bottles of the shittiest red wine you can buy or shoplift
1 bottle of rum (dark and spicy are ideal, but when isn't it? -- take what you can get)

These ingredients are "primary" because if all else fails you can just throw them all in a saucepan, add fire and eat.

Ingredients (secondary)

Quantities not noted because a) I don't know and b) it doesn't matter

Flour
Yeast
Butter
Milk
Tomatoes
Egg
Onions
Apples
Pears
Red peppers
Garlic
Oregano
Sprite
Basil
Cloves
Whatever fruit and berries you can still afford after all the alcohol and meat
Olive oil
Cinnamon sticks
Apple juice
Black pepper
4 different kinds of hot sauce (to pour all over the pizza)
Probably some other stuff, but whatever you've got on hand will probably work

Serves 1

Instructions:

1. First of all, you bought way too much wine for one pitcher of Sangria. Drink like half of one of the bottles.

2. Sangria was invented by the Spanish as a quick, effective delivery vehicle for cheap red wine. The recipe therefore, is necessarily cheap and simple. You pile as much sliced fruit and berries into a large pitcher as you can and then fill it with wine. The juice from the fruit will slowly diffuse into the alcohol and make it delicious.

3. Keep the pitcher in the fridge for a couple of hours or while you do the rest of the prep. When you serve it, top up the rest of the pitcher with Sprite to make it bubbly.

4. Sangria done.

5. Drink continuously for the duration of cooking.

6. Dough is pretty easy. Just throw a bunch of flower, yeast, an egg, some water and a dash of milk into a bowl. Mash it all together until it starts to look like dough. I don't know. Making dough is boring. Watch this fruitloop do it.

7. Put the dough in a pan and put a bunch of mashed up tomatoes and hotsauce all over it.

8. Then fire up all the meat, onions and red peppers in a pan until they're a little bit cooked. More hotsauce. Then put that on top of the dough too.

9. Finally, tear up the cheese and sprinkle it all over the place. More cheese = better. Mozzarella is what Zeus ate.

10. Throw it into the oven. Turn the oven on. I forget to do that sometimes.

Pizza done.

11. Eat pizza, finish sangria. It's important to be over the legal limit for the next part.

12. Skin, core and half the apples and pears. This is hard when you are drunk, so think of it like a field sobriety test. Don't fuck it up or you get stabbed in the hand.

13. Spread an even layer of sugar over the bottom of a non-stick pan. Turn on the fire part underneath it and wait for the sugar to melt. (Yeah, sugar melts into a light-brown liquid when it gets hot. I didn't really know that.)

14. Add a bunch of butter once the sugar melts. Then throw in a bunch of cloves, black pepper and the cinnamon sticks. My roommate ate one of the cinnamon sticks and informed me that it was gross, so don't do that. Then put in the fruit.

15. After like 30 seconds, the goopey shit at the bottom will start to get really thick. That's when you pour in a bunch of rum. Like 4 or 5 shots worth. Some people will tell you that that's too much, but... well, they're wrong. Quantity of rum => amount of fire. So I don't really know what the hell they're talking about.

16. Then kinda tip the pan into the fire. Or stick your hands in there with a lighter. I don't care, I'm not your mom. The alcohol should explode (trifecta attained). Then flick around the pan, preferably where a girl can see you because this part makes you look awesome. Don't spill fire on yourself.

17. Then pour some apple juice on it so it's not so sludgey.

18. Eat.

This would be good with ice cream. But I never remember to get ice cream, so I just ate it plain. Probably the most delicious thing ever. I might put it on pancakes sometimes.

I'll try to make this a running thing. Hopefully with a different type of dead animal, variety of liquor and magnitude of explosion each time. I even made a new subject tag! Next up; Jack Daniel's chicken. Side of white phosphorus.

Primavera Write-Up

2010-05-31T08:40:00.000-07:00

"My friend and I are going to a festival in Barcelona next month. You should come!” she said.

“Barcelona you say? Umm... Who’s playing? And when is it?”

“Last weekend in May. And tons of people -- Wilco, Buena Vista Social Club, Spoon, Major Lazer – you should look it up online.”

I don’t recall my exact physical reaction, but I probably made my thinking face (sort of a combination of stroke victim and child-staring-at-television). Hipster music festival, early-summer Mediterranean coast, Barcelona – that shit is a Tier-1 Good Idea (and it certainly didn’t hurt that the girl asking was super pretty). I was making my thinking face because saying ‘maybe’ to something like that is fucking weak.

“Yeah, fuck it. That sounds awesome,” I said, snapping out of my thinking face.

And that was that. The festival itself (link here) was this weekend and, needless to say, it was awesome. Here are a few of the highlights, written smart-assedly in award show format:

Best Performance from a Band I’d Never Heard Of
Florence and the Machine

When she first took the stage I thought she was going to be annoying because she had bright red hair and was dressed like a gay angel. But she wasn’t annoying at all. She was awesome. I have a soft spot in my heart for vocalists who can plug their microphones into an effects pedal and make it work. Her band was awesome too. One word: Rockharp.

For Totally Playing the Shit out of Veckatimest
Grizzly Bear
Because that’s the one they sold at Starbucks.

Drummer Who Most Obviously Did Not Decorate His Own Instrument
This guy...

Bummer.

Most Rapey
Major Lazer

I’m all for exuberant stage shows, but when you stop listening to the music and have to ask yourself “who is that girl and why is he doing that to her?” they might have gone a little overboard.

Most Unexpectedly Metal
Wilco

I don’t know if the folks who make Jeff Tweedy’s flannel shirts were informed, but he is basically in a metal band. What’s the last thing you expect during a live rendition of ‘Impossible Germany’? Alien attack, probably. But closely following that would have to be the explosive aneurisms of awesome that the Wilco drummer and guitarist seemed to suffer at corresponding intervals.

Best Rack
Black Francis of The Pixies

<-- Nice.

Most Adorable Frontman
Carl Newman of The New Pornographers
Happy ginger with a funny little Canadian lisp chatting up the crowd between songs. Super precious.

Best Dressed
Spanish Hipsters

<--- How are this guys’ shorts even staying on? This award was clinched when my friend said aloud, “all we need now is a guy wearing one of those Velvet Underground t-shirts” and then like five seconds later, seemingly magicked into existence by the utterance, a guy walks past rocking the Andy Warhol banana. It was amazing. Spain doesn’t even have an Urban Outfitters.

Best Set
Spoon

Spoon rocks pretty hard.

Overall Winner
Me

Best weekend ever.

Je ne sais pas

2010-05-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

So as of last week, I was all set to move to Hebron. Departure date was set, accomodation was sorted, plane ticket was booked. But now... not. I'll spare you all the boring written details and try to boil it down into an allegorical video presentation.

So basically, Hebron has moved back into the 'maybe' catagory of future plans. Still well-ahead of backpacking through Pakistan, but still far from the certainty that it was a short time ago. Exceptionally disappointing if it doesn't work out, but I can't imagine my parents will be displeased. And hey... extra week of vacation.

"Some kind of insane, genocidal purge..."

2010-05-22T11:56:00.000-07:00

“It’s like a fucking Twilight Zone episode.”

“A plague or something...”

“Some kind of insane, genocidal purge...”

John and I stood at the edge of the beach; swim trunks and t-shirts, a football tucked under my arm. A large crowd occupied the waterfront; sunbathers, footballers, some walking hand-in-hand, some staring. Two hundred or so. ...All men. Every last one of them.

“Creepy.”

I’m making it a point to write this carefully. One of my objectives is to avoid causing offense unnecessarily. So, if anything here does cause offense – I probably meant it to.

I’ve met a lot of interesting people since arriving here in Morocco. The experiences of the women, however, as related to me, have been the most interesting. The women I know best are here to work – usually on contracts ranging from 1-3 years. Teachers, mothers, artists, NGO workers. Some of them are even diplomats working in Casablanca as representatives of major Western powers; well-traveled, and specifically trained to be culturally sensitive and highly tolerant. Of the tourists, single females choosing to travel alone through North Africa are a particularly tough, brave and independent breed.

These should serve as the preface of my post. Some were related to me second-hand, but I have absolute faith in the veracity of each.

A female friend of ours came to visit Casablanca for 2 nights. Over the course of a single day, she was assaulted twice in broad daylight in neighbourhoods I frequent – once in front of a group of male onlookers. Nothing similar has happened to me in 8 months.
I have spoken with four female students who are not allowed to use Facebook, by order of either their fathers or boyfriends. Two of them are also forbidden from using email.
An Australian couchsurfer missed her train because the taxi driver refused to deliver her – insisting that they “get lunch” first.
Our apartment is a fairly social one. The ratio of Moroccan male to female visitors, however, is probably around 10:1. A vast majority of Moroccan girls and women we know are A) Not allowed in men’s apartments, B) Not allowed to socialize with unmarried men, C) Not allowed out of their homes after 8 or 9pm, D) Must check-in frequently if not at home or in a pre-determined location.
I have removed two men from my Facebook list because they were soliciting my female friends – apparently based on the “quality” of their profile pictures – for attention/companionship.
A friend of mine who works at an NGO has frequent difficulty walking 3 blocks from her apartment to her office. She often ends up running into work.
Police will stop you on the street if you are walking with a woman they believe is Muslim. (This may be profiling, rooted in an attempt to solicit a bribe – but it is also well-fitted to a trend).
Several female travelers who have left my company to explore other cities have been subjected to aggressive and unrelenting pressure for marriage or sex from Moroccan men who had volunteered, ostensibly, to accompany them for safety purposes.
Two female diplomats who have lived in this country for the last 2 years have a combined total of zero numbers from Moroccan men in their phones. They bemoan and regret the fact, but will flatly ignore or deflect public conversations with domestic nationals.
I have lost count of the complaints that have been relayed to me of marriage proposals, sexual propositions, catcalls, passes and gropes from Moroccan men directed at foreign women.
I have seen women being assaulted on the street, amongst a group of men, with more men watching. Twice. When men fight on the streets, others typically intervene.
On days when the local soccer teams play, women do not leave their homes in our neighbourhood (near the stadium) out of fear of the groups of men and boys that wander the streets before and after the match.
There are (many) public cafes in which women are explicitly disallowed. Public cafes that do allow women tend not to have them.
This weekend, I walked a pair of female friends to the big mosque on the waterfront. I left them there to walk a mile along the waterfront to a popular beach. Alone. 5 minutes after I left, they were being followed by a group of men. 5 minutes after that, one of them was bleeding. 5 minutes after that, they were in a police station...

My perspective has evolved to the point where I now feel neglecting to escort a female friend from one point of the city to another is tantamount to reckless endangerment. I’d sooner drunk-drive a forklift through my kid’s playground than let anyone I cared about walk through the downtown area alone at night.

The bullet points above are in no way meant to be a blanket condemnation of all men in Morocco. I have met a number of Moroccan men (and women) who are better people than I can claim to be. But simply put; women are second-class citizens in Morocco. This is further substantiated by the litany of other statistics on gender equity within the country (see: literacy, higher education, healthcare, employment, political office and violence).

Women do not have the same freedoms or opportunities as men. Most troubling is the fact that Moroccan laws appear to be far less restrictive than social convention.

In one of my classes, we were doing an exercise on unreal conditionals (“if ____, then ____”). One of the exercises was to express what each student would do if they were a member of the opposite sex. Among the responses from women (aged 17-30):

“If I were a man, I would go out with my friends every night.”

“If I were a man, I would get a promotion at my job.”

“If I were a man, I would be safe at night.”

One of the men in the class joked, “If I were a woman, I would kill myself.”

Unwillingness to acknowledge a problem (along with some sickening hypocrisy) is seemingly endemic amongst men here. “Women in Morocco are free to do whatever they want,” is something I have heard repeatedly. This is often suffixed with “no, I wouldn’t let my sister see a male friend at night” or “no, I wouldn’t date a woman who danced at nightclubs”.

I don’t want to get into the causes for it all in this particular forum. Hell, I have developed a veritable fusilade of attacks for it over the past 8 months... unfortunately, I’m still in a place where they could get me in trouble. But here’s a hint: I’ve been to poor, uneducated countries before. I’ve seen ancient, tribal practices integrated into modern, gradually-liberalizing societies...

I have seen nowhere else on Earth where the socially-institutionalized mistreatment of women is worse than here. It is nauseating, and I’m not going to miss it when I’m gone.

On a related note...

2010-05-14T09:04:00.000-07:00

To all four people who read this... the blog is going to be on hiatus for an indeterminate period beginning next month. As will any references to it from other sites. I'll let y'all know when I put it back up.

31/5/2010 Edit: Maybe not. We'll see.

An Abridged History of Israel

2010-05-12T16:41:00.002-07:00

It's kind of embarrassing, but until recently, I've only had a pretty rudimentary understanding of Middle East history. Though to be fair, I don't know much about string theory either, and that's probably less complicated. But I figured it would be a good idea to brush up before I actually moved there. I've been reading a bunch of stuff. So in the interest of future blog posts making any sense, I figured I'd give y'all the rundown as well. The following is a chronological summary of everything* that has happened in/around Israel for the past dozen or so centuries.

*where "everything" = stuff I didn't think was boring

It all begins in the
17th Century BC

Abraham, patriarch of Judaism, Islam and Christianity is born and starts talking about “One God”, as opposed to “Lots of Gods”. According to his Wikipedia page, he lived to be 175... which is totally plausible for a guy who didn't know what soap, medicine or science was.

13th Century BC

Moses does the stuff with the pharaohs and the plagues and the rocks. This time period also marks the height of Deistic badassitude.

The Moses People (henceforth ‘Jews’), invigorated by all the fire hail, blood water, baby-slaughtering and face-boiling, systematically conquer most of Israel.

1020 BC

The Jews consolidate power under a monarch – Saul. First major defeat of the people called Philistines (henceforth ‘Palestinians’).

1000 BC

Jerusalem made capital by Saul’s successor, David.

930 BC

Something really confusing about a Jewish insurrection and two separate states. But this is about the time when Assyrians and Babylonians start kicking the living shit out of everyone, so it really doesn’t matter.

722 BC

Aforementioned Assyrians and Babylonians have rolled into Israel and totally wrecked stuff.

It was at about this time that the Jews got together and decided that they should begin developing a religious framework to underpin their nationhood. This would irrevocably bind the Jews and their descendants to the land of Israel... So no matter where they went, that would be where they were meant to be. No future conflict anticipated.

23 AD

Jesus stuff. Does some preaching and is eventually found guilty of being a dangerously subversive loud-mouth that too many people were paying attention to. Accordingly, the Romans execute him in the most nondescript way they can think of: On top of a mountain during a lightning storm/earthquake.

536BC – 1576AD

Israel is militarily steamrolled in quick succession by Persians, Babylonians, Seleucids, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Persians again, Ninjas, Pirates, Mamluks, Arabs and Crusaders. This was all a part of someone’s plan to make the (already) arid terrain more hospitable by soaking it in nutrient/mineral-rich man blood for 1,000 years straight. There’s about 30 totally awesome screenplays in there somewhere. Epic battle sequences wooooo!

