Friday, April 29, 2011

Recipe Week #4: My Italian Soul

While I greatly appreciate the Dutch mentality (e.g., bicycling, frugality, worship of sunlight, and excellent English skills), I think my soul might be Italian. I loved Rome more than any other trip we've made this year (and not just because Jeff proposed to me there), and I could eat pasta every day for eternity (damn the consequences). Something about Italian sunshine, Italian coffee bars, Italian hand gestures, and the beauty of certain Italian cities makes me extraordinarily happy. And then there's tiramisu.


My acculturation to all things Italian is significantly furthered, of course, by the fact that I am surrounded by Italians. I work for Italians, I work with Italians; we have an Italian neighbor, we have Italian friends. Sometimes I catch myself using hand gestures and I don't even know what they mean (which is dangerous, since most hand gestures - in Italian - mean something rather crass). If only more international organizations were based in Rome...

But for now, I will settle for learning to cook decent Italian food (or, as Jeff will be quick to point out, for encouraging Jeff to learn to cook decent Italian food). Luckily, a good friend of Jeff's from northern Italy once gave him a collection of her family recipes. Here's one we made recently - though fair warning, second helpings can induce instantaneous arterial hardening.

SALSA DI GORGONZOLA – BLUE CHEESE SAUCE

4 tablespoon Butter
½ cup Flour
2 cups Milk
½ cup crumbled blue cheese
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg

Warm up the milk, but be careful not to boil it.

Melt the butter in sauce pan. As soon as it is completely melted, add the flour. Stir continuously with a whisk until you smell something like cookies.

Add the milk very slowly and continue to mix with a whisk until the sauce is smooth, with no lumps. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg and the cheese.

Bring to a (gentle) boil and cook for about 2-3 minutes.

Use with pasta and top (if you wish) with walnuts and parsley.

Warning: This makes a lot. You might consider cutting the recipe in half unless you have a family of 10.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Recipe Week #3: I say tabbouleh, you say tabbouli

When Jeff announced his great visa success, our lovely Lebanese friend presented him with the perfect "welcome home" gift: a Lebanese cookbook - and a promise to spend a day cooking with us.

Plating hummus
We thus had our very own Lebanese cooking class a couple weekends ago, in which said friend taught us how to make hummus, tabbouleh, kefta, and fattoush just like her mother makes hummus, tabbouleh, kefta and fattoush. We also made falafel from scratch, but that was a new adventure for all of us.

All of these dishes are surprisingly straight forward (though they can be time consuming - try soaking and peeling a pound of fava beans, and you'll know what I mean). There's also a surprising amount of room for variation. Take tabbouleh, for instance: our friend feels very strongly about the fineness of the burghul (bulgar) -- it should be #1 burghul, not #2 -- and the amount (according to her, hardly any).

Other interesting notes on making tabbouleh: traditionally, you layer the ingredients carefully - the top layer being half onions and half tomatoes, neatly divided - and wait to mix in the dressing (lemon juice and olive oil) until you are ready to eat. Also, the spices are best mixed with the onions before the onions are added to the salad, as this helps ensure their even distribution in the final product.

Here's a general recipe for tabbouleh, copied/adapted from Lebanese Cuisine by Madelain Farab (who just happens to be a Portlander):

A little heavy on the tomatoes, imho
1/4 to 3/4 cup burghul (Farab recommends #2)
2 large bunches parsley, chopped very fine
About 1/4 as much fresh mint, also chopped fine
A few green onions, finely chopped (including the green part)
1 small onion, finely chopped and mixed with a bit of sumac, salt and pepper
2 large tomatoes, finely chopped
About 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1/2 cup olive oil (dress the salad to taste)

Rinse the burghul, drain it and squeeze it dry. Place it in a large mixing bowl and layer the parsley, mint, and green onions on top. Put the seasoned onions on one half of the salad and the tomatoes on the other half. When ready to serve, toss the salad with some lemon juice and olive oil (it should be fairly wet). Traditionally, the salad is eaten using grape leaves or lettuce (think pita bread and hummus).

