Michael Toler Right now it's Ramadan, and the month of August, so it's supposed to be quiet, right? The faithful are too tired, hungry, or thirsty to stay awake over books, and the un-Islamic or non-Muslim are expected to stay in Europe, perhaps awaiting better weather and the assurance of daytime food come mid-September. So why is … Read more The Scholars of Summer
What do Ulan Bator, Tangier, and Mexico City have in common? Great weather? Safe water? The best pizza? Some of the above, certainly, though not all the time. Staffers from Bangladesh (AIBS), Jordan (ACOR), Mongolia (ACMS) and Pakistan (AIPS) No, what joins us with places like Tunis, Amman, and Phnom Penh is our membership in … Read more From Mexico to Mongolia: The CAORC World
Imagine this: you reach the age of, say, 35, and you’re driving down the expressway with the kids in the back seat. You get hopelessly lost a half hour from home. You decide, then and there, to sign up at the program offered by the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, TALIM. The course? … Read more Arabic: Speaking 5, Reading 0
One of the joys of this job – a mix of citizen cultural diplomat, curator, and tour guide – is meeting some of the Americans who make their way to the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies. TALIM, which means education in Arabic, is primarily a research center for scholars (we are the AIMS … Read more Resurrecting Her 19th Century Tangier Consular Uncle
There should be a comma or two in the above title, adding an element of clarity to this post about the annual cultural Moussem of Assilah, an event which requires no invitation to attend, but just try to find out anything about it without traveling to Assilah. No website (or rather, one that hopelessly jams … Read more Culture Diplomacy and Moussems
That's a rather silly title, given that millions of car ferry passengers and cruise ship tourists see the city on the Strait of Gibraltar every year from their ships. I guess what I meant is this: there was a time when three-masted sailing ships, men-of-war and of commerce, regularly moored off this ancient city on … Read more When Tangier Was Seen From the Sea
The Legation's door, that is. This is a story of a fine building, the "Old American Legation" in Tangier, home to TALIM, the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies. Our new home. A fine building that has seen better days – sometime between when it was given to the United States of America by … Read more Gibraltar Shrouded in Fungus, or the Cat Who Ate the Legation
When they arrived in Tangier to run the American Legation, Thor and Elizabeth Kuniholm knew they were embarking on an adventure. It was 1991, when the world was about to witness the fall of the Soviet Union, and Francis Fukuyama was drafting the End of History. In Tangier, history wasn't ending, it was just taking … Read more Tangier Bids Farewell to the Kuniholm Era
"Ghana's Fairytale Ends…" was how the Reuters dispatch from Accra described the letdown ("the silence of the vuvuzelas") of Ghana's defeat last night at the hands of (or is it at the feet of?) Uruguay. The Moroccan waiters at the Tangier restaurant were rooting for their fellow Africans, just like the Algerians were last week … Read more A Ghanaian’s Black Friday On the Tip of Africa
As real estate pros know, location can be everything. The just-completed conference in Oran, Algeria of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies – AIMS – focused on the multitudinous aspects of location in "Viewing the Scene: Global and Local in North Africa." The happy organizers and hosts, the directors of the Oran-based CEMA (the AIMS … Read more Location, Location, Location: AIMS In Algeria
