O.  Ah, yes, a local! Where are you from, dear man?

L.  I am from Nablus.

O.  Hmm. (flips through his manual, which contains colored illustrations of traditional dress) Why, no, that’s impossible! You are dressed like a man of Sinai. The natives of Nablus dress thusly. (shows the local his colored plates)

L.  Even so, I am from Nablus.

O.  Then, sir, you are incorrectly attired. Your headdress is wrong, don’t you see? And your belt, it should be black. Either that, or you are a liar.

L.  (a bit heatedly) I should know where I am from!

O.  (turning away) These people are as innocent as children. No logic or reason in their actions. They can’t tell black from white, wouldn’t recognize their own mothers — they are impossible!

Each person shelters about 100 trillion microbes. (For comparison, the human body is made up of only around 10 trillion cells.)

So we are about ten times more “germs” than we are “us.” Or to put it another way, we are a seething mass of germs held together by a thin tissue of human genetic material.

Jesus was 90% microbes. So were Einstein, Gandhi, and Marilyn Monroe. And no doubt, most of Gandhi’s 100 trillion microbes would have been just as happy living in the intestines, glands and pores of my neighbor Betty Sue.

It seems pretty incredible that we’ve been able to create the works of Shakespeare, or discover distant galaxies in this condition.

Why? Because people over thirty have a stake in the system, and they are more interested in preserving it, than in sharing it with you. Either that, or they have no clue what’s going on, but they need to pretend that they do, in order to preserve their self-respect and get through the day.

Either way, their hands are dirty. They are opposed to idealism because it has failed them, or more exactly, because they have failed it. They have made compromises they want to believe were necessary. “That’s just the way the world is,” they will say. “We do what we can to survive.”

I’m over thirty, so I know what I’m talking about. Of course, you shouldn’t trust me. Trust only yourselves. Until you are thirty, then turn to self-doubt.

How many times I’ve wished that the power of dreams could have saved us! If, while we were sleeping, each of us could have shaped her true world, the world of her imaginings, and if we could have joined these worlds in a federation of dreams, perhaps the waking world would have come to resemble this softened and shadowy landscape. Perhaps the hard edges of life, its brutal realism, its crushing logic of cause and effect, would have loosened, leaving space for miracles. Perhaps we would have surprised ourselves, and found something to wonder at, even while awake. Instead we walk like zombies through a landscape that shapes us, and which we are powerless to shape. Small disappointments crush us, and we’ve lost the will to resist. We’ve lost our connection to each other and ourselves.

Ever since I was little, I’ve been shouted at. My parents, my teachers, my boss. Sometimes the shouting is couched in sounds of politeness, or even in words of love, but it amounts to the same thing. Someone wants something, someone expects something, someone is telling me what to do. Movies, music, and nightclubs offer a temporary way out, but even in these worlds of excitement, the message is the same. Ambition, desire and ego are the word of the day, and the rule of our lives. Then of course there is God, who some people talk about. God is the ultimate ego, and God wants things too.

I remember the man who thought he could write a novel while dying, a never-before-attempted novel about the journey to the other side. He took a bunch of pills and sat down to write, but instead of charting the uncharted, he wrote a handful of rambling phrases before drifting off to sleep. When he realized his mistake and fought to bring himself back, he threw himself out of his chair and died on the floor.

Thanks to the generosity of one of my readers, I’ve been nominated for the 2010 Best of Morocco Blog Awards in two categories, best news blog and best overall blog.

Check out the Morocco Blogs website, and vote for me or any of your favorites. At the very least, you’ll discover some great blogs, including several who’ve become my friends over the years.

Morocco Blogs periodically reviews English-language blogs about Morocco, with a sample post from each one. They reviewed my blog here.

When I started in 2006, there were just a handful of bloggers writing about Morocco in English. Now there are culture blogs, travel blogs, personal blogs, blogs about news and politics — both by Moroccans and other by lovers of Morocco.

