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Muslim culture

The Blind Plumber of Tetouan

Mustafa al-Farkhani stops outside the closed gate of the Tijaniyya shrine in Tetouan, Morocco, and holds a finger to his lips. His eyes go dim as he places his ear against the whitewashed limestone wall of the house that abuts the shrine.

Shirtless Days: On Living and Writing in the Jungles of Papua

In Papua, Indonesia, fifty miles south of the largest gold mine in the world, a little Muslim girl is staring at me. She’s been at it for two minutes and twenty seconds now; I know this because I’ve been timing her. There she is, not blinking, thoroughly rapt with the unspectacular; she is amazed that I exist.