Literary Safari

I’m reading The Voices of Marrakech, by Elias Cannetti (thanks, Steven!) in Berber terrain of Morocco, and therefore inspired to write a little about the incredible experience I’m having here at the Kasbah du Toubkal.

I’m in a truly idyllic valley surrounded by the Atlas mountains with the highest mountain in North Africa, Mount Toubkal, in full view. The silence is punctuated by a rooster crowing, the moo of a cow, and and the sounds of children playing in their mud huts in the distance. A few strains of a string instrument are carried along with the wind through the open window beside me, and very soon, the evening call to prayer will echo all around me.

Today, we went for a hike nearby. There is a winding path that we followed up toward a small hamlet where a man sold peanut and sesame brittle and another turbaned Berber man with black teeth tried to sell me a silver bracelet for $80. Along the way, we met some Japanese tourists on mules and a bunch of kids who offered me a lift.

At the top of the hill, we came across Mohammad, a mountain guide who is going to take us to the base camp of Mount Toubkal for an overnight stay tomorrow. He invited us to his home to “take a cup of tea.” We sat on his terrace and drank hot chamomile mint tea, fresh almonds that he peeled with his own hands, and cherries picked off the trees in the distance. Here, apple, walnut, almond, and cherry orchards dot the hills, alongside streams and waterfalls.

… More later …

Update: To read more about the Kasbah de Toubkal, check out this NYT article.  

Nancy Drew is my quintessential heroine. I grew up reading all the books in the series by Carolyn Keene—The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, and The Clue of the Broken Locket … She was not just a character in a book to me. She was an adventurer, a good friend and dutiful daughter, a role model. I rooted for her when the going got tough, and cheered for her when she cleverly disengaged herself from sticky and dangerous situations.

That’s why I was so excited to see the movie, Nancy Drew, which opens today. I couldn’t wait to take a trip down memory lane (and neither, apparently, could all the other women who were in the screening room with me!)
But, this Nancy was so very different from the one I know and love … At first, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to adjust to her 21st century representation.

After all, in my mind, Nancy Drew is eternally 17 or 18; tall, elegant, eloquent, a teen who could pass for an adult. Now, imagine the first scene of the film: A very young looking Nancy (Emma Roberts; yes, Julia’s niece) finds herself in the middle of a bank heist in River Heights, manages to convince at least one of the thieves that they should turn themselves in, and cleverly scales down a high wall (unscathed, of course) to the thunderous applause of her hometown groupies and a worried dad Carson Drew (played by Tate Donovan). The local police chief gazes at her in awe, boyfriend Ned Nickerson nearly swoons, and Nancy, a vision of extreme perfection, drives away with her dad.

You’d have a tough time too. You’d ask yourself why the director (Andrew Fleming) couldn’t just have picked a Nancy who was a little older, a Nancy who fit your mental image of her.

But then, the plot takes off. You find out that Nancy is leaving River Heights for a brief stay in Hollywood, that she has rented a house with an unsolved mystery about a famous (and dead) icon actress, and that … she has promised Dad that she will solve no more mysteries. (Ahem, obviously that’s not going to happen. Come on, get a clue!)

Suddenly, a switch goes on in your mind and you become 9 years old again, wanting to embark on an adventure with Nancy, hoping to find secret passageways, needing to figure out who the bad guys are—and how to get them.

That’s what happened to me. Despite my misgivings about Nancy being so very different than I imagined she would be—she seems to be a caricature of my dear friend Nancy—I was sucked into the movie pretty soon.(It helped that I decided to watch the movie as a 12 year old. Once that happened, Emma Roberts also began to grow on me — she’s not really Nancy that I’ve always known, but she is cute and has an on screen presence.)

There’s a mystery to the magic of Nancy Drew. Publishing giant Edward Stratemeyer, who invented her in 1929, probably never would have guessed that she would survive as a cultural icon for decades, and that she would grow and evolve with time, along with her popularity. In Nancy Drew (Get a Clue), Nancy is a 21st century gal. She listens to her iPod while browsing the Internet, looks for clues on IMDB.com, and drives a Hybrid. But, she’s also a traditionalist—canvases homes door-to-door (instead of calling on her cell phone) in search of a key player in her mystery; is CPR-certified; and is polite to boot (she refuses to go over the speed limit even during a car chase and says “excuse me” to the thugs who are after her.)