Voting is open for a whole month, until Feburary 21, and nominations are still open for now as well. Good luck to all the nominees!

If I had to pick a single image to sum up what I’ve seen so far in Morocco, I guess it would have to be this one.

A young man rests on his bicycle, overcome by fatigue or even despair in the middle of his route. People pass by, indifferent, no doubt consumed by their own problems. The nowhere quality of the place just underlines the theme.

Fortunately no nation, culture, or people can be summed up in a single image. However, since I’ve returned to Morocco after being away for three years, I keep hearing the same message from most of my friends. Nothing has changed, and since things were dysfunctional to begin with, that means Morocco is slowly sliding into an abyss of futility and defeat.

A friend in Essaouira who was active in reformist causes, labor activism and investigative journalism has given up writing after suffering personal difficulties and the intense opposition of local authorities.

A friend in Fez who is in his third year of law school lost an entire year of studies after conflicts between students and the administration led to the cancellation of midterm exams.

Other friends have been more fortunate on a personal level, but they still see a society with no middle class, no effective system of public education, no electorate ready to defend its rights, no politicians willing to risk their privileges in the fight for reform, and a state committed to a bread and circuses strategy of keeping the youth entertained with festivals rather than investing in the long-term economic development of the people.

To be honest, I was reluctant to return to Morocco because I thought I might be saddened in this way. Coming from a nation where everything works despite having just suffered a major economic crisis, it’s difficult to undertand a society that remains stuck despite the enormous inventiveness, curiosity, motivation, and native intelligence of the Moroccan people.

When I was here in 2003–2006, there was a feeling that despite all the obstacles of an underdeveloped nation, change was in the air and the future would be brighter. It was easy then for me to explain what I loved about Morocco, a nation reaching for democracy and opportunity while holding to the best of its traditions. Today I have a harder time answering that question.

I’ll have more to say on this later, but for now I pose the question to you, dear readers. Is Morocco stuck, and why?

No more lounging around the house in a leisurely way for me! Today I hit the road, first to visit friends in New York, then on to Paris, and finally Morocco before the end of the month. Watch this space as eatbees blog “goes live” from Morocco and around the world!

Also, best wishes to the Iranian people on today’s presidential election. The current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is running again, but there is talk that major change is coming. For one thing, women and young people are participating in unpredecented numbers. Go here for an slideshow of the colorful rallies that have taken place in recent weeks, and here for live updates from the ground in Tehran.

Check out my novel Not from Here and let me know what you think.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been spending most of my time doing rewrites to this novel and now, it’s finally finished. Of course no creative work is ever truly finished, at least not until it’s between covers in a bookstore, or behind a frame in a gallery, or the artist is dead. But now I feel that the novel is quite close to the final form in which it will appear commercially, if and when that happens. If I have to drive around the U.S. selling it out of my trunk on streetcorners, it will happen, but let’s try the more conventional routes first.

Not from Here is the story of a young musician, Anton, who escapes from his stifling small town to go to the city, where he tries to change the world with his music. It’s also the story of his unbreakable friendship with his alter-ego, Timmins, a reclusive artist whose paintings come true. And it’s the story of his discovery of shadowy forces that manipulate society on every level, through politics, the media and even our friends, who might be spying on us without even realizing it. At first Anton is helped by this conspiracy because they need him to stir up the youth, but as he comes to understand its goals, he decides he must fight it, expose it and try to destroy it. Will he succeed?

This novel is a coming of age story, a story of friendship and betrayal and the end of the world. In short, it has everything, an entire universe crammed into 450 pages. I spent several years working on Not from Here, so I respectfully ask you, my friends and readers, to take a few days to read it, give me your supportive and critical comments, and recommend it to friends.

Now that I’m finished with this, I’ll be traveling to New York, Paris and then Morocco, where I’ll be in time for the Gnaoua Festival at the end of the month. Readers of this blog who would like to see me while I’m in Morocco are requested to contact me at write[at]eatbees.com, or leave your contact information in the comments below.