In which the author increases his understanding of the intellectual and educational condition of modern Morocco with the help of leading historian, Maati Monjib; and, returns to his favourite subject of language, this time with a Gordian Knot just waiting to be cut.
February 17 is the anniversary of the Day of Rage in Benghazi which kicked off the Libyan Revolution in 2011. But behind the rage, our author finds the politics, the hopes, the justified impatience, and his Libyan friend, Salah. Meanwhile, libraries are burning in Timbuktu.
Bookshops are places where the rhizome of culture breaks ground, connected beneath the earth but apparently separate on the surface. But in Morocco at least, something dreadful is happening to girls between the age of ten and 20, and leaching away their early literacy.
Dispassionate analysis of social and political problems is what is needed to build a better society. Thirty Moroccan youth activists seize the chance, in the process moving the author, who meanwhile finds himself drawn into the country’s language wars.
The effects of learning Arabic from two different angles – as a cause of illiteracy in Morocco, and a spurned langue d’immigration in France – prompting reflections on what constitutes a ‘modern foreign language’ in the European mind.
