Casablanca Notebook: A Collection of Tales from Morocco

Rating:
Summary: CASABLANCA NOTEBOOK, by Louise Roberts Sheldon
Review: A fascinating peek at a very foreign land by a seasoned reporter and illustrator who lived there for a total of eight years.Louise Sheldon grew to know and love Morocco and its people in a way that few journalists or diplomat's wives (and she is both)are permitted or qualified to do. The period between 1975 and 1996 was one of critical importance in the history of the Arab world, and King Hassan II's pro-Western stance encouraged all manner of contacts with Amaricans. This book is the fruit of that policy. she traveled from the circles of wealth and power to the far corners of the country and even into the Western Sahara to witness the fighting between Moroccan forces and the Algerian-backed Polisario. Her eyes saw the big picture and the small with equal clarity and sympathy, and her portraits of the little people, Arab and Berber, ring true. From the hazards of inter-cultural city marriages to the intricate rituals of a Berber wedding in the High Atlas she takes us with her on a voyage of discovery. We envy her, and so will those who share in her adventures by reading this fresh and entertaining account.