As you can see, most of the work is in the chopping. Personally, I like more grain in the tabbouleh and more olive oil than lemon juice, but I can admit that here because I don't think our friend reads this blog.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Recipe Week #2: When in Holland...


Last winter, I had the bright idea that we should learn how to cook like the Dutch cook, just so we could make use of all that kale and rootworst and cabbage and endives we were seeing in the store. This lasted for about two meals, after which Jeff and I decided there was a reason why (1) the Dutch have a growing obesity problem and (2) most of the restaurants around town are Italian and Indonesian.

But during my short-lived enthusiasm for learning Dutch "cuisine", I did find a few helpful websites with collections of traditional recipes. Of the handful of recipes we tried, we actually really liked a couple of them - we just decided they were a little too heavy for everyday use.

This dish combines almost all the favorite Dutch food groups: smoked sausage, leeks, mashed potatoes, and cheese. It's also an example of the standard "stamppot" approach to Dutch cooking (that vegetables always taste better when mixed into mashed potatoes). I presume there is a significant ethnographic link between Dutch dishes like this and the casseroles of the American Midwest.

Who says cabbage can't be bad for you? Note that the "bacon" used by the Dutch is the thick slab kind that you cut into cubes (but regular American bacon should work fine). I would cut back significantly on the amount of jam the recipe calls for; otherwise, this dish can taste like candy.

You'll notice these recipes - like most of the recipes we encounter over here - measure amounts not by volume but by weight. At first this caused us some consternation, but then we bought a cheap kitchen scale at Ikea, and Jeff now swears by the greater precision that comes from weighing ingredients.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Recipe Week #1: Dutch Baby

My last morning in Portland, before my 10-hour flight back to Amsterdam, Mom made me our favorite childhood weekend treat - the appropriately named "Dutch Baby". 

Dutch Baby is one of those family traditions that seems so fixed and enduring, you are shocked as an adult to find out that no one else knows what the heck you're talking about. But I think Mom described Dutch Baby aptly when she compared it to "a giant popover" (at least, for those of you who know what a popover is).

So here's Mom's recipe (in her words), modified from Sunset Magazine (1977). This is best made in a cast-iron skillet; it rises like a souffle, but falls just as quickly. You cut it up like a pie and top it with butter, powdered sugar and lemon (in that order).

1/4 cup butter
3 eggs
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup milk
Powdered sugar
Lemon slices

Have pan and ingredients at hand before you begin. Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Make sure everyone will be available when you take the pancake out of the oven in about 30 minutes.

Put the butter in the pan and set it into the oven to melt while you quickly mix the batter. 

Put the eggs into a blender or food processor and whirl for a minute or so to blend. Add milk and flour and beat another 30 seconds.

You can also make this with a rotary beater by beating the eggs until light and then gradually beating in the milk, then the flour.

Remove the pan from the oven and pour the batter into the hot melted butter. Return to oven and bake until puffy — 20 to 25 minutes.

Note: If the pancake doesn’t creep up the sides of the pan, the pan wasn’t hot enough when you added the batter. It’s somewhat of a juggling act to get the pan hot enough without browning the butter. Even if the pancake doesn’t rise, it will still be delicious.

And for the record, I have not seen Dutch Baby on any of the cafe menus here in the Hague.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

The Blue Envelope of Death


In honor of U.S. Tax Day:

As not-quite-a-staff member of my international organization, I fall into a sort of diplomatic limbo: I am allowed to live in the Netherlands, but otherwise I have no diplomatic privileges. You might be asking, who needs diplomatic privileges? Trust me, it helps.

Our first limbo-challenge was the realization that I had no status to sponsor Jeff's stay in the Netherlands. I felt impotent. Thus began our mad scramble to find any plausible grounds for Jeff to obtain a visa independently - and our full introduction to the logistical wrangling of expat life.

