Jewish roots of the song “Rich Girl.”

 I first noticed the 1993 recording “Rich Girl,” by British duo Louchie Lou & Michie One, when I heard it played at the Basement Bhangra parties I attended at the dance club S.O.B.’s in the late 1990s. I was immediately struck by the surprisingly Jewish elements of a West Indian dance hall record.

 The chorus, sung in an Oriental melisma, is to the tune of “If I Were a Rich Man” from the 1964 Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, composed by Jewish-American Jerry Bock. The lyric is changed but nonetheless patterned on the original lyric by (I assume) Jewish-American Sheldon Harnick which, according to Wikipedia, in turn was inspired by the 1902 Yiddish monologue “Ven ix bin Rotşild” (If I were Rothschild, װען איך בין ראָטשילד), written by Şolem Aleyxem (שלום עליכם). (The title of the Yiddish version of “If I Were a Rich Man” is “Ven ix bin a Rotşild” [If I were a Rothschild, װען איך בין אַ ראָטשילד], the extra word presumably added to fit the song’s meter.) What few other people seem to have noticed is that the additional “na na na” part is to the tune of “Hat-tiqwâ” (התקוה), the Israeli national anthem. (Gwen Stefani’s more popular cover version uses a different melody for the “na na na” part. Was that intentional based on the melody’s Zionist connection?)

 The only online acknowledgment I could find of the use of “Hat-tiqwâ” was James Lœffler, “Ethnic Sampling,” Nextbook: A New Read on Jewish Culture, 26 August 2005. Lœffler noted the borrowing of Jewish melodies “as part of an unlikely ode to social justice and community harmony.” Eric Schulmiller posted a comment on that article on 31 August refuting Lœffler’s interpretation: “…[T]he juxtaposition of the two most popularly recognizable Jewish melodies (outside of ‘Hava Nagilah’)…echoes the age-old antisemitic trope of the money-grubbing Jew as typified by the spoiled, materialistic Jewish American Princess (aka the ‘Rich Girl’).” Schulmiller’s accusations of anti-Semitism are unwarranted and unfounded. Louchie Lou & Michie One are a London group that was, again according to Wikipedia, exponents of a “rise of radio friendly reggae in Britain.” According to Michie One’s MySpace profile, the duo co-wrote “Rich Girl.” Listen to the recording: The performance contribution of Michie One, the black West Indian member, was toasting in a light West Indian créole. All the Jewish elements (the melisma and two Jewish melodies) were contributed by the other member, Louchie Lou, better known to her friends and family as Louise Gold. I have no direct documentation of her ethnic background, but the evidence suggests she is a British Jew rather than an anti-Semite.

 Perhaps my epiphany is common knowledge in Britain. For all I know, hundreds of magazine articles may have been published in the U.K. about how Louchie Lou & Michie One have a blend of Jewish and West Indian influences, but I never read any of them and I found none on the Web. I admittedly have not sought any print sources for information on the Jewish element of the group or the recording, instead relying solely on Internet sources. I would love citations of print sources that confirm or deny my suspicions about the group.

 On an unrelated, typically linguistic aspect of the record, Michie One’s toast curiously mixes verb tenses. The rich are perceived as singular, but the poor as plural: “Rich is getting richer, but the poor are getting sting.”

Update (11 June): “Rich Girl” (1993), by Louchie Lou & Michie One

Update (3 February 2009):
• “Rich Girl” (1993), by Louchie Lou & Michie One
• “Rich Girl” (1993), by Louchie Lou & Michie One

Versions of this article are reproduced at webcitation.org/5eJlAStJc and 5eJlkViv2, as well as on Facebook.

My friend Andrew was stabbed at Union Square.

 My thoughts keep returning to my friend Andrew who was mugged Thursday on the uptown 4-5-6 platform of Union Square station. He found himself in Brooklyn Hospital with a stab wound in his hip, a gash on his head and a broken pelvis. It’s particularly scary as I and many of my friends use that station frequently, and a particularly close friend uses that platform particularly often.

 Andrew is a fixture at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center’s Dance 208 series and can also be seen at numerous bear events and venues in New York City. (Although I first met him at Lucky Cheng’s through a mutual friend, I mostly know him from the Eagle and “Woof!” at View Bar.)