1517 – 1917

Ottoman rule. Still paying attention? Me neither.

The Ottomans are reasonably open-minded and let the Jews kind of do their own thing. Israel undergoes large-scale Jewish immigration. Mostly from the sort of awesome places where people could reasonably say, “Know what would be a more peaceful place to live? Israel.”

1917

First World War. Ottomans chose the side that wasn’t with America and Great Britain (oops); subsequently get their shit ruined. Brits roll into Israel and pledge to establish “a Jewish national home in Palestine”. No future conflict anticipated.

1918 – 1948

British rule.

1918 – 1948

Inexplicable upswing in British people everywhere being totally fucking stressed out.

1939 – 1945

Holocaust in Europe. :(

1948

State of Israel proclaimed into existence by the Brits. War erupts between Israelis, Palestinians, and pretty much everyone else in a 2 country radius. Britain backs slowly out of the room going, “ehhhhhhhhh”.

Though numerically and geographically overwhelmed, Israel has the support of something called America. Needless to say, Israel wins the war (after creating a little thing called the Israeli Defence Force – henceforth ‘IDF’) and sets about consolidating its borders.

1949

Armistice agreement signed with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon (all of Israel’s neighbours). Israel is inducted into the United Nations – which Arab states also got super pissed off about.

1956

Sinai Campaign. The IDF captures the Gaza Strip and the whole of the Sinai Peninsula, constituting much of what is modern-day Israel. The UN declared a Whoa Shit Emergency, but the entire operation only lasted about a week, so whatever. In addition to “reconstituting the ancient Jewish homeland”, the Israelis also succeeded, coincidently, in procuring access to the Straits of Tiran and an open trade route to Asia.

1962

Adolf Eichmann, who was a jerk, is tried and executed in Israel.

1967 – 1973

The Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War. Two more short conflicts between Israel and Egypt/Syria. Israel proves just how scrappy they are by winning both (mostly) decisively (kinda). Numerous disengagement, ceasefire and armistice agreements are signed.
Egypt also signs an agreement that closes its borders with the Gaza strip, a volatile Israeli-controlled area of Palestinian territory. This is seem as an abandonment of Palestinians by other Arab states.

1978

Camp David Accords are signed. They are essentially the plans for general peace and the formation of an autonomous Palestinian government. But that latter doesn’t really happen. ...Nor does the former.

1984

A bunch of Jews immigrate to Israel from Ethiopia. This isn’t really relevant to anything – I just thought it was interesting that there were Jews in Ethiopia.

1994

Palestinian self government installed in the Gaza strip and Jericho. Expands over the next few years into different areas of the West Bank. “Palestinian territory” essentially consists of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The West Bank is an area surrounding Jerusalem (which is Israeli) to the North, South and East. Everything West of that – from Jerusalem to the Mediterranean coast – is Israeli. The heavily militarized Gaza Strip is the tiny piece of land connecting Israel to Egypt. It is essentially a fortress, totally encapsulated by the IDF. Even its border with Egypt is closed (save the network of caves that connect the two).

This is where it gets (more) complicated.

Backtracking...

1987 – 1993

The First Intifada [Arabic: “Uprising”]. With no clear origin or central leadership, the First Intifada grew out of a general unrest, centered primarily in Palestinian refugee camps. The best description of the discontent I have heard is due to a perception amongst Palestinians of a “creeping process of de facto annexation”.

Sparks for conflict were abundant and unrest was rampant (the official containment policy of the Israelis was codenamed “Iron Fist” – go figure), so once hostilities began, they spread quickly. Casualties, for such a historically significant uprising, were low – 163 Israelis and 2,162 Palestinians (1,000 of whom were killed by other Palestinians as “collaborators”). The truly significant outcome was the shifting power structure within Palestine.

Up to this point, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) had been weak and not particularly influential. During the intifada, however, it emerged as the only obvious source of central leadership for the Palestinians. Unfortunately, it was also known as a terrorist organization by most of the world. After the Six Day War, Palestinians lost a great deal of faith in their Arab neighbours and began to radicalize. A dude named Yasser Arafat and his Fatah political party, which had connections to a number of paramilitary (“fedayeen”) groups, used this radicalization to take control of the PLO.

Even though the PLO was taken largely by surprise by the First Intifada, the world began to recognize it as the de facto leadership organization of the Palestinian people.

Another group that’s worth taking note of at this point is Hamas. It's based in Gaza and is a radical Sunni Islamic organization with a long history of doing horrible shit (suicide bombing civilian targets, using human shields, recruiting child soldiers).

1993

Oslo Peace Accords. The PLO and Israeli government secretly negotiated the Oslo Peace Accords as the First Intifada was winding down.

The Accords granted Palestinians the right to self-government. It also created the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was dominated by Yasser Arafat’s PLO and Fatah party. This marked a promisingly civilized turn in the PLO’s mission statement. From this point on, the PLO “officially recognized the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security”. Others did not agree.

2000 – 2005

Second Intifada. This one started for pretty much the same reasons as the first: people on both sides who were generally pissed off. Technically, this one is still ongoing, but violence began to ebb in 2005.

This one resonates in memory a little better that the older stuff due to the wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli military incursions that were all over the news for about half a decade.

2005

Remember Hamas? Palestine held its first legitimate series of municipal elections in 2005. And Hamas won them, taking 74 of 132 seats – ousting the more moderate Fatah party, which Palestinians saw as being corrupt, ineffectual and overly-bureaucratic.

Hamas has openly backed down from its previously (and emphatically) stated goal of “obliterating” Israel, but the core of its charter remains unchanged. The full ramifications of their new, and legitimized, leadership position remain to be seen. Needless to say, Israel was not pleased when they won the elections.

2005 – 2010

Hamas and Israel are still at each other’s throats. Israel, and just about every Western power that matters, still views Hamas (and by corollary, the PLO?) as a terrorist organization. Low-level violence simmers (if you can call Hellfire strikes, gun battles and mortar attacks “low-level”).

Just now

Israel and Palestine resolve their differences. Disney Holy Land is opened, the Jonas Brothers add a few Gaza tour dates, and Israeli and Palestinian musicians join forces to record an uplifting new rendition of ‘We Are the World’. All good, mom!

Glossary of terms I didn't necessarily use but are still important:

Hezbollah: An Islamist political and paramilitary party based in Beirut. They, like Hamas, are generally viewed as terrorists (probably because they've got a pretty strong track record of blowing up buses with suicide bombers and shelling civilian neighborhoods). They're important because they've managed to set off the odd full-scale war between Israel and Lebanon.

Settlers: Israeli civilians who "settle" in Palestinian territory. Their placement is a huge point of contention because they basically set up shop wherever they damn well please and are protected by the IDF.

Terrorist: Something that has become exponentially more difficult to define over the past decade. While organizations like Al Qaeda fall safely within the distinction, others have started to blur as they move away from paramilitary activity and into politics. Hezbollah, for instance, is known to the US as a terrorist organization, but the Brits recognize their political wing as legitimate and the EU doesn't say anything at all.

SPF 40: It is going to be very sunny when I get there. Best be prepared.

Zionism: In the broadest sense, it is the notion that Jews deserve control over the State of Israel by merit of ancestory, historical persecution and religious affiliation. Hard-line Zionism is typically the stance held by right-wing Israelis - particularly Settlers.

Parts of the Bangkok Entry I Don't Mind Publishing Under My Real Name

2010-05-11T18:29:00.000-07:00

I just found a write-up of my first few nights in Bangkok. If I had any brains, I would delete the whole goddamn thing. An excerpt:

The bus was mostly empty. I was so accustomed to the pangs of loneliness and homesickness that they were sort of comforting -- something familiar. It was a dark night; large portions of the city only nominally lit. The towers of the city center cast a pallid backdrop to the low, brown clouds. Khao San, however, was lit with neon and open flame.

From an infrastructural perspective, the road serves as a sort of grimy connective tissue between a busy commercial lane and a tangle of dilapidated apartment blocks near Bangkok’s commercial center. The only local foot traffic that Khao San sees is at the end of the work day when bleary-eyed workers make their way from their businesses on one end of the street to the brothels on the other. Culturally, Khao San is the stuff of backpacker legend. It’s where Leo drank cobra blood and found the map at the beginning of ‘The Beach’. It is the epicenter of almost all transient activity in a three country radius.

I stepped out of the bus and was immediately accosted by a handful of adolescents in battered sports jackets. They offered "the last room on Khao San". Simultaneously. I declined.

Setting out in search of accommodation on my own terms, further propositions came in a steady bombardment:

Room with fan - $3

Beer - $1

T-shirt - $4

Cocktail bucket (they tend to forsake the glass in favor of the plastic beach pales you made castle battlements with as a kid) - $4

Watch - $40, down to $5 at first sign of disinterest.

Then there are the drug dealers:

Opium/marijuana/highly suspect ecstasy pills - open to negotiation. (You can get coke too, but common wisdom is to avoid it like, well, Thai coke. High grade heroin is easier to come by than cocaine in the area due to its proximity to the Golden Triangle. See: 'American Gangster'. Both are white powders, and dealers rarely care enough about their customers' wellbeing to make the distinction. A lot of Westerners kill themselves in Asia with heroin overdoses. See: 'Pulp Fiction'). [Note: I don’t do drugs, but I am informed]

[Redacted]

The gross commercial overpopulation of the area and the sort of cutthroat capitalism practiced by the locals is disorienting at first, but I found it all fascinating once all of the individual catcalls had aggregated themselves into a babbling, foreign white noise.

I got a place to stay from the street lady who sold me a bowl of noodles. I’d taken my food and made the universal sleep gesticulation: Tilted head over folded hands. My server's eyes lit up and she waved excitedly for me to follow her. She abandoned her noodle cart on the street and led me into the building behind it and up a flight of stairs. We paused before opening the door to my room and she held up enough fingers to represent $2 worth of Baht. I gave her the money, she gave me the key.

The room was a Malarial petting zoo. Roaches, bedbugs, the scratching of mice inside the walls and a grainy haze of mosquitoes that spawned in the hall puddles. The mattress was out of an episode of Dexter; a blackened stain in the middle and no sheets or blankets. The pillow looked like it had been used as an oil mop in a mechanic's shop. There were no windows. But at least the door had two bolts and an extra loop for my own lock.

I dragged the nightstand away from the wall, placed my pack on top of it and locked the room as I left. My resolve not to actually sleep or touch anything in the room imbued me with a second wind for sampling the city’s nightlife.

[Redacted]

“Don’t drink the vodka,” Chris said. I’d just met him, but we were getting along well. “They refill them with homemade stuff. Can’t fault their initiative, but it’s fucking blindness potion.” I pulled a beer out of a cooler behind the bar and put money down.

Megan had fallen asleep on Chris’ arm. She breathed heavy, counter-nausea breaths.

“You want to check out another patio bar I heard about? Supposed to have fire dancers,” Chris continued.

“She going to make it?” I asked, nodding at Megan (who very obviously would not).

“I have no idea who this girl is.”

“Ah, okay.” He propped her against the bar and waved/shrugged to the group of girls she’d come in with. We took our beers with us.

Chris was in his mid-20s and a former member of the British Army. He was on month six in the process of burning or liquefying and drinking every last cent he’d saved over his 5 years of service. He wore a Tibetan prayer flag around his wrist, a half-finished tattoo on his neck and a black tshirt that just said ‘one’ on the front. I’d asked him what he did in the army and he said, “Soldiering”.

[Redacted… Bangkok is ridiculous]

Anyway... Bangkok. I don’t typically recommend a visit. I can’t imagine anyone would.

But it is the way it is because visits are sort of unavoidable. It’s the doorway. Barring some cataclysmic shake-up of the Southeast Asian economic landscape, if you travel, Bangkok will get you eventually. It just does. If you ever find your way there, just relax and enjoy.

Argumentum Ad Hominem

2010-04-26T17:34:00.000-07:00

I recently put in for an office transfer with my work (my organization operates all over the place). My boss approved it, and I just got another approval from the director of the other office. I think an IM conversation I just had sums it all up nicely:

Matt: Sup.

Patrick: Yo.

M: How's Africa?

P: Good. Moving to Hebron in June.

M: I’m moving to Shababasaur. I can make up words too.

P: You’re an idiot.

M: At least I live in a real place.

P: Hebron = Palestinian city in the West Bank.

M: Seriously?

P: Yeah.

M: Why would you move there? God you're dumb.

P: To tell you the truth, I’m having a hard time articulating my motivation for this one.

M: My previous comment is a pretty concise way to do it.

P: There’s an element of truth to it.

M: How long will you be there?

P: Two months – until Ramadan. Month off. Then I might go back if I like it.

M: If you like it? What, like if the club scene is hoppin’?

P: Hah.

M: How are you going to come back to the States if you’re on the goddamn no-fly list?

P: Pff. Apparently there are a lot of expats there. Hebron and Ramallah are the hotbeds for NGO/political activity.

M: You remember Sean? He’s moving to Indonesia to do jungle tours or surf classes or something equally ridiculous. Sean is smart.

P: Does sound nice. South America is still on the itinerary. But honestly... that sounds less interesting than what I’m doing.

M: Hmm. Well, there you go.

The move isn't a 100% certainty yet, but I'd put it above 90. Check out the map in the last post for an overview of the scenery. I'm pretty psyched. For a country the size of New Jersey, there's a TON of stuff to see (New Jersey should really be ashamed of itself).

More to come.

More to follow....

2010-04-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

(Click to enlarge)

Fes, Morocco - Southern Circuit Trip

2010-04-16T07:19:00.000-07:00

“We’ll go now?”

“Well, I will. But I’m going alone.” I was beyond the point of annoyance and making a concerted effort to control my temper.

“Your friend said you want a guide today.”

“No, he didn’t. And that’s my friend, not me.”

“I have been waiting since ten o’clock,” gesturing toward a time on his watch, three hours past.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I broke eye contact and began to walk down the narrow passage which lead from the riad to the city’s central market. He followed.

“It’s rude for you to make me wait.”

“I'm sorry, but I didn’t ask you to come.” Anthony and Al had stayed in the riad to avoid the conversation I was having.

“Why will you not come with me?”

“It’s not necessary. I prefer to walk alone.” I measured my voice as I spoke.

“Friend, please,” he caught up and walked sideways ahead of me, “why don’t I come with you?”

“No. I'm really not interested.”

“Why.”

“Because the words came out of my mouth.”

He paused, frustrated, to gather his thoughts. “You can call me later?”

“No.” It was the 2nd of 4 times I would encounter the faux (unofficial) guide.

In the off-season, when gullible and lazy tourist populations are in the decline, the shills and drug dealers of Fes are at their most determined. They will press each conversation to the razor’s edge of physical altercation, walk away, and re-engage a few hours later as if you were a beloved relative. The westerner’s hope that some fraction of unsolicited attention might be a genuine extension of friendship is invariably cause for disappointment. It’s a cancer on the touristic appeal of the city. Fortunately, the body is strong enough as a whole that most of the time the obnoxious little cyst can be overlooked.