Everything as a non-diplomatic expat is a battle: opening a bank account (you have to register with the city first), registering with the city (the registration couldn't be finalized until Jeff submitted his residency application), submitting a residency application (which in Jeff's case required a bank account). Do you buy international health insurance or local health insurance? What's your back-up plan when they reject you for a seemingly minor pre-existing condition? 

And then there's the question of taxes. A staff member at my work would be exempt from Dutch taxes, and her salary would be grossed up to cover any U.S. taxes she could not otherwise get out of paying. Sweet! 

As for me: too bad, so sad. 

Sure, a delightful thing called the Foreign Earned Income Tax Exclusion allows me to avoid most federal and state taxes, but I still have to pay for Social Security and Medicare. Meanwhile, my colleagues assured me that I didn't have to worry about Dutch taxes unless the Dutch authorities (the Belastingdienst) came knocking on my door - which they do by sending you a letter in a bright bluish-purple envelope. No colorful envelope, no Dutch taxes.

This reassured me for about a month, until one day I came home to the blue envelope of death.

It could be worse. Actually, as it turns out, it could have been much worse. First, the Dutch tax authority prepared my return for me, in about 10 minutes. I cannot imagine typing the Dutch equivalent of a 1040 Form and accompanying instruction booklet into Google translate. Second, it turned out I make so little - even when entered as Euros (and have you seen the exchange rate lately??) - that I didn't owe any Dutch taxes after all. Sweet - or sad?

Still, we're stuck paying the city trash tax and the water pollution tax, which are not cheap, and I am sure other fees are lurking right around the corner. Thank god we have no children, cars, or pets (because there is a dog tax).

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Overheard in PDX


I'm checking out my favorite double-fried old fashioned doughnut with the dark chocolate frosting in the pastry display case when I first notice the anxious strain in the voice of the woman in front of me. She's just turning down the slightly stout barista's offer of her usual americano, her voice trailing off lamely as she explains, "I saw a woman who had like a cup with all this whip cream, and I thought ... I need ... to have one of those..." 

The barista, black beard and black clothes with one tasteful tattoo on his right forearm, busies himself with the espresso machine. After a pause, he offers, "How's your day going so far?"

"Well, I just woke up actually, so I'm just like going to work now, so... my day's, I guess, not really going yet..." She fusses with her purposefully mussed-up hair. "I was on this date last night," she states. "With this guy I used to talk to all the time when he worked at Whole Foods." Just like we talk, every day - shit, but don't think I actually like the Whole Foods guy: "But it was like a total clusterfuck. Yeah, I thought he was cool when he worked at Whole Foods, but you know, it turns out he's a total douchebag." 

The barista is staring out the window over the top of the machine as he pounds the ground espresso and locks it into place to pull. He looks down briefly as he shifts to start steaming the milk. "Where'd you go?" he finally says.

She leans into the counter, as if invading his personal barista space will force him to turn around, and takes out her lime-green wallet. "To [somplace]. I mean, he just talked about himself all night, like for 3 hours." She pauses. "It was a total clusterfuck," just so we're clear.

"Maybe he was nervous." He shakes the whip cream cannister as if whipping it by brute force.

"Oh, yeah, maybe... But whenever I tried to say anything he'd just interrupt again..." 

The barista waits several beats before capitulating. "I'm sure he was a tool," he offers as he swipes her credit card.

"Yeah," her voice sounds relieved, "it turns out he's, like, a super-famous Feist fan." Air quotes and forced giggle.

"What does that mean?" More interested, but still avoiding her eye as he slides her the credit card receipt and pen across the counter. "'If you check out issue 52 of the Feist Fanzine, bottom of page 4, you'll see my latest piece'?"

She giggles again, "I know!" Her hand trembles as she signs.

"Later." "Later." And she leaves, unrequited crush.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Of Bikes and Shame


The problem with bicycling to work, I have discovered, is that every day I seem to find a way, at some complicated intersection or another, to do something really stupid. Although crisis is always averted, it is usually thanks to the quick reflexes of the unlucky pedestrian, bicyclist or driver who made the mistake of crossing my path.

