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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 world--love to...

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 traveling companion Walter van Rensselaer Berry as well as eleven other men and women. They had all traveled to the southern Sahelian city in October 1917, after visiting a colonial fair in Rabat. In a dark tailored suit with a veiled hat, Wharton cocked her head in a distinctive manner.