Tourists, with their euros and dollars and SLR cameras, would not come to Fes if her charm had not been so astonishingly well-preserved over the centuries. The old medina has hovered at or just above the poverty line throughout its 1,200 year history. Buildings and avenues crumble artfully, doorhandles and cobblestones worn to a mirror finish; upkeep performed dutifully with an eye toward maintenance rather than improvement. Angular props, built with bound planks of plywood and paid for by the UNESCO foundation, are sporadically found wedged between buildings, preventing collapse.

The city’s main tourist attractions; a mosque, a school and a few tanneries have been so overgrown with additional housing and storefronts over the centuries that their facades are almost completely obscured. It’s only the odd ornately decorated, guarded door that will open onto a stunning ancient compound. It’s here where the city’s tourist dollars are really seen. Islamic calligraphy, painstakingly carved into porcelain and inlaid with jade is immaculately preserved within; youths tout fake designer jeans to tourists a few meters outside.

Automobiles are barred by police from coming inside the medina walls (easily enforced - there hasn’t been a car invented narrow or agile enough to navigate alleyways). Men lead donkeys, loaded with cargo between the souks as the means of bulk conveyance.

The three of us were staying in a beautiful riad that Al’s family had booked almost three years before. They’d had to cancel their stay and the proprietor had kept the deposit, insisting that there was no expiration date on its use. Riads are fortress-like housing compounds that traditionally house large families – often extending several lateral steps. Their rooms are built around spacious inner courtyards where most of the mingling and eating is done. Very little conversation is necessary to make them suitable for tourist intake as they are essentially built like boutique hotels – each wing of the family taking up its own, semi-enclosed unit. Beautiful and comfortable though it was, however, it was extremely expensive (for us). So we had resolved to stay only a few nights, and then head to one of the youth hostels nearer to the primary medina entrance.

I would vent my frustration with the city’s more aggressive salesmen a few more times before I left. One rug salesmen dragged me into his shop and started pouring glasses of tea while a few of his workers dutifully arranged their wares before me. I was thirsty, so I asked for several refills.

“You remember outside when I said I wasn’t going to buy any rugs?”

“Oh yes, no need to buy – just look.”

“Okay,” I said and drank my tea.

Fifteen minutes later, I had finished my tea and was on my way out of the shop - to the owner’s intense dissatisfaction. He finally postulated that I didn’t want any rugs because I was racist. “I live in Casablanca,” I told him in Arabic. He looked pissed.

Sales pitches usually start very soft (“come see my shop – just look and take pictures!”). Once you’re inside, some hospitality is extended to get you to stay. The hospitality is partially genuine, rooted in Islamic tradition. But once you’re sitting, the dealer rapidly becomes more assertive. Most shopkeepers bank heavily on the fact that Westerners often fail to apply analytic filters to what they’re told, being unaccustomed to having salesmen lie to their face. “This rug took 30 hours to make by hand,” “They sell for twice as much on Ebay,” “The dye will never come off.” All said with well-practiced earnestness and in disarmingly imperfect English.

Fortunately, the anger that they express if you ignore their pitch or poke holes in their assertions is equally disingenuous. In some cases, you can even circumvent their desire to take your money and have an actual conversation.

Fes is the reason people come to Morocco. It’s a glimpse at modern life trying to integrate itself with a largely impoverished, millennia-old city. And it’s a beautiful, stunning thing to see. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be real.

Bribery and Assault Rifles, Cambodia

2010-04-15T04:57:00.000-07:00

The AK-47 is a selective fire, gas operated 7.62mm assault rifle, first developed in the Soviet Union... Even after six decades, due to its durability, low production cost and ease of use, the model and its variants remain the most widely used and popular assault rifles in the world. It has been manufactured in many countries and has seen service with regular armed forces as well as irregular, revolutionary and terrorist organizations worldwide.

- Wikipedia

I pulled back the bolt on the charging handle and stared into the chamber for the third or fourth time, moving it out of the shadow cast by my shoulders so I could get a better look. The inside of the barrel was black, even in the sun - the first round was perched, ready, at the top of the magazine. My palms were beginning to sweat against the stock. A loaded AK-47 wasn’t as heavy as I thought it would be. I shifted it amateurishly in my hands before releasing the slide. A Kalashnikov is meant to function properly for decades with minimal upkeep. Its construction is rugged and simple. It has only 4 moving parts – about as many as a fancy wine opener.

I looked back at Adam who was staring at me in rapt attention. He'd been neglecting the cigarette between his lips - the dangling column of ash had burned almost to the filter. He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head at me expectantly. I looked at the owner of the gun, a diminutive Cambodian police officer who we’d befriended. He didn't speak English, so he just shrugged and gave a thumbs up.

As far as I could tell, all you have to do is insert the ammunition into the bottom of the gun, look down the sights and pull the trigger. Then anything on the other side of the barrel would be obliterated spectacularly. So easy a child could do it.

I turned back to the firing range and brought the rifle up to my shoulder, shifting its center of gravity to different positions relative to my line of sight. Staring down the sights of the most infamous assault rifle in the world was an odd sensation. I felt like I should be yelling at someone in Russian. My eyes locked their focus onto the silhouette a few dozen yards away... then closer, to the iron sights as the bobbed unapologetically over the chest and head of the paper man.

"Bang bang bang!" Yelled the Cambodian policeman. Fuck, I swore, and almost fumbled the gun. The little brown man started laughing so hard he cried.

I rolled my eyes and smiled as I readied the gun again. My mind was a little bit frantic: how many millimeters, how much pressure, how long until the bullets started flying? So I squeezed slowly, continually, purposefully. Thunder. My eyes snapped shut instinctually. There was a tremendous string of staccato explosions as the stock drummed itself into my shoulder. It ended the moment I released the trigger - no more than a second after I had compressed it. I opened my eyes again.

"Fucking awesome," Adam said behind me. The policeman said something excitedly in Khmer.

I stared downfield at the tiny holes I'd left in the paper. For all the noise and force, I sort of expected the paper to have been vaporized. But it just sort of fluttered pitifully. Two of the little bullets had fallen harmlessly onto the white over my imaginary foe's shoulder. The third had landed below the neck, about where the collarbone would be. I couldn’t tell if there were more.

Our assault rifle guide piped up again, saying a lot of things very quickly in Khmer. He was smiling and waving his hands around, apparently gesticulating a detailed explanation of something. At one point he lined up his two index fingers in a trajectory away from his eye which I took to mean “aim better”.

Adam and I had been introduced to our police friend a day earlier by a local restaurateur named Bruce. Bruce spoke good English, so we engaged him when we could - asking about his work, his family, his country. Bruce, like every other Cambodian we'd had the opportunity to speak with, was a cheerful and outwardly goodhearted person. He'd told us about his brother the police officer and assured us, almost pleadingly, that the broad understanding tourists held about the Cambodian Police (that they were corrupt and malicious to the man) was overblown. His brother, he said, never took money from foreigners - he couldn't even afford to buy his wife a present for her birthday. Bruce had never asked us for anything besides our bar tabs, and even then he had flatly rejected every gratuity we offered - so we asked if there was anything we could do to help.

"No, no," Bruce said. "But he is back in the kitchen with the dishes - you should meet him when he is finished."

Some hours and half a dozen beers later, Bruce's brother emerged from the kitchen and took off the apron that covered his police uniform. He put it back into a closet behind the bar, took out the AK-47 he had left there and slung it over his shoulder. When he sat down to talk to us, the presence of the rifle was a small elephant. Adam and I, both drunk, found it difficult to reconcile the competing horror and curiosity that it evoked - just dangling from his shoulder, occasionally bouncing against his chair as he spoke.

Learning to use it must have come up at some point in the conversation - and the idea must not have been new to Bruce's brother. His face lit up immediately. In fact, stories are rife in backpacker circles about the Cambodian police and military renting out their firearms to tourists. There are whole businesses dedicated to it. One British backpacker had sworn to me that he had been offered a live cow and an RPG to shoot at it for $200. Bruce did a bit more rough translating (which couldn't have made much sense by the time we slurred out the English and he translated it into Khmer) and we all agreed to meet the next day at noon.

The rifle was still slung over the little policeman's shoulder when we arrived. He and Bruce both smiled their bright white Cambodian smiles and waved to us as we approached. Adam and I both gave Bruce's brother the equivalent of $9*, and I threw in a postcard I'd brought from New Zealand. He seemed to be more excited about the postcard than he was about the money; holding in outstretched arms like he were hanging it on a wall. He clapped my shoulder appreciatively and started talking to us in Khmer as we walked to his truck.

None of this ever registered as a bad idea. Writing it in my journal the next day – “got in unmarked vehicle destined for undisclosed location with heavily armed Cambodian” – struck me for a moment as reckless.

We’d spent the first 10 minutes at the firing range (the land behind some guy’s house) listening to Bruce’s brother explaining things to us. We understood nothing. But the gesticulations helped. Somewhat surprisingly (and perhaps a little disconcerting) his arm waving, combined with what I had seen in movies, actually proved to be all the formal instruction that was required in loading, readying and firing the weapon.

I was pleased with my first salvo of rounds. If some foe of mine took a bullet in the chest, I felt confident that they would be fucked. Maybe even dead. I smiled and took aim again. In video games, you never aim at someone’s head with an automatic weapon right away. You aim somewhere on the torso (or “center mass” in gamer/military speak). It’s a bigger target and the recoil from the initial few rounds will usually raise the barrel a few fractions of a degree. So the 2nd, 3rd and 4th rounds will bounce upwards towards the head. I always thought that made perfect sense, and saw no reason why it wouldn’t work in real life.

I fired again, for a little longer, concentrating on keeping my eyes open. More rounds in the black; one of them through the neck.

“What’s it feel like,” Adam asked.

I fired off a few more rounds. “Fuck.”

I kept shooting until the rifle went ‘click’. Very Hollywood. I squeezed the trigger again to be sure. Click. I thought about it, and the weapon seemed a little bit lighter. Empty. I still kept it pointed in the air as I handed it back for fear a phantom round might still be perched above the firing pin.

It was an utterly foreign, almost euphoric, experience for the time that we were there. We took turns with the gun for an hour or so. Even tried to talk to Bruce’s brother for a bit, but without much success. Adam and I were getting good by the end. Even Bruce seemed impressed when I snapped in a new clip, leveled the weapon and deftly sent two fresh rounds into the silhouette’s face.

Broader implications of the experience would unfold over the next few days.

[*$18.00 USD is, as of 2007, 1% of the per capita GDP in Cambodia. The American equivalent would be $460.00]

Angkor, Cambodia

2010-04-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

About 900 years ago, a guy named Suryavarman charged a rival prince's war elephant on foot. He leapt onto the animal, pulled himself up the harness and stabbed the rival prince through the heart with a sword. Thus, leadership of the enormous Khmer Empire was consolidated. A few years later, construction of the Angkor Wat temple complex would begin -- the architectural zenith of the entire region.

“This is so stupid,” a statement that has punctuated some of the better things I’ve done. “This is so stupid,” one of Caesar’s Lieutenants must have said, looking back at the Rubicon.

The moat around Angkor Wat was silver with moon and star light.

“It’s so quiet,” Lucy said. We all sat and stared, the absence of a response accentuating the fact.

The temple looked further away in the darkness. Like a range of hand-wrought mountains on the horizon. The causeway seemed to stretch for miles.

“There’s probably an unmarked grave around here somewhere for trespassing tourists,” Liam said. It was a flawed attempt at humor in Cambodia. There probably was.

We’d agreed not to use our flashlights to avoid detection, so I strained to examine my map by moonlight. “Ta Prohm, the jungle temple where they filmed Tomb Raider, is about four miles from here.”

“We should probably stay off the paths,” Liam said, letting his tone remind us of his initial reticence
“You’re probably right,” I conceded. I was nervous about getting caught, too.

“I’m alright here,” Lucy said. “We’ve been walking all day anyway.”

The Angkor Temples are near the top of the SE Asian tourist checklist. There are dozens of western-style hotels in Siem Reap, the nearest city, all of which operate Disney-esque shuttle services to and from the site. Foreigners pay $20 for a day’s access – about three weeks income for the average Cambodian.. There had been thousands of people there earlier in the day, crowding and jostling. Some annoyingly over-precocious English tween had blathered at me nonstop while I was trying to watch the sunset. Allowing children into museums or historic sites is about as good an idea as setting yourself on fire. Same goes for the obese. I’d had to wait in line for almost 20 minutes just to use some stairs.

We’d been walking back to the shuttle boarding point at the end of the day when Lucy stopped and said, “let’s just stay.”

“No,” Liam knee-jerked.

“Like, overnight?” I asked, already sold.

“Yeah. We’re just going to have to come back and pay [$20] again tomorrow. I’m surprised more people don’t just camp out here.”

“Hmm.”

“There’s nowhere to sleep here Lucy. And it’s probably illegal.”

“It’s definitely illegal,” I said. “I asked a policeman earlier.”

“We’ll be able to sleep if we get tired enough,” Lucy said cheerfully. “You can tell it’s going to be a warm night.”

We broke off from the herd and into the woods, up a hill and into a clearing overlooking the largest temple – Angkor Wat. Even off the trail there was no grass, just over-trodden dirt and worn branches that the multitudes used as handrails.

“I’m surprised more people don’t do this,” Lucy said as we settled in.

We talked for a few hours as more stars twinkled into being and the conspicuous silence was replaced by a din of cicada clicks. The occasional flashlight beam bounced mindlessly across the road in the distance. We’d stop talking and go stone-still whenever the dancing lights got close.

I was curious about what would have happened if we’d been caught. Doing something illegal in Cambodia is not the same as doing something illegal in the United States. In a Western representative democracy, penalties are legislated to be commensurate to the crime and are accurately enforced. A couple dumb kids staying overnight in a park get yelled at, or, at very worst, a fine. In a country like Cambodia, there is a disconnect between law enforcement and legislation. The power balance in a questioning or arrest is about the same as a mugging.

I had already paid one bribe a few days earlier (Border guards had demanded an “unofficial passport duty” upon entry, as well as an additional fee for the inconvenience of having to accept Laotian currency. It came to about $14.50 – exactly the amount of cash in my wallet.), and would pay a second before I left. It is a profound culture shock to be robbed by a police officer. A badge and gun are symbols of safety in my mind. But as is the case in America, officers are just regular guys who make a regular wage. The difference being that that wage in the US is enough to buy a new car every few years and put your kids through college. In Cambodia, it is barely enough to stave off malnourishment. And that disparity, in most cases, is greater than the value of integrity, or even human decency.

A steep fine, doubtless, would have been the price of getting caught in a national park after hours. The most worrisome element of such a payment are the theatric lengths that the officer will go through to get it. Horror stories circulate of backpackers caught with drugs or prostitutes who spend a few nights in jail while they wait for sizeable wire transfers. Such stories are all the incentive a reasonable person should need to avoid serious crime in Asia. Actual jail terms, handed down by a judge for something like drug trafficking, are only debatably more desirable than a death sentence.