 (Andrew, I wish you the speediest possible recovery. החלמה מהירה ורפואה שלמה.‏)‎

 If you have not already done so, read the shocking story of the assault in Andrew’s own words.
• Andrew Jónás, “I’m a Statistic!,” Andrew MySpace Blog, 19 May 2008.
• Andrew Jónás, “Pain Is Not Even Close…,” Andrew MySpace Blog, 20 May 2008.

Update (21 May): I understand now that the title of this article is likely inaccurate. Andrew was assaulted at Union Square, and he was stabbed, but the police believe the actual stabbing occurred elsewhere. Also, he has published another article, this one about nightmares resulting from the attack: Andrew Jónás, “And Here We Go….Dreams and Stitches…,” Andrew MySpace Blog, 21 May 2008.

A version of this article is reproduced at webcitation.org/5eVG6nrtq, as well as on Facebook.

“The Mesopotamians,” by They Might Be Giants.

 This song from last year has been in my head and emitted by my computer speakers aplenty the past few days. I am very pleased that Sumerian and Akkadian names can be found in a popular song along with a reference to cuneiform. And yes, for the most part, Mesopotamia corresponds to modern Iraq (العراق).

Update (14 May): How unlike me to not cite my source! I had no idea this song existed until I read Justin Mansfield, “Another One for My ‘Ancient Themes’ Playlist,” The Mad Latinist’s Journal, 18 October 2007.

Jott’s error: “One drink with her to go necked(?).”

 Jott is funny. I recorded a message they interpreted to be “One drink with her to go necked(?).” I had actually said “Wondering whither to go next.”

Ḥāmēẓ vs. ḥummuṣ.

 Yes! Despite their appearing to be spelled identically and both referring to food, Hebrew חמץ (ḥāmēẓ, in Yiddish xomeʦ) unleavened bread, and Arabic حمص (ḥummuṣ) chickpeas are from two different roots. While it is true that the Hebrew letter צ (ṣāddî) corresponds to the Arabic letter ص (ṣâd), it also sometimes corresponds to the Arabic letter ض (ḍâd) which is the case here. חמץ comes from the ḥ-m-ḍ (חמץ׳، حمض) root meaning sour, and is thus cognate with the Arabic حامض (ḥâmiḍ) sour, حمض (ḥamḍ) “a bitter plant, sorrel” and حميض (ḥamîḍ) “tract of land abounding in bitter herbs.” (The quotes are from F. Steingass, A Learner’s Arabic-English Dictionary [Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1989]. Thanks also to John Wortabet and Harvey Porter, Hippocrene Standard Dictionary: Arabic-English English-Arabic [New York: Hippocrene Books, 2000].)

 Dave Curwin (DLC) suspected as much in his Web log article “chametz,” Balashon - Hebrew Language Detective, 12 April 2006. A comment on that article nearly a year later by Justin a.k.a. The Mad Latinist, 7 April 2007, confirms it. However, in his article “Chickpeas,” The Jewish Daily Forward, 21 October 2005, Philologos appears to be forcing a connection between ḥāmēẓ and ḥummuṣ where it doesn’t actually exist: “The reason for this, as you will know if you ever have left chickpeas or hummus paste in the refrigerator too long, is that both have a tendency to sour quickly.”

The 29th Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Festival.

Festival banner while Yosakoi Dance Project was performing. Photograph by William Eng (eggrollboy).

 I had a great time today at the Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans’ 29^th Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Festival at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza in Turtle Bay. Music, dance, cultural and political organizations, food and sexy men were in great abundance. I bumped into a number of friends including my neighbor and fellow GLYNY alumnus Glenn D. Magpantay who introduced me to a number of volunteers from Gay Asian and Pacific Islander Men of New York (GAPIMNY). Not only present but performing were Makalina and Virgil, my former co-workers at Waikiki Wally’s, together with the Lei Pasifika group. My other favorite performers of the day were DVL Dance Vietnam (who truly know what to do with hats), Yosakoi Dance Project, Caron Eule Dance (performing “The Crane Wife” featuring dancer Hasi as Kinzo) and Bollywood Axion. Kudos to Rainbow Yuen, Bibs Teh and the rest of CAPA for a smashing event, although the black ink on the covers of their programs was unstable, and both my copies have ugly smudges on them (as had also been on my fingers).

