5 Romantic Things To Do In Morocco - The Dream Mediterranean Getaway
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USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Savage but fair: Surviving a swank writing master class in Morocco
Silk Road Slippers, a five-day writers workshop at a delicous Moroccan resort, was more scrivener's boot camp than a luxurious path to self-discovery. MARRAKECH, Morocco – It's morning under the Atlas Mountains and publishing legend Alexandra Pringle is taking a savage blue pencil to a very nice paragraph. At least I thought it was a very nice paragraph. But no. It's actually a mess – jumbled, ineffective – and Pringle, former editor-in-chief at Bloomsbury Publishing in London, strikes down my wan offering with a single sentence before moving on to the next willing victim. It's obvious, just one day into this weeklong writing workshop, that we're in the hands of professionals – three glamorous, erudite killers who've had a hand in some of the biggest and most interesting books of the last 40 years. Pringle runs the master classes with historian and broadcaster Alex von Tunzelmann ("Fallen Idols", "Indian Summer") and Faiza Khan, a former editor-at-large at Random House, packing the plummiest accent this side of Downton Abbey. They're a formidable team – humane, perceptive, politely unsparing. The outfit, called Silk Road Slippers, holds four master classes a year at a delicious resort hotel outside Marrakech, each featuring a different heavyweight lecturer, including winners of the Nobel, Booker, Pulitzer and other literary prizes. My session was graced by novelist Alan Hollinghurst ("The Line of Beauty"). Esther Freud, Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah , Monica Ali and Andrew O'Hagan have all given attendees a bracing taste of how it's really done. The classes are very much open to new writers. Many at the session I attended earlier this year were already in the writing game, some with published books. But Silk Road Slippers wasn't created with literary pros in mind, von Tunzelmann says. Among those gathered under the palms at the workshop's long outdoor table placed near an outdoor fireplace to ward off the morning chill were an architect, a publicist and a counselor. Silk Road Slippers has hosted newbies who'd spent their professional lives in business, medicine, and law. Scrivener's boot camp The Jnane Tamsna boutique hotel, created by French attorney Meryanne Loum-Martin (whose life would fill a page-turner) and her American ethnobotanist husband Gary Martin, was the swanky backdrop to a week of grinding mental labor. The Morocco location makes Silk Road Slippers accessible to writers from Asia, Africa and Latin America who may not care for the process of getting a visa to Europe and the United States. (U.S. passport-holders travel to Morocco visa-free.) Despite the sumptuous trappings – the palms, the book-lined bar, the (five!) swimming pools – Silk Road Slippers is more scrivener's boot camp than a luxurious path to self-discovery. The days are filled with short writing exercises, with each hastily written passage read aloud by the author and then critiqued by Pringle, Khan and von Tunzelmann. Writers are drilled in dialogue, setting, action, perspective – a crash course in substance and style. In a revealing assignment, attendees were asked to write a fictional third-person scene with themselves as the protagonist. As with the other drills, the results ranged from middling (that was mine) to quite good. There wasn't a bad pen among the nine women and two men who were my classmates. But none topped Booker Prize-winner Hollinghurst, who turned out, in the same 15 minutes as the rest of us, a richly cinematic scene placing the fictional character of Alan Hollinghurst in a tricky social encounter fraught with manners, ego, and ambition. Just like something out of a novel. Anyone can play Years ago, U.S. literary wags spilled barrels of ink over the question of MFA vs. NYC, shorthand for two paths to creating a life as a novelist: the formal structure of a master's in fine arts degree, with its ready-made community and the tutelage of established teacher-mentors, or the (relatively) hard-knock life of apprenticing oneself to the New York publishing industry and living, loving, losing in the real world, with all the bruises to show for it. Nobody was talking about this kind of thing in Marrakech. I had no idea where anyone went to school, or what credentials they may have held. Every person there was taking a leap of some kind to learn alongside – and expose themselves to – a group of discerning strangers. There was no shortage of work. There were tears, and support among new friends. Some writing samples were raw and personal, but that was no protection from our instructors and the feedback born from their editorial instincts: 'There's too much specificity. You're putting the kitchen sink in there.' 'It's just awful. It's explanatory. It's telling us what to think.' 'There's nothing more boring than other people's dreams.' By the end of the week, each participant had completed a passage of at least 1,000 words to be assessed in an hourlong consultation with one of our three guides. I drew Pringle, and I've never had a more rewarding or discombobulating conversation about writing. Despite having two nonfiction books and decades of journalism to my name, Pringle pointed me to the far riskier path of literary fiction. That gets to the heart of why even a published author might want to spend time and money on a workshop like Silk Road Slippers and why it holds so much potential benefit for newcomers. This is solitary work, and trying out your craft with trusted peers and masters of different ages and walks of life can be – as I found – a rejuvenating literary shot in the arm.