We didn’t get caught that night. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you,” an American accent as I sat up slowly the next morning. It was still dark, but the noise of a forming crowd chattered through the trees.

“What time is it?” One of those default questions you can articulate while your brain is powering on.

“A little after five,” the American said – a man about my age with a big digital camera and day pack slung over his shoulder. “The park just opened.”

Made it, I thought. “Cool,” groggily.

“Did you guys sleep here all night?”

“Yeah.”

“You allowed to do that?”

“Definitely not.”

“Heh. Cool.” A like-mind.

I smiled and nodded. “Spot’s all yours.” I patted the ground. “Just don’t get caught.”

Reunification Express, Vietnam

2010-04-14T06:18:00.000-07:00

This post is from a series of older journal entries I wrote about my trip across Asia in '08. The Reunification Express is the aptly named rail line that now connects the former and current capitals of Vietnam (Saigon and Hanoi, respectively). I covered most of its length on my way to the Chinese border.

I’d been on the train for over a day. The garbage smell had established its residence in my nostrils so thoroughly that I had to concentrate to notice it. The man in the bunk above mine snored.

I’d been lucky to find the bed. Its previous occupant had disembarked on the previous stop and I had managed to seize his spot the instant he stepped away. A quarter of a second later and someone else would have.

The sleeping cabins were cramped and filthy, but at least afforded their occupants space to lay down. The only horizontal space in coach was the aisle where the chickens walked.

There had been a sealed plastic bag at the foot of the bed containing sheets and a pillow. I opened it and threw the contents on the floor. They were dirty and worn – only packaged to appear laundered. So I was cold as I slept – the breeze broke past the window frames and my jacket was a pillow. First class on the Reunification Express.

Twenty four hours down, twelve to go.

* * *

The man who took my ticket at the Saigon station could have easily have been a thief as a station attendant. No one wore uniforms, no one spoke English, and everyone was yelling. It wouldn’t have actually mattered who he was though. I made my way through the clusterfuck of a waiting area and directly onto the platform where I chose a train car at random and boarded without impediment. The handle next to the door was worn, warm and damp with palm sweat.

I couldn’t tell where I was supposed to go because the part of the ticket I’d kept was entirely in Vietnamese. I just took the first available seat. I’d boarded the only train marked ‘Hanoi’, so I figured I would at least be going in the right direction (the Vietnamese use Roman script – an adapted alphabet developed by Portuguese missionaries in the 1600s – an incredible convenience when it comes to navigation). Whoever had designed the wooden plank benches must not only have been on a budget, but held a robust contempt for the concept of ergonomics and the comfort of his fellow man. I shifted uncomfortably as people filed into the car.

The older man sitting by the window to my right smiled happily and extended his hand and a greeting in Vietnamese. He was finishing a cup of instant noodles and threw the container on the ground after he had finished. It drew my attention to the floor – a cement of sunflower seeds, animal hair and tea leaves. The woman sitting ahead of me finished an apple and casually pitched the core into the aisle. Most of the passengers spat.

As the train filled, I came to realize that my bench was not intended for two people, as my privileged Western assumptions had led me to believe, but four. A woman and her young son sidled in next to me, boxing me tightly into the noodle cup man. They all seemed ecstatic to be sitting next to me. The woman immediately showed me a moisture-wrinkled photograph of her other children and nearly cried when I reciprocated with a picture of my sisters.

My assumptions that one’s presence in a tiny train car dictated the use of an inside voice also proved to be in error. Enormous families, 10-12 people, filling several benches, yelled jovially to one another. The definition of humanity changes at that density – an individual becomes a cell, language a din, sights and smells are an indistinguishable blur.

I was taken aback by the situation to say the least, but tried not to show it. I felt like a Muslim in a strip club. Everyone else was having a good time – I just felt dirty, claustrophobic and like I was in very real danger of losing my mind. [I’m not sure how to fill the stripper part of that analogy. Maybe they were the luridly writhing sack of semi-live squirrels that one guy brought onboard and flung into the baggage compartment – trapped, terrified and probably eating each other.]

The train rolled forward like it was powered by a hundred tiny men banging cooking pots together. People in my car clapped, presumably for the lack of boiler explosions. A guy fiddled with his window but it wouldn’t budge, so he spat his gum on the ground with everything else.

We rolled cautiously to the speed of 35 miles per hour, which would be maintained for the remainder of the journey. People really started to settle into their seats and made themselves at home. Blankets were draped over everything as make-shift partitions. Children wedged themselves into the overhead baggage compartments and slept. The noise was incredible.

I toured other cabins to stretch my legs every few hours. I didn’t have access to the first class sleeper cars. The attendants that guarded that side of the train looked at me with pity, as if I had carelessly trapped myself on the wrong side of the door. The 2nd class sleeper cars, though more expensive, were worse than the seated areas. Their occupants took further liberty in making themselves at home. Men were half naked and strewn across their bunks like dead birds below paneled windows. The refuse on the ground was so thick that it opposed foot traffic. And every room seemed to be overbooked – six beds, stacked three to a side without room to sit up, and always eight or nine people. I ate bananas and jerky to purposely constipate myself and avoid the horrifying prospect of having to use one of the overflowing plague chambers at the end of every other car.

The views offered respite. The route runs North-South along the incomparable Vietnamese coastline. From the right side of the train, the ocean is a near permanent fixture. Almost preternaturally steep bluffs and black-green jungles painted views to the left. Massive bomb craters were starkly evident – overgrown and camouflaged, but in deep, perfect circles. The rail lines, I assumed, would have been a popular target.

* * *

A child vomited in the aisle outside my room and for two hours the cabin attendants strode carefully over or around it. I resolved to get off at the next stop – Hoi An. My ticket would have taken me all the way to the capital, but I was finished.

The woman I’d shown the picture of my sisters to saw me gathering my things and gave me a little bag of rice balls. For all the Vietnamese I’d met who chose to conform to their aggressive and impersonal stereotypes, a gem like her will always brighten one’s outlook on the population as a whole. Her age struck me a few moments after I stepped off the train and bit into one of the little rice balls. She was just over 40 – maybe 45 – a child of the war. Her father and mine might have been enemies.

I didn’t want to stay long – there was too much I wanted to do up North. I’d just wanted off of the train. My disembarkation had been knee-jerk and illogical.

I stayed the night. A little bar a few blocks from the train station advertised rooms. There was a good mix of locals and foreigners sitting at tightly packed wooden tables inside and the bartender smiled at me from behind a screen of cigarette smoke.

I sat at the bar after dropping my things in the little room upstairs. The muscles that had been listing toward atrophy on the train refused to carry me for any further exploration of the town. It was times like those – sitting and drinking at a shoddy bar, happily eating whatever they brought out from the kitchen – I was happiest to be alone. I would be back on the train the next day, the opportunity to explore another beautiful Vietnamese town; wasted. But I didn’t care. And there was no one there to second-guess.

Scorpions Under My Tent - Rome, Italy

2010-04-10T03:59:00.000-07:00

I probably looked like a lunatic. I was furiously molesting the bottom of my tent with the end of a 3 foot stick. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was still high, turning every rock on the ground into a skillet. I hunched over, trying to get a good view of the cracks and nooks that formed under the base of my tent, stick in hand, prodding away.

“Hey man. What are you doing?” He spoke with a Portuguese accent, but I couldn’t place which side of the Pacific it came from.

“Oh, hey!” Startled, I looked up, doing my best Wild Eyed Crazy Person. The end of my stick was still lodged under the foundation of my tent.

“Julian,” he said, sliding a large, beaten rucksack off of his shoulder and extending a hand, “you alright?”

“Patrick,” I said, shaking his hand, “There’s a huge fucking scorpion under my tent.”

“Fuck.” Emphasis on the ‘u’, to express dismay.

“Yeah.” I looked back down at my stick and wiggled it. “I’m trying to get him to come out.”

“I think I’m supposed to be staying in that tent, too. Where’d you get that stick?” His tone was of resolve.

There were 40 of the tents lined up under a shady cluster of trees at the top of a hill in the camp. There was a clearing a few feet away with a picnic table where you could look out over the suburbs of Rome. Each tent was meant to serve as a semi-permanent structure, like the ones you see in documentaries about refugees. Each slept two people. Or 6 if you’re from Somalia.

“There’s another one under that tree over there,” I pointed. The trees that crested the long line of tents were supposed to create some semblance of relief from the sun. Unfortunately, no amount of shade could keep the tents from becoming uninhabitable with heat from about 8 in the morning until the same time at night.

“How far under there is he?” it’s best to assign male distinctions to an enemy for whom you wish death.

“I’m not sure. I can’t see him anymore.”

“If he comes out, we should smash him with a rock.”

“Yeah.” I stared down at the gap in the blocks I was prodding.

“Can scorpions jump?” Julian asked cautiously.

I looked up from my stick. “No… What? Can they?”

“I think that’s what they heard. Because they don’t make webs or something, so they have to tackle their pray and… fuckin’, you know, stab it.” He gesticulated the point by flinging one hand at the other and making a hard, jabbing motion into his palm.

“Fuck.” Again, on the ‘u’.

“Yeah.” He leaned down and examined the rocks, wiggling a loose one with his own stick.

“Did you know they had scorpions in Italy?” I asked, clearing some dirt away from the base of another rock.

“Yeah. I saw a couple of them while I was walking; just outside Bologna.”

“There decent hiking up there?”

“Dunno. I walked here from Portugal.”

I looked up from my stick. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. It’s fucking far.” He kept poking. “From Porto.”

I still wasn’t looking at my stick. I was dumbstruck. “You walked across all of Spain, France and most of Italy?”

“I hitchhiked from Zaragoza to Andorra [Eastern Spain to the French border], but the guy tried to steal my pack, so I don’t do that anymore.”

“That’s awesome, dude.” Some of the bark was coming off of my stick, so I picked at it.

“You fly here?” Like he was asking what flavor sissy cake I preferred.

“…Yeah,” embarrassed. “So you’re Portuguese?”

“Yep. And you’re American?” He smiled up at me.

“Accent give me away?”

“Yeah. And you want to hit the scorpion with a rock. A Canadian would want to catch it and release it into the wild or something.”

I laughed and we both enjoyed our moment of masculine scorn for another people. That quickly subsided however, when I remembered that I had just seen a scorpion next to my sleeping bag that needed killing. The heat was probably making me complacent. I wiped my brow, furrowed it fiercely, and got back to work.

“I think I see him over here,” Julian said with equal parts excitement and anticipation. “Whoa shit, I see a claw.”

I grabbed a rock in my free and ran over. “Can you make him come out?”

“No. Look.” He knelt and pointed into the rocks. “He’s hiding under that big one.”

“We should use our sticks together and try to grab the claw like chopsticks.”

Julian looked at me like I was retarded.

“Seriously. Hold this rock.” I gave him the rock. “And give me your stick.” I took his stick.

“This is an awful idea.”

I ignored him and concentrated on my sticks. Two of the ends were fairly pointy, so I lowered myself and steadied them on my knee. I lined them up as best I could, holding each one between the thumb and index finger of either hand, and inched them toward our adversary. His brown claws wobbled back and forth as my sticks got closer. I couldn’t quite make out his body or tail. I saw Julian holding the rock at the ready in my peripheral vision. The scorpion shifted to the left underneath the rock; its claws still protruding into the open. I shifted my body weight so I could steady the sticks for the last few inches.

“You guys alright?” A girl walking by asked in a Spanish accent, startling me.
I rolled my eyes and Julian shushed her angrily.

“There’s a scorpion under our tent,” I explained, letting my tone express my annoyance at her intrusion.

She took a few steps backwards and was quiet.

I looked back down at my sticks, and began sliding them further forward.

It wasn’t necessary to move them the last inch or so forward, since as soon as they got close enough, the scorpion shot out of his hole and seized the end of the stick with his pincer.

“Fuck!” I spasmed, all but dropping the sticks. Luckily, in my moment of panic, I had dropped the end of my second stick down on the edge of the scorpion’s claw, trapping it in place. “I THINK I GOT IT!” Speaking louder than I intended to.

I pulled out the sticks quickly, pulling the scorpion along with them. As soon as it was out in the open, Julian hurled the rock down as hard as he could, completely missing the insect.

“Fuck!”

I fumbled the sticks, releasing the scorpion’s claw, dropping it to the ground. Someone shrieked. Maybe me.

Julian leapt past me toward the scorpion, furiously stomping at the ground. Dirt and dust lifted up around him, rocks tumbled from their places and profanities flew. When everything finally settled, Julian and I were staring down at an exceptionally dead scorpion.

“Cool,” Julian said, almost out of breath. The girl gave us a funny look and walked off.

“Nice work, man.”

“Thanks. You too …with the, uh, sticks.”

“Thanks.”

We stared for a few moments at the dead scorpion in silence before I spoke again:
“You want to get a beer?”

“Yes,” Julian nodded solemnly.

We turned away from the tent and started walking off toward the camp’s bar.

“You must be tired from walking all the way from fucking Portugal.”

“Yeah.”

Family Arrives, Everyone Plays Tourist, Sarah is Momentarily Displeased with the Accommodation

2010-04-06T17:25:00.000-07:00

“You have to be fucking kidding me,” Sarah said so softly that only those standing immediately next to her could hear.

Elizabeth heard her, laughed and skipped ahead to where I was walking. “Did you hear what Sarah said?”

We rounded another corner of the narrow dirt alleyway that ostensibly connected our rented apartment with the main cobblestone thoroughfare of the medina. Sarah’s displeasure with our course was understandable. Had the approach we walked been in any part of the United States, there would be strong odds that it did not lead to a refurbished riad apartment, but some kind of redneck drug factory or murder garage. I extended my arms slightly, tapping the dirty walls on either side as we walked. Men worked overhead on aggressively hazardous-looking wooden scaffolds, roping buckets of muddy cement to one another with a Gilligan-esque system of pulleys.

The apartment I’d rented was actually the quarters used for visiting groups of women for a much larger riad (family home built around a central courtyard). Islamic architecture is foremost family oriented, and secondly; built with a mind for introversion. On the second point, for instance; the largest, most important mosque in Fes is almost completely unrecognizable from the outside. It is so overrun with housing and shops that its facade has been completely buried. It’s only after locating one of its arched doorways and gaining entrance that you take in what a grand and meticulously artful building it really is. Large homes are similar. It often seems like the approach and facade are designed purposely to belie the comfort and opulence of the interior. Entry rooms for riads are often more expansive than the streets that lead up to them.

I was worried when we came to Fes that my family would be subjected to the same level of harassment that my friends and I faced when we first visited. But my fears were largely unfounded. Going totally unharassed anywhere in Morocco (especially when travelling with young women) it impossible, but Fes was much better than I anticipated. It’s widely known that there is a hierarchy of tourist marks. Touts and faux-guides will always ask a set of questions, in addition to making visual assessments, to determine which demographic you fall under. For instance, middle-aged American tourists with DSLRs hanging from their necks and fanny packs tied around their waists will be harassed far more frequently than scruffy Latin American 20-somethings with rucksacks on their back. (Though the latter will have to deal with drug dealers). The hierarchy of value of nationalities in descending order: Japanese, Korean, American, Western European, Gulf Arab, Latin American, Arab, Other. For tourist types: Elderly, family men, adult women, backpackers with good gear, backpackers with shitty gear and baggy French cheesecloth pants.