Take this morning, for example: it being a fine spring day full of blue skies and birdsong, I set out for work on my bike - and immediately did something really stupid. Faced with a barrage of Dutch from the construction workers observing my stupidity, I felt painfully clueless (were they scolding me or defending me?) and wished I knew enough Dutch to apologize. Instead I could only stare blankly back at them and the livid driver I almost rode in front of. But the worst - oh, the worst - is the righteously indignant glare. The driver this morning gave me a doozy - as in, "Are you crazy! Or just really dumb?" It's a version of Dutch I understand completely.

As I continued on my way, shaken and (I admit) near tears, I came to realize that there is (surprise) a lesson to be learned. It goes something like this:

  1. Living a good and full life requires trying new things.
  2. However, when we try something new for the first time, we will not be good at it.
  3. Thus, as we undertake any new endeavor, we will make mistakes - many of them.
  4. But those mistakes help us get better at the new endeavor, much more quickly and successfully than if we never made mistakes.
  5. Plus mistakes can sometimes lead to humorous stories of self-deprecation that provide good foder for cocktail parties and dinner conversations.
  6. In conclusion: Mistakes are good, learning curves are important, and we can't give up just because we're embarrassed.

So right about now, you're probably thinking, "Thank you, Captain Obvious." But as a recovering perfectionist, for me this is a very hard lesson to learn. In fact, it's a lesson I've "discovered" and "learned" many times already. Two steps forward, one step back.

In the meantime, if anyone knows of a Road Guide for Bicycling in Holland, please let me know.

(This post was brought to you in part by Heather B., who first told me it's OK to try things I know I won't be good at; Ms. Milani, who taught me the importance of having good foder for cocktail parties; and Mysti, who likes to say "in conclusion".)

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Street Food, Portland Edition

Food carts are thing in Portland. In fact, they are so much a thing in Portland, I'm surprised that they're not over (as in, "so over"). 

But maybe that's the beauty of street food - it's just too useful to be "over". The food cart fad has been growing in Portland since the late '90s; today there's something like 500 or 600 permitted food carts around town. (I'm too lazy to pin down a more precise number.) Entire parking lots have been turned into food cart food malls, with covered and heated communal eating areas and carts that have taken on the rooted permanence of mobile homes in upscale trailer parks.

When I was home in Portland, Mom and I stopped by the new Mt. Tabor food cart lot on Belmont. It covered all the major yuppie food groups: Mexican, falafel, fancy fried seafood, pan-Asian noodles, Korean/Hawaiian barbecue, Portland vegan, lattes, and the kind of sandwiches white people like. Plus a creme brulee cart. Because everyone needs one of those. 


It is also requisite (I deduced) to dedicate at least one chalkboard to listing the local farms whose meat products you "proudly serve." One of them should be Carlton Farms. Extra points for those carts serving certified humane eggs. But IFC has already covered this particular punch line.

My bottom line on the food carts: It's not about cheapness. In fact, it's hard if not impossible to eat a full meal for less than a McDonald's value meal. And at least at McDonald's you get indoor seating and (usually) a clean toilet. 

Rather, the joy is in the variety. I like the idea of being able to eat something different every day, able to trust that it will (almost) always be more than decent and that my $6-9 will line the pockets of some local and not just another faceless corporation. And what could be more Portlandian than that.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The History of Morocco in 7 Days

According to all travel guides, travel articles, and everyone in and out of Morocco we talked to about visiting Morocco, there are two primary activities that tourists in Morocco are expected - nay, required - to enjoy: eating, and shopping. Given that we had bad luck with the former, and very little interest in the latter, we suffered a certain unguided confusion: how could we experience Morocco in a way that revolved around neither couscous nor soukhs?

I was reminded of Alain de Botton's essay "On Curiosity", and how he struggled as a tourist in Madrid to appreciate the bland architectural statistics recited by his guide book. Set down the book, he says, and follow your own curiosity: a botanist might look at a national park and wonder how many species of linchen grow on a mountain side; a philosopher (like de Botton) might look at a church and ask "Why do we worship God?"