Media already online
• Photographs by William Eng (eggrollboy)
• Photographs by Ina Bixade
• Video by Ami (amilee2)

Swap vs. swapna.

Swapna Trading, Lexington Avenue, Murray Hill

 On Friday, 28 March, I met a friend for dinner at Rice in Murray Hill, and nearby was the store Swapna Trading. As swapping and trading are similar concepts, he speculated the English word swap may derive from swapna. It does not. Although I was certain it was only coincidence, I did not yet know enough about the etymologies of the two words to speak educatedly. The English word swap derives from a root meaning to strike, according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, “fr. the practice of striking hands in closing a business deal.” The Sanskrit word स्वप्न (svapna) refers instead to sleeping or dreaming. According to a number of sources, including the Indo-European Documentation Center of the University of Texas and Wiktionary, it derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *swep- making it a cognate of Latin somnus and Greek ύπνος (hypnos), thus meaning it is also a cognate of English somnolence, soporific and hypnotic.

Lobster Canto.

 Like many others, one Chinese restaurant I frequent in Jackson Heights (specifically New Jade Bamboo House 玉竹園, 70-24 35^th Avenue) has pictures of various dishes on an overhead menu. The captions to these pictures are in a font size much too large for the space allotted to them, so numerous rather extreme abbreviations are employed. My favorite is Lobster Cantonese Style abbreviated as Lobster Canto, a song I would love to hear.

Blessed Lightning, or Barack and Baruch vs. Barak and Burak.

Barack, Baruch, Barak and Burak.

 They’re at it again. Pronunciation shift and inconsistent transliteration are confusing people. With Senator Barack Obama high in the public eye at the moment, people are speculating what his first name Barack might mean. With the knowledge that it is of Semitic origin (in this case, Arabic via Swahili), many have compared it to the name of Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and incorrectly concluded that it means lightning. However, the two names, despite their similarity, are from entirely different Semitic roots.

 Ehud Barak’s last name might be better transliterated Bārāq or Bārāḳ to reflect its coming from the Semitic b-r-q (ברק، برق) root, but is transliterated as it is to reflect its pronunciation in modern Europeanized Hebrew which has shifted from [q] to [k]. The precise same shift occurred in the Turkish language as it is spoken in Turkey (as opposed to Turkic Central Asian languages). Thus the Turkish first name Burak, as in that of musician Burak Kut, is also from the b-r-q root, more specifically from the Arabic burâq (براق).

 Barack actually comes from the Semitic b-r-k (برك، ברך) root and means blessed. The cognate Hebrew word would be bārûḵ (ברוך) as in the name of Bernard Baruch. In Hebrew and Aramaic, the pronunciation of certain letters changes to a different allophone when in certain positions (in this case, word final), so that the sound of the letter kāf (כ، ك) becomes spirantized and shifts from [k] to [χ] or [x]. In imitation of German or Polish, this is frequently transliterated ch. This sound change does not occur in Arabic.

Update, 3 October: The following articles have more information. At least two of them were published before mine was, yet I failed to consult them.

• Benjamin Zimmer, “The Barrage Against ‘Barack’,” Language Log, 12 February 2007.
• Benjamin Zimmer, “‘Barack’ Mailbag,” Language Log, 14 February 2007.
• Bill Casselman, “Barack: Origin & Meaning of Obama’s Given Name,” or “Barack Obama: The True Meaning of His First Name,” Bill Casselman’s Canadian Word of the Day & Words of the World, ©2008.

Update, 9 October: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language believes the b-r-k root to be “Probably a metathesized variant of krb” which would mean Barack is cognate with Hebrew כרוב kərûḇ, Arabic كروب karûb and English cherub and cherubic.

Versions of this article are preserved at webcitation.org/5bJ8vqYBb, 5bJAFkj2i and 5bRhxh8gS.

Canada geese.

Photo: Melanie (cat_crocodile).

 I was walking home today from having submitted my move-out papers to Riverbay Corporation when I spotted a Canada goose with a yellow neckband marked as RT46, a participant in the North American Bird Banding Program, nibbling grass on a small remaining green area of the huge parking lot that was formerly the Co-op City Greenway. Once home, I reported the sighting online to the U.S.G.S. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center Bird Banding Laboratory. The geese are some of the few things I shall miss after leaving the Bronx, although I will not miss their droppings always left behind in the most inconvenient places on the internal paths of Co-op City.