Utilizing the aforementioned information, I determined that my parents and sisters would encounter a near constant barrage of commercial offers and demands. But again, it was not the case. Apparently there is an exception clause to the whole thing. Nuclear families, traveling as a unit, are left alone. That’s the only rationale I can think of. Traditional Moroccan cities like Fes have a tremendous amount of respect for the sanctity of family, and I think it immunized us. When I moved off on my own, for instance, or when either of my sisters did, the shills were instantly on the attack. But travelling together; total peace.

Foresight

2010-04-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

It’s not so much thought or planning that determines the things I do. More often than not, it’s conversation, followed by impulse. While this may sound like the thought process of a crazy person, I’ve gotten pretty good at trusting my instincts. I mean, I can hardly argue with the results –life is pretty sweet. This entry, recorded mostly for posterity, should serve as the record for the origins of a future expedition.

“Jeff started dating a crazy Spanish lady who almost broke his knees,” Ben said.

A pack of illiterate Moroccans bayed obscenities at one another from the street below my window. Jeff and Ben’s travel packs sat conspicuously below the shutters. They’d arrived from Madrid and Paris, respectively, earlier that afternoon.

“Spanish chicks are awesome,” I said.

“No, like, we-almost-had-to-move-when-Jeff-broke-up-with-her crazy,” Ben clarified.

Jeff nodded and began to expound. “It’s hard enough to run your own business anywhere in the world.” He paused and gathered his thoughts. “Imagine the hurtles a single Western woman would face running a dive shop in Central America.”

I nodded in appreciation.

“Well, in the absence of a clear system for resolving commercial or personal disputes – typically called a ‘legal system’ in countries like ours – business owners are left to explore other avenues of conflict resolution. ...How do I explain this?” He asked himself.

Ben: “There was a phrase we heard once in a while when we lived there. If someone were to say, ‘I called a guy from Almirante’, it meant that they were having a problem. Almirante is on the mainland, so the person they called would be outside of the locus of reprisal of the island community. They would come to the island and solve the problem.”

“Usually by stabbing or knee-breaking,” Jeff said.

“Right. Like this coke dealer we knew...” Ben reached backward over his head and tapped somewhere near the top of his spine. “...right between the shoulder blades.”

“Fuck,” I said. “Like a hit? How do you know that wasn’t a regular drug-related shanking?”

“Oh, it was almost certainly drug-related. But it was also definitely contracted. Everyone on the island knows each other.”

“So if a strange Panamanian shows up and stabs a guy and then leaves, it was likely the whole purpose of his visit.”

“That makes sense. So what did you do to the Spanish lady?”

“Well, previously she paid $40 to have a guy’s knees broken. He was harassing her customers and trying to extort money off her to stop – generally being a dickhead and making her life miserable.”

“So she called a guy from the mainland?”

“Exactly.”

“What makes it even better is that this story didn’t really come out until Jeff was in the process of dumping her.”

“’You can never leave me.’ ‘We are together now.’ ‘You have no idea how much you’ll regret this.’” Jeff mimicked.

“Fuck,” I said again.

“Boca del Toro is nuts. Wild West meets Spring Break.”

“Does it get many tourists aside from guys like you?”

“Almost no Americans (of course) outside the sailing community, but definitely a fair handful of Europeans, Aussies and Israelis. It’s kind of situated at the end of the Central American circuit. And it really is beautiful. Crystal blue water, warm all the time. I bet the numbers only go up over the next few years.”

Jeff: “When we were there, a boat full of Argentine college girls pulled in and just dropped them for a week. Argentine girls all over the place – just laying out on the docks like caught fish.”

“Overall though, way fewer tourists than you’d expect. I lost count of our beach trip days where we were the only people on this 6-mile stretch of pristine sand.”

“I told you we were only going to be there for a week and a half, right? We met this bartender the first night who told us to be careful because ‘Boca will suck you in’”.

Ben laughed as he recalled the line. “Yeah,” he interjected, “We burned our return tickets the next day and lived there for two months.”

“We saw this apartment listed the 2nd day we were there... $300 a month, 2 beds, internet... and waterfront. With its own boat dock. What the fuck kind of $300 apartment is waterfront in a tropical paradise with its own boat dock?”

“It was stupid.” Agreed Ben.

“So we lived there. We just couldn’t come up with any reason not to.”

“Also, the one we took was $300 because we’re ballers, but you can go as low as 75. And those are just a few streets back from the beach. Little shacks with coconut trees and hammocks in the front yard.”

“I’m going.” I said. I was serious (and still am). I’d already partially tuned out, balancing logistics in my mind while they went on digging the hole I was wandering down.

“Two of the top-25 party hostels in the world are reachable by water taxi from our dock,” Ben dug.

“I drank rum from coconuts,” Jeff added.

“Done,” I said. “Seriously, I’m setting up fare alerts tomorrow. Where do you fly into?”

“Panama City. No direct flights that I know of to the islands, but the little Cesna shuttles out to them are cheap.”

“So done.”

“Keep me posted on that, man – I might go back down there with you. Still have a lot of friends down there.”

“I wonder how Edwardo is doing,” Ben said.

“Which one is that?”

“Our coke dealer friend.”

“The dude that got stabbed in the spine?”

“Well, it missed the spine. He’s good now, I think.” Ben said.

“That’s good.”

“Edwardo was kind of a dick.”

“Did you guys see much else of Central America while you were there?”

“Not as much as we’d have liked. Guatemala, Nicaragua – that’s why I want to go back.”

“I want to sail to Cartegena,” Jeff said.

My interest level shot up again. “Sail to Cartegena?” I gesticulated a sort of map with both my hands and pointed toward the bottom of it. “That’s in the Northern bit of Columbia, right?”

“Yep. The whole region is a huge hotspot for the ritzy sailing crowd. You either catch or pay for a ride down there with one of them. Or I guess there are a few commercial outfits that do it too.”

“How long does it take?”

“Five days if it’s done right – island hopping all the way down.”

“That sounds awesome.”

“And once you get there, I got the number of this hostel that organizes these five-day treks into the jungle where you can explore a lost city. Pre-dates Machu Pichu by 600 years, and no tourists.”

“Are you just making this up now?”

“No man. And if you pay the guy $6 extra, you can visit a cocaine processing plant.”

“No.”

“Yep. The guy who gave me the phone number has a picture of Facebook of him just laying in a big pile of coca leaves.”

“Ugh – goddamn it. Why am I not doing all those things right now?”

“You have a job,” Jeff accentuated the word job with about three times its weight in scorn. Both he and Ben laughed at me.

Devil Music

2010-04-06T09:12:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has heard the latest ‘We Are the World’ Haiti benefit recording could not be faulted for interpreting it as the death of music. That song is the Challenger explosion of pop. My offering here is for anyone so-affected:

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_Beach

Jonsi - Go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(J%C3%B3nsi_album)

Two stunning, near-flawless pieces of music. Some the earlier rap tracks on Plastic Beach get a little too weird, but Mos Def brings it all together toward the end. In 5 years, I think Jon Birgisson and Damon Albarn will be mentioned in the same breath as Thom Yorke as the most consistently excellent and prolific musicians of this era. At least I hope so.

Jeff and I Endeavor to Climb a Mountain, Fail, Still Feel Good About It

2010-04-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

I’m going to start titling some of my blog posts like the chapters in a Lars Van Trier movie so people think something awful is about to happen. Then, when it doesn’t, they will be happy. Good plan.

Jbel [Arabic for Mountain] Toubkal is the highest peak in Northern Africa. I heard about it shortly after my arrival in Morocco and resolved to take a stab at climbing it. Plans were finalized when my friend Jeff announced his own enthusiasm for tackling the excursion while planning his visit. Jeff is a guy I know from back home. He hunts ducks with binary explosives and an assault rifle. Good guy to have on a mountain, I figured.

The bus from Marrakesch to Imlil – the trailhead for the hike up Jbel Toubkal – collects its passengers from a dusty street corner adjacent a cemetery. On some days. But not on the one when we were going. We stood for about two hours, kicking rocks into the road and telling dirty stories about third-world hostels until finally surrendering ourselves to one of the taxi drivers who had been beeping at us at 4-minute intervals since we began our wait.

“Two people 300 dirham,” The taxi driver said.
“For both of us?”
“For each of you.”
“50 dirham for both of us,” I countered.
“60 dirham each.”
“Fine.”

The High Atlas range rises from the expansive plains of central Morocco like a mist-shrouded cliff face at the edge of an ocean [Pretty flowery description, no? Please take my usual avoidance of such effeminate language as proof of sincerity here]. ‘Intimidated’ is a gross understatement when applied to a pair of relatively inexperienced climbers approaching the range from over a hundred kilometres in the carcass of what was once a respectable Mercedes sedan. We saw the foothills first, and what looked like a low layer of cloud cover above them. The clouds, of course, were not. They were mountains.

Alternating gasps of dumbstruck awe and defeatedly muttered obscenity would be the soundtrack of the expedition. There is no portion of the trek that is not so epic in its beauty that one can help but to remark on it. And there is not one stretch of trail so relentlessly steep as to not implore you to turn back. (We would later find that, despite climbing the wrong mountain, we ascended, and subsequently descended, over 6,000 vertical feet of stone and ice over the course of 16 hours).

The hike is completed in 4 stages:

Ascent from Imlil to the refuge (situated in an alpine valley below the summit) [6 hours]
Ascent from the refuge to the summit [4 hours]
Descent to refuge [2 hours]
Descent to Imlil [4 hours]

Our first day on the trail was dedicated entirely to the venture from the Berber enclave of Imlil to the mountain’s isolated stone refuge. The route, whose beauty I mentioned earlier but really can’t overstate (see: pictures), proceeds upward from the village through a series of valleys and canyons, braced on either side between jagged Atlas cliffs. An expansive pebble riverbed just outside the first village is the last reminder of what even ground is meant to feel like. Thenceforth, each stride brings a knee to an acute angle somewhere near the waist and the air begins to thin.

There are three more clusters of Berber homes along the way – the last of which is perched over a series of glacier-blue waterfalls and haloed with whitened peaks. Pretty. After you stop seeing other humans, snow starts to splash across the trail and the pace begins to slow. This is about 4½ hours in.

The refuge, visible at the end of the last long ravine for a full hour before you reach it, is one of the loveliest sights of the trek – for only the promise of a bed and hot water. All ice and snow for the last hour. More cursing, heavier breath, elevated heart rates; cardiovascular systems struggling to keep check on the diminishing supply of oxygen.

To our surprise, the windows of the refuge were sweating with condensation when we arrived. 30 to 40 people were already present – their noise and bodyheat almost oppressive as we entered. The numbers were somewhat surprising, as we had only seen two other hikers heading in the direction of the refuge that day. It became apparent, however, that most of them had been staying at the refuge for several days – hiking up the mountain with skis each morning (and possibly again in the afternoon), and sliding back down. They were almost exclusively from Nordic countries – blonde superhumans who would wander up the mountain sideways, skis strapped to their feet and then fling themselves off cliffs to ski back down. We didn’t really talk to anyone. Mountain folk are strange.

Confusion and misadventure began at 5:00 the next morning following my soundest night of sleep in recent memory. After breakfast, I stood in front of the large hanging map near the front door of the refuge. “Where the hell are we?” I shouted to Jeff.

“By the mountain.”

I cocked my head sideways. It didn’t help.

We set out around 6:00, trudging determinedly up the kind of icefield Dolph Lundgren would drive a snowmobile across before launching it into a helicopter.

Crack, I heard from behind me. I spun just in time to see Jeff disappear from view and the split of a deep crevasse racing toward me. I leapt to the side, burying my dual-wielded ice axes into an ice-covered cliff face. A blackened descent into frozen nothingness had opened where I stood. Jeff was nowhere to be seen. “Help me,” I heard faintly as I pulled myself up the cliff. “Be right there, buddy!” I said as I tied a length or parachute cord around my torso and drew the .45 from my pack. Yetis had been sighted in the area.

Nothing from the previous paragraph happened. Just making sure everyone is paying attention.

So we continued up the valley from the refuge. And I’ll just cut to the chase here: We climbed the wrong mountain. Jbel Toubkal is situated in a range of other very big rocks. We chose the wrong rock.

Upon returning, I was asked by my girlfriend, bless her heart, “why didn’t you guys just go up the biggest one?” A reasonable-sounding, but misinformed question. If you were to ask a person standing in Brooklyn to look across the water and point out the tallest building in Manhattan, they would be able to do so easily. If that same person, however, were placed in an alleyway between two apartment buildings in the Lower East Side; that same task would be considerably more difficult.

Another friend of mine asked another equally reasonable sounding question. “Why didn’t you guys get a guide? They’re like $10 for the day.” Reasonable sounding but, again, misinformed. To have hired a guide would have required a degree of humility and respect for nature’s indifference to our survival that, quite frankly, neither Jeff or I possess. So a guide was out.

“But if you had hired a guide, you would have climbed the right mountain.”
“If Christopher Columbus had hired a guide, he would never have discovered America.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“You don’t make sense.” And that was the end of that.

So, by the middle of the second day, at the highest elevation we would reach, we came to the end of the road. At 13,000 feet, the ends of roads are dramatically demarcated with sheer, hundred-foot drop-offs. “Shit,” we both said, looking over the side. We sat and ate at the top of our little mountain for a while and watched the Mountain Vikings hopping along the cliffs on their skis like goats, jabbering to each other in their bobbly languages.

Regardless of the failure, I think the trip was a success. It was one of the most physically challenging things I’ve done in my life, and the payoffs (there were so many of them along the way) made the whole thing immensely rewarding. I plan to return as soon as I get another two day weekend. So expect another post like this in the future with more gloating and fewer tangents meant to distract you from what an idiot I am.

First Culture Shock

2010-01-15T03:55:00.001-08:00

Morocco has a strong lounging/loitering culture. I had a hard time walking through the city at night when I first arrived because groups of young men tended to gather in alleyways and doorsteps, generally away from the harsh illumination of streetlights. In the West, there is no licit reason why a group of young men would want to wait for hours in the dark with no female company. It’s pretty much a certainty that those guys would be doing some sort of drug that a redneck cooked with ammonia and lye or were waiting to knife the next passerby. In Morocco, it’s just how guys spend the evening.

This trend carries throughout the day. In the mornings and early afternoon, the same groups of men will sit in cafes. Chairs are often linked together so that armrests overlap and all of them face into the street. The effect is that outdoor cafes take on the feeling of audience boxes. Wherever you walk in Casablanca, a gallery of men is on hand to observe. In the evenings, men tend to shuffle around a bit – wandering en masse from the cafes to the alleys. This all may sound like exaggeration, but it is not. Groups of men, seemingly doing nothing, were the first to induce culture shock when I arrived in Morocco.

