Travel

by John Massaro GODDAMN, HAS THIS COUNTRY changed in my lifetime, and for the worse in almost every way. The 1960s, and especially the last three years of that decade, was a tumultuous era, what with nationwide race riots, violent street protests against the Vietnam War, mayhem on college campuses,…

by John Massaro “THEY HATE Americans.” Oh, bull____. I’ve heard that silly line so many times I’ve lost count. It’s just one more sign of how ignorant Americans are, how watching television has destroyed their minds. Having traveled to 97 countries, and interacted with countless people who knew I was…

by John Massaro (2016) “Boy, you really do like danger, don’t you?” “Better not bring any bibles with you.” “What are you going there for? They hate us.” I TURNED A DEAF EAR to all the nonsense. People whose horizon is no wider than a television screen, who wouldn’t know a visa from a lottery ticket, are…

by John Massaro (Note: I wrote this in 2015, intending for it to be presented in some form on a radio program. That didn’t happen, but it did appear on the Web site Whitebiocentrism.com. It’s more an attempt to educate than entertain, to provide a snapshot of everyday life in post-colonial Africa, based…

Casablanca by John Massaro THERE’S A RAILWAY network connecting the major cities of Morocco but I didn’t use it until the very end. What I had missed! My second-class carriage on the 9AM express to Casablanca was new, spotless, quiet ,and punctual. It would’ve been a great finale to my journey were it…

Djmaa-el-Fna by John Massaro THESE ARE JUST MUSINGS on my part, but the more I thought about it, the more I surmised that Arabs are a lot like Jews, though on a much smaller and harmless scale. They seem to have evolved in parallel ways over the ages in this region of the world. It’s a Semitic thing. To illustrate…

by John Massaro I MET HIM ON the way to the CTM bus station in Fez, where I was going to enquire about departures to Azrou, a small Berber town to the south. (When I had arrived in Fez, the driver demanded a “tip” before removing my backpack from the luggage compartment.) I was having trouble communicating…

This image is from an article at Morocco World News entitled “Global Honesty Index: Moroccans at the Bottom of the List.” by John Massaro MOROCCO IS WITHIN SLINGSHOT range of Spain, just across the Straits of Gibraltar, an hour by ferry from the sleepy port town of Algeciras. If its proximity…

by John Massaro BEFORE I BEGIN TELLING YOU about Morocco, a country in its own league, let me wrap up my overall impressions of the Arab world, which encompasses a large chunk of the Middle East and stretches across the entire Mediterranean littoral of north Africa and deep into the Sahara Desert. If you’ve…

Ancient building carved directly into the cliff face in Petra, Jordan by John Massaro THE ANCIENT CITY of Petra is Jordan’s crowning glory. In the fourth century B.C. an obscure tribe, the Nabataeans, and after them the Romans, carved temples, palaces and tombs from the indigenous pink sandstone;…