News
I was somewhat surprised to discover recently that one of the most common search terms that lead readers to this blog is “Ahmed Marzouki.” You’ll remember that Marzouki is a former political prisoner who spent 18 years and 3 months of his life in the infamous Tazmamart jail. I wrote a review on this blog of his incandescent memoir, Tazmamart: Cellule 10, a few years ago.
I bring this up because I was recently reading Neil MacFarquhar’s new book, The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You A Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East. (Phew. What a mouthful!) This is a memoir of the years MacFarquhar spent in the region, and it includes a chapter on meeting Marzouki. Here is an excerpt:
“It is hard to find words to describe the horrors we lived—all alone, no light, no medicine, little food,” Marzouki said to me. Every time I asked him to remind me how long he had been a prisoner, he always responded “eighteen years, three months,” not rounding off a moment. “It was an eternal night.”
By bribing sympathetic guards, the men finally got word to their families that they were still alive despite the fact that King Hassan and his senior advisers denied that Tazmamart existed. The first significant break came after one officer’s daughter, a high school senior, scored among the top ten students in the entire country on the mandatory university entrance exams. During an audience with King Hassan, the king asked if there was anything they wanted and the girl bravely asked when her father was going to be released from Tazmamart. As Marzouki described it, the king calmly turned to an aide and asked, “Is anyone still alive in Tazmamart?” It took several more years before an international campaign finally pressured the monarch to release the men in September 1991. “We were ghosts, skeletons who could barely talk.”
MacFarquhar’s book came out in April; I picked up a copy at the lovely Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge.
The Moroccan magazine Tel Quel did an interview with me a couple of weeks ago; you can find it here. In other news, my first book, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, is now available on the Kindle. My new novel, Secret Son, should be available in that format soon as well. And take a look at the Santa Barbara Independent‘s recommended summer reading list.
I find myself these days taking a lot of notes for my new novel, but not quite daring to start the process of writing it. I am not sure why. I wonder if it is just a fear of new beginnings, or if it is something else. The truth is, I don’t mind too much. I’m rather enjoying this state of being in between books. There is pleasure in the pathless woods, Byron once wrote. And I suppose I am not in a rush to find a path yet for this new novel.
When my first book was sold, several fellow writers suggested I hire an independent publicist. I think the common wisdom is that, because of the shrinking space devoted to books on radio, print, and television, debut authors need the extra help. But then I met Michael Taeckens, who is director of publicity for Algonquin, and I realized I had nothing to worry about: he is one of those rare people who is absolutely amazing at what he does. And he also happens to be a wonderful person and a good friend.
I’m very happy to report that Michael has an anthology coming out this summer. It’s called Love is a Four-Letter Word, and it includes contributions from Junot Díaz, Kate Christensen, Gary Shteyngart, Maud Newton, Jami Attenberg, and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, among many others. The essays are all true stories of heartbreak, but they are told with wit and wisdom, with humor and honesty. A great summer read.
It almost never fails. When a Western reporter goes to Morocco to write about the process of democratization, the resulting article will inevitably mention sartorial choices and give them positive or negative values. Jeans = good. Jellabas = bad. At Slate, Anne Applebaum visits Morocco and finds that many women “would not look out of place in New York or Paris.”
So what? What does Moroccan women’s fashions have anything to do with human rights and democracy? Under King Hassan, Moroccan women used to dress much less conservatively, but that didn’t mean that the country was a haven of human rights. Just look at what happened to women activists during the Years of Lead.
Her contention that protesters outside Parliament were “politely” waving signs is bizarre. If she had spent any kind of time, day after day, watching what happened to them, she wouldn’t be praising their politeness or the police’s restraint. The elections themselves are really nothing to write home about: turn-out was low and the results were, as usual, entirely unsurprising. If this is what she qualifies as “transformation from authoritarianism to democracy” then Lord help us all.