Having packs of dudes staring at you is disconcerting, but there was something more... Seeing only men on the streets – innumerable, aimless bands of them – implied that women had somehow gone missing. I remember walking through a park on my second week here when it struck me, “where the hell are all the women?” It is something that has bothered me for a long time – a mystery that I only began to unravel on my recent vacation around the south.

You lose continuity when you fly between two points. It’s like the connective tissue between two cities are their airports, a few hours of your time and a bad in-flight meal. If you can help it, it’s almost always more informative to traverse the space between two places overland. Even if there’s not a whole lot between them, you’ll know it firsthand. Seeing the sites between population hubs here in Morocco was particularly rewarding. The first thing a traveler will notice is how spectacularly rugged and beautiful this country is. It’s easy to forget you live in North Africa – the setting for a range of dramas; from ‘The Sheltering Sky’, to Eisenhower and Rommel’s armored deathmatch – if you live in palm-shaded Casablanca. But the next thing you notice is where all the woman are. They’re working.

There are still cafes in the rural areas between cities – all full of lecherous stares and the thinly veiled homoeroticism of the all-dude clientele. But there’s also agricultural land – full of women. They work the stony ground with picks, carry water, drive cattle, herd sheep.

This is not an unfair generalization drawn by just a few isolated findings. This is consistent and absolute; thousands of kilometres worth of observation in every area of the country. Women work. Men lounge. In the cities, they simply work more invisibly; in homes, kitchens, offices.

I’m not certain why this trend exists, but one can only assume that it is grounded in the religious and ethnic make-up of the country. It certainly has nothing to do with poverty (people are far poorer, and much more egalitarian with the work distribution, in SE Asia and the rest of Africa). If you look at countries that would obviously be on a further extreme of the religion/ethnicity spectrum (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait), you see institutionalization of the trend. I have strong opinions about the former of the two factors that those of you who know me well have probably heard, but it would be tricky for me to get into them on a public forum while I’m still living in this country.

Suffice to say, the division of genders remains my greatest problem with this culture and the most concrete reason why I will never be fully at home in a country like this. Hopefully it will change, though. Saudi Arabia’s high court recently ruled that the laws mandating the separation of unrelated men and women had to be reassessed because they had been based mostly in tribalism, and not the Koran. The marginalization of half a country’s intelligence, ingenuity and labor is a lot to bear for the sake of tradition.

Some Photos Posted

2009-12-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

Back in Casablanca. Nice to be in my own bed again.

Here are two albums I just uploaded to Facebook. Excuse the artsy stuff -- I'm still in kid-in-a-candystore mode with my new camera. You should be able to look through these without having (or without singing into) a Facebook account. Comments and such enabled once you've signed in.

Imperial Cities: Meknes, Fes, Marrakesh
Sahara: Merzouga and the Algerian border

Baby Jesus Would Approve

2009-12-23T05:07:00.000-08:00

Another short one, and probably the last before I get back to Casa...

The little Sahara excursion was awesome, and the three days spent there seem way too short.

In Sidi Ifni now - formerly Spanish colonial town way down south on the coast. The money I've alloted myself is running a little low (the riad in Fez sort of broke the bank), so I'll probably be another 3 or 4 days in this area before heading back to Casa.

Always an element of suck to doing the holidays solo, but I would feel ridiculous complaining about it. My Christmas plans: Surfing, Legzira Plage (pictured), seafood tagine, bootleg alcohol with French tourists. Win.

Hope everyone has a good Christmas. Pictures/write-ups/obscenity when I get back to Casa.

In Fez, Still Alive

2009-12-16T06:32:00.000-08:00

Four days into the trip now and we're comfortably settling into Fez. We've covered Meknes already. It was a little break-neck, but the weather sucked and pretty much everything that's awesome about Meknes is more awesome in Fez.

The touts in Fez are probably the most aggressive and unrelenting of any that I've seen anywhere. Bangkok has nothing on the imperial cities. Knowing that a myriad of souvenirs (not to mention any sort of drug or illicit service imaginable) is at our disposal at "very special price for you" is comforting, but the saturation of advertisement can be annoying. One 'faux-guide' waited for us outside our riad for three hours before I finally told him off. Two restaurant touts got into a shouting match over us last night - bidding each other's set menu price down from 80dh to 40. "He will give you yesterday's food" the loser shouted at us.

The less-than-endearing form of capitalism practiced here is due entirely to the tourist activity inside the walls of the medina. And tourists are drawn here for good reason. The beauty of the city more than compensates for the hassle and it's really good to be here. It's easy to lose track of why one is drawn to Morocco if you're living in Casablanca. No such danger here.

Pictures and more information to follow. I can see the walls of the city from inside this cybercafe, so I feel ridiculous sitting here.

Ifrane, maybe Azrou, maybe Errachidia, and Merzouga next on the itinerary.

Meticulous Preparation

2009-12-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

Besides mapping out the previously posted rough itinerary for my upcoming (tomorrow) trip around the Southern half of Morocco, I have taken the following measures to ensure a smooth journey:

Downloaded the second season of Breaking Bad to watch tonight so I wouldn't go out and spend all my trip money on alcohol.
Took a bag of clothes to the lady who washes them for me. I need the pair of jeans I wore most of last week.
Skimmed my roommate's Lonely Planet book on Morocco. Also Spain, because I love Spain.
Figured out a way to tell my maid (who speaks no English or French) that we'd be gone for a little while.
Thought long and hard today at work about what I would throw into my backpack to keep me going for three weeks.
Looked at train schedules. Well... looking, present tense.

Things my roommate (who is "just going to follow you, dude") is going to wish I had done:

Booked hotel rooms
Booked transportation
Research, of any kind

This is going to be awesome.

Cannibalism

2009-12-04T07:09:00.000-08:00

How's that for an eye-catcher? How awesome would it be if this all-of-a-sudden started to be a blog about eating people? That would get a lot of hits. Then I could be famous like that hooker who wrote a blog. Movie deal! Apparently they eat albinos in Tanzania (or something?).

Anyway, this isn't about eating people, it's about music. There was a French girl who crashed at the apartment for a couple of nights a few weeks back and I took all the music off of her external hard drive. And I have since been consuming the music. Thus, "Cannibalism". I don't know - whatever. To be perfectly clear, music is probably the #2 or 3 thing that I miss about the United States. At this point, I'd listen to a Black Eyed Peas remix of a newborn's death rattle if it meant I could go to a decent concert afterward. The things I'd do for a trip to a really good record store are not suitable for a website attached to my real name.

But for all the Casablanca music scene lacks, I've still managed to expand my horizons by looking to other expatirates. Particularily French ones. I don't know why, but the United States is essentially a world music ghetto. Given my rather extreme jingoism, the fact that I had never heard of the following two albums before leaving the protective embrace of CONUS is an embarassing admission. I suppose the argument could be made that such an enormous amount of good music is created in the Anglo world that any additions would contribute diminishing or negligible returns on the margin - the same argument for why so few Americans have passports. But that's pretty retarded. There is no good excuse. Not given how goddamn amazing these two are:

Amadou & Mariam - Welcome to Mali
Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson

How's that for a long-winded alternative to the 'What I'm Listening To:' section on Myspace?

If this all sounds very disjointed, then it is a fair representation of where my brain is this week. Have to work until Saturday, but then I'm getting the hell out of dodge. Three weeks all around the southern half of the country. Saharan Frontier, Anti-Atlas, Southern Coast. Could not possibly be more excited.

Eid al-Adha

2009-11-30T10:42:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: There are pictures of dead sheep heads and guys with knives below the body of this post. If you don’t want to see that, don’t scroll too far ahead.

I spent another (it’s happened two or three other times) Thanksgiving away from home this year. When I went to school in New Zealand, I rarely missed it because the southern hemisphere’s summer break fell almost exactly overtop our winter holidays. It meant that I rarely got a tan, but at least I was home for the important stuff.

Happily, I was not without the holiday spirit altogether. In Islamic countries, Eid al-Adha is celebrated right around the same time as Thanksgiving. It’s the day when practitioners of the Islamic faith celebrate the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to murder his son. Happily, Old Testament God was all like, “psyche!” and Abraham only had to kill a sheep, so that’s the practice followed here. So, most families – or nearly every one that can afford the 2,000dh ($260) animal – will buy a sheep and kill it with a knife (exsanguination), distribute the meat amongst themselves and to the less fortunate, eat it, and cook the animal’s head on fire pits in the street. (I am still unclear as to the practical or religious motivation behind burning the head).

So I was awakened on Saturday morning (noon), not only by the usual mind-splintering hangover (buying alcohol during religious holidays is an entirely different story, probably for a less public forum), but by the smell of burning fur - the aroma wafting through my window from the large open grill on the sidewalk below. I heard my roommate retching.

I had managed to remain unconscious for the general massacre itself. Most sheep are sliced and wrung out early in the morning, so my day was filled with the aftermath. I took a shower (something that would be repeated twice more that day) and threw on some sandals. Immediately after leaving my apartment building, I had to hop over a small estuary of gore that had puddled near the curb. I regretted having chosen the sandals. I spent the next few hours wandering the streets with my roommate, snapping pictures with my new camera.

Once the general revulsion and niggling voice of some undefined moral qualm had been quieted in my mind, I really enjoyed myself. The city was a whole different place. Automobile and pedestrian traffic was infrequent, every shop was shuttered and gray smoke rose from open flame as far down every street as you could see. Most of the head-roasting stands were manned by the more entrepreneurial local kids. Fresh heads were thrown onto the fires at intervals as cars or passersby stopped and dropped off their trophy-filled garbage bags. Presumably they came by later to pick up the remains because no money changed hands at the drop. Older kids drove donkey carts full of the still-blood-wet hides. The precise economics of it all still eludes me.

The scene – at first bizarre and macabre – started to take on the feel of a community block party. The kids from each stall would wander back and forth, socializing and talking shop – happily waving their hatchets and poles of rebar and occasionally shuffling the blackened heads around with their feet like soccer balls. So even without the safe hominess of a proper Thanksgiving, I had a good food-related weekend - complete with a strengthened sense of community.

Click for higher resolution (if you're into that sort of thing).

Shopping

2009-11-24T03:45:00.001-08:00

I've spent some time over the last few days camera shopping at the local flea markets (early Christmas present - thanks family!). The markets are arranged like any number of similar enterprises in a developing country. Separate stalls, usually roughly specialized to offer products of one type: Consumer electronics in one, DVDs in another, clothes and shoes in another. There's wasn't really any foresight given to the layout of the market as a whole, so you're left to kind of wander from one aisle to the next, looking for the next camera stall. (Though to be fair, there might be a Vegas-esque element of 'let the customer get lost as hell and take their time getting out' to it).

If you ask to try one of the cameras, the proprietor will helpfully pop in a battery and memory card so you can snap off a couple of test shots. If you're buying used, it's nice to be able to test the exact camera you'll be buying. Some of the older pictures on the memory cards are a little odd though. If you scroll back far enough - past the crappy test shots of the adjacent pants merchant - most of the pictures are of smiling light-skinned families standing in front of The Prado or out on safari in Saharan Africa.

Maybe there's a separate classical art and zebra section of the market that I missed.

Anyway, more pictures forthcoming I hope.

Guest Author

2009-11-18T06:41:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, I am spectacularly lazy. If it comes right down to doing something, and there exists the possibility of not doing it and going back to bed, I will gravitate toward the latter. So in that spirit, I'm giving post privileges for this blog to my roommate, Anthony. I'll keep posting, and so will he; thus creating an illusion of much higher productivity. And then: Profit.

I'll need to figure out a way to sort of differentiate our posts in the subject line, but for the most part his will be about his feelings, knitting, and pie recipes, while mine will continue to center around toilet humor.

What it's all about...

2009-11-13T09:59:00.001-08:00

So I've got a little over three weeks off, starting in December and running a little past New Years. It's not a lot of time, especially given how much of this area I want to see, but it's enough to do a little reconnaissance. Three weeks really isn’t the sort of timeframe I’d want for a trip of this size – I won’t be able to fall in love with little villages along the way and put my feet up for a day or two – but it will be enough to give my brain a lay of the land.

Most of my interest lies in the south of the country. Less European influence, better nature and fewer tourists make that a pretty easy call. So I’m working on a circuit (having to double back on the same route is such a waste) that will hit the highlights and give me an idea of the places I should go back to and spend extra time.

Here’s what I’m working with so far. Looking at it makes me deliriously happy – almost to the point of giggling:

View Morocco: Southern Loop '09 in a larger map

Click to blow it up.

My roommate, Anthony is probably coming along. Anyone else for a little vacation?

More Random Things

2009-11-12T07:21:00.000-08:00

There is an Iraqi guy who lives in our apartment building. He only comes and goes at night, doesn't speak with anyone, and has stained glass pictures of the Koran hanging over all of his windows. He has a cute nickname: Al Qaeda.
Everything is closed from 2pm until 5pm here. Ostensibly for prayer. This is annoying because that is the exact time that I often want to buy things. If I were that pious at my job, I would also be fired.
A standard first date in Morocco is to take the girl out for ice cream. It makes her feel like you care, but it makes me feel like a pedophile.
Morocco has been under the control of France, Spain and Germany at different points in time over the past 100 years. There is an Independance Day for each. No work!
It's a good idea to host parties at your apartment. People bring lots and lots of food, and then you have stuff to eat for the rest of the week.
People cannot parallel park here. If they are by themselves, they'll just keep going back and forth, bumping the cars ahead of and behind them, until they are satisfied with how close they are to the curb. Usually, there are special parking attendants who work on almost every street whose entire job it is to help people parallel park.
Retail CDs and DVDs do not exist in Morocco. Piracy has taken over almost 100% of the market share.
Tourists keep telling me not to drink the tap water, but I do. Fine so far.
There's a holiday coming up where families all over the country will sacrifice a sheep, give 1/3 of it away to the poor, and eat the rest. I am very much looking forward to this holiday because sheep are delicious. Also, people buy the sheep a few days to a week ahead of time, so there will be random sheep tied up in parking garages and front yards.
Morocco protected it's currency during the global credit crisis (my income in Dirhams has improved by almost 15% against the dollar since I first signed my contract 7 months ago) through a series of brutally protective trade policies. You essentially cannot export Dirhams - foreigners cannot wire money home, or transfer funds to foreign bank accounts. And goods essentially cannot be imported for individual consumption. You can order things off of Ebay and Amazon, but you have to use a credit card you got in a different country and the government will charge an addition 40% duty when it arrives. All of this means that I am making more money than I thought I would, but it is kind of hard to pay my student loans.
There are three dialects of Berber. Two of them are as distinct as "French and Japanese" according to a colleague of mine. Between those, French, Spanish and Arabic, there are 6 native spoken languages here.
Moroccan DJs fight dirty. My friend Anthony punched my other friend Younes in the stomach, so Younes got a spray deodorant and a lighter and shot Anthony in the face with fire.

