On the ferry from Spain to Morocco, I had my ear bent for several hours by a friendly Moroccan bloke, as they tend to be. It was either that, or coming out of stealth mode and joining the Americans listening to an Aussie English teacher yap nonstop for four hours. The job selects for strong lungs. Between broken English, a smattering of French and German, and long phrases in Mime, the fellow now residing in Germany kept the ferry crossing lively.
‘You… sing?’ he ventured cautiously.
‘Uh… not really,’ I replied.
‘I two Indian friend. They sing,’ he said.
‘Qawwali?’ I asked. The universal gesture of ‘WTF are you talking about?,’ palms upturned. ‘North Indian, they sing,’ he told me.
Why yes, I suppose we do.
‘Prime minister sing. First time!’ he said. Ahhh… got it. Singh. Turban, not pipes. His ululatory fixation now made a lot more sense.
He proceeded to tell me about his friends in Germany. ‘Sing crazy for whiskey!’ Yeah, yeah, Ustad Walker and his famous school of blended malt scotch. He told me with no small admiration that he’d seen a grown man down a full liter of whiskey and show up the next morning with no ill effect. He said that Germany is recruiting Indians because they are the computer caste.
We compared the etymologies of words from Arabic and Farsi which show up in Turkish and Hindu/Urdu, such as kitap (book), maidaan (plaza) and duniya (world). He said he wasn’t religious, ‘religion politics, only makes trouble,’ but was visiting his family for Eid-ul-Adha. He mimed ram horns, slitting the beast’s throat, and asked how you translate Lucifere from French.
The rest of the encounter got weird.
He called Dubya a marionette controlled by unseen hands, and I felt a sudden, unexpected wave of dirty-laundry-stays-in-the-family. He said in Germany there’s a popular book by an author who claims to have predicted 9/11 several years ago, the U.S. is omnipotent via near-magical technology, and the reason why the Iraqi military didn’t stand and fight is the CIA used its mind-control satellite to make them go home. He seemed to sincerely believe this. One theory he dismissed but said was popular was that bin Laden must be a U.S. puppet, because his act created so many problems for the Muslim world. The argument was, how could the U.S., with its advanced airspace defense systems, have allowed 9/11 to happen if not deliberately?
Another theory he disbelieved: Vietnam was nothing more than training for the U.S. military, which is so advanced it must be kept sharp by training in different climates at all times. He warned about globalization– unemployment is high in both Germany and Morocco, and popular talk blames outsourcing and German robots. He then turned his pack of Marlboros upside down and expounded on the KKK theory:
The inverted triangle that is characteristic of the Marlboro packaging is representing the letter K, and it is repeated three times on the pack, thus being a reference to the group in question. In addition, if one turns the pack upside down, the Marlboro logo itself says something resembling orobl Jew. According the the myth, “Orobl” is a phonetic transcription of horrible… [Link]
We were deep into the heart of Tin Foil Hattitude, and the more I pushed back the more he insisted he was right. But throughout he was friendly, saying he has no problem with any religion, only with the U.S.’ money-centric foreign policy. I have no idea whether this guy’s views are representative, or that he’s just another example of the nuts being more outspoken. But Morocco is friendly with the U.S.:
Morocco was the first nation to recognize the fledgling United States in 1777 and has the oldest non-broken friendship treaty with the country, the Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship, which has been in effect since 1783. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the American signatories. The United States legation (consulate) in Tangier is the first property the U.S. owned abroad… Morocco was granted Major Non-NATO Ally status in June 2004 and signed free trade agreements with the United States and the European Union.
In 2003, Morocco’s largest city, Casablanca, was attacked in the Casablanca terrorist attacks. The attacks left 33 civilians dead and more than 100 people injured. [Link]
Overall I got the sense of the U.S. being viewed as so powerful as to be an alien country, a la Arthur C. Clarke’s maxim, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Meanwhile I type this on a Dell PC in a Net cafe in Fez. Non-hijabi teen girls are giggling as they video chat. There are Pantera, Tupac, Guns ‘n Roses, Bob Marley, Harley and Dark Side of the Moon paintings on the wall.
Fez feels a bit like a Delhi suburb, mostly paved, but much less crowded. The road signs are in Arabic and French, old men wear pointy-headed cloaks (now I know what to bring back for Ennis), and people are carting around Eid sheep in wheelbarrows. Plenty seem to speak Spanish here, and all the Spanish-Arabic music mashups suddenly make sense. There’s an Arabic song playing softly which sounds like a straight Bollywood ripoff.
I’m busy memorizing phrases like ‘végétarien’ and ‘sans viande ou poissons.’ My atrocious French ‘nunciation defeats me at every turn.
it seems that people all over the world have their own twisted opinions formed by the power of media………what is right?