“…[A]ll away from the [B]ronx”

As I organize my move in the next few weeks from the Bronx to Queens, I was nostalgic one night for the Bronx gay community of which I was actively a part in the 1990s and which I will soon leave behind. I was scouring MySpace for evidence of individuals I knew from the various different gay organizations with which I had had contact at the time, but found very little.

I did, however, find a strange quote from someone I don’t believe I ever met: Jenny Toledo, a Puerto Rican Lesbian living in the Bronx. Last month, she posted a comment on the MySpace profile of California-based Lesbian podcasters 2 Homos of whom she is presumably a fan: “Showing love all away from the bronx”. I would think this would count as an eggcorn, but perhaps not, since it could be interpreted as having the opposite meaning than what was intended. Either way, it seems to say a lot about the current Bronx pronunciation that would lead to such an error.

Misheard: The huge Korea fair.

 Almost every multilingual person I encounter exhibits the same trait that is the reverse of my own personal experience: They learn to speak a language more or less fluently but have great difficulty imitating the sounds of the new language and instead choose from the repertoire of sounds of their native tongue. This is of course why people speak with accents, and I am fascinated by it. This week, my painter Pablo, who is Ecuadorean, was describing another client of his, and even with repeated utterances, I could not ascertain whether this client was huge or Jewish. (It turned out to be the latter.)

 I overheard Dan, a Romanian-born member of the faculty of the school where I work, talking about the Korea fair taking place downstairs, and images came to my mind of exotic music and costumes (not to mention cute guys), and I momentarily wondered how I would excuse myself from my desk to attend. I was disappointed to figure out it was actually a career fair.

Well and smoothly.

A voice-mail message from Šəmûʼēl (שמואל) referring to my impending moving: “I hope it’s going well and smoothly. I hope you are well…and smoothly.”

APANY’s MySpace account was closed but not quite deleted.

 I worked very hard on developing a MySpace presence for the Asian Pacific Alliance of New York (APANY), a struggling not-for-profit organization of gay Asians and Pacific Islanders here in New York City. I was not only the Web master of their profile page, but a force of nature driving all their MySpace–related promotion. I painstakingly typed all the articles from the hard copy of their newsletter into the MySpace Weblog, I created both an event page and calendar listing (which MySpace keeps curiously separate) as well as a bulletin for each upcoming event, I uploaded every possible APANY-related photograph I could find on the Web to picture albums, and I found videos of APANY events online and linked to them in the corresponding Weblog entries. I invited as many APANY members and pageant “royalty” with MySpace accounts as I could find to be our friends, and browsed for every Asian or Pacific gay male and transsexual in the New York City Metropolitan Area (hundreds) and slowly requested their friendships one at a time, a process that took days to finish. Most who checked their accounts before the requests expired seemed to accept, and we soon had over two hundred forty friends, including local gay Asian artists and performers (e.g., Kevin Nadal, Vidur Kapur, Danny Katz, Justin Woo) and major organizations and venues (e.g., the Web, Lucky Cheng’s, the Asian and Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS [APICHA]). Keeping up with friendship requests from genuine parties and spammers alike, as well as the steady stream of new images, videos, messages and events was arduous, but I managed to keep my head above water.

 Then this week I discovered it was all gone. In its place were the words “Invalid Friend ID. This user has either cancelled their membership, or their account has been deleted.” Why was our account closed when other not-for-profit organizations were allowed to keep theirs? I can only speculate: I created event pages and bulletins with large numbers of external links, mostly to other not-for-profit groups or government Websites, precisely during the brief window of time before they introduced their current safer external linking system (redirecting via msplinks.com), but after they had instituted a policy of insisting accounts had been “phished” if there were too many external links in their bulletins and event pages and then forcing the users to change their passwords. As a result, I wound up changing our password about ten times, not knowing this might possibly raise a red flag to the powers at MySpace and indicate a theoretically compromised account ripe for the closing.