The Best Albums of 2000 - 2009 (someone please argue with me)

2009-11-11T08:18:00.000-08:00

I've had sort of a boring week, and it has been a particularly frustrating month for music (Thom Yorke recording a track for the new Twilight movie soundtrack? Really?). My boredom and nostalgia for quality-tunes-past has converged in list form. The following is my rationale for my selection of the ten best albums of the past ten years.

I like making lists like this. It makes saying something like, "oh yeah, that's one of my top-five favorite [whatevers]" a lot more meaningful if you actually think about it beforehand. I generally throw down at least 20 possible choices right off the bat. And then, admittedly, I’ll trawl through other lists to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything (in general, my musical memory is much closer to 5 years than it is to 10). Once I have a very large working list, I’ll start paring it down. But something struck me this time as I began to search: None of the albums really jumped out. I would look at an album, know that it I loved it, but I was never outright convinced that it belonged on a list. The field was too even.

This was not, in my opinion, a decade of seminal, genre-founding breakthroughs. In the last ten years, there was no Nevermind, Slim Shady LP, Back in Black, Talking Book, White Album or Zeppelin II.

This is not to say that there was any shortage of musical genius. On the contrary, I would argue that musicians have never been better. Listen to an Arcade Fire or Kanye West album and you can be rest-assured that the people recording today have set a ridiculously high bar. But the fore of musicality has moved beyond the creation of genres and styles, and into their amalgamation. Interdisciplinary composition is the new genre. Especially in the last few years, I have heard people complaining that it is becoming increasingly difficult to classify a new album. ‘Indie’, ‘pop’, or even ‘hip hop’ and ‘urban’ are cop-out blanket definitions that oversimplify the trend.

10. Lupe Fiasco – The Cool

There’s a line on Lupe’s first album – Food and Liquor – where he briefly describes his introduction to rap: “I used to hate hip hop, because the women it degraded, but Too Short made me laugh; like a hypocrite I played it, a hypocrite I state;, but I only recited half, omitting the word ‘bitch”. An American born Muslim and loudly political, Lupe Fiasco’s affiliation with hip hop culture is tenuous at best. But from his position at the sidelines of gangsterism, he has been able to affiliate himself with a much wider base of musicality than the likes of Talib Kweli and Mos Def. “Did you improve on the design? Did you do something new?”

9. El-P – Fantastic Damage

El-P is another rapper who has branched out in ways that would have been nearly unthinkable in the 90’s. He raps in schizophrenic explosions of argumentative dialogue; backed by an ensemble of samples – house beats, screaming strings, trap set rolls – that would make UNKLE blush. And again, this guy isn’t rapping about rims and 40s. El-P narrates his albums like the protagonist of a Palahniuk novel. He searches for hypocrisy and injustice in every nook and cranny of society, pulls it into the light and lyrically crucifies it. His work isn’t easy to listen to, and you’re probably not going to hear it on a dancefloor (it would seriously harsh a buzz), but if you give it time and thought, it rewards the effort many times over.

8. The Arcade Fire – Funeral

The arcade fire deserves to be on the list solely for having made the loudest, most stadium-ready album in recent memory. I like to think of them as the thinking man’s answer to Coldplay – glistening, ecstatic music, wrought with deceptive simplicity. I will admit bias on this one, though. I’ve seen the Arcade Fire live, and I’ve been in love with all twelve of them (or however many – there are a lot) ever since. Their festival sets are long, crescendoing epics that climax in the more up-tempo pieces of Funeral. Hearing the opening bells of ‘Rebellion (Lies)’ as 60,000 exhausted hipsters began humming along was a musically transformative thing for me. I still remember how utterly exhausted I was dancing along as the song imploded in on itself and nova’d out into its cacophonous finale. If Funeral has any faults, it has been to raise a bar for The Arcade Fire that they are very unlikely to clear again.

7. Atmosphere – Strictly Leakage

Strictly an EP, actually – not an album, but I’m making an exception here (and in one other place on the list). Atmosphere is always at the top of their game when they’re talking directly to their fans. Hell, they’re still considered “underground” after dozens of commercially successful releases and numerous mainstream offers for exactly that reason. They full-length albums are always wonderful, but there’s an element of discomfort to them. Slug and Ant are best when unforced – recording and performing for fun. Which is why this [13-song] EP is so amazing. The tracks are just things they had laying around. But the joy and irreverence with which they were recorded is very apparent. There’s a song about white kids who listen to rap, a 1-minute narrative about winning a hand of poker and another song about why bringing a girl back to your mom’s house is so undesirable. You don’t need politics when you have poetry.

6. Sigur Rós - Takk

The lead singer of Sigur Rós modified his guitar with a curved bridge so he could play it with a violin bow. He also sings in a language he invented because his native Icelandic wasn’t whimsical enough. The guy makes Bjork look like a pants-suit accountant… and he composes music so beautiful and emotionally challenging that his personal idiosyncrasies are the last things that come to my mind when I hear it. I’ve seen people, with no comprehension of what is being sung, brought fully to tears by this album. The music is something that transcends almost every measure of quality that you can attribute to artistic expression – it’s just something else. Put ‘Seaglopur’ on headphones, turn down the lights and try to disagree.

5. Radiohead – Kid A

Radiohead can really do no wrong by me (see ‘Honorable Mentions’ below). Thom Yorke is my musical hero and I have never disliked anything he’s put his hand to. With that said, Kid A is a step back from everything that had made Radiohead a critical and commercial darling of rock music. It is a tangle of static, clicks, screams and feedback – a bad acid trip of an album that begs you not to like it. People say, “yeah Radiohead is awesome... but have you heard Kid A?” There are no singles, no anthems, no club beats (maybe Idioteque). But Kid A is Radiohead at their most free and creative, and nothing can touch that. Even beyond the chaotic genius of the album itself, its recording served as a stepping-stone for the band – an adaptation of their style. After ‘Kid A’, ‘In Rainbows’ was clearly to follow.

4. Jay-Z – The Black Album

The Black Album is the nearest on this list to an old-school, iconic milestone. It marked the birth of swagger, yet another post-gangster direction for hip hop, and a new benchmark for one of rap’s most skilled and prolific artists. The whole thing plays like the crier’s song for some medieval King. ‘99 Problems’ was released in tandem with Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’ and the announcement of their pending nuptuals – a coup de grace for Hova’s status. ‘Dirt Off Your Shoulder’ birthed its own widely recognized gesticulation. ‘Encore’ has been mixed so many times that it has become synonymous with the practice. Lines from every song have made their way into street vernacular. There is a reason why Hova can say with every new release that he is the greatest rapper alive. While the accuracy of the statement is debateable; no one can casually deny it.

3. The Black Keys – Chulahoma

Chulahoma, the second EP of the list, is a short tribute to the late blues legend Junior Kimbrough. The last thing on the recording is a voicemail left for Dan Auerbach by Junior Kimbrough’s widow. Her voice trembles throughout as she compliments the guitar/drums duo on recording such a faithful adaptation of her husband’s work. I picked this album as one of the best of the decade mostly for what it represents; the efforts of The Black Keys to reinvent and reinvigorate the blues. Chulahoma is a devastatingly emotional and almost palpably visceral album, and that’s what the genre needs to be these days to stay relevant.

2. Kanye West – Late Registration

The guy takes a lot of flak for what a narcissistic jackass he is. As in, narcissism; a neurotic obsession with one’s self. In West’s case, I think it’s justified. Late Registration is a masterpiece of staggering proportions and the pinnacle in a trilogy of work (College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation) that I will be untouchable in its artistic breadth for the foreseeable future. There isn’t a club in the western world that didn’t have ‘Gold Digger’ on heavy rotation. There’s a song about his dying grandmother with a tuba baseline. Jay-Z raps about blood diamonds, Common sings about love, he even got Paul Wall, Lupe Fiasco and Adam Levine. The whole thing is drenched in soaring strings, Dre-esque beats, flawless harmonization and obsessively crafted production. It’s Las Vegas in a CD.

1. Radiohead – In Rainbows

When Radiohead releases an album, they do so – every time – with a mind toward disowning their previous work and reinventing their sound. They are a group that specializes in wringing beauty from discontent and, as Yorke has said on numerous occasions, allowing themselves to be comfortable would be to defeat the soul of their work. ‘In Rainbows’ is a marked departure from that paradigm, and a turn toward something completely different. Free from the EMI record contract that “strangled” their creativity (one wonders what the group’s body of work would look like had it been allowed to breath), Radiohead released ‘In Rainbows’ over the internet and told fans to pay whatever they thought it was worth - the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to the lumbering, antiquated business model of the record industry. The songs on ‘In Rainbows’ are fiercely effulgent things, and with Yorke’s sideprojects siphoning the less compatible elements of his artistry, the band sounds like a whole again – unified. So while Radiohead may have forever abandoned the self-imposed pressure that compelled albums like Amnesiac and OK Computer, they freed themselves to make, in my opinion, the best album of their careers.

Honorable Mentions:

Radiohead – Amnesiac
Radiohead – Hail to the Thief
Radiohead – ComLag [EP]
Drive-by Trucker – Dirty South
The Black Keys – Rubber Factory
The Black Keys – Thickfreakness
Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova – Music from the Motion Picture ‘Once’ [soundtrack]
Mos Def – The Ecstatic
Raekwon – Only Built for the Cuban Linx Pt. 2
Ghostface – Supreme Clientelle
Ghostface – The Big Doe Rehab
Fugazi – The Argument
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Spoon – Ga Ga Ga
The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
The National – Boxer
And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead... – Source Tags and Codecs
Bob Dylan – Together Through Life
Bob Dylan – Love and Theft
Ratatat – Classics
Justin Timberlake – Futuresex/Lovesounds
The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come For Free
M.I.A. – Kala
Lil’ Wayne – Tha Carter III
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam
The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Burial – Untrue
LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem
Jay-Z – American Gangster
Kanye West – The College Dropout
The White Stripes – White Blood Cells
Raphael Saadiq – Instant Vintage
Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
Lupe Fiasco – The Cool
Madvillain – Madvillainy
Danger Doom – The Mouse and the Mask

Pictures

2009-10-29T03:16:00.000-07:00

My camera was stolen somewhere between Madrid and Seville a few weeks back. Thus the lack of pictures here and on Facebook. Little fella had been with me for two years, photographed a dozen countries and has crossed every line of longitude on the planet. It wasn't the best camera in the world, but it was dirty and scuffed and had a good story. So the reason I haven't talked about it before is because thinking about it makes me angry. Requiescat in pace.

Fortunately, my lovely and talented friend Andrea came to visit the other week (hint, hint, everyone else) and took better pictures than I possibly could have. So, a few shots of my adoptive city:

These are the walls of the old medina that I've written about previously. It's a partially walled section of the downtown area that was - back when the French referred to the port region as 'Useful Morocco' - the entire city of Casablanca. Now it's a busy market and dense residential area:

All this is about a 20 minute walk from where I live. And just on the other side of it, on the water's edge, is the mosque I wrote about earlier. It's a structure larger than St. Peter's Basilica, but instead of walking through downtown Rome to get to it, you walk through dilapidated slums. (My friend Anthony took this one):

And finally, a little local cuisine... All kinds of things are sold on the little food carts stationed on the corner of almost every intersection and pedestrian thoroughfare. But I am an uncultured American and was fascinated that some people eat snails.

You can get a bowl like that for about a dollar. And for the record, they are delicious.

More pictures to follow, I hope. I want to splurge some of my first paycheck on a new camera to abuse over the next few years. If any of you know much about photography, please drop me a line somewhere.

Random Things

2009-10-24T01:36:00.000-07:00

Not everyone speaks Arabic, French, Spanish and English, but they all speak Facebook.
The third pillar of Islam is Zakat - the practice of alms-giving to the less fortunate. That is why I have to walk over or around 30 disfigured hobos every Friday because there is a mosque between my apartment and work.
Camel sandwiches are not A) delicious, B) $2.00 or C) readily available at 11:00pm after I’ve already been drinking because they are in fact D) all of the above.
My friend who works for Emirates says that Moroccan flights always run out of sugar because Moroccan people put a shit-ton of it in everything. I definitely believe her because she is very pretty. But also because many Moroccan people have missing teeth.
Drinking is technically illegal in Morocco, so I have to buy all of my booze from the supermarket that’s owned by the King. Thanks, King Mohammed!
Half of all taxis have “broken meters” with air quotes. The tourist price is 10 Euros, but the real price is 10 Dirhams, which is less.
Imagine if the music video for “I’m on a Boat” were made in total seriousness and featured several cut scenes of questionably attractive bikini-clad women dancing by a pool for no reason. That is what every music video out of Lebanon and Egypt is like.
The sheesha place by my apartment is charming. Their only flavour is apple.
The bastardized Moroccan Arabic form of “two” is difficult to transliterate, but it sounds roughly like ‘Juzsh’, which kind of sounds like the terribly transliterated French word for juice, ‘Juszh’. I often receive two juices when I only wanted to order one.
When I finally get around to buying clothes (less expensive than doing laundry), I’m going to buy a shirt with ‘Armani’ on the front and ‘Prada’ on the back. Those are real things.
I heard a German guy tell a Nazi joke. “Have you ever been to France?” someone else asked. “No, but my grandfather was there for a few months and loved it,” he said before seeking out a high-five. Granted.
Syria has the best food in the Middle East, Lebanon has the prettiest girls, Algeria doesn’t get along with its neighbors, no one likes that Iranian guy with the stupid name, Turkish people drink during Ramadan and the Israeli passport stamp is to a traveler what herpes is to a college kid.
Casablanca is a city in transition. I see as many women in miniskirts as I do in birqas.
There are guys who walk around on the streets with carts who collect garbage and sell it (to the garbage store?). They advertise their business by making a sort of honking noise every 5-8 seconds that is very loud and carries a long distance. This was sad at first because poverty is a vicious cycle. But the fifteenth goddamn they wake you up with their stupid fucking goose noise is about the time when you want to donate a glass bottle to their head from your 3rd story window.
Peugot (a French automobile and man’s purse manufacturer) makes a motorcycle with bicycle pedals.
I would love to write a book or short story, but the only time I can get something amusing on paper is when I write sarcastic little lists with no cohesive meaning or value. There’s probably some sort of learning disability associated with that phenomenon that I’m too lazy to look up.

Settling In

2009-10-20T03:24:00.001-07:00

It turns out teaching is a lot like bartending. Efficiency is a important, but communication is key. Speak slowly; use concise, simple present tense sentences and active phrasing. Gesticulate. I am good at those things. So while I've never had a job quite like this before, it feels good. Now, at least.

It's difficult to describe - or even remember - how nervous I was for my first couple days of work. I think I've sort of blacked it out of my mind like I had PTSD; buried it under some twigs in my subconscious like the cover of a pit trap - something to stumble into later and deal with in therapy. It was the result of three compounding weeks of anticipation. Moving to (yet another) new country, finding an apartment, making friends, settling into the office, finding a gym, figuring out how I was going to do laundry, etc... Miniature adventures that I relish, but that totally sapped my mental energy in fairly short order.

