Currently browsing posts tagged: writing.

5 Writers You Should Read

This is one of those half-brained ideas I came up with yesterday while doing some googling for good articles on the niqaab ban.  There are people I love to read–many of them are listed to the right, in my blogroll–but there are some people I think ought to be read by everyone (or, at least [...]

16.07.2010

4 Comments

Couscous, Djellaba, Tajine.

Originally posted at Talk Morocco Julia Roberts, McDonald’s, Mickey Mouse. This was how a young Moroccan student of mine described the United States to me. Images from his youth: Pretty Woman, glimpsed illicitly on satellite TV as a boy, or downloaded by BitTorrent. McDonald’s, which arrived in his hometown when he was eight, a beacon [...]

22.04.2010

No Comments

For Rushdie

Let me tell you a secret: I think Christopher Hitchens is an idiot. Though I admit I’m a latecomer to his columns, from the moment I heard about the SSNP incident, I was utterly convinced. In fact, I’m perhaps glad that I didn’t know much about him at the time, because I fear that I [...]

05.01.2010

10 Comments

Meknes, ya Meknes

As I get ready for work, I finger a row of books on the shelf, tickling the spines of favorite titles like John Updike’s Brazil and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita until I reach a tiny volume. My fingers rest upon the broken and bent spine of Allan Hibbard’s Paul Bowles, Magic, and Morocco, [...]

04.08.2009

11 Comments

On Admiration

I am surrounded by writers. Every morning when I wake up, one of the first things I do is scan my RSS reader for something to bring meaning to my day. I scan the loads of Moroccan blogs I subscribe to, I scan those of my Global Voices friends and colleagues, I read up on [...]

15.06.2009

6 Comments