As an armchair historian, my questions tend more along the lines of "Who were the Saadi sultans? And why were their tombs covered up?" These questions proved hard to answer, however, because cities and countries are - most inconveniently - not arranged chronologically.

But with the aid of retrospection and Wikipedia, I can magically re-order our trip to tell the history of Morocco in 7 days (with, fair warning, full literary and romantic license):

Romans: While the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians also made an appearance in ancient Morocco, the Romans left the best ruins. Volubilis, about an hour outside Fez, was the capital of one of the farthest flung provinces of the Roman Empire, Mauretania Tingitana. The city remains largely intact today, a maze of stone foundations and tall columns spread at the foot of green mountains and facing a broad plain. Fading mosaic floors gather puddles after rain storms; tall grass and wildflowers crowd stone steps.


The Roman presence (and the Phoenician and Carthaginian) demonstrates how Morocco is in many ways Mediterranean - in look, in feel, and in economic ties.

Idrissid Dynasty: Sometime in the 700s, a man showed up in Volubilis, claimed to be descended from Mohammed, and set about establishing the first Moroccan dynasty. He (Idris I) founded Fez in 789, and his son (Idris II) built it up as the capital of the new kingdom.

Peeking inside the
Kairouyine Mosque
Fez was from the start a crossroads of peoples and cultures: local Berbers, Arabs from Spain and Tunisia, Jews and Christians. In 859, a wealthy educated woman founded the University of Al-Karaouine, which might be the oldest university in the world (though it was not technically called a "university" until 1947, so go figure).

Since non-Muslims cannot enter the university, its adjoining (and ginormous) mosque, the tomb of Idris II, or many other Islamic sites, so we had to content ourselves with quick glances and stealth photography.

Almoravid Dynasty: The history of Morocco is in many ways a tug-of-war between the North (with its links to the Mediterranean world) and the South (with its trans-Saharan trading routes and their silk, gold, and slave wealth). After 1000, the balance shifted south, where Yusuf ibn Tashfin created a new capital, Marrakesh, for his new Berber dynasty, the Almoravids. By 1070, the Almoravids controlled territory stretching from south of the Sahara all the way to Spain and Portugal (map).

Where Fez is white and stony, Marrakesh is pink and adobe; where the Fez medina is relatively small and compact (most of its population today lives in the new part of town), Marrakesh's is sprawling and largely unnavigable to outsiders. People (tourists) seem to like either one or the other, but not both (though this seems largely dependent on the quality of the riad they stayed in and the aggressiveness of the street vendors they encountered).

What makes Marrakesh particularly unique is its main square: the Djemaa al Fna.  Ever consistent in our priorities, we ignored the street performers, dancing monkeys, snake charmers, and often cheesy musicians for the makeshift food stalls that fill the square every night with bright lights and white steam.


A sample Djemaa al Fna menu, in three installments: (1) Small bowl of snails in salty broth, ladled from a giant cauldron. (5 dirhams, or about 60 cents). (2) Spicy little sausages from one of the popular sausage stands, where the patrons crowd benches around the grill and hand back cooled food to be reheated. (Plate of sausages with flat bread and dipping sauce, 35 dirhams, or about $4.50.) (3) Intensely spiced tea served from a giant copper vat and a dense dessert of something like unsweetened cocoa and cloves - for me, the tea stole the show. (2 teas and 2 desserts should cost only 10 dirhams.)

Merinid dynasty: While the Merinids were (I am told) Berbers from the south, they returned the capital to Fez around 1248.

Water Clock, sans "clock"
My vision of Fez as a city of great medieval learning is largely based on the legend of the water clock (c. 1300s): based on the flow of water behind the scenes, every hour a ball would drop through a window into one of the twelve copper bowls resting on the carved wooden beams below. Unfortunately (for us), the bowls and mechanism were removed in 2004 to be reconstructed. I'm not sure why it's taking seven years, but I like the idea that no one today is quite sure how it ever worked. Very Da Vinci-esque.

