Avuncular American

In Case of Fire, Pray to St. Florian

You know that Tangier is extremely humid, even when it's not raining.  You also know that the historic American Legation building is stone, cement, plaster, and concrete, materials in use in our 18th through 20th century buildings.  And that these walls are soaking wet (so says our new moisture meter).  So who's worried about fire safety?

It turns out that we're also 50% wood and other flammable material.  Beams, lath, parquet floors, windows, shutters, doors (and doors-within-gates), etc.  Not to speak of furniture, picture frames, and books, lots of books.  Oh yes, and I'm not really sure that our mazout or fuel oil supply is all that secure.  We are flammable.  Highly.

That tag you see is from a fire extinguisher, last inspected in 2003 (ignore the reference to "monthly").  We have some two dozen of them, which had been distributed across our 45-room, 5-building, 5-staircase institution.  I'm glad the tag says that it was in "Good" condition...  eight years ago.  Apparently even that's not reassuring, given some companies' practice of sandblasting old extinguishers down to the metal case, painting them shiny fire engine red, like new! Contents: untouched.

Someone, seeing my collection of fire extinguishers, suggested that we could save money by collecting the dust that has built up in our courtyard from the wall and roof resurfacing project.  Makes great fire extinguisher refill material, they tell me.  Inshallah.

I missed National Fire Prevention Week last October, but I can't wait until International Firefighters Day in May.  Fire safety is now, so... we're having a fire drill!  No, bad timing. Did Noah have a fire drill in the Deluge?

Well, the rain stopped this afternoon for a bit, so we gave it a try.  Not the tagged A-B-C hand-held models, but the old-time fire hoses that are found throughout the Legation, installed probably when this place was still a functioning diplomatic post (i.e., pre-1962, or almost 50 years ago).

I hope that they were tested in the last half century, but I can't be sure.  One thing I know: they remain nicely rolled up, locked in their metal cabinets, with the keys on the inside, behind glass.  Did they ever display the "In Case of Fire, Break Glass" instructions?

By the time our team figures out that the glass slides and was not to be broken, precious minutes have slipped by.  We retrieve the key.  Now, metal door open, we see that the hose - in remarkably good shape after all these years - is not connected to the spigot.  More minutes. 

The hose is attached and unfurled, with Ahmed (left) heading for our thankfully imaginary fire.  Open the spigot.  Nothing.  Water does not go to that particular hydrant (is that the proper term?).  Oh well, maybe we won't have any fires in our library, filled with 8,000 rare volumes on Morocco. We are toast.

Until we get working - and regularly inspected - fire extinguishers, along with water to our fire hoses, we don't have a prayer in the event of a fire.

Therefore, my resolution for the next Fire Prevention Day: build a marabout to St. Florian.

Saint Florian is the patron saint of firefighters.

Gerald Loftus

1821: Sultan Moulay Slimane Gives Tangier Legation to U.S.

190 years ago, in 1821, Morocco's Sultan Moulay Slimane (the French transliteration tends to be used, vice the more familiar to Anglophones "Suleiman") gave the original building of the Tangier Legation to the United States.

Now, 190 doesn't have quite the same ring as 200, but this is notice to those who care about such things: the Bicentennial of the Tangier American Legation (Institute for Moroccan Studies) is only 10 years away.

The image here of TALIM's benefactor is not a portrait, but rather an artist's rendering of the Sultan from contemporary descriptions.  It was explained to me by a Moroccan historian that royal portraits were only done after Moulay Slimane's reign.

His reign was rather tumultuous.  According to Larousse, it included sibling rebellion, pressure from Turks, Berbers, and Islamic fundamentalists - wahabism, which Moulay Slimane saw as an antidote to practices such as maraboutism or veneration of saints.

To top it all off, the plague hit Morocco.  Imagine being a Sultan - or an American diplomat in Black Death-ridden Tangier - during this dark time.

Little, it appears, has been written about this enigmatic Sultan.  My historian friend, who has already written about other Alawite sultans, is working on a book on Moulay Slimane.  One of Morocco's newest universities is named after him, and we hope to interest AIMS American and Maghribi scholars in this Sultan who reached out to both wahabi fundamentalism and the young democracy called the United States of America.  He died in 1822, the year after he gave us this property.

With all that going on, Sultan Moulay Slimane managed to free the last of Morocco's Christian slaves and give the U.S. a permanent home for its diplomats.  From which, 190 years later, I write this post.

Thank you, Sultan Moulay Slimane.  Your image, even if an artist's impression, will assume its appropriate place at the Legation.  And we hope to make a splash in a decade to mark your generosity of almost two centuries ago.