 I posted a message in the MySpace forum asking how one might appeal the decision if that were even possible. As one can see by viewing the thread, I got conflicting advice by two persons who fancied themselves informed on the topic. (One wrote “nope no appeals”; the other “Youi [sic] can appeal….”) Both thought getting the account reinstated to be little short of impossible. I don’t know how likely getting our account reinstated would be, but I strongly suspect that MySpace could easily do so if I could only catch their attention and gain their sympathies. Here’s why:

• Our social network is intact. Our friends’ respective numbers of friends did not decrease by one when our account was closed. (I personally still have 169 friends, although the number should have decreased when APANY’s account was closed.) Our Weblog also looks different depending on whether or not I am logged in, so I am being treated as if I were still APANY’s friend.
• Our Weblog is intact. As I mentioned above, our friends can still view our Weblog. Those who were not our friends see the Weblog set to “private” (not “deleted”).
• Our pictures are intact. For the time being, our main profile page can still be viewed at Google’s cached copy of the page, and the embedded slideshow still functions. As the slideshow accesses the original images, they all must still be in place.

 I wrote a letter to MySpace. If they respond, I’ll let you know. I also wouldn’t mind if others wrote to MySpace at this location and summarized this article and pleaded our case with them. If enough MySpace members write, perhaps they’ll flip the necessary switch and reopen our crucial promotional tool.

Gay and Lesbian Arab Society film screening, Friday, 29 April 2005

Via della Zoccolette, 95 Avenue A, Manhattan

Gay and Lesbian Arab Society
Seventh Dog (2005)
حدوتة مصرية [Hadduta Misrija/An Egyptian Story] (1982)

Bear Café: “The Tattooed Bear: A Celebration of Inked Bears,” Sunday, 17 April 2005

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, 208 West 13 Street, Manhattan.

Categories: bear/chubby, gay

Lucky Cheng’s/Waikiki Wally’s, Saturday, 16–Sunday, 17 April 2005

Justin Loffredo

David [דוד]’s birthday brunch at Miracle Grill; “Ashes and Snow” exhibit at the Nomadic Museum

David [דוד]’s birthday brunch at Miracle Grill
“Ashes and Snow” exhibit at the Nomadic Museum, Hudson River Park

Lucky Cheng’s/Waikiki Wally’s, Manhattan, Sunday, 6–Monday, 7 March 2005

Introdans from the Netherlands

Third week in Morocco, 22 February–1 March 2005

Tuesday, 22 February 2005 (Polly’s and George Washington’s birthdays), Marrakech: (PM) Polly’s birthday at her riade: Moha (#117) staff (runner Si Mohamed [Bidaoui], soccer player Si Muhammad [Hamada], Ibrahim, older man [Ârbi?] with only two teeth, Yacine), ÂbdoulFatah from Belhaj, boxer Ahmed and messy Hassane (Angel Sheridan) from Âli, Si Mohamed from M’barek (#114), ÂbdelGhani Waldy out of drag, Miss U etc. Delicious food, good conversation, too much alcohol. ÂbdoulFatah got rude, Hassane got messy, Ibrahim threw up. Most everyone left at once except for ÂbdoulFatah, ÂbdelGhani, Miss U and I (although Hassane briefly showed up again with quiet co-worker Ahmad). ÂbdoulFatah left insulted. ÂbdelGhani got very kaikai. Walking around Djemaâ al-Fna seeing drag queens. Dinner at the so-called Complexe Mabrouka with ÂbdelGhani. Sat at Belhaj with ÂbdoulFatah and parade of others (Hafid from Saïd, Hafida etc.).

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Wednesday, 23 February 2005, Marrakech: (AM) I sat at Moha (#117) for quite awhile primarily because Si Mohamed the runner said Polly had told him I should wait there for her return, which wasn’t exactly accurate. I was seated right next to Habib, a young man smoking hachiche who was making silly faces into the camera while Si Mohamed (Bidaoui) was its operator. (PM) I found Polly at Cyber Mohamed Yassine. Beldi. Dinner at Charaybi (#25), joined by Saïd the newlywed. ÂbdousSamade at next restaurant flirted with Polly and showed us his sausage. The usual wanderings. Met Si Muhammad selling compact discs on Rue Bab Agnaou. Met Sameer Chinoy and gang at Moha (#117). (Left to right, I think they were Moroccan Ibrahim, Saudi-born Canadian Sameer, Moroccan-born Canadian ___, and Rafiq who I thought was Moroccan but Si Mohamed the athlete would later tell me is Pakistani, later joined by Ômar the light-eyed brother of one of the Moroccans, and cousin Reda. “Uncle Shel” and Habib, who now works at Moha, played music with wiglets, garter belt and Barbie necklace.

