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The Couscous Chronicles: Stories of Food, Love, and Donkeys from a Life between Cultures
Azzedine Downes moves between cultures, places, and time in this wryly comedic, at times mysterious, and always curious memoir of a lifelong nomad.
The best strategy was to drink tea, smile, and enjoy the frustration of not knowing where the story leads. If time is endless, why rush to the point of a story?
Now an international leader in the fight for animal welfare, Azzedine began his career as a volunteer teacher and later was appointed to leadership in the U.S. Peace Corps. An American Muslim with Irish roots, he's a natural cultural shape-shifter, immersing himself in the cultures of Morocco, Eastern Europe, Northwest Africa, Israel and his native United States. Along the way he befriends the glue-sniffing shoemakers of Fez, becomes the de facto manager of a traveling break-dance troupe, dodges bullets on his daily commute, and finds himself cursed over a feast of couscous gone very, very wrong.
But his most powerful story recounts Azzedine's marriage to an elusive girl from Tangiers. Arranged after only two meetings their love story ultimately spans continents and withstands language barriers, international intrigue, and one very antagonistic State Department bureaucrat.
A labyrinth of tales as complex as its namesake dish, The Couscous Chronicles is for anyone who believes that the only real failure is to remain unchanged and in place, that true love is always a blind leap, and that a good story over a cup of tea holds the power to change one's destiny.
1142993278
The Couscous Chronicles: Stories of Food, Love, and Donkeys from a Life between Cultures
Azzedine Downes moves between cultures, places, and time in this wryly comedic, at times mysterious, and always curious memoir of a lifelong nomad.
The best strategy was to drink tea, smile, and enjoy the frustration of not knowing where the story leads. If time is endless, why rush to the point of a story?
Now an international leader in the fight for animal welfare, Azzedine began his career as a volunteer teacher and later was appointed to leadership in the U.S. Peace Corps. An American Muslim with Irish roots, he's a natural cultural shape-shifter, immersing himself in the cultures of Morocco, Eastern Europe, Northwest Africa, Israel and his native United States. Along the way he befriends the glue-sniffing shoemakers of Fez, becomes the de facto manager of a traveling break-dance troupe, dodges bullets on his daily commute, and finds himself cursed over a feast of couscous gone very, very wrong.
But his most powerful story recounts Azzedine's marriage to an elusive girl from Tangiers. Arranged after only two meetings their love story ultimately spans continents and withstands language barriers, international intrigue, and one very antagonistic State Department bureaucrat.
A labyrinth of tales as complex as its namesake dish, The Couscous Chronicles is for anyone who believes that the only real failure is to remain unchanged and in place, that true love is always a blind leap, and that a good story over a cup of tea holds the power to change one's destiny.
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The Couscous Chronicles: Stories of Food, Love, and Donkeys from a Life between Cultures
Azzedine Downes moves between cultures, places, and time in this wryly comedic, at times mysterious, and always curious memoir of a lifelong nomad.
The best strategy was to drink tea, smile, and enjoy the frustration of not knowing where the story leads. If time is endless, why rush to the point of a story?
Now an international leader in the fight for animal welfare, Azzedine began his career as a volunteer teacher and later was appointed to leadership in the U.S. Peace Corps. An American Muslim with Irish roots, he's a natural cultural shape-shifter, immersing himself in the cultures of Morocco, Eastern Europe, Northwest Africa, Israel and his native United States. Along the way he befriends the glue-sniffing shoemakers of Fez, becomes the de facto manager of a traveling break-dance troupe, dodges bullets on his daily commute, and finds himself cursed over a feast of couscous gone very, very wrong.
But his most powerful story recounts Azzedine's marriage to an elusive girl from Tangiers. Arranged after only two meetings their love story ultimately spans continents and withstands language barriers, international intrigue, and one very antagonistic State Department bureaucrat.
A labyrinth of tales as complex as its namesake dish, The Couscous Chronicles is for anyone who believes that the only real failure is to remain unchanged and in place, that true love is always a blind leap, and that a good story over a cup of tea holds the power to change one's destiny.
Azzedine Downes is the President and CEO of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). Before joining IFAW, he served as the Chief of Party for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Jerusalem and Morocco, as well as the Acting Regional Director for the U.S. Peace Corps in Eurasia and the Middle East. Fast Company has named Downes one of The 100 Most Creative People in Business. He is a member of the Global Tiger Forum Advisory Council, the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation’s Council of Hope, and currently sits on the U.S. Trade and Environmental Policy Advisory Committee. He currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island. The Couscous Chronicles is his first book.
Read an Excerpt
The Break-Dancing Consultant and the Camel Bar
We landed back in Nouakchott, and Mohammed dropped me back at the embassy guesthouse, saying he would pick me up the next morning for meetings with the minister of education once again. I had been the only guest staying at the cavernous house, so I was surprised to hear noise inside.
The laughter of boisterous boys greeted me as I opened the door, but the group fell silent as I introduced myself. They had been enjoying the dormlike atmosphere of the empty house, and I was viewed as the older guy who was going to spoil all their fun.
When I asked them what they were doing in Mauritania, one of the boys broke into a dance move. There was a popular American film at the time called Breakin’. Break dancing was entering the mainstream, and the US ambassador to Mauritania was intent on importing American culture. He had invited the dance troupe to perform at a twenty-thousand-person soccer stadium in the capital city.
The boys would be staying with me in the guesthouse. Their first question focused on food. “Are you fixing something for dinner?”
“Am I fixing dinner? No, why would I be fixing dinner?”
“Are you the guy who is supposed to take care of us?”
“Umm, no. I’m the guy who is working on a project with the government.”
“Who is going to feed us?”
“Well, who is supposed to staff you?”
“Staff us?”
“Who is supposed to take care of you?”
“They picked us up at the airport, and then they just left us here.”
“Are they coming back?”
“We don’t know anything. We just came from the Bronx today.”
Suddenly I was living with a group of teenage break-dancers from New York City who were told that someone would look after them, and I was the only person standing in front of them. I broke the ice with the only break dance move I could muster, and soon became “Papa Break-Dancer.”
I later learned that the boys were victims of tension and infighting at the embassy, between the ambassador and cultural attaché. The attaché wanted a string quartet to perform classical music for Mauritanian VIPs, and the ambassador wanted to fill the stadium with Mauritanian youth who would love truly American culture. But right now, these boys were hungry and looking to me to get them fed.
Mohammed picked us up in a van, and we headed to the beach. Like the road to the airport, the road to the beach was littered with weathered carcasses, and the smell was pungent. The boys thought that was cool and reminded them of the Bronx. Teenagers have vivid imaginations.
After a good meal at a beachside restaurant, Mohammed announced that we would finish out the night at a camel bar. So once we convinced the boys that they needn’t go back to the house to change clothes, we headed into the desert.
The boys wanted to “make the scene” and look cool at the Camel Bar—they thought it was a club and were anxious to show off some moves that were featured in the break-dancing movie. In reality, “the camel bar” was a herd of camels sitting in the sand. The tent was listing to the right, the bonfire was fading, and the camels chewed their cud. We could feel their breath as we inched closer to the fire to ward off the chill of the Saharan night.
“Milk all around!” called Mohammed to the waiter.
As she was milked, the camel did not protest too much. The enormous, shallow, wooden bowl, filled to the brim with warm milk, was passed from one patron to the next. The fire cast a dancing shadow across the faces of the men sipping the still-hot milk. We stared in horror as the bowl came closer and closer to our group, and the boys began to fidget. The darkness prevented a true counting of the number of flies sitting on the lip of the bowl.
My eyes told the boys: Do as I do, or you will regret it in an hour or two.
When the bowl reached me, I lifted it slowly to my face. Because the vessel was now half-empty, I could tilt it to completely shield my face and, more important, my lips from view. The lip of the bowl never touched my lips, but all present applauded my bravery for taking such a great gulp of fresh camel milk.
FOREWORD by Jane Goodall FEZ, MOROCCO: THE MEDINA FEZ, MOROCCO: LA VILLE NOUVELLE CASABLANCA, MARRAKECH, ZAGORA, AND SALE CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSSETS FEZ, KENITRA, AND SUPPOSEDLY IMILCHIL MAURITANIA RETURN TO MOROCCO AND ITS MOUNTAINS BOSTON, PHILADELPHIA, AND WASHINGTON, DC YEMEN: THE ANCIENT CITY OF SANA’A MOROCCO FOR THE “REAL” WEDDING BACK TO YEMEN AND AN UNEXPECTED SAUDI ARABIAN HONEYMOON ROMANIA BULGARIA FOGGY BOTTOM AND THE STANS JERUSALEM GOING HOME TO MOROCCO TRAVELING THROUGH TIME