On Sunday, I hung my empty backpack on the curtain rod above the French doors that open onto my small balcony. It doesn't quite match the red pastel drapes, but it couldn't be more appropriate to the worn motif of the room itself. Everything had a fresh coat of paint applied to it in anticipation of our arrival, but it all still feels old. The paint still has the newborn sheen that highlights the sag and imperfections of the walls. The furniture is dark stained wood. My dresser is an elegant, preposterously heavy old thing, but missing a few handles. Laying on my stiff mattress in the middle of the day, distracted by the insane noise of the street and soaking the duvet through with afternoon sweat, it feels like home.

Casablanca is a wonderful city. Like a good expatriate, I'm slowly working my way through a few Bowles novels, and spending as much time as I can wandering the streets, eating things off of carts. The place is a farcry from the gorgeous old cities of Europe and the Middle East. It doesn't have any old architecture, fortresses or landmarks. At least, none that haven't been cannibalized for some new purpose. The whole city is painted from the same palate of beige, gray and broken cement. But it feels like a crossroads. If the United States is the mixing pot, Casablanca would be the point directly above it where the various streams of humanity cross, mid-pour. French-speaking Africans from the horn of Africa, Arabic-speaking Africans from the Sudan and Ethiopia, Arabs of every stripe, Europeans, and a spattering of Americans and Chinese. They all live here and do business in the chaos that is laissez-faire as only Africa can manage.

So I understand why guide books recommend giving the place a miss. If you only have a few days, there's really no excuse for coming to Casablanca over Marrakesh or Fez. But if you're looking for a place to settle down for a couple of months to finish that novel, this is the place.

The Old Medina and Al Hassan II

2009-10-02T05:03:00.000-07:00

Today I took a walk from my hotel, through the medina, to the city's landmark Al Hassan II mosque. It's a shame I didn't do it earlier. I really feel like I have a better understanding of this place now.

The route to the mosque from the hotel first takes you down a long, palm-shaded boulevard, capped at its north end by the American consulate. Multinational corporations are headquartered there and everything is well maintained. Traffic even seemed to be a little more contained and self-conscious than elsewhere in the city (it usually reminds me a little of Phnom Pehn, but with sand-blasted sedans instead of scooters). We walked a few miles down that street and detoured into the medina (which I talked about in the previous post). There are a number of entrances, but we walked in through the old, beautifully constructed gatehouse.

The markets within the medina are the best things I've seen since I got here. It was commerce - unadulterated and honest - as only a third world country can show you. In Western supermarkets, you buy tomatoes that were picked green half a world away and ripened stop sign red with ethylene gas. In Casablanca, the fruit bore the muddy fingerprints of the farmers who picked it. The faces of meat vendors were obscured behind a static of flies; you walked to the thudding, discordant metronome of cleavers on wood. The fish stalls were humid with stench - the bottoms of my shoes still smell like the tide. Small children kneaded dough on doorsteps; young men sold $70 "Armani" jackets (pre-haggle price); pyramids of spice in long, multi-colored rows. And so much noise.

The homes above the storefronts pulsed with movement. Shadows flitted up and down slanting stairwells and unseen children were audible. The people who lived there were very poor. (Though, it's worth noting that they are not the poorest in Casablanca. The slums - an area that provided the city with thirteen Afghan-trained suicide bombers in 2003 - are about an hour from the city. Around a million people live there.)

We walked out of the medina on the side nearest the ocean. A row of fruit stalls broke into a long expanse of empty ground where men sat and ate amidst piles of garbage and dusty avenues of foot traffic. Broken buildings flanked the space and the breeze at our backs kept the smell of the market with us as we walked. The only thing that made the empty plot of land more unusual than the bustle of the market adjacent to it was the grandiosity of the mosque the loomed above it.

The Al Hassan II mosque was built by the former King of Morocco to commemorate his 60th birthday, and to give Casablanca the distinctive landmark it seemingly lacked. It is on the sea wall about four blocks from the squalor of the medina homes, perched on a bed of stone that had been manually reclaimed from the ocean. It was designed by a French architect and cost the citizens of Morocco five hundred million dollars. It is an enormous, grand, stone blimp hangar of a structure. It is inarguably beautiful and impressive... but again; out of place.

We poked around the courtyard but didn't go in (in fact, non-Muslims can't go in without a guide). The west-facing sides of the minaret are discolored with weather damage. There were other tourists there. One might argue that they would not have chosen Morocco as their destination had it not been for the world class landmark. But I wonder.

Is "Casablanca, Morocco" really the city with the big mosque? I'm going to say 'no'. This city's draw should be literature and history. How many of those kids I saw in the medina making bread on doorsteps could have earned university degrees for $500 million? I'm no humanitarian - it just strikes me as bad economics.

Finding Beer

2009-10-02T04:58:00.000-07:00

I don't think I'd drink if "let's go get a beer" wasn't the beginning of so many good stories. I was sitting in the lobby of my hotel with a newly befriended colleague. He made the suggestion. So began my second night in Casablanca.

"You should have not been in that neighborhood past dark," my boss said fourteen hours later. "You guys are insane."

The neighborhood in question is the one immediately outside the walls of the old medina - a walled district that houses some of the city's poorest residents. By day it is a dense, frenetic marketplace. By night, it is an eerily silent stretch of darkened storefronts and infrequent foot traffic. Anthony (my thirsty coworker) and I didn't encounter anything we perceived to be dangerous, but its potential was nearly palpable. Also, there were no bars.

The idea was to find a place where we could sit and enjoy a pair of cold beverages. The plan of action was the traveler's default: Walk until we found something. It's a good plan because even if you don't find what you're looking for, you'll quickly develop your bearings in a new city. As was the case that night. We certainly discovered where not to be at 2:00am.

Casablanca is a different city at night. People work, eat, honk their horns and converse in the streets well past dark - as late as midnight in some parts of the city. But then a switch falls into the off position and it all evaporates. No cars, no people, no noise. Street lights stay on, dutifully illuminating vacant sidewalks. It can be disconcerting.

Before I make it sound like I'm more reckless than I am (or as a post-script now that I have); there wasn't really any danger (, mom). I know what a dangerous neighborhood in a poor country looks like. As does Anthony (a man who worked for several months in Hebron and Gaza). But it was an interesting exploration of the city. You can't really know something is like in the dark unless you look.

Updates Forthcoming

2009-10-01T14:53:00.000-07:00

I have like three updates written on my laptop, but I'm pretty sure I've been blocked from the hotel network. Apparently when my eyes see "free wifi", my brain reads "free bandwidth to totally monopolize and steal music with". The system administrater seems to have disagreed. But otherwise, everything is fine. I'll probably end up taking my computer into the office tomorrow and posting from there.

Also, ù§èé²àç French keyboards.

Cultural Connections

2009-09-26T15:41:00.001-07:00

The lights in my train car don't work, so I sat for a while in near darkness. The train stopped and a few people got on. They filed down the aisle past my window until one man slid my door open and joined me. I couldn't see much beyond an outline.

"Hello," he said in Arabic.

"Hello... do you speak English?" I said in French.

"A little."

We chatted a bit. He sounded about my age, but I wasn't sure. He was on his way to the next town on the line where he would work through the night as the security guard at a gas station. He lamented how little he was paid, saying that wages were a problem throughout Morocco. "But I love my country," he was quick to add. He was extremely friendly; soft spoken, smiling and eager to converse in English - just like every other Moroccan I'd met on the trip.

I had my laptop out and felt a few pangs of white guilt about it once he mentioned how little he was paid (a mid-range laptop is worth around three months' salary to the average Moroccan). I was about to close it and put it away when he asked if I had any music.

"Yeah," I said, pleased that my self-consciousness had been misplaced. "But mostly American music."

"I like American music..." He thought for a moment. "Do you have Kenny Rogers or Justin Timberlake?"

I don't have any Kenny Rogers, but I absolutely have Justin Timberlake (I'm not even going to claim that as a guilty pleasure, by the way. Say what you will about his body of work, but 'Futuresex/Lovesounds' might be the best pop record of the decade).

Language barriers kept us from getting too far in the way of conversation, but we both had our heads bobbing in its absence.

Tangier

2009-09-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

I walked for 8km down streets of dirt and broken cement. When you can find a steep enough hill, you can see the coastline - an ocean cresting into an expanse of whitewashed homes and stone minarets. The original plan was to stay in my hotel room, sleep, read and recuperate from my time in Spain (and a vicious two-day hangover). But lord knows I'm not the type to splurge for air conditioning, and here's a shocker: Africa is really hot. [Note: To be honest, most backpackers are quick to point out that Morocco is not "Real Africa". Probably fair.]

The city is visibly poor, but populated with very happy people. I walked all that way totally unharassed by shills or beggars. Though that may be have been because I was the only foreigner that I saw all afternoon. School had apparently just gotten out (2pm) because children ran, weaving and screaming, kicking soccer balls between taxis and pedi-carts. I gesticulated my way through a €1.20 purchase of olives, cheese and bread. Some kind of mango pulp/yogurt drink set me back another €0.40.

I like it here. Glad I only have a day, but happy to have seen it. I'll be on a train to Casablanca first thing tomorrow. I have no idea how much it will cost or how long it will take. $12 and six hours are my guesses. The route never deviates the coastline though - so I think I'll be happy with half a day in a right-hand window seat.

You'll see this on a quiz someday...

2009-09-25T09:03:00.001-07:00

When you cross from Algeciras, Spain to Tangier, Morocco, you can look out over the side of the ferry and see England, Spain and Morocco; Europe and Africa; The Atlantic and the Mediterranean - all at once. The sun was just dimming on a perfectly clear horizon as I was setting sail. The lights from both continents were already visible as we left the docks. Views of Gibraltar (an interesting English-controlled peninsula near Algeciras) broke free of the coastline as we left the harbor. Stars enveloped the ocean.

Fast ships can make the crossing in 35 minutes. My clunker took 2 amazing hours. I'm very happy I didn't fly. I can't image a better way to have been introduced to Africa.

Spain Recap

2009-09-25T08:59:00.000-07:00

So it was kind of a break-neck tour, but from what I saw; color me impressed. On my last day in Madrid I bought a bus ticket from a midget. I didn't actually need one, but my brain kept making jokes (Spanish midget = Spidget?) until I sort of found myself putting money into his tiny little hands. For the rest of the afternoon, I hopped from line to line, only exerting myself to make sure I didn't get too lost. It was a good idea. I saw a lot of the city, and fell that much more in love. The streets are lined with shade trees and deck furniture where Spaniards sit throughout the day drinking Sangria and beer. An almost incomparably beautiful city (Florence and Rome come to mind as equals) is the frame for its happy, youthful population. I rode for a good two hours.

And such was the tone for the rest of my trip. As I've said before, my only regret is not having had enough time. Happily, it's starting to register that the country is my new neighbor, and I'll have plenty of time to get back once I've settled in. I've heard Cadiz runs some badass wine tours.

If you're ever lucky enough to get over there, I'd really recommend no fewer than 4 nights in any one place. The speed and aggressiveness with which I usually try to case a region was profoundly inappropriate for Spain. I always got the feeling that the siesta culture that permeates Spanish society is mostly lost on someone passing quickly though. It's a country to be observed from a lawn chair, not glanced at from a run.

Granada Wins

2009-09-23T04:34:00.000-07:00

Madrid is a party, Seville is gorgeous, but Granada has swept in for the overall win. As wonderful as Madrid and Seville are, they're a bit sterile. Everything is wheelchair accessible. Tourists snap enough pictures to compile a real time stream of information to rival London's CC camera system. Elderly Americans ride around in horse-drawn carriages like they're taking in the sights at Moorish Disney.

Granada feels like the city on the approach to an ancient fortress. What makes that feeling particularly refreshing is that the city is exactly that. Claustrophobically narrow cobblestone streets, steep ascents, vantage points that make you feel like you're on defensive overwatch. And above it all; Alhambra - The Red Fortress. Granada is a working military outpost, overrun by Bohemia. Dreadlocked Spaniards wander the streets in their cheesecloth European parachute pants. Food and drink are cheap (the free tapas with every beer tradition that I've mentioned before is very much alive here). University students sit and read on every flat surface.

The city feels like more of a home, less like a tourist trap. I could imagine living here.

There's a lot more I could write... People live in caves outside the city limits. Alhambra and the cathedral are amazing. Expat 20-somethings make incredible lives for themselves here. My hostel feels like a North African version of The Beach. I'll catch up on it later when I can upload some photos.

Again, the only negative is knowing that I have to leave soon.

On Accomodation

2009-09-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've stayed in a lot of hostels. Slept around, as it were. And the two I've stayed in so far in Spain have been the 1st and 2nd best I've ever seen. I don't understand why you would stay in a hotel here. (...Privacy, I guess - but whatever)

<-- This is the view from the terrace at the place I stayed at in Seville. $20/night, free breakfast, free tours, and if I didn't throw like a girl I could hit the Seville Cathedral with a rock.

Contrast that to the places I stayed at in Thailand: Prostitute next door, smelled like dead person, roaches, electrical outlets that looked like they were wired by an arsonist. Or Rome: Actually a tent, ten miles from the city center, scorpions. Or Russia: Hobo knife fights, blood. Not that I didn't love all of those places, but Spain plays in a whole different league.

I love this country.

Writing these things in bus stations is working out pretty well. Hopefully I can knock out another one between here and Granada.

La Noche en Blanco

2009-09-21T08:36:00.001-07:00

The whole country of Spain is on the sleep and work schedule you kept during college. The day starts no sooner than ten o'clock. Anyone on the street before then (unless they are still out from the previous night) is pissed off and avoiding direct sunlight. Work for four hours, then go home, drink a couple beers and take a nap (siesta). Go back to work and keep things running until nine or ten, then remember that you're hungry and go get dinner. After dinner, hang out with friends and drink whatever's cheapest until two when you pass out. Same plan on Friday, but your 2:00 siesta segues into a 16 hour bender and you spiral into a nocturnal liver-punishing cycle that takes you through Monday morning.

That's not a joke. I was fortunate enough to have attended a big art festival on the streets of Madrid called La Noche en Blanco (The Night of White... or In White?) the night after I arrived. There were brochures for it on the turnstiles of the subway. Big city fold-out city maps covered in 115 numbered dots. The key on the reverse side covered the various art and music happenings at each dot. I couldn't read the descriptions, but I could read the time. 9 to 6. At night.

People throw around "the whole city" a lot in describing public events - "the whole city came out for the Rose Festival" - and it isn't true. Some statistically negligible fraction of the city came out. But when I say, 'The whole city came out for La Noche en Blanco', I mean it in a mathematically factual way. The streets were packed. The. Whole. Night. Apartment buildings were dark and the din of conversation and music blanketed everything I saw. Sleep anywhere but a soundproof bunker would have been impossible.

Part of my certainty that no soul remained indoors comes from the distance that my group and I walked. Miles. We had no idea what was going on, so we just took to the streets and meandered toward whatever was making noise or shooting lights into the sky. We must have covered five miles between 11pm and 5am (when I finally made my way to a bed and coma'd out). And every last block, bar and plaza was packed.

This was after my first full day in Spain, by the way. I slept for 14 hours the night after.