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Thursday, 24 February 2005, Marrakech: (AM) Snacks at Café Toubkal with runner Si Mohamed (Bidaoui), Hassane and ÂbdoulLatif from Moha, Ibrahim and Si Mohamed from M’barek, and very briefly Bagheera. I ate a cardboard toilet tissue roll. No one we knew in Café Kebir.

(PM) Raining on and off all day. My camera spent its time in Guéliz in my bag. Met Polly at Royal Air Maroc office, Avenue Mohammed V, Guéliz. Shoe shopping at Atika where the security officer with the nice eyebrows also had nice shoes of course. Cybercafé on Avenue Mohammed Zerktouni. Polly and I walked from Guéliz to Daoudiate together. Stopped in Hôtel Redouane for directions when we didn’t need them. Caât Moghtate, met Cheikh ÂbdoulHac. All the boxers present changed their clothing, activated the two punching bags that were stationery when Polly and I used them and then went out to play basketball in the rain. Restraining myself from following the soccer or basketball players into the locker-room or showers with my video-camera was difficult.

Complexe Mabrouka. Saw slim, funny-looking Muhammad and gigolo Cherif eating together on Rue Bab Agnaou. Cyber Mohamed Yassine. Icky French girls at Moha (#117). Runner Si Mohamed (Bidaoui), soccer player Si Muhammad (Hamada) and ÂbdoulHadi (George Hamilton) sang my name repeatedly and loudly. When I decided to walk around, I saw it was raining again and ducked for cover in Café Toubkal.

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Friday, 25 February 2005, Marrakech: (AM) A fuse blew, and the lights went out in Café Toubkal, and the loud, smoking party next to me began to sing. I returned to the Djemaâ al-Fna foodstalls after 01:00 and stood sheltered from the rain at M’barek (#114) watching the always fascinating deconstruction of the réstaurants, this time made even more interesting by the added elements of the overhead tarps and the rainwater trapped in bulging pockets in them. The dark skinny worker there led a rousing song joined in by his coworkers loudly singing along and banging on various available surfaces. Looking a bit like javelin-throwers, the workers at Moha pulled horizontal metal tarp supports from their positions over the réstaurant’s ceiling. M’barek seemed to be the last foodstall remaining with any semblance of structural integrity when I finally went home and left them to their hot meal together huddled in a circle.

(PM) Net Dev. Caât Moghtate: Cheikh ÂbdoulHac again, met Reda and Âmine.

Ate at Chegrouni again in the rain. Walked around Djemaâ al-Fna a bit and saw boxer Ahmed (and messy Hassane [Angel Sheridan]) at Âli. Ahmed asked why I hadn’t been at Caât Moghtate when in fact I had. When I told him so, and showed him some video footage of my visit, he apologized for not having been there. What is it with Moroccans and appointments? He also seemed quite miffed with any co-worker who intimated Ahmed should perhaps do some work instead of socialize. Polly and I went to Cyber Internet Iris and saw Âbdellah and Si Muhammad. Polly bought some pastries to share with Moha (#117) staff because she felt like a Coca Light. Again ÂbdoulHadi started singing some song and put my name and some pertinent facts about me into it.