Morocco World
3 hours ago
- Morocco World
Calls Grow for UK to Intervene in Imprisoned Fighter Lee Murray's Case
Lee Brahim Murray-Lamrani is a British-Moroccan former MMA fighter, born on November 12, 1977, in London to a Moroccan father and English mother. In his early life in Woolwich, London, Murray gained notoriety due to his alleged linkage with illegal activities, including violence and drug dealing, before indulging in the MMA world. In 2006, Murray was involved in a robbery of £53m from a Securitas depot in Kent, England, with a group of masked men before he ran away to Morocco. After four months on the run, Murray was caught in Rabat in a joint operation conducted by Moroccan and British police. He was sentenced to 10 years in Moroccan prison before the sentence was increased to 25 years on appeal. Lee's younger son, Lenie Murray, was two years old during the incident. 'I was only two years old when my dad went to prison. I've spent my whole life without him. He's missed my childhood, and I've missed having a father by my side,' Lenie told Morocco World News (MWN) in an exclusive interview. Read also: Human Rights Groups Demand Inquiry into Lee Murray's Conviction 'He made a mistake a very long time ago that he's taken responsibility for and changed for the better. He's still my dad. I love him and miss him every day. I just want the chance to know him properly and to have him be part of my life. I'm not asking for anything more than the chance to share time with the father I've missed for 19 years. 'My father has spent 19 years in a Moroccan prison — far longer than anyone else involved in the same case received in the UK,' he added. Human rights groups are now demanding that the UK parliament take action in the case. 'We are urging the UK government to formally support a pardon request for Lee,' Radha Stirling, CEO of Due Process International and founder of Detained in Dubai, told Morocco World News. She added: 'We're also urging an investigation into whether the UK government breached its obligation to its own citizens, to pursue a prosecution by a foreign government since this sets a dangerous precedent.' Murray's MMA Career Murray started his MMA career in 1999 at an event called 'Millennium Brawl' when he won over Rob Hudson by a first-round knockout, and gained the nickname 'lightning.' Lee fought four times in 2000 and won each fight with either a submission or a knockout. His aggressive, unpredictable style made him one of the most feared fighters at that time. Dana white, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), described him as 'the most legit gangsters of all time.' Dana detailed: 'I actually ran into Lee Murray right after he got stabbed. He got stabbed everywhere and they were still fresh…Days after Lee Murray got stabbed, he's walking around the event with all the stitches still in him. Lee Murray is one of the most legit gangsters of all time, he really is.' Murray has a professional record of 8-2-1 (win-loss-draw) with remarkable fights, including his win over Jorge Rivera at UFC 46 via triangle armbar in just 1 minute and 45 seconds of the first round. Eight months later, Lee delivered a competitive fight with the UFC legend and Hall-of-Fame Anderson Silva in Cage Rage 8, which ended by decision for Silva. On September 28, 2005, Murray faced the incident that would put an end to his MMA career. He was stabbed repeatedly in the heart at a birthday party at Funky Buddha nightclub in Mayfair. According to The Standard, Murray underwent open-heart surgery and needed 30 pints of blood, but no one was charged with the attack. 'First, they stabbed me in the head. At first, I thought it was a punch. When I felt blood running down my face, I wiped it away and kept fighting. Then I looked down and blood was spurting from my chest. I knew I had been stabbed in the heart by the blood gushing out of me. Blood sprayed from me about a meter away,' Murray said in an interview. Nearly two decades after the Securitas robbery, Lee Murray remains imprisoned in Morocco, and his case continues to draw attention from human rights advocates. Tags: human rightslee murrayMMA
Ya Biladi
3 hours ago
- Ya Biladi
Morocco : A national conference calls for equal reform of the Family Code
The Jossour Forum of Moroccan Women (Jossour FFM) held a national conference on Thursday, July 24, in Rabat, focusing on reforming the Family Code to promote equality. The event gathered politicians, institutional representatives, associations, academics, and media professionals «to collaboratively envision a family legislation that is more just, equitable, and aligned with contemporary Moroccan realities». According to a press release, the conference is part of the project «A Just and Equitable Family Law for All Women», supported by the organization Diakonia. For the organizers, it represents «a significant milestone in the advocacy efforts led by Jossour FFM», with recommendations drawn from their memorandum, crafted after extensive consultations. «This document, the culmination of thorough collective work, sets the stage for a comprehensive reform of the Family Code, in line with the 2011 constitutional principles and Morocco's international commitments», the source noted. During the conference, participants highlighted «the necessity to dismantle the legal and social obstacles that impede the realization of women's rights». Discussions centered on «the shortcomings of the current Moudawana, the contradictions between some of its provisions and the equality principles enshrined in the Constitution», as well as «the concrete proposals offered by Jossour FFM to forge a more inclusive new family pact». Speakers unanimously agreed that «reforming the Family Code is now a social and political imperative, essential to ensuring equal rights and accompanying the profound transformations within Moroccan society». Beyond the conference, Jossour FFM aims to «establish a diverse and civic dialogue platform». This inclusive approach also seeks to «enhance civic and political engagement, placing the issue of Moudawana reform at the forefront of the national agenda». In this context, the successful execution of the conference underscores that «Moroccan society is prepared to collectively embrace a new family pact, grounded in justice, equality, and dignity for all women», the organizers stated. The organizers further emphasized that «the goal is not merely to amend legal articles, but to fundamentally rethink the legal and social frameworks governing family life in Morocco». They affirmed that the advocacy will persist «with institutions, political parties, and civil society to vigorously champion the recommendations from this conference».
