Grant extension awarded!

New official departure date: December 10, 2010

Moroccan State of Mind

Watch this first: "Empire State of Mind," featuring Jay-Z and Alicia Keys.

Then watch this: "Moroccan State of Mind," featuring Mary and Alaina (with appearances by your favorite blogger + Maria and Al "Cheeks" Saline).

Congratulations to Mary on an awesome first music video!

Next Stop: The Validation Station

One of the many great things that happened to me during my first several months in Tetouan was meeting Carolina Ceca, a young Spanish artist working in the city under the auspices of a Spanish government grant. (You can see a bit of her work here. It’s worth checking out.) Before her Morocco time came to a close a couple days ago, we were meeting up once a week, ostensibly to converse in (and practice her) English but really just for girl talk. We had also tinkered with various English texts that she’d written up for grant applications and her website.

The last day we spent together, though, I figured I’d turn the tables and request some feedback on a project abstract I’d translated to Spanish. It’s something I hand out to research-related people when I meet them, since I find they often focus better on what I’m saying when I’m not actually saying it, but rather when it’s written down in front of them. As expected, Carolina had some helpful suggestions to make; however, she also surprised me with some passionate – and personally validating – insights into the Spanish side of my work.

Request for Grant Extension

Current status: Four months into Fulbright grant
Request: One month of additional funding (Nov. 10 – Dec. 10)

Overview

Having focused much of my undergraduate studies on religious relations in al-Andalus, I applied for a Fulbright grant with the aim of expanding my knowledge to encompass modern dynamics between Catholics and Muslims in Spain and Morocco. Specifically, I proposed to examine the way in which both groups used religious rhetoric to frame their respective positions over Moroccan combat in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. It was to be a historical undertaking, grounded in archival research that I would primarily carry out in Tetouan, the old headquarters of the Spanish Protectorate.

Now in Morocco, my work has indeed taken me to Tetouan, where I have been living for the past four months since the end of my CLEA grant. The city has thrown several curveballs at me, however.

Of pork, paella and critical thinking

Last Sunday my friends Ahmed and Meriam invited me home for lunch with them and their two children, Atimad (age 12) and Hatim (age 9).* Highlights from the meal that nearly knocked my pants off for their sheer abnormality:

1. We didn't eat Moroccan food. Instead, Meriam made a tasty Spanish paella.

"Look at the peaks!"

I think I mentioned in a post back in the fall that the translation of the name of a beautiful northern town -- Chefchaouen -- means "look at the peaks." It's apt. The Rif Mountains are lovely; they most certainly ought to be admired. But mountains, as we know, require more than just ogling, and so imagine my excitement when my landlord mentioned two or three months that he belongs to a hiking group. "You can come too, if you can keep up," he offered.

Picturing the diversity of MENA

For the last several years, Fulbright has sponsored an annual enrichment seminar for the grantees based in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. In early May I was fortunate enough to travel to Amman for this year's seminar, as well as to extend my plane ticket on either end and do some tromping around Beirut, Damascus and the Petra ruins in Jordan.

Enrichment seminar? you may be asking yourself. Where is it that my hard-earned tax money is going now? A fair question.

Tracing the New Reconquista: Religious Rhetoric in Morocco During the Spanish Civil War (abstract)

One of the most powerful founding myths of the Spanish nation is that of the reconquista, typically represented as the sacred and patriotic struggle of medieval Christians to rout infidel Muslim forces from the Iberian Peninsula. Given the potency of this narrative in Spanish tradition, it appeared as an attractive discourse for a group of disgruntled military officers staging a coup d’etat in 1936: they saw themselves as messianic guardians of the “true” Spain, duty-bound to purge the country of the decadent Republic then in power. Their self-portrayal became complicated, however, by a heavy reliance on the Spanish protectorate in northern Morocco – more specifically, on some 80,000 Muslim Morocco recruits into the rebel army. To smooth over the irony of an alliance with precisely the Moorish enemy of the medieval reconquista, leaders of the Nationalist effort began promoting the notion of a religious brotherhood between Catholics and Muslims. Followers of the two monotheistic traditions were to unite in a holy crusade against the threat of the atheistic Spanish Republic.

