Category: personal

We were driving along a beach road with a couple of friends when a cop stopped us. I was sitting in the back, but being the only Darija speaker in the car, I lowered my window, ready to translate. “You went up a one-way street,” the policeman said. “License and registration.”

I apologized and explained we had not seen the sign. (Later, we drove by again and saw that it was partially covered by shrub.)

“I have to write you up. The ticket’s going to be 400 dirhams.”

Upon hearing my translation of what the cop said, my husband, clearly unaware of how these things are supposed to be handled, immediately whipped out the money from his wallet. (You are supposed to start by saying you’re very sorry, you were distracted, and yes you made a big mistake; you’re busy, so you don’t have time to deal with the paperwork; how you wish you could come to an understanding… and then you would bargain the cop down to about 1/3 of the ticket price–about 130 dirhams in this case. My husband had skipped all these steps, and was ready to hand the entire amount over. )

The cop, a tall and lanky fellow with a thin mustache, got very nervous, and walked away. He went to the intersection and directed traffic for a few minutes, before coming back.

“So,” he asked, “what are you all doing here? Are you tourists?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I’m here for research. But my friends are tourists.”

As soon as he heard the word “research,” he looked scared. He handed Alex his money back. “We don’t want to give tourists a bad image of the country. Here. Just pay attention next time.”

I had no idea that “research” was such a red flag for cops.

Sorry for the silence in the last couple of days. I was busy finishing a piece on Zakes Mda (for The Nation) and now that it’s turned in I can spend some time online again.

I am about three weeks away from the end of my Fulbright Fellowship in Morocco, and I’ve already received several emails from friends asking me, “What next?” I’m happy to report that I’ll be joining the Creative Writing department at the University of California, Riverside. I was hired at the same time as Reza Aslan, and we’ll both start in the fall. I’m very pleased about this for several reasons: UCR has the most diverse campus in the UC system. The creative writing department itself is particularly strong. And it offers the opportunity for me to try something new in class. I am going to miss Portland (particularly Powell’s, the greatest bookstore on earth!) but it feels right to be back in the Los Angeles area, where I’ve lived for more than 11 years, and where I have so many friends and family.

(art credit: Kerne Erickson)

Last year, my story “The Fanatic” was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing, along with pieces by Sefi Atta, Darrel Bristow-Bovey, Muthoni Garland, and Mary Watson. The finalists’ work appears in a new anthology, titled Jungfrau and Other Short Stories, and it can be ordered from Amazon.co.uk. I believe the book also contains selected stories by writers who have attended the annual Caine Prize workshop, held in Kenya in mid-spring. (There’s a brief mention of this in Boyd Tonkin’s column in the Independent.)

I’m finally back home, and have access once again to my laptop and (semi-reliable) Internet connection. Over the last four weeks, Alex and I went to Ifrane, Azrou, Meknes, Fez, Tetuan, Ceuta, Tangier, and villages along the Mediterranean coast. We read books, we saw movies, we took friends to see sights, we bargained over souvenirs (it was generally agreed that I was worse at bargaining than even tourists), we swam in the sea.

And everywhere we went, I was the party pooper. “That beach sounds fantastic,” I’d sigh, “but, really, I should go back to the apartment and edit Chapter 12.” Or “I’ll catch up with you in the medina later, I’ll just rewrite this one scene I have in mind first.” Or “Can we get back on the early side? I have some work to finish?” It went like this for our entire vacation, and although I felt terrible for Alex and our friends, at least I did manage to finish another draft of my novel. Now my plan is to do some fine-tuning before my return to the U.S. in mid-August.

This Saturday, I will give a reading at the International Conference on Mediterranean Women and Human Development, which takes place in Fez on June 28, 29 and 30. Here are the details:

June 30, 2007
5:00 PM
Reading and Discussion
Fes International Conference on Mediterranean Women
Palais des Congrès
Fes, Morocco

The conference will include talks by the likes of Latifa Jbabdi, Nouzha Skalli, Zakya Daoud, Leila Abouzeid, and Fatima Sadiqi, so be there.