Gerald Loftus

La mosquée - Daoud Aoulad-Syad

We've seen films-within-films before, usually films about making films.  La mosquée, a little gem featured at the 2011 Moroccan National Film Festival, is different.  It's a sort of "post-production" film: what happens after the film crew leaves a small Moroccan village?

From the director, Daoud Aoulad-Syad, at last November's Damascus International Film Festival:

For the filming of my last movie "Waiting for Pasolini", sets were built on land leased from local villagers.  Among the sets, a mosque was built on the land of Moha, a villager who also appears in the movie.  At the end of filming, the filming team leaves the village.  Villagers demolish all the sets, except the mosque. This mosque became a real place of prayer for the whole village.  For Moha this is a real disaster.

Poor Moha, salt of the earth farmer.  He just wants his land back, and it seems that he's the only one around who realizes that the "mosque" is just a prop, literally propped up from behind like any cardboard Western might create an instant church, saloon, or hotel.

Even the "imam" is fake, but he sees opportunity everywhere: Moha should just get with the plan.  This film has everything: local official who has the power to make Moha's life hell; sleazy political candidate who's not above buying your vote with a goat; authentic imam in jeans, who says "the djellabah does not make the imam."

Physics professor at Rabat University, the director looks a bit like a Moroccan Bob Marley, and plays himself at the outset.  This is a "comedy," but the laughs are all subdued, and not without a melancholy tinge.  I will eagerly await Prof. Aoulad-Syad's next offering.

Aoulad-Syad, interviewed on Radio Médi1, said that the Moroccan National Film Festival's selection of 19 shorts and 19 feature films is out of an annual Moroccan production of some 100 films.  A very respectable Moroccan showing indeed.

The organizers, the CCM - Centre Cinématographique Marocain - couldn't have chosen a better venue.  Tangier's Cinémathèque, a popular cultural attraction in its own right, in the historic Cinéma Rif, has a year-round repertoire of current, classic, and documentary films.  The National Film Festival, in its 12th year, keeps coming back to Tangier.

The turnout, on this rainy, cold Sunday afternoon in January, is testimony to the CCM's - and the Cinémathèque's - quality offerings.  It also helped that entry was absolutely free!

This first appeared on TALIMblog.

La mosquée at Tangier's Moroccan National Film Festival

We've seen films-within-films before, usually films about making films.  La mosquée, a little gem featured at the 2011 Moroccan National Film Festival, is different.  It's a sort of "post-production" film: what happens after the film crew leaves a small Moroccan village?

From the director, Daoud Aoulad-Syad, at last November's Damascus International Film Festival:

For the filming of my last movie "Waiting for Pasolini", sets were built on land leased from local villagers.  Among the sets, a mosque was built on the land of Moha, a villager who also appears in the movie.  At the end of filming, the filming team leaves the village.  Villagers demolish all the sets, except the mosque. This mosque became a real place of prayer for the whole village.  For Moha this is a real disaster.

Poor Moha, salt of the earth farmer.  He just wants his land back, and it seems that he's the only one around who realizes that the "mosque" is just a prop, literally propped up from behind like any cardboard Western might create an instant church, saloon, or hotel.

Even the new village "imam" is fake, seeing opportunity everywhere: Moha should just get with the plan.  This film has everything: local official who has the power to make Moha's life hell; sleazy political candidate who's not above buying your vote with a goat; and an authentic imam in jeans, who says "the djellabah does not make the imam."

Physics professor at Rabat University, the director looks a bit like a Moroccan Bob Marley, and plays himself at the outset.  This is a "comedy," but the laughs are all subdued, and not without a melancholy tinge.  I will eagerly await Prof. Aoulad-Syad's next offering.

Aoulad-Syad, interviewed on Radio Médi1, said that the Moroccan National Film Festival's selection of 19 shorts and 19 feature films is out of an annual Moroccan production of some 100 films.  A very respectable Moroccan showing indeed.

The organizers, the CCM - Centre Cinématographique Marocain - couldn't have chosen a better venue.  Tangier's Cinémathèque, a popular cultural attraction in its own right, in the historic Cinéma Rif, has a year-round repertoire of current, classic, and documentary films.  The National Film Festival, in its 12th year, keeps coming back to Tangier.

The turnout, on this rainy, cold Sunday afternoon in January, is testimony to the CCM's - and the Cinémathèque's - quality offerings.  It also helped that entry was absolutely free!