Tracing the New Reconquista: Religious Rhetoric in Morocco During the Spanish Civil War (working paper)

Once upon a time, many years ago, the kingdom of Spain suffered a terrible invasion by hordes of barbaric adherents to the nascent Islamic religion. These infidels, swarming up from North Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar, managed to penetrate and subdue the land as far north as the Pyrenees, stopped only by the heroic efforts of a small group of brave-hearted Christians. With their courage, the reconquista was born, that sacred and patriotic struggle to wrest the Spanish realm back from the heathen Muslims, fully realized with the defeat of Granada in 1492 at the hands of the good Catholic rulers, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

Northward, ho!

Between Seattle and Vermont, the northern roots just wouldn’t leave me alone, so once my language grant ended in Fez at the end of February, I migrated to Tetouan – a smaller city about an hour east of Tangier, ten some kilometers from the Mediterranean and surrounded on all sides by the Rif Mountains.

A photographic explanation of my two-month absence from the blogosphere

Bob and Lynda Olson came to Morocco! Late February to early March.

Shnu parlez-vous?

One of the qualifications required of Fulbright applicants is proficiency in the language(s) spoken in the country in which they’re requesting to study. For Morocco, the Fulbright website specifies that this means Arabic and French.

“So, uh, what are you doing here?”

Yallah! Making efforts at the Marrakesh half-marathon

Given that none of the previous months’ blog posts have included accounts of hyperactive flip-outs, it’s an accurate assumption that I’ve been able to continue running here in Morocco.

Stuff that is different and makes us cold

The last posting opened with a side comment about the unusually warm winter we’ve had this year in Morocco. Why, then, as I sit around the apartment doing Arabic homework, am I wearing fleece pants, wool socks, leg warmers, a long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, fleece, hooded down jacket and a hat? It’s due to a little something we like to call lack of indoor heating.

Siiiingin' in (If)rane

It’s been such an unusually warm and dry winter here in Fes, and I managed to pick a rainy Saturday to visit Ifrane. Consider it, then, a testament to the company – Rod, Sam and our host, Kelly – that the trip was a great time anyway.

Gobbling up one "eid" and sheepishly celebrating another: Thanksgiving and Eid al-Kabeer in Morocco

As chance would have it, the Gregorian solar calendar and Islamic lunar calendar aligned in such a way this year that within two days of the great American turkey slaughter, millions of Arabic-bleating sheep met a similar fate across the Islamic world. That’s right: it was a holiday double-header this past weekend for us Americans in Morocco.

Kareema and Kamilia go jellaba shopping

Many, many people in Morocco dress in Western-style clothing, but there are also a good number – especially in Fes – who opt for a more traditional wardrobe, the centerpiece of which is the jellaba. The best way I can describe the jellaba is as a sort of elven cloak: full-length, pull-over, hooded. It comes in all different patterns and materials, from leopard print to the “Moroccan cashmere” a shop owner touted to Sam the other day when we were out shopping (and which I might edit as “glorified felt”).

Independence-ing in Moulay Idriss and Volubilis

Wednesday, November 18, was Independence Day, established in acknowledgment of the liberation of Morocco from the French and Spanish protectorates in 1956. We had the day off from school, but the truth is that most Moroccans let the holiday pass without much more than a tip of the hat in its direction. As my friend Mustapha put it, independence was a big deal when it first happened, but over the years, celebrations have become more and more subdued, dying away to essentially nothing in recent years. That being said, a day off from school is a day off from school, so Rod and I decided to use it as an opportunity to visit the small town of Moulay Idriss and the Roman ruins of Volubilis, both accessible from Meknes, a city forty minutes east of Fes.

Under Moroccan Ground

We've established that Morocco has some pretty great mountains, but who knew that it is also home to the largest cave system in North Africa? Called the Gouffre du Friouato (the "Abyss" of Friouato... who or what Friouato is I don't know), this natural wonder can be found thirty-five kilometers outside of the small city of Taza, two hours northeast of Fes.

Oct-over? Already?

After a week or so of settling into the new apartment, it feels like Cath and I were here hardly at all during the last two.

Our extra-Fes excursions have been three-fold: to the nearby town of Azrou, to the Sahara Desert and to the small cities of Tetouan and Chefchaouen up north. Although the latter was an independent trip undertaken by just Cath and myself, the first two were organized for larger groups; together, I think that the trips encompass two rather distinct styles of travel.