It comes from Le Matin, of all places: The Spanish discover the existence of blondes in Morocco. It’s about the response in Europe when it was discovered that the blond and blue-eyed girl photographed riding on her mother’s back is not Madeleine McCann, but two-year-old Bouchra Benaissa. Photos here.
I am doing a reading this evening in support of the anthology X-24: Unclassified, which was edited by Tash Aw and Nii Ayikwei Parkes. Nii will be there tonight, along with contributors Nikki Aguirre, Jennifer Kabat, and yours truly. Details, details:
X-24: Unclassified
With Nikki Aguirre, Jennifer Kabat, Laila Lalami and Nii Ayikwei Parkes
Thursday, September 27
6:30 pm
John F. Kennedy Library
Conference Room B530
California State University Los Angeles
Do come by and say hello.
On the fourth anniversary of Edward Said’s passing, Randa Jarrar has posted a poem/appreciation she wrote for him. Here are the first two stanzas:
It’s been four years and a day.
I like the way you wrote about bellydancers,
Tahia Carioca, who couldn’t tell you how many men she’d married.
When you asked her,
She could only utter a shrillKteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!
And I love the way you wrote
about those who wrote badly about bellydancers,
Oriental feet and jingles
and finger cymbals.
Edward, I wanted to meet you, wanted to fete you,
to talk about lost houses and lost selves and bellydance
with you.
What else would we have talked about?Kteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!
Read the poem in full here.
Jessica Valenti, Natasha Walter, Rebecca Walker, Julie Binder, Ariel Levy, and Joan Smith tell readers which books on feminism most marked them.
Protests over a 30% hike in the price of bread quickly degenerated into full on riots in the town of Sefrou, and ignited several other demonstrations around the country, including in Rabat. (A loaf of bread or a baguette normally costs 1.20 dirhams. The new price would have been 1.56 dirhams, which is outrageous, especially considering the importance of bread and bread products to the Moroccan diet, particularly among the poor.) Yesterday, the Moroccan government announced it was canceling the hike, probably out of fear they would end up with a repeat of the bread riots of 1981 in Casablanca, which left several hundred people dead.