News

A suicide bomber blew himself up and injured three other people at an internet cafe in the neighborhood of Sidi Moumen, here in Casablanca. According to the BBC:

The blast happened after the man began a dispute with the cafe’s owner, who refused him access to jihadist sites. Another man, with the bomber at the time of the blast, fled after the explosion but has now been arrested by police, reports say.

“The man used to come to view jihadist websites and the dispute was prompted by the internet cafe owner’s decision to prevent him this time from viewing such propaganda material,” one official told Reuters. Police say it is unclear if the device was detonated by design or went off by accident during the argument between the two men.

The attack took place on the anniversary of the Madrid bombings. Several news sites have put forth the theory that the bomber was at the internet cafe in order to get instructions about his target as it seems inconceivable that he would aim at a place in the slum. The investigation is still ongoing. Last week, Moroccan police arrested a suspected terrorist by the name of Saad Houssaini, who is alleged to be the “chemist” of GCIM.

The National Book Critics Circle awards were announced yesterday in New York, and I was especially pleased to find out that the judges selected Kiran Desai’s excellent The Inheritance of Loss. (That was the novel I voted for, by the way. None of the other books on the ballot I cast made it!) You can see a list of winners in all the categories at the NBCC blog, Critical Mass.

Tom Lutz has an essay in Salon about the recent crop of books by novelists on what and how to read, which he sees as the by-product of a rift between writers and critics:

Over the past 15 years, I taught an average of a semester a year at the University of Iowa, the home of the famous Writers’ Workshop. When I started the writers were on the fourth floor and the critics on the third. I often had a Workshop student or two in my graduate courses, and I would bring the creative writing faculty in to meet my undergrads. By the time I left two years ago, that had long ceased. A durable and unbreachable wall had been erected between the writers and the scholars. They looked at each other not as allies in a common project, but as enemies. Now the Workshop has moved across campus and the divorce is final.

In the interest of full disclosure, let me say I have since gone over to the other side myself and teach in a creative writing program. But I still don’t understand, frankly, why people hate literary scholars for having a professional vocabulary while remaining perfectly content with economists’ using “devaluation” or philosophers’ using “existentialist,” or physicists’ talking about a “projective Hilbert space endowed with the Fubini-Study metric.”

You can read the piece in full here. (You’ll likely have to watch an ad to access the piece, unfortunately.)

On this International Women’s Day, I want to pay homage to all the Moroccan women who have worked for so long, under difficult circumstances, to bring about gender equality, justice, and progress for their country. This post is in remembrance of our ancestors and grandmothers, our pioneers: Fatima Al Fihriya, who built the world’s oldest university in Fes, Al-Qarawiyyin; Touria Chaoui, who flew her plane over occupied Casablanca in order to distribute independence tracts; Malika Al Fassi, the only female signatory of the Independence Manifesto; Saida Menebhi, who died in prison for her political ideals; and all the female victims of the Years of Lead.

With admiration for the work and sacrifices of, and examples set by, Leila Abouzeid, Ghita El Khayat, Aicha Belarbi, Aziza Bennani, Fatima Benslimane, Bouchra Bernoussi, Rahma Bourquia, Zakya Daoud, Fatna El Bouih, Aicha Ech-Chenna, Nawal El Moutawakil, Nezha Hayat, Dr. Hakima Himmich, Latifa Jbabdi, Najat M’jid, Fatema Mernissi, Soumaya Naamane Guessous, Zoulikha Nasri, Halima Ouarzazi, Badia Skalli, Hinde Taarji, and all the other activists whose names do not appear here.

With respect for the men who have joined in the fight for gender equality: Mouhcine Ayouche, Abdelkader Ech-Chenna, Aziz El Ouadie, Moha Ennaji, Chakib Guessous, Lahcen Haddad, Yusuf Madad, Lekbir Ouhajou, Noureddine Saoudi, and Ahmed Zainabi.

And with hope, for the new generation.

As has been widely reported, French author Henri Troyat has died. I remember spending long summer days as a teenager reading La Lumière des justes. My sister (a big fan of historical novels) always liked him. I’ll be honest, I barely remember his work now. Here’s the Guardian obit.