Jeffrey Taylor in Morocco

The travel/current events writer Jeffrey Tayler has got an excellent piece in this month's Atlantic Magazine (sadly...subscription required). After the New Yorker, the Atlantic is the best magazine in the country, and this fine travelogue that takes you up the coast of North Africa in Morocco is filled with the kind of writing that makes you want to book your ticket to Marrakesh and hang out for while.

Actually, Tayler spends more time on the coast, visiting towns like Rabat and Casablanca, though no word on whether he dropped in at Rick's. I have been to a couple of the places he writes about, and very much enjoyed his recollections of some of these places. But he goes much further afield than I did, visiting places like Azemmour and Doukkala, while I confined myself to the coast near Rabat. Now, that said I had one advantage during my trip, in that I got the royal treatment. I was there visiting a father of a friend, a well-connected former government minister, and so rode arouund the city in a limo and had several of the finest meals I've ever had.

North Africa fascinates me, and it is too bad that it currently has a reputation for Muslim extremism. The country is beautiful, and with the exception of a very strange, near-violent encounter in Tangier (a wretched hive of scum and villainy) I found the people of Morocco to be amazingly friendly and generous. No doubt, Tayler would agree.

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