Overall I got the sense of the U.S. being viewed as so powerful as to be an alien country, a la Arthur C. Clarke’s maxim, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’
Not entirely untrue. I would say that for people from a certain social/economic class (sorry about how that sounds, but it’s true), his views would probably be shared by the vast majority of Muslims who cannot travel or haven’t been to the US. I do know that even the people with whom I’m friends feel similarly, at least in terms of the fact that the US is well-nigh unstoppale, a global juggernaut of sorts. The conspiracy theories propounded in Pakistan and the Middle East are not necessarily as extreme as this guy’s, but they’re not too far off. I have my own theories about everything, but that’s all they are; at the end of the day, as Zee put it (to paraphrase), the power of the media is invidious and far-reaching. There exists, for certain, a great deal of information that many people only get from their particular access to media. To wit (and my apologies for the length of this, but I got it over e-mail and don’t have a direct link):
Published on Tuesday, December 20, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Release of ‘Dr Anthrax’ by Felicity Arbuthnot
On Saturday, eight ‘high value’ Iraqis held without charge for over two years by the United States were released. They included Dr Huda Ammash, a distinguished internationally renowned, environmental biologist, Professor at Baghdad University, whose earned her PhD at the University of Missouri. Her father, former Iraqi Ambassador to the US, under the government of Abdul Karim Kassem (1958-1963) was executed in a purge to stamp authority by Saddam in 1981. In the 1990’s Dr Ammash was, ironically offered a seat in the Legislature. When Saddam offered a position to say: ‘No thanks, I’ve my career plan mapped out, was not an option’, but her academic career remained her passion and primary focus.
Arrested by US troops, this brave, gentle woman suddenly became ‘Mrs Anthrax’ and featured on America’s asinine playing cards of their ‘most wanted’, in the wild west, last chance saloon Iraq became after April 2003. Dr Ammash’s crime was her numerous scientific papers on the environmental and biological impact of sanctions and the horrific health cost of the weapons used in the 1991 Gulf war by Britain and the US. In ‘Iraq Under Siege -the Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War’ (Pluto Press, updated 2003 Ed: Anthony Arnove) contributors included Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Howard Zinn, Denis Halliday – and Huda Ammash. All those the US and UK Administrations love to hate most, were under one cover and she was firmly allied with them.
Her introduction reads: ‘The Gulf war ended in 1991, but the massive destruction linked to it continues. An unprecedented catastrophe resulting from a mixture of toxic, radiological, chemical and electromagnetic exposure is still causing substantial consequences to health and the environment, exacerbated by sanctions …. much of Iraq has been turned into a polluted and radioactive environment.’ She understated.
She refers to the International Treaties outlawing such weapons, to depleted uranium (DU) weapons not being ‘depleted’ but a ‘radioactive waste’, the all in minutely detailed, careful, hard hitting, scientific, incontrovertible fact. ‘DU is radiologically and chemically toxic to humans and other forms of life.’ She details, well on the side of caution the ‘… terrifying total of three hundred and twenty to three hundred and fifty tons of DU expended ammunition…. scattered throughout Iraq and Kuwait.’ She reminds that US Army manuals warn of the dangers, that the pollution enters the water table and thus can spread through the entire region ravaging the lives of those – young, older and yet unborn – not even in the conflict zone.
She writes of a less addressed subject: ‘Electromagnetic pollution’. ‘….particularly dangerous because it is often undetected’. In Finland near early warning radar systems, ‘..pregnancy problems, anxiety, depression, fatality, heart failures, cardiovascular diseases, cancers …leukemia, eye and skin diseases ..’ in excess have been recorded,as with those who work ‘in other electromagnetic environments.’ During the forty five day day war, widely deployed electronic devices ‘… advanced radar systems, laser guided missiles …released high frequency electromagnetic energy into the atmosphere …’ Chemical pollution included black rain, a soot laden atmosphere and environmental pollution was added to by soil ruination heavy metals such as nickel and vanadium also ‘.. changing the components of the ecosystem ..’ producing an increase in rodents and scorpions.’ Plants died in poisoned earth and in formerly fertile land: ‘ …. new fields of sand dun
The British government were perfectly aware of Dr Ammash’s non-anthrax credentials, they gave her a visa to speak at a Conference on Iraq’s environment in Manchester in 2000, where their plants sat in their seats as the rest of the audience gave her a standing ovation. Iraqis too were in the audience, opposed to Saddam – many listened to her with tears in their eyes.
Huda Ammash tried to alert the world and redeem, save, her country’s environment. She might also have saved Ken Bigley. His kidnapper’s demand in October 2004 was, as with Margaret Hassan, release of women prisoners – all women prisoners. The British government said there were none, that after the depravities of Abu Ghraib they had been released (to call this economical with the truth would be another understatement.) The US Administration linked the demand to only Dr Ammash and a colleague Dr Rhab Taha. Colin Powell whose country is holding all Iraq hostage, said he didn’t do deals with hostage takers – and Ken Bigley was beheaded. Even two illegally held women might have been a life saving gesture.
Another life to be saved is Dr Ammash herself, who passionately fighting for the environment she loved, had fallen its victim. She never mentioned the cancer she suffers, to which she has lost both her breasts. Brave, steely, elegant, gentle. Her treatment shames us all. Oh, and anthrax? Perhaps the US should arrest a few scientists at their very own Fort Deatrick, Maryland, the US Army’s ‘Medical Research Institute’ – possibly the world’s largest producer of weapons grade anthrax.
Felicity Arbuthnot is a London-based writer.
If you haven’t come across them already, if you see cheap CDs anywhere, you might want to check out two groups: Carte de Séjour (especially the one that contains the song “Douce France” song by Rachid Taha), and Les Negresses Vertes’ earlier stuff (Mlah, Famille Nombreuse, or the one with the yellow and pinkish background with a group photo). Both groups, though based in France, have ties to North Africa (CDS to ALgeria, LNV to Maroc).
enjoy!
I definitely have heard about the Marlboro KKK/anti-semitic stance – when I was 17 in Bombay to be specific. It seemed a little far-fetched even then… but then – who knows what to believe when we pretty much live on teh basis of our senses and socially created symbols? Fascinating that story is still around. I love that the third world, developing countries whatever are retaining soem degree of cultural specificity! I hope we dont all homogenise!!!