The courtyard of the Bou Inania medersa
The water clock sits across the street from the Bou Inania medersa and mosque, yet another institution of higher learning in Fez, also built during Merinid rule. Recently restored, the medersa is one of the few Islamic sites in Fez open to non-Muslim tourists.

Fez is renowned for its intricate plaster work; the tiles and carved cedar wood aren't too shabby, either. What Morocco lacks in representational art it makes up for in spades with Alhambra-esque palaces and religious centers.


Saadi dynasty: By the 1500s, the power pendulum was swinging south again, where the Saadi sultans ruled Morocco from Marrakesh. Among other accomplishments, at a time when Europe was first flexing its colonial muscle, the Saadis successfully kicked the Portuguese off the Moroccan coast.

Many of the Saadi kings, their families and servants are buried in the (creatively named) Saadian tombs, at the south end of the Marrakesh medina. What makes these tombs so intriguing for tourists is the fact that the next guy to come to power so thoroughly walled up and hid away these ornate tombs (the better to help the people forget about former dynasties), no one remembered they were there (no outsiders, at least) until they were disclosed by aerial photographs taken in 1917. That "next guy" was none other than the infamous Moulay Ismail.

Courtyard with tombs of servants and disfavored cousins

Moulay Ismail: There is no shortage of legends about Moulay Ismail ibn Sharif, an early member (1672-1727) of the still-ruling Alaouite dynasty. Known for his "war and woman", Moulay Ismail relied on an army of loyal black slaves, his infamous Black Guard, to control an often fractious country. Story goes he gave them women and then raised their sons within the Guard's ranks until his personal army grew from 15,000 to 150,000. Meanwhile, he's reported to have had hundreds of wives and 1000 children (or, at the very least, 889). Busy man.

Just one row of the royal stables
Everything about Moulay Ismail was oversized, so it's no surprise he decided to designate a new capital, Meknes, and fill it with oversized public works. Slave labor built massive walls, massive graineries, massive stables, and massive mosques, all out of stone, mud, and straw. The cavernous galleries of the graineries could hold enough wheat to feed the entire city through lengthy sieges; they are still naturally kept cool by the impossibly thick walls and the underground wells from which water was channeled through the building. Outside, the royal stables are in a more advanced state of ruin, endless rows of stone arches fronting a man-made lake built to water the Sultan's 12,000 horses.

The mausoleum of Moulay Ismail in Meknes is actually open to non-Muslim visitors, yet it was inexplicably closed the day we were there. Instead we wandered through the underground complex next door, allegedly a prison for Christian hostages, or perhaps just another storage area for grain. More empty cavernous rooms, more infinite series of arches.


Although not a gentle or enlightened ruler, Moulay Ismail did succeed in repelling multiple Ottoman incursions and in kicking out the Europeans every time they tried to get a foothold along the coast. But why this constant struggle for control of Morocco? Let us pause to consider the trans-Saharan trade routes.

Ksour: Winding up through the Atlas mountains from the south, the lucrative trans-Saharan trade routes pop out near Marrakesh - but first they must pass through countless Berber ksour in the mountains (ksar in the singular), each demanding tribute. Fortified towns made out of mud, straw, and bits of wood, the striking red ksour have entered our collective imagination largely thanks to one in particular: Ait ben Haddou, used as a movie set for countless Hollywood productions, from Lawrence of Arabia to Gladiator and The Mummy.


But despite what Gladiator would have you believe, ksour like Ait ben Haddou might not date back to Roman times. UNESCO only suggests they may have been around in the seventeenth century. The historical difficulty? The construction method used for ksour is not durable, and repairs are needed after every rain storm. According to our guide (though I remain a bit skeptical), Berber villages built in the traditional manner must be reconstructed almost from scratch every five years. But the rapid deterioration of these enclaves could help explain their inherent romance, as they are almost always in a state of half-ruin.


Trade with Europe: From Marrakesh, the goods from the trade routes were transferred to the coast for shipment to Europe. Due west from Marrakesh is the port of Essaouira, a primary port for the country for (give or take) two centuries.