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Saturday, 26 February 2005, Marrakech: (AM) Polly and I went over to Âïcha (#1) where ÂbdoulÂsise (Famma) works and spent time with him, co-worker Hassane, and friend Monaïm. Monaïm later joined us at ÂbdoulMadjide/Rachida where there were two workers named Rachide and two named ÂbdourRahim. Our old friend Rachide from 2002 continued pestering us for whiskey when we’re certain he’s just a teenager. Polly lost the dieters’ tea and we went to Café Toubkal for drinks. We were joined by numerous foodstall workers, including runner Si Mohamed (Bidaoui), Yacine and Hassane from Moha (#117), boxer Ahmed from Âli, and ÂbdourRahim from Charaybi (#25). Later we went to Café Kebir and sat primarily with Monaïm reading the newspaper and watching sexy Mark Dacascos in a very loud movie dubbed into French. I think I left after 04:00. Monaïm and ÂbdoulÂsise (Famma) from Âïcha (#1) seemed to have every intention of visiting my apartment for Coca and Fanta, and they got almost all the way to the taxi queue with me and decided to postpone the affair one day, and I went home alone. (PM) I walked downtown and met Polly at Cyber Mohamed Yassine, although we also separated there. I took a walk up Rue Souk Semmarine and made sure to flirt with ÂbdoulLati, the turban man. I also noticed an unusually large police presence that made the veiled ladies selling upturned skullcaps scatter when the blasé officers came near. I went to Moha (#117) to meet Polly at 18:30, and we arrived there within a few minutes of each other. We sat there appreciating the workers there, including soccer player Si Muhammad (Hamada) and teen heartthrob Habib, as well as speculating what Yacine’s mother is like. Polly distributed some bottles of booze she’d just bought cheaply in Guéliz. Polly mused the large police presence might be because some VIP, perhaps even the king, is visiting, but in truth, we knew of no such visit. We then walked on and around Rue Souk Semmarine, seeing Âli at the Cheese Man’s shop with his interesting buttons and lack of concern whether we purchase anything or not. We visited Moulaï’s shop when he wasn’t there, and his staff said he was away praying. When we passed again, he hugged me with glee and drunkenness. We then took a stroll down Rue des Banques through Canaria, down Rue Riad ez Zitoun el Jdid past the Bahia Palace, then up Avenue Houmman el Fetouaki back to Rue Bab Agnaou into Cyber Mohamed Yassine again. We continued our walking around and greeting people. Rachide at ÂbdoulMadjide/Rachida pretended not to want to talk to us because Polly had refused his many requests for booze. Polly decided to go home fairly early, or at least before midnight. I continued my wanderings including going to Âïcha (#1) to chat with ÂbdoulÂsise and Hassane and their co-workers.

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Sunday, 27 February 2005, Marrakech: (AM) Eventually, I went to Toubkal to sit and have drinks as various food-stall workers drifted in and out and chatted with me. ÂbdoulFatah from Belhaj came for an extended visit. Monaïm came in briefly but not for our appointment, and he said he would return but did not. At around 02:00, I paid for the drink I’d been nursing and found ÂbdoulÂsise just finishing up work. He was with ÂbdourRahim, the food-stall worker who imitates the parrot, and said he’d be replacing Monaïm who was supposedly tired. … (PM) Miss U returned to Marrakech from Fès. Walked downtown. Rue Bab Agnaou extremely crowded. Dinner at Âïcha (#1) with ÂbdousSalam as our forgetful waiter, ÂbdoulÂsise (Famma), Hassane etc. Bought bubble wrap at Place Bab Ftouh. Went down Rue Mouacine to find desired store closed. Snacks and drinks at Bougainvillea Café. Rain began. Refuge in Café Toubkal.

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Monday, 28 February 2005, Marrakech: (AM) Sat in Café Toubkal a long time with Miss U. Visited by numerous: Si Mohamed (Bidaoui) from Moha dressed head-to-toe in blue, hat included, but drinking neon green beverage. Hassane from Moha escaped the rain with a plastic bag on his head. We ate meals, French fries included. We admired Toubkal worker Si Muhammad’s ample posterior. (PM) Miss U and I walked to and around Guéliz, stopping in Star Food, Rue Yougoslavie, for their chicken cheeseburgers. We went to a bookstore and found a coffee table book in French entitled Djemaâ al-Fna, possibly spelled differently, with pictures of Yacine and Ibrahim from Moha. She and I parted company so I could visit Ahmed from Âli at Caât Moghtate in Daoudiate. It started raining on my way there, but finally seeing Ahmed there was a great relief. I got some good footage of Ahmed and others in action, and I really, really wanted to follow the young men into the changing room at the end of it all. Couldn’t reach Polly by telephone. Djemaâ al-Fna. Met Si Mohamed from Moha at Café Toubkal. Drinks and snacks at N’zaha. Met Ômar who makes hot drinks. Sat with Hafida and ÂbdoulFatah (and briefly ÂbdourRahim [Freddie Mercury]) on tiny seats. ÂbdousSamade.