What is quality?  All my life I have asked this question.  When I first began to sell Moroccan jewelry, I did not know much about what makes for quality, say, in a Tuareg piece.  What I thought was great quality in jewelry three years ago?  I would not touch it now.  Now I am a connoisseur.  True, I am learning more about what I sell all the time, but - I can spot quality now.

  Like most things, a sense of quality is not innate as it is learned.  True, many people instinctively have a design sense: We call this sort of person an artist.  Their ability to bring colors, textures and work between light and darkness, is a great gift.

  Not long ago I taught website creation here in Morocco.  I was given a computer room and the headmaster, said, "Just show them what to do."

  I wore a joloba into class, and said, "Look, you all can wear traditional clothes and create websites using the textures of your traditions.  You need not just...imitate how Americans do website creation."

  I created story boards for the students to draw their "beliefs" about beauty by hand, and create a logo as the focal point of their vision.  The students began to work with one another, and discuss just what quality is.  One student came to me.  "Sir," Rachid said, his face animated for the first time since he began the course, "you are different than what teachers are in these rich schools of Morocco.  They take us first to software and by the time we are tired of code, they teach us more boring things.  You show us that code and the computer are tools for us to work with, to be artists!  I like that!"

  "If not artists," I said, smiling - "designers."

  "And if we sell things?  We do it with pride, pride in the quality of those things we want to sell!"

   "Nahim."  Yes.

  Once I told the class about my favorite American president, John F. Kennedy. "He did not always tell people what they wanted to hear, telling them they should sacrifice for their beliefs and for their country.  He showed that people really want something more than just...products on sale.  They long for quality.  Quality of style, quality in design, and quality - in character."

  Meanwhile, the girls in the class began to talk.  Why is the teacher taking so long putting us on the computers? 

  The next day the headmaster fired me.  She said the girls were livid and their parents had all approached her, saying, "Our children are learning nothing.  What has art to do with learning how to sell things on a website?  We are teaching our students as Americans do at the American Language Center, how to be at the top, top notch."

  "Your students are already at the top," I said.  "Now they want to know how the artisan at the bottom feels, who creates beautiful things.  Like the Tuarag tribe.  They have no computers, but they have eyes and a sense of who they are in life.  They know life as it is and they express it in molten silver, in stone.  And students need to sense a little more about the quality of a website, before they hop on the software. 

  "But you," I continued, "you just want to turn out a bunch of Moroccan kids imitating Americans.  Your formula is flawed."

  In Morocco, where art proliferates among the poor tribesmen, what I call the "Walmart reality" - has set in.  The American Trade Agreement definitely is great, mainly, as one can only do better for trade, which also means a lot of interchange between culture, often, raising the standard of living for all those involved.  But with the best comes the worst, too.  Now marketing through demographic research, using the laws of supply and demand as a sole guide for what is or is not marketable, threatens to dislocate the traditions of the souk.  In the souk, families work together to produce and sell their wares, not so much with shelves full of things people want for a 'bargain prices,' rather, to show that what they sell is authentic.

  I once owned a company called World Wide Webs.  I sold Internet sites that were custom designed to feel like product my customers sold; but only after I sat down with customers and after at least three meetings, learned about their enthusiasm for what they do, and how doing what they do impacted their own lives.  Work went well for about six months; but by then, the big giants like IBM and Microsoft, began to sell websites on the cheap.  A template site for $49.95!   Their sites were like most template sites on eBay.  They were virtually look alike, cookie cutter designs. 

  Such people who sell this way?  Who knows?  They may do well.  But one realizes they care nothing for quality, just...moving product now.  But what good is this in an ultimate sense?  Besides, those who directed the making of their own sites - allowing me to interpret their visions - they remained long after the many cookie cutter template sites were forgotten.

  Quality is more than a carefully crafted, marketing campaign.  No, it is first of all about what a thing is, i.e. its essence.  And letting it sell itself. 

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  Yesterday I saw John F. Kennedy's shirt that he wore on his inauguration, on eBay.  I clicked on it.  I want that shirt, a part of my country's history that makes me proud to be an American.  I still recall him saying, "Art is not propaganda, it is about truth (paraphrased)."  After all, I am still sold on Kennedy! 

  Instead of visionary leaders like Kennedy, we have people who stand behind the president, in offices, crafting images.  They are small, petty men who crunch numbers and manipulate the market (find dirt on the competition), then, raising a front man, they sell the country out to the highest bidder. 

  For me?  I believe in quality, whether it is in a Tuareg necklace or in the way people decide who should lead them.  The character of the material a necklace or a man or woman is made of, their metal, matters far more than how they are presented to us.

  Now I click again on eBay's homepage.  I see the rather classic styled shirt a truly great man once wore for his inauguration.  I want Kennedy's inaugural shirt!  Me!  I could bid on a piece of my history! The reserve for his shirt is for over two million dollars. 

  Hm.  I think I have enough in my pocket to find a few beautiful, Tuareg pieces at the souk today...but Kennedy's shirt?  I may have to wait a little while on that one...

In Moroccan Treasures, we go beyond sales for the sake of sales at eBay.  We work from here in Morocco, telling stories.  We tell the stories of our life here, and how it is for me as an American citizen to live in an Islamic Kingdom. 

During these last weeks there were a number of terrorist attacks in Casablanca, one of them by the American Consulate, where my wife Hanane & I were about to take our son to finalize his naturalization papers.  Yet now, once again, a lot of Western media outlets are looking to compete for this news story about the terrorