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In late 2008, when I was preparing for the publication of my second book, Secret Son, I received from my publisher what seemed like a longer-than-usual author questionnaire. (For those of you who don’t know: the author questionnaire is a form that invites you to list magazine editors, book reviewers, booksellers, and pretty much anyone you think will have the slightest interest in your book.) Dutifully, I began to fill it out. Then I noticed a section on social media, which hadn’t been part of the questionnaire when I published my first book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits.

I had never had any interest in Facebook, but in the face of questionnaires I am nothing if not thorough. I joined the damn site. Within days, I realized that everyone I knew—family, friends, writers, acquaintances, neighbors—were on it. It really felt as if I were the last person in North America to give in to it. I was delighted to find so many familiar names, and happily accepted any and all friend requests. Before long, however, my friend list ballooned to several thousand. And I loved it. I loved seeing my family’s baby announcements or travel pictures; I loved reconnecting with people I had gone to college with; I loved finding out what my friends were reading and recommending; I loved reading articles my colleagues posted.

But the way Facebook works, everyone on your list has the same claim on your attention. So if I made a joke that had a ten-year-history in my family, someone whom I had never met, and who could arguably be the friend of an old acquaintance of a neighbor of a cousin, made a comment about not getting it. It became necessary to explain the joke, which took away some of its humor. Or if I posted a link to an article, along with a line that I thought was clearly sarcastic, someone took it literally. I had to temper the sarcasm, which took away its bite. If I was busy and did not get a chance to respond to an incendiary comment, someone was bound to take it as an endorsement. When someone sent me fifteen invitations to one event in the space of a week, I was forced to politely decline fifteen times. And when someone sent me a marriage proposal, I said, “Enough.”

I decided to remove anyone from my page whom I didn’t personally know. Sounds pretty sensible, right? Boy, was I wrong. It turns out that if you massively remove people from your list, these people don’t necessarily like it. And that you acquire a reputation as an anti-social person. (Which, okay, fair enough, maybe I am. That’s why I took such a perverse interest in David Fincher’s film. It was amusing to see a socially inept person create a site like that.) The truth is, I like people. But, call me crazy, I just want to know them, too. So now I have two personalities on Facebook: Private-me and Public-me. Public-me will tell you about her upcoming book, or about this cool article she just read, or even about this post, while Private-me sits in the corner, watching quietly, the way she always does.

Photo: Columbia Tristar Marketing

This is what my windshield looked like when I left yoga class yesterday morning. We’ve had a very cool summer in Santa Monica—temperatures rarely rose above 70 degrees—and now it looks like winter is here in earnest. I don’t mind the cold weather, though. It provides fewer distractions from my book. Exactly what I need at the moment. The title of this post is from one of La Fontaine’s fables, which I, like every other child in the Francophone world, had to memorize: “La Cigale et la Fourmi” or “The Cricket and the Ant.” (In Aesop’s version, it’s called “The Ant and the Cricket.) For a few weeks now, I’ve been worrying that perhaps I had misspent my summer, that I hadn’t written enough. But I’m happy to say that I was wrong, that I needn’t have worried. I turned out to be the Ant, not the Cricket.

Fodail Aberkane is a name you will not have read much about in the press. He was a Moroccan construction worker, a man of very modest means, who spent the last week of his life fighting for the return of his motorcycle. It seems like such a trivial thing to lose your life over, a motorcycle, but when you have nothing, even an old moped, little more than a bicycle with a low-speed motor, can make a difference.

One reason you haven’t heard about Fodail Aberkane is that the facts about him are few and slim, and come mostly from an account given by his brother to newspapers in Morocco. Aged thirty-seven, Fodail Aberkane lived in Hay Inbi’at, a working-class neighborhood in Salé, the town that sits across the river from the capital, famed for its fortress walls, its medina, and its pirates. On September 9, which was the eve of Eid in Morocco, Aberkane was riding his moped when he was stopped by police, on suspicion of being under the influence of cannabis. The officers took him to the Hay Salam station, where he was held for two days, before being released on judge’s orders.

On September 13, Aberkane returned to the police station to collect his moped and his mobile phone. The police told him they could not release the vehicle without proof of insurance, which he did not have in his possession. Instead, he showed them a document attesting that he had declared the loss of his insurance papers to the relevant authorities. The police refused to accept the document. On September 15, Aberkane returned to the station yet again, this time bringing with him a new insurance contract, but the officers still refused to release his moped.

Here an argument broke out, which resulted in his arrest for insulting police officers. When his brother Mustapha visited him at the Hay Salam station, he says, he saw agents beating Fodail in full view of everyone. The police then threw Mustapha out of the station and warned him, “Don’t ever come back.” Two days later, on September 17, Fodail Aberkane was turned over to Ibn Sina Hospital in Rabat, where he was pronounced dead. The district attorney has opened an investigation, and everyone connected with the case is waiting to see whether charges will indeed be brought against the agents responsible for his murder. Until then, it’s the usual Wait and See.

The other reason you will not have heard about Fodail Aberkane is that he is the kind of victim who does not attract the attention of the English-language press. He is not a famous journalist, he does not run a political party, he has not run afoul of the Islamists, and he does not have any connection to terrorism. This particular victim is an easy one to ignore and to forget. When stories about Morocco are written, who will remember his name? Who, aside from his family, will mourn him? Who will hold his alleged murderers to account? Who will make sure that no other man or woman is beaten to death?

In 2004, Morocco established an Equity and Reconciliation Commission to document cases of torture during the Years of Lead. Since then, however, the country has once again started down the old, familiar road. Fodail Aberkane is not an exception. Over the last few years, allegations of torture have been made against the police in Morocco on many occasions. Two years ago, Zahra Boudkour, a 21-year-old university student from Marrakech, was arrested for taking part in a student demonstration. She was stripped naked and beaten, but no one was brought to account for the violence that was visited upon her. In his encounter with the Marrakech police, another university student, Abdelkebir El Bahi, found himself thrown from the 3rd floor window of a dorm. He is now in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Boudkour and El Bahi were abused and tortured because of their ideas and their ideals. Fodail Aberkane was trying to get his moped back.

Torture has become one of Morocco’s most popular exports. According to the New York Times, the kingdom has provided its services to CIA investigators in the case of Binyam Mohammed, the Ethiopian citizen who was detained for five years at Guantánamo Bay, and later released after all charges against him were dropped. Morocco was also the site where Ramzi bin al Shibh, one of the 9/11 conspirators, was allegedly questioned. Videotapes of the interrogations were discovered under a desk at the CIA last year, the Associated Press recently revealed.

At a plenary meeting of the United Nations last week, Morocco’s king Muhammad VI spoke about the National Initiative for Human Development he has committed himself to for the last five years: education, job creation, poverty alleviation, environmental protection. These are all wonderful goals. But even an educated, employed, middle-class citizen with a low-carbon footprint cannot enjoy her full rights if her human life, that most precious of gifts, is not itself respected. Morocco cannot—indeed, it will not—progress as a nation, if the rule of law is not obeyed. Until then, the names may change, but the story will remain the same.

I realized the other day that it had been nine years since I started blogging.  At the time, I was working for a software company in Los Angeles and spent lots of time experimenting with shiny new things online.  Although I had been reading blogs for a few months by then, I didn’t really take the plunge until after the terrorist attacks of September 11.  Starting a blog seemed like a necessary outlet for all the rage I felt.  I often commented on politics, culture, and literature, and eventually started to post several times a day.  I met a lot of people online, some great, some not so great.  I received many sweet notes of encouragement and the occasional hate mail.  I discovered a lot of books and writers I would not have otherwise heard about—and that is something for which I remain grateful.

After a while, the literary debates online seemed to me somewhat cyclical.  There were always stories about how independent bookstores were closing, how few newspapers still ran reviews, how Amazon was manipulating the market, which book was shortlisted for this or that prize, which book was picked to be on Oprah, which writers were feuding, which writer had dissed another one in a review, how few books by women were reviewed in major newspapers, how differently books by writers of color were marketed to the reading public, and so on.  In 2001, when I had started blogging, Jonathan Franzen, having just published The Corrections, said he was uncomfortable about having an Oprah sticker on his book because it might drive away male readers.  Now it is 2010, and Jonathan Franzen has a new novel out, Freedom, and again it has an Oprah sticker on it, but this time he is fine with it.  You might see this is a sign of change, but it looks to me more like a sign of continuity.

After enduring eight years of Bush, it seemed like the era of Obama was going to finally usher in some change.  But nine years after the attacks, American troops are still stationed in Afghanistan, with no end in sight; Guantanamo Bay is still open; and the country is still on high alert for terrorists.  In 2001, the country was awash in anti-Muslim comments.  Remember Franklin Graham’s comments that Islam is a “very wicked and evil religion”? Well, it’s 2010, and the anti-Muslim comments are at an all-time high. Marty Peretz says that “Muslim life is cheap” and that “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse” and there isn’t really any serious fallout for him or his magazine.  I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.  Maybe because I want to explain to you why I haven’t been blogging as much. Having to face the same inane “controversies” has made me weary.

The waning days of August have brought with them another bout of nostalgia–I keep thinking of childhood summers in Rabat. And in honor of those, I thought I’d share this poem by Agha Shahid Ali, “I Dream It Is Afternoon When I Return to Delhi”

At Purana Qila I am alone, waiting
for the bus to Daryanganj. I see it coming,
but my hands are empty.
“Jump on, jump on,” someone shouts,
“I’ve saved this change for you
for years. Look!”
A hand opens, full of silver rupees.
“Jump on, jump on.” The voice doesn’t stop.
There’s no one I know. A policeman,
handcuffs silver in his hands,
asks for my ticket.

I jump off the running bus,
sweat pouring from my hair.
I run past the Doll Museum, past
headlines on the Times of India
building, PRISONERS BLINDED IN A BIHAR
JAIL, HARIJAN VILLAGES BURNED BY LANDLORDS.
Panting, I stop in Daryaganj,
outside Golcha Cinema.

Sunil is there, lighting
a cigarette, smiling. I say,
“It must be ten years, you haven’t changed,
it was your voice on the bus!”
He says, “The film is about to begin,
I’ve bought an extra ticket for you,”
and we rush inside:

Anarkali is being led away,
her earrings lying on the marble floor.
Any moment she’ll be buried alive.
“But this is the end,” I turn
toward Sunil. He is nowhere.
The usher taps my shoulder, says
my ticket is ten years old.

Once again my hands are empty.
I am waiting, alone, at Purana Qila.
Bus after empty bus is not stopping.
Suddenly, beggar women with children
are everywhere, offering
me money, weeping for me.

The poem appears in his collection The Half-Inch Himalayas. You can find out more about Agha Shahid Ali here.