What should be done with colonial statues honoring Moroccans forced to fight a European war? The war memorial was cold and wet, but the warm pulse of history throbbed rhythmically within it. I had driven nearly an hour from my hotel in Paris just to touch...
I am in a plane heading to Casablanca. Seated behind me, four compatriots loudly discuss their vacation plans across the aisle separating them. I note three European-Americans and one Asian-American. I recognize something of myself in them. Like me,...
Venturing into a foreign land requires a tweaking of your playlist. You can’t know a place except through the musical traditions of the people there. Music connects people, and you will find that Moroccans–or others in the the Arab...
In 1991, Kimberly Meyer decided—in a deliberate fashion—not to have an abortion, and, twenty-one years later, she traveled with her now grown daughter from Germany to Egypt via the Levant. “On the trip,” she writes, “I had been trying to return to something...
When I saw two photos of Edith Wharton visiting the Bahia Palace of Marrakesh, adrenaline rushed through me. I am a historian, so I constantly seek out new documents that illuminate the past. In these black and white photos, Wharton was with her best friend and...
