On a January night 20 years ago this month, tanks were rolling down the Avenue de A.L.N in Oran. At first I was simply concerned that they would knock down our venerable building by mistake when one of them stopped to make a U-turn in front of the American Consulate, where we lived. Then … Read more 1992-2012, Algeria-Morocco: Political Islam(s)
On the Edge (Sur la planche) – Leila Kilani, Morocco 2011 Death For Sale (Mort à vendre) – Faouzi Bensaidi, Morocco 2011 We were very well advised, at the outset of Tangier's just-concluded 13th edition of Morocco's National Film Festival, to see the two films that in fact came to win the top two prizes. … Read more Filming Morocco’s Lower Rungs On the Social Ladder
French Protectorate brochure for the Morocco Pavilion at the 1939-40 New York World's Fair, TALIM museum and research library, Tangier In this year of the centenary of the 1912 Treaty of Fez, retrospectives on Protectorate Morocco abound. The first thing you must know about Morocco, 100 years ago, is that two Protectorate zones were … Read more What You Must Know About (Protectorate) Morocco
François Beaune wants your (true) story. Your Mediterranean story, in whatever language (French, Arabic, Hebrew, English, Spanish… the Med is a melting pot of languages too) you choose. And though the invitation is open – "I believe in copyleft, and want stories to be shared" – there are some conditions for submissions. Inspired … Read more Copyleft Your True Story: Histoires Vraies de Méditerranée
Foreignization, domestication, transmutation… Karima Bouziane has mastered the vocabulary of her topic. At today's presentation at TALIM, the audience caught on immediately to this specialized world of semiotics, which has to do with the study of signs and communication. The capacity audience (09:00 on a Friday morning – a major feat!) was composed largely … Read more Domesticating Foreign Ads or Translating the Maghreb
Poster adapted by Serena Epstein, American School of Tangier As we walked, I showed Tennessee the Arabic translation of his play, and explained that the title in Arabic meant: A Cat On the Fire. Mohamed Choukri, Tennessee Williams in Tangier (1979, Cadmus Editions, translated by Paul Bowles) Choukri's little book recounts one of the playwright's … Read more Tennessee Williams’ A Cat On The Fire
"To provide outstanding young military leaders an unsurpassed opportunity to achieve fluency in a foreign language, pursue graduate study at an overseas university, and acquire an in depth understanding of foreign cultures, thereby further equipping them to serve in positions of great responsibility as senior leaders in the United States Armed Forces." The Olmstead Scholarship … Read more Deep Education: Olmstead Scholars Learn More Than Arabic
From "Précipitations Annuelles," dry month map inset at TALIM research library, from the colonial era Institut Scientifique Chérifien The Scientific American picked up Reuters' article from today "Morocco prays for rain for first time since 2007." Now, I don't think that my prayers for dry weather last fall, when the Embassy contractor started our latest … Read more Let It Rain, On Morocco
To our usual languages in the little "card" above, we wanted to add a New Year's greeting in Tamazight, also known as Amazigh or Berber. But we couldn't find it in tifinagh, the Berber alphabet. The world's most complete list of holiday greetings has just included (with our prompting) an entry for the language spoken … Read more 2011 to 2012: Another TALIM Transition
For the last couple of months, settle into a Royal Air Maroc airplane seat, reach for the inflight magazine, and you'll see the cover story – the Museums of Tangier. Featuring, along with our friends the Kasbah Museum, the Tangier American Legation (TALIM) museum. We are thrilled that RAM, with its six million passengers per … Read more Read All About It: Legation & the Press