I must admit that though perturbed by the caricatured version of Nancy that creeped into the film at times, I was also charmed by this contemporary Nancy’s clever ways (bribing a medical records officer with one of Hannah’s home-baked blondies); her kind demeanor (befriending Corky, the miniature and chubby school nerd, with lines such as “I think the ability to sleuth is an attractive quality in women” — adorably played by Josh Flitter); her self-assured, do-good, intelligent manner and her lack of self-consciousness (all qualities rarely represented or applauded in the media today).

In short, I was carried away into the world of my favorite teenage sleuth all over again. (And yet, when Nancy is almost run over by a car and says calmly, “I wonder who tried to kill us,” I couldn’t help but burst into laughter.)

In a way, watching the movie was kind of like reading the Nancy Drew books. You don’t expect much in the way of writing or style, but the story, the plot, and your connection with the character keeps you going. Yes, that’s it. That’s exactly how it was for me. I love Nancy so much that to walk away from her (whether on the page or on the big screen) would be a betrayal of our friendship.

It’s taking guts on my part to say that I got a kick out of watching the movie. But, hey, if Nancy’s got guts, so should I.

After all, it takes guts to be her—a teenage chemistry, French, and detective whiz and perfectionist in a plaid skirt, cardigan sweaters, penny loafers, knee-length socks, and neat tied-back hair—surrounded by fierce fashionistas and Paris Hilton types on Hollywood Boulevard. I say this with certainty because I have just been to Hollywood and strolled down the Walk of Fame. (No kidding, I’m writing this as I sit on my flight back from LA to New York!)

“I like traditional things,” says the teen sleuth extraordinaire in her latest onscreen incarnation. I do too. That’s why I watch this movie till the end, and walk away still cheering for Nancy who knows how to do things her way, knows the importance of helping others (her mottos: “It is important to judge the means and the ends independently in order to know the difference” and “Others first”), and isn’t afraid to be herself.

The silver screen could always use more gutsy girls like this. So, who am I to chew them out? After all, I like traditional things too!

If you are an old-time fan of Nancy Drew, you’ll want to pair this film with:Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, by Melanie Rehak. This book is a fascinating history of the creation of the character Nancy Drew by publishing giant and genius Edward Stratemeyer, who also created the popular boy series Hardy Boys. Stratemeyer recognized girl readers as a real publishing market in the 1920s and developed many series of books for them. In this book, Rehak traces Nancy’s development from concept to writing by focusing on the two women behind her – Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Mildred Wirt Benson. Viewed from the lens of the changing society of early 20th century America and the developing women’s movement of the time, this book is guaranteed to make you never see Nancy Drew the same way again.

On All Things Considered yesterday, I heard a fascinating interview with Benazir Bhutto, former two-time prime minister of Pakistan who is planning to return to Pakistan to “try and restore democracy.” In other words, the controversial and divisive political figure who is in self-imposed exile is planning to run for office against the current military regime.

Benazir Bhutto was as eloquent as ever in this interview, and made some really interesting points about the anti-terrorism alliance between the U.S. and Pakistan under General Parvez Musharraf, who she is most certainly beginning to challenge. Listen to the interview. Read the story.

As a former student of history and of South Asia scholar Ayesha Jalal, I will be watching the unfolding of this story very closely.

You know those lazy Sunday mornings where you get to sit around and read the paper, drink a hot chocoloate (or a cafe au lait) and eat a croissant … and come upon a piece of writing that makes you go, “Yes, this is what the personal essay is all about?” Well, those exhilarating moments that I long for … I just had one when I read novelist Roxana Robinson’s essay “The Novelist and the Curious Cabbie” in today’s New York Times.

A writer hops into a taxi, headed to a Midtown literary festival. But the book talk starts earlier than she expects.

She meets a Bangladeshi cab driver and her mental image of him is blown up when he begins to speak to her about Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Virginia Woolf, and of all things that she would never expect … literature.

I’m guessing she was on her way to the PEN World Voices Festival when this incident happened. Her epiphany:

We were headed west. It was dark now, and all the lights of the city were on. I was going to walk into the great radiant space of Town Hall, and I was going to listen to writers I admired speaking their own words into the golden air. And now this driver had revealed his own connection to that world, and it felt as if the entire planet were connected by tiny, invisible filaments that would glow if only you could see them.

This is a must-read.