Eid Greetings and some intellectual ranting which you can skip if you want

EID MUBARAK LI KUL WAHID! KUL 3AM WA ANTUM BI-KHIR!

So Ramadan is ending and we can start eating again... Al HAMDU LILLAH!!!! Eid mubarak to all, may every eid be full of blessings for you and your families, bi-idhn Allah.

Ramadan in Morocco has been a wonderful experience, although I'm glad it's over. The whole idea of not eating or drinking ANYTHING, ALL DAY, has been very challenging and i've only managed it about 12 times out of the 30 days. Ok, so I'm not a muslim and I'm not required to fast, but attempting to do so was worthwhile. My muslim friends appreciated it and breaking fast together at the end of a hungry day was a fantastically rewarding experience - dates and lentil soup have never tasted so good!

I visited Casablanca on the weekend, which was nice. A big, industrial port city but worth the visit. I bumped into a friend from Fez in one of the cafes (WIERD!) and spend the next day with him and his mate walking along the beach. Fasted, and 'breakfast' (at sundown) included fried octopus tentacles... These Casa-we-een are a little bit crazy, i think.

Somebody asked me if I had come up with any critique of western intellectuals while i've been here? It's a nice idea! Unfortunately i haven't really had much time to read or think about things that much - the course is very intense and focusses on language only, so any debate outside of that is a bit slow and my brain's fried a lot of the time so i really have very little to add to Freud or Marx!

there were a couple of things... i read (on Edward Said's 'recommendation') Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' just before i came. i thought it was one of the best novels i've read in ages - intense and eloquent with a thread of darkness and fear which runs from the first page to the very end. I have not read much of Said's work on Conrad, certainly not since i read the novel, anyway, but i guess that much of his thesis would be that the 'west' (which sees itself as 'civilised', ahead of the 'backward peoples', and so on) takes its view of the 'east' and africa from this kind of text: the fearful, the tense, the text which interprets - or leaves incomprehensible - a world which comes to us as completely alien. this applies as much to the Middle East and to Morocco as to the Congo, where Conrad's novel is set.

It has been incredibly interesting being in Morocco after studying that sort of thing. I've been enjoying the contrasts and the variety of this beautiful country - the miriad forms of scenery and background, the new and the old and the ancient which pile on top of each other, clambering for attention, and the different strands of thought and social reality which are thrown in your face: poverty, cultural richness, Islam, history, and 'progress'.

Why is the 'East' seen as so alien? Ok, geographically Morocco is not that far East, but it's in the Arab world, living with Muslims, I am living in 'the other camp' - and do I feel threatened? Basically, no. The threat is in my mind, if at all. Of course you need to be careful, you need to avoid causing offence, you need to make sure you only trust people who aren't out to get you, you need to be more careful about every purchase than you would be in Britain or Canada or the States. But you also have to examine your own reactions to the place: if I feel threatened or out of place, is it reality I am responding to or simply the unfamiliarity of the atmosphere? The more time I spend here, the more familiar everything becomes (the streets, the inside of people's houses, the wild-looking arguments which dissipate like smoke, etc), and the more at home I feel. The alien is only alien because we make him an alien - and more to the point, only poor because we make him poor.

I do think the guidebooks talk a load of crap. They make people sound like scary, backward, camel-oriented theives who fly off to grab their gun as soon as you put one foot wrong. It's not like that. Morocco is a country looking in many directions - to the Arab, the Berber, the African, the European and of course to the Islamic. People are used to seeing westerners, at least here in Fez, and I think our western image of the old medina, 'like something out of Alladin' gives us a false impression. Yes, the city is bursting with history and culture and beautiful old buildings, but at the same time, many of the 800-year old houses are internet cafes, teleboutiques, and so on. Stand somewhere overlooking the city, and you'll see just what Ibn Battuta would have seen here seven centuries ago (say the guidebooks) but now the skyline bristles with tv aeriels and satellite dishes.

There are some nice romantic stereotypes about Morocco, but the reality can be quite different, and I was annoyed at myself that subconsciously, and against all the mental strength i could muster in England, I absorbed some of the fear which the Rices and Wolfowitzes of this world are so keen on spreading. It's easy to refute the fear academically, in a library in Leeds, but practically, when you arrive somewhere, it's easy to feel uneasy. I'm thankful for this opportunity to absorb some of the reality.

Peace

Paul