An Explanation

The title of this blog is in reference to a book by Ali Behdad, entitled Belated Travelers. In that book, Behdad discusses several writers, including Flaubert and Kipling, who were to varying degrees counter-cultural within the context of their contemporary Western societies. Behdad examines how, when writing in the colony or about colonized people, even these writers were driven by a fruitless search for authenticity in the Orient, and escape from their own, rapidly industrializing societies. Though I don't claim to be all that counter-cultural, I am interested in the search for escape and authenticity and how it affects the way we perceive and write about other people.

Being a blog, the title is also used in reference to something more personal. In Morocco again for the first time in five years, and studying again for the first time in three, I am interested in how the word belated captures my sense of return, and how I remember what I am returning to. Five years ago I was living with a Moroccan family in the medina of Rabat. Each morning, my first fifty steps took me past the same family members, neighbors, peanut vendors, fish sellers and boutique owners. I found the intimate sense of community that existed in that quarter of the medina edifying, and I loved being familiar with it. There was also a part of that experience which I no doubt enjoyed because of what I perceived to be its authenticity.

In the coming year, I'll be enrolled at Al Akhawayn University and then, hopefully, at a language institute elsewhere in Morocco. In short, I will be reconciling my memories of Morocco from five years ago, as well as my perceptions as an American with my experiences now.

What follows may be no more than a glorified travelogue, but I still welcome any feedback, belated or otherwise, for when you feel the writing might be too romanticized, esoteric, boring, full of cultural relativism or otherwise.