Laila Lalami

I spent last weekend camping in Death Valley. Actually, “camping” isn’t quite the right word for it, since we had an air mattress, pillows, foldable chairs, and—luxury of luxuries—fresh coffee. But we slept in a tent, we went on several hikes, and I didn’t do any work, so that counts for something. I’ve had a hard time coping with being back, though—not just because of the mountain of mail and email that was waiting for me, but because the news lately has been unrelentingly terrible.

Then today, I heard about the bomb at the Argana cafe in Marrakech, in the middle of the day, just when the place was packed with people. The last time I was in Marrakech, in 2007, I had tea at the Argana, which overlooks the famed Jemaa el-Fna square. I remember that, walking out of the cafe late in the day, I was accosted by a soothsayer who insisted on telling me my fortune. The cards, she said, were very good; they were full of promise, and my promise got even better after I tipped her. This was an anecdote I considered amusing, something I might have told friends at dinner, to joke about how a good tip can give you a good future, but today I thought about it and it seemed completely bittersweet to me.

I remember walking around the square and helping an American friend buy her first tagine set. I remember haggling over the price of a carriage ride, which would take my friend out of the square to see the ocher walls of the city. I remember the meloui I had for breakfast on my last day, how the honey on it was laced with the taste of lavender. I remember so much. And then I think how useless my memories are. It was Camus, wasn’t it, who wrote that the sorrow of exiles is to live with a memory that serves no purpose. That is how I feel.

A few weeks ago, the editors of 3 Quarks Daily, the magazine of eclectic online writing, asked me to judge their Arts & Literature Prize. (The prize is in its second year and was judged last year by Robert Pinsky. Prizes have also been offered in the areas of Science, Philosophy, and Politics.)

Nominations for the 2011 Arts & Literature Prize were opened in mid-February, submitted to a vote, and winnowed down to nine finalists earlier this month.

I enjoyed reading the nine entries very much and appreciated especially the wide variety of subjects and genres: book reviews, personal essays, critical essays, an open letter, and a poem. There was a lot of very strong writing but, in the end, I had to choose just three for the prize. You can find out who they are here.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been writing guest posts for The Notion, which is The Nation magazine’s group blog. I’ve written on the recent Frankfurt shootings, Arab uprisings and American intervention, the blame game that Arab dictators have been playing, and I’ve followed up my posts on the February 20 movement with a short piece on the self-immolation of Fadoua Laroui. In short, it was a busy fortnight! But now I am back to my regular pace, working on my novel, teaching at UC—and yes, of course, pondering what else to write about.

In a new piece for Foreign Policy, I write about why the February 20 movement’s demands in Morocco have so far been restricted to constitutional reforms. Here is an excerpt:

When I was living in Morocco in 2007, I often noticed that foreign journalists were completely confounded by the country. And understandably so, because, depending on whom they talked to, the country was either on the verge of full democratization or about to have a Russian-style revolution. Elections were going to bring about an Islamist tsunami or the leftist coalition would surprise everyone by its strong showing. The recent family law reforms had brought in real change for women or it did not matter because the judges were not applying the new law anyway. The Equity and Reconciliation commission was proof that the infamous Years of Lead — a period during the 1960s to 1980s characterized by widespread extralegal detentions and torture — were being reckoned with or that the victims of abuse had been unwittingly co-opted by a wily government. The francophone elite was fleecing the country or it was the country’s only chance of moving forward in an era of globalization. The king’s right-hand man had quit his post and run for a parliamentary seat because he had fallen out of favor in the palace or he had quit because he was going to be appointed prime minister.

The truth was, nobody knew.

You can read the rest here.

(Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images)

In a follow-up post for The Nation, I write about the protests that have taken place throughout Morocco on February 20.

In spite of the Moroccan government’s campaign—through its official media, its ministers and its allies—to discredit the February 20 movement, peaceful protests took place today throughout the country. Thousands of protesters gathered simultaneously in Rabat, Casablanca, Tangier, Tetuan, Beni Mellal, Kenitra, Agadir, Marrakech, Essaouira and in other, smaller cities such as Bouarfa, Sefrou, Bejaad and Jerada.

As I explained in an earlier post, the campaign against the movement included accusations that it was led by agents of the Polisario Front; by atheists and other assorted non-Muslims; by republican revolutionaries; by Moroccans living comfortably abroad; or by people who are disorganized, unclear about their demands and leaderless. But even before the democracy protests got underway today, it was clear that the tide was turning and that the virulent government campaign had only served to bring about support from a wide cross-section of Moroccan society.

You can read the rest here.

(Photo credit: AP)

In a new post for The Nation, I write about the protests that are planned for February 20 in Morocco.

With the ouster of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, the Arab world has erupted in popular protests in favor of democracy and dignity. Morocco, long considered one of the most stable Arab countries, is not immune to this regional trend. Inspired by the cases of Tunisia and Egypt, a group of young activists are using social media to spread the word about a protest in Casablanca on February 20. A video they have made to promote the protests has already gone viral. It features thirteen young Moroccan men and women, speaking in their native Arabic or Berber. “I am Moroccan and I will take part in the protest on February 20,” they all say, and then go on to explain their reasons for marching: freedom, equality, better living standards, education, labor rights, minority rights, and so on. (You can view the video, with English subtitles, here.)

The February 20 movement was started by a group calling itself Democracy and Freedom Now. Their demands include constitutional reforms, the dissolution of the present parliament, the creation of a temporary transitional government, an independent judiciary, accountability for elected officials, language rights for Berber speakers, and the release of all political prisoners. Democracy and Freedom Now was soon joined by a loose coalition of cyber-activists, traditional lefties, Islamists, and 20 human rights organizations, including the Moroccan Association of Human Rights and Amnesty Morocco.

You can read the rest of the piece here.

For the next two weeks, I will be writing guest posts for the Notion, the Nation magazine‘s blog. My first post is about the recently reported attack on the reporter Lara Logan:

A woman has been sexually assaulted—what should the reaction to such a heinous crime be? Blaming its victim? Disparaging the country she’s in? Looking for a scapegoat?

Stunningly enough, all of these reactions have been voiced since yesterday, when it was revealed that Lara Logan, the Chief Foreign Correspondent for CBS, had survived sexual assault in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. The network has released few details about the attack, except to say that, when Hosni Mubarak’s resignation was announced and crowds filled the square, a mob surrounded Logan and her crew. She was separated from them in the ensuing frenzy and suffered “a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.” Logan flew back to the United States the following day and is now recovering in a hospital.

Read the rest here.

Last Friday, about fifteen minutes after it was announced that Mubarak had resigned, a close friend called me from Morocco, cheering for the Egyptian people. And then another friend called, emails arrived—all expressing the same joy at the fall of the tyrant. Over at the Daily Beast, I have an opinion piece about the effect of the ongoing revolutions on how people think about Arab world.

It was nearly 20 years ago that Samuel Huntington put forth the idea that major sources of world conflict in the aftermath of the Cold War would be cultural. Certain civilizations could coexist peacefully with one another, he argued, but others were bound to come into conflict because their inherent values and belief systems were polar opposites. The contrast between “the West” and “Islam” provided the clearest illustration of his argument and, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it gained an even wider following. Huntington’s theory has so pervaded public discourse that when people speak of his “Clash of Civilizations,” they usually mean the inevitable clash between the West and Islam.

People in Western countries were told by their elected leaders that the Arabs were fundamentally incapable of governing themselves in a democratic way, that they needed strongmen to keep them in line or else they might lash back in another major terrorist attack. Meanwhile, citizens of Arab countries were told by their local dictators that, well, this was the best they could do. Their nations were stable, they had a functioning government, and there was some sort of law and order on the streets. That was enough. And it was either that or the local Islamist party, which, if it were ever allowed to come to power or have a say in government, would endeavor to take away whatever rights the Arabs were lucky enough to have.

And you can read the piece in full here.

(Photo credit: AP)

At a dinner with friends the other day, all any of us wanted to talk about was the uprising against Mubarak’s regime in Egypt. I think we all know that we’re witnessing something unique here, something that will have far-reaching effects for the region. My latest piece for The Nation magazine is a commentary about this winter of discontent in the Arab world. Here is how it opens:

For those of us who have grown up in a dictatorship, the protests that have ignited throughout the Arab world feel like the fulfillment of a great promise. This promise was made to our parents and grandparents, to all those who fought for independence: that we would have the right to decide our future. Instead, our leaders delivered us into a world of silence and fear and told us that we must watch what we say and watch what we do. Our institutions were undermined or dismantled, our political parties were stifled or co-opted, their members disappeared or neutralized. And whenever we looked to the West for help, its presidents and prime ministers spoke with forked tongues, one moment lecturing us on democracy and another offering support to our dictators.

You can read the piece in full here.

(Photo Credit: Reuters)

Yesterday, in between writing and grading, I kept thinking about this line from Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians: “All creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice.” Over the last few weeks, people throughout the Arab world have been reconnecting with this memory and demanding change. The people of Egypt have taken to the streets today to pursue this goal; the Mubarak regime’s response has been, as always, violent repression.

The Guardian asked a group of writers, including me, what we make of the protests that are now rocking the region. Here is my contribution:

In Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, published in 1966, an unnamed university graduate returns to his home country, Sudan, full of hope about the new era of independence in his country. But an old man from his ancestral village warns him: “Mark these words of mine, my son. Has not the country become independent? Have we not become free men in our own country? Be sure, though, that they will direct our affairs from afar. This is because they have left behind them people who think as they do.”

As Salih predicted, the regimes that have followed European occupation of the Arab world have consolidated power in the hands of a small elite, which was often beholden to foreign countries and bent on repressing the civil and human rights of its people. Over the last two generations, the majority of young Arabs have known only two or three heads of state, each brought to office thanks to heredity, coup d’état, or sham elections. This is why, reading about the events in Tunisia earlier this month, it seemed to me I was witnessing the first national uprising in the Arab world since independence.

You can read it all here.

(Photo credit: AP/NYT)