Ryan Farha

• 2010-03-23

  Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos.

  — fortune cookie, 3/20

• 2009-11-17

  Tanjawis are born actors, fitting into a role on the spot should the situation arise. Anybody who has seen the numerous arguments and fights among them—the invective hurled, the belligerent poses, the righteous attitudes—will agree. A perfect example occurred on a January day in 1974 on the rue de Fez when an elderly fatima managed to get herself in the way of a slow-pedalling bicyclist whose right handlebar grazed her. She promptly collapsed and lay in the street feebly moving her arms. Neither the bicyclist, who seemed more annoyed than anything else, nor anybody in the crowd that quickly assembled, made any attempt to help the fallen woman. Eventually she sat up, tried to look dazed, and then, tucking a stray hair under her jellaba cowl, loudly berated the cyclist and demanded payment. Seeing that she wasn’t hurt, as he and everybody else had known from the first, the latter went off as fast as possible. The fatima made the best of the final scene by screeching to high heaven that she had been hurt and that the culprit had run away. Then, with a smug look on her face, marched off in the knowledge that her performance had been a good one.

  — Lawdom Vaidon, in Tangier: A Different Way

• 2009-10-21

  !المعيشة في طنجة غالية بزاف

• 2009-10-05

  Lenny, as performed by John Mayer

• 2009-09-25

  

  Collage, Morocco, 2008 to 2009