I did not know of Chefchaouen’s existence until a week ago, when I googled ’10 best things to do in Morocco’. For all my longing to visit Morocco, in truth I have known nothing at all about its reality, drawn instead to imaginings conjured by words: desert wind, Aladdin, magic carpets, Sheherezade, Bedouin, dates, mint, [read more ...]
It was always going to end this way, missing my bus, being befriended by Muhammed Couscous and spending the night in the one city everyone who has ever said anything at all about Morocco has said: ‘land in Tangiers and get out of the city as quickly as you can’. The young Australian woman I [read more ...]
If I am going to live in fear, let me fear what is real. I do not generally speak of fear, choosing instead to tell a different story, one that I hope inspires women to shed the darkening cloak of stay-home paranoia – and choose life. Jill Meagher’s murder last week has shaken the hearts [read more ...]
I am a child; I am standing in the corner of the courtyard; it is dark; I am leaning into the shadow cast by one of two dozen stone columns; my eyes cast upwards; I am watching. I am watching the window above and across the courtyard . . . . . . for whom [read more ...]
What is tourism but a gathering of selves from the dust of time? The pyramids. Uluru. Machu Picchu. Stonehenge. Places of attraction on Planet Earth that draw thousands daily and millions annually . . . for what, if not to awaken memories cast in stone, tune into vibrations of times past, steady modern lives with [read more ...]
There is a letter I long to write, to a woman who is not my friend, not really, although both of us, when speaking to others, each of the other, would claim friendship. This woman is one for whom I have held deep admiration, for the courage with which she has met life’s challenges and [read more ...]
Barcelona is a woman’s town. I noticed this on my first visit there, 15 years ago. The women glowed. They shone. They were worshipped by the men on their arms. Young, old, of middle age. Beautiful, plain. Just the same, all unequivocally adored, all sharing the same informal, confident grace. All unambiguously empowered, as women. [read more ...]
I am on the street, filling time. It is morning, a slow Spanish morning, where the shops are late opening and the bars are not quite filled with workers in for their coffee and pan con queso y jamon, bread with cheese and ham or a variety of other cured meats. I am looking for [read more ...]
It has rained not a drop in Granada since May. Until today, the day I pulled in on the train. Which, I must say, I actually don’t mind at all. Probably because it didn’t start to pour until I’d blindly dawdled my way through unfamiliar streets misted with morning looking for my hostel, which I [read more ...]
There is a point in every day where the tide of human affairs recedes, when streets empty, stores close and people retreat, as light itself withdraws from the world. It is the point where once-mothers sit alone in big houses, that ought to be filled with the voices of children demanding dinner and needing baths, [read more ...]