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Next to me, Naomi radiated unease. Abdelfettah looked, understandably, bored. Matthew cleared his throat impatiently, waiting for me to elicit a few recipes, some anecdotes. I liked my hosts, but Naomi, while quick, articulate, and informative off-camera, froze when the cameras turned on. I couldn’t do it to her. In my state of neurotic, hash-heightened sensitivity, I just couldn’t put her on the spot, knowing the cameras would then move in for a closer shot. I certainly had nothing to add to the world’s knowledge of Morocco. I was just finding a few – a precious few – things out myself. Who am I, Dan Rather? I’m supposed to face the camera and spit out some facile summary of twelve hundred years of blood, sweat, colonial occupation, faith, custom, and ethnology – as it relates to a chicken stew – all in a nice 120-second sound bite? I’m not even Burt Wolf, I was thinking. And I hate Burt Wolf. Watching him in his flawlessly white chef’s coat, with his little notepad, pretending to take notes for the camera while he leans inquisitively over some toiling chef in a French country kitchen, the voice-over giving the viewing audience the short course on the French Belle Epoque. I used to watch those shows and want to leap through the TV screen, grab a fistful of Burt’s chef’s jacket, and scream, ‘Take that off, you useless fuck! Give the man some room, for God’s sake! Let him work!’ But I was Burt now. Worse than Burt – because I had no idea, no clue, what I was doing. In my madcap lurch around the world, I’d done no preparation. I knew nothing. About anything.

I could have pointed out, I guess, that the raisins and preserved lemon were distinctive of Fez-style tagine. I’m sure I could have described for the viewing audience the difference between couscous made from scratch and couscous made out of the box, talked about the way it’s cooked – in the couscousíre – steaming over the simmering sauce from the tagine. I’m sure, if I’d stitched a smile on my face and gathered my thoughts, and had the heart to do it, I could have gotten Abdelfettah to discuss his hopes for his city, his planned music center, his art, knowing full well that that would have ended up on the cutting room floor. As Matthew squirmed and fumed, the clock ticked, each second dropping like molten lead into the vast pool of unusable footage. What was I going to say? Abdelfettah had found something here, but however beautiful, however righteous and unpolluted by the outside world it was, I knew I could never live this way. Maybe, I mused, if the cameras were gone, maybe then I could give myself over more wholeheartedly to the experience. Maybe I’d be more able to relax. But I knew better. Even with the added conveniences of a high-speed modem, hot tub, bowling alley, regular deliveries of deli food and pizza from New York, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts, I couldn’t live like this. Ever. My hosts seemed so content and at home within the context of their city, their family, and their beliefs that I felt it completely inappropriate to nudge them into the automatic dumb-down that comes with addressing a lens.

My last meal at Abdelfettah’s was pastilla, the delicate, flaky pigeon pie, wrapped and baked in waqa with toasted almonds and eggs, then garnished with cinnamon. Like everything I’d eaten, it was wonderful. But I felt pulled in twelve directions at once. I was not happy with being the globe-trotting television shill. I had been cold and away from home for far too long. I yearned for the comfort and security of my own walled city, my kitchen back at Les Halles, a belief system I understood and could endorse without reservation. Sitting next to these two nice people and their kids, I felt like some news anchor with a pompadour, one of the many glassy-eyed media people whom I’d flogged my book with around the United States. ‘So, Anthony, tell us why we should never order fish on Monday.’ My spirits were dropping into a deep dark hole.

I was being ‘difficult.’ I was being ‘uncooperative.’ I really was. An executive producer was flown out from New York to soothe my