The Phoenicians were here, as were the Romans; the Portuguese tried to build a castle on the site in the early 1500s but were soon kicked out by the Saadis. The French gained a foothold in the area in the 1600s, and Mohammed III hired French engineers to design the city's dramatic fortifications and harbor walls (made famous in modern times by the opening scene of Orson Welles' Othello). Essaouira was the site of military battles and diplomatic relations, a symbol perhaps of Morocco's love-hate relationship with Europe.

This is no gentle beach-y coast: this is a rough-hewn, rocky harbor, home to a contingent of sea-battered fishing vessels. Though crawling these days with European tourists (the nearby airport at Agadir is heavily serviced by the discount European airlines), the old medina is ruggedly beautiful, its white-washed houses with their bright blue doors a relief from the incessant pink of Marrakesh. Waves crash, seagulls cry, and the sun's heat is broken by the constant sea wind.

Colonialism: From kicking the Portuguese out of Essaouira in 1510 through the "First Moroccan Crisis" of 1905-1906 (which, despite its name, was in fact a European crisis sparked by the rivalry between France and Germany for control over Morocco), Morocco valiantly fought off European efforts to colonize and control it for four hundred years. But after the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911 (something about Germany establishing an outpost in Agadir and the French responding by exerting more control over Essaouira?), Morocco was forced to sign the Treaty of Fez in 1912. While it didn't lose its sovereignty per se, the country was termed a protectorate and divided between French and Spanish control.

The Moroccans never took well to French rule, and after World War II their demands for independence grew. After Mohammed V openly supported the independence movement against the French administration, the French exiled him and his family to Madagascar in 1953. (Boo.)

The French were aided in this move by the very powerful Glaoui family, whose vast control over the south was threatened by the continued presence of the northern Alouite dynasty (and the nationalist movement). Among the Glaoui holdings: the Telouet ksar, guarding one of the key mountain passes leading to Marrakesh. The Glaoui family had built three successive castles at the same strategic point, abandoning the old as they fell into advanced states of disintegration. The most recent was built only a hundred years ago and was inhabited until the 1950s - but it's now also a ruin.

A functional stronghold, the abandoned Telouet ksar consists mostly of bare rooms and narrow stair wells, like this:


But all of a sudden you come across this:


And this:


And this:


I'm not sure if the whole place was ever this elaborate, or if the greatest decoration was saved for these harem rooms. At any rate, the family fled to France when King Mohammed V returned triumphant to Morocco in 1956, having negotiated independence from France and Spain. In the story of Morocco, the North won again.

Modern Morocco: Morocco is still a constitutional monarchy, with an emphasis on the monarchy bit. But the new king, Mohammed VI, is reportedly forward-thinking and has announced constitutional reforms after the recent Arab revolutions. Still, it's hard to get a finger on the real sentiments of Moroccans when a formal portrait of the King is ubiquitous in every public space, from train stations to the carts of street vendors. This is not (yet) a fully open society.

But while outsiders continue to romanticize Morocco's past (erhem), most of the country lives in modern apartment blocks and villas in modern cities, like Casablanca, Rabat, and the Ville Nouvelle of Fez. Modern Moroccans do not aspire to live in the medinas beloved of the tourists, but in pretty villas in tree-lined suburbs bordered by broad boulevards. Meanwhile, Morocco's permanence as a romantic tourist destination has helped spawned trendy clubs, high-end spas and shopping districts frequented by rich outsiders and upwardly mobile locals alike.

I did not get to see this Morocco (more accurately, I did not choose to, in our limited time). The closest I got was the Majorelle Garden, a small botanical park made famous by Yves St. Laurent, whose ashes are scattered here. As a tourist destination, the garden was a disappointment: so crowded with yammering tourists that there was not an inch of solitude in the surprisingly small space. Yet Yves St. Laurent's vision of bright colors and lush abundance is a happy and optimistic note on which to end our superficial tour of Moroccan history.