Gerald Loftus

Wired, Wireless, Haywire: Legation's Trimlines Get Sidelined

Twenty years ago, in the magical Belgian film Toto le héros, we saw a glimpse of the future: walking down the street, you're confronted with wiring, plumbing, and tubing coming out of the most unexpected places.  It's the Centre Pompidou effect, but without the discipline.

I've seen the future, and it's here in the medina. The Wired Effect.  It's even crept into the historic Tangier American Legation.  So I've declared the War on Wires.

That pile of tangled telephone line you see (only a representative sample) used to be on our walls.  Not "in" but "on."  Same principle applied to electricity.  Need a new plug for that stove?  No problem.  We'll just drill a hole in this nearby wall, string the cable through the 19th century courtyard, then drill another hole to get it back inside. Presto!

The impetus for this War on Wires has been twofold.  Thanks to funding from institutional sponsors AIMS and CAORC, TALIM has been able to retire its venerable Trimline™ phones.  For those who don't remember, here's the Collectors Weekly blurb:

The Trimline, like the Princess phone, was one of the Bell System's best marketing innovations. First introduced in 1965, the idea was to create a stylish, easier to use telephone. A huge success, the Trimline was copied by most other major telephone manufacturers. The Trimline's dial was located in the handset itself with the ringer and electronics inside the telephone's base.

Yes, and when combined with vintage 110v Radio Shack® intercoms (and lots of transformers), you had a means of paging Monsieur le Directeur through many parts of this sprawling place.  "M. le Directeur, Mr. Ben Shismu is calling," the intercom would announce, to all within earshot, including the caller.  "Who?" the Directeur would respond.  "Mr. Ben Shismu..." followed by information that one hoped the caller himself did not overhear.  Our new phones have an intercom function, but the caller doesn't get to listen in.

And the wiring is either in the wall or in a relatively unobtrusive track.

I'm going to have to flog the old phones on eBay.  They'll be treasures to someone.

The other trigger to our anti-wiring crusade has been our State Department funded roofing project, which has waterproofed selected - stress on selected - roofs and walls.  Somehow the application of fresh paint makes these eyesores even more visible, and also leads to new discoveries: many of the wires, long since superseded, were simply left to dangle in the breeze, snipped at one end.  Away they go.

In the bargain, we've not only installed new phones and additional extensions, but extended WiFi to most parts of the Legation.  Thanks to Morocco's excellent high speed ADSL and 3G coverage, it is the envy of most countries on the African continent in terms of internet access.  We still have a long way to go, but phone-wise and internet-wise, we have moved from the '60s to at least the mid noughts.  Not bad.

With all this modernity, we haven't forgotten our roots.  In fact, our newest acquisition is this vintage phone, purchased at a nearby antique shop for use as a prop in our budding "Legation Room," an attempt to recreate an office in our museum to illustrate that this was once a working American diplomatic post.

And we got it for a bargain.  Not trusting the price quoted to me, the Foreigner, we had our undercover shopper Yhtimad go there a few days later (she was already known to the shopkeeper as a customer) and get it for half the price.  Foreigner price, Moroccan price.

This antique dealer doesn't know me yet.  I once negotiated for two years with an Alexandrian mashrabiya dealer over a beautiful antique picture frame.  I was a good customer, and we became friends in the bargain, chatting politics etc. for long periods over mint tea.  In the end, my Egyptian friend just gave me the frame.

I'm going to have to sip some tea with my Tangier antique guy...

Gerald Loftus

Tu Bishvat in Tangier

From Wikipedia:

Tu Bishvat (Hebrew: ט״ו בשבט‎) is a minor Jewish holiday, usually occurring in late January or early February, that marks the "New Year of the Trees." Tu Bishvat is one of four "New Years" mentioned in the Mishnah. Customs include planting trees and eating dried fruits and nuts. In Israel, the flowering of the almond tree, which grows wild around the country, coincides with Tu Bishvat.

Reminds me a little of the Egyptian spring holiday Sham ennissim ("Sniff the breeze"), which comes a bit later in spring.  Does this mean that Tu Bishvat is the holiday of optimists, ushering in spring in mid-January?

Thanks to American Sephardic scholar (Brandeis University) and musician Vanessa Paloma (check out her blog for videos of performances), we were invited last night to a celebration of Tu Bishvat at the home of a member of Tangier's Jewish community.  Though the food and company were much appreciated, it was Vanessa's solo performance, voice and medieval harp, which was the real treat.

These songs from the diaspora, harking back to the days of Andalusian Spain, before Jews and Muslims (as well as converts to Christianity), were summarily expelled, are a pleasure even for those who don't speak Spanish, Ladino, or its northern Moroccan version called Haketia.  They can be highly evocative of longing and loss, but yesterday's selection was roundly joyous, mostly songs of love and marriage.  Appropriate to the Tu Bishvat theme of spring, of renewal.

To people who cherish the sight of Jews, Muslims, and Christians sitting around and having a good time, last night was an even greater treat.  Perhaps reminisicent of the best days of Andalusia, renowned for its tolerance and cultural flowering.

Tangier is a place where this kind of easygoing mingling is still possible.  So to all those who celebrate "the New Year of the Trees," happy Tu Bishvat!

Gerald Loftus

Save America's Treasured Legation

Does TALIM pass the SAT* test?

*SAT stands for Save America's Treasures, a US National Park Service program which, according to the NPS, "is one of the largest and most successful grant programs for the protection of our nation’s endangered and irreplaceable cultural heritage."

TALIM Board members, Fellows, Friends of the Legation, interested citizens, and motivated readers are requested to read the SAT definition of "national significance" (below, in italics), with my accompanying comments (in red).  I would ask that those interested in safeguarding our treasure here in Tangier - but who live in the US, maybe even in Washington D.C. - might approach the NPS with a view to TALIM getting needed assistance in the quest to preserve this "nationally significant" historical landmark.

The only one, we never cease to repeat, located outside the United States.

I eagerly await your feedback.

- - - - - - -

The quality of national significance is ascribed to collections and historic properties that possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the intellectual and cultural heritage and the built environment of the United States, that possess a high degree of integrity and that:

• Are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to, and are identified with, or that outstandingly represent the broad patterns of United States history and culture and from which an understanding and appreciation of those patterns may be gained;

[Events: First recognition of the United States of America by a foreign ruler, oldest continuously-occupied diplomatic property, Barbary wars and their aftermath, site of international negotiations (Cap Spartel Treaty, considered a precursor to League of Nations and United Nations), scene of earliest acitivities of OSS prior to Operation Torch in World War II, etc., etc.] or,

• Are associated importantly with the lives of persons nationally significant in the United States history or culture;

[Persons: George Washington's correspondence with Moroccan Sultan establishing one of America's oldest treaties still in force, announcement of the assasination of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt's gunboat diplomacy to free kidnapped American, Dwight Eisenhower's visit to newly-independent Morocco, etc., etc.] or,

• Represent great historic, cultural, artistic or scholarly ideas or ideals of the American people;

[Cultural: Tangier, home of American writer Paul Bowles for over a half century, with TALIM the repository of his newly-digitized Library of Congress recordings of Moroccan folk music.  Artistic: the Legation Museum, with its collection of American, Moroccan, and European art and historic maps.  Scholarship: TALIM, American Institute of Maghrib Studies (AIMS) research center for Morocco, with its renowned library and facilities for exchange scholars.  Etc., etc.] or,

• Embody the distinguishing characteristics of a resource type that:

   • Is exceptionally valuable for the study of a period or theme of United States history or culture;

[Period, theme: The American relationship with Morocco from the first days of American independence, with Tangier the focus for almost two centuries.  The sole remaining example of a diplomatic presence in an Arab medina.  American diplomats as co-adminstrators of the Tangier International Zone.  Etc., etc.] or

    • Represents a significant, distinctive and exceptional entity whose components may lack individual distinction but that collectively form an entity of exceptional historical, artistic or cultural significance (e.g., an historic district with national significance),

[Exceptional entity: TALIM's partnership with Moroccan cultural preservation organizations to enhance life in the historic medina.  Projects in urban renewal, literacy program in Arabic for medina women.  Etc., etc.] or

    • Outstandingly commemorates or illustrates a way of life or culture;

[Way of life: American diplomacy in the midst of the population of a walled Arab city or medina.  The oldest of the Department of State's "Culturally Significant Properties."  Tangier as magnet for polyglot multicultural expatriates.  Etc., etc.] or,

    • Have yielded or may yield information of major importance by revealing or by shedding light upon periods or themes of United States history or culture.

[Yielding information: Wartime Legation Chargé d'Affaires lauded for saving European Jews from concentration camps.  Documentation on Moroccan efforts on behalf of Muslim slaves in pre-Civil War America.  Etc., etc.]

Historic Property Projects
The historic property will be considered to be nationally significant according to the definition of "National Significance" listed above if it meets one of the following criteria:

• Designated as a National Historic Landmark or located within and contributing to a historic district that is designated as a National Historic Landmark District.

[The Tangier American Legation is the only US National Historic Landmark located outside the United States.]

- - - - - - -

There.  Now it's up to you.  I'm here in Tangier, with my small staff of dedicated Moroccans, who are trying their utmost to maintain this corner of American heritage that certainly is a treasure worth saving.  Take this information and run with it.  Write to the National Park Service, write to your members of Congress and Senators.  Make sure that this unique institution does not suffer the fate of other worthy landmarks.

And get us some of that SAT grant funding.

Gerald Loftus

AIMS In Marrakesh, TALIM In Morocco

Anyone reading this blog over the last few weeks might get the idea that Morocco lives under a big rain cloud.  Definitely not the case.  There is a sunny side to the country, and we've been there: Marrakesh.  I even groused about its tourist-trap side, though the city is much more than beads and baubles.

Its museum, in the heart of the medina, gave me an opportunity to compare practices with our own (nice as it is, they charge $5.00 for entry - we are currently free - and we have about five times as much content).  I did like their modern membrane roof, which I think blends nicely with the historic palace courtyard.

The city gave its name to the country, and for a long time, was its capital.  It was to Marrakesh that American envoy Thomas Barclay traveled in 1786 to meet the sultan.  Our Tangier American Legation was the fruit of the resulting treaty, one of the oldest in force between the United States and a foreign country.

Other than R&R, we created a mini-AIMS meeting, in that we had a nice get-together with AIMS President Emily Gottreich, Berkeley's Vice Chair of the Center for Middle East Studies.  Along with her talented musician husband Albert Benichou, she's in Marrakesh on a sabbatical, conducting research in her area of specialization, Muslim-Jewish relations and the Jewish presence in North Africa.

It's always good to get out of the house, even more so when your "house" is a museum cum research center in the middle of the medina.  TALIM is, after all, the AIMS center for the entire country of Morocco, not just for its home city of Tangier.

We have to remind ourselves of that from time to time.  Morocco, here we come!

Gerald Loftus 

Bad Tourist in Marrakesh

Back in Tangier after a week in sunny Marrakesh.  Thankfully the sun is shining in Tangier too.

Marrakesh and its sights - sprawling medina around its famous Jemaa el Fna, suburban reservoirs nestled in the shadow of the Atlas Mountains - attract a number of tourists.  And therein lies the problem.  I don't feel like a tourist.  I am a Bad Tourist.

I react like a grouch when the umpteenth souk salesman calls out "Ali Baba!" to me (someone, apparently, has told merchants that the words Ali Baba! will result in instant sales among foreign tourists).  If I'm heading for the city museum, I don't want every other tout re-directing me to "the square" (Jemaa el Fna, where all the tourists go).

It's this approach to foreigners, treating them like they are children, that finally got under my skin.  That, and the flat tire ruse.  Somebody deflated my tire (probably the security guard in the gated Palmeraie complex where we stayed), and extracted a tip for helping me put on the spare.  I have no proof, other than the tire had no puncture.  It was his way of shaking down the tourists on their last night in town.

Yes, there are lots pretty sights in Marrakesh, and I don't rule out returning there.  But the word about harrassing tourists needs reinforcing, apparently like it has been here in Tangier.

Gerald Loftus

Legation Fund Raising: Insert Money Here

I like to call it the "poor box."  It's the wooden box screwed to our door, with the hope that visitors to the museum will be moved to leave a token of their appreciation.  Good thing tokens don't exist anymore.  Or else we'd get them, along with wooden nickels, and other useless objects.  Somebody once made like they were stuffing notes into the slot; the "notes" were in fact used tickets to Tangier's only other museum, which charges 10 dirhams or about one Euro.  At least they didn't litter the street with their worthless tickets.

So I decided to explain what the box is for.  Short of plastering $ signs all over it, I thought of a discreet "thank you" on the side of the box:

It's way too discreet, I know.

After all, some people might think we're thanking them just for coming, and sharing their presence with us.

So I decided to indicate what we are about.  Again, the message is way too subtle for some people.  "Restoration" and "National Historic Landmark" might not hit the right note with some casual visitors.  Add "nonprofit" and they might start getting the idea.  Then throw in some of our activities - "women's literacy" and "research library" - and the more thoughtful will start to realize that we might need some money to offer these programs.

So there it is.  Our local micro-financing effort, trying to raise the average donation from 18 cents to, well, more than that.

But if you're reading this in a place from other than Tangier, the best thing is to send money to our US sponsors.  Details are here.  And thank you for your tax-deductible help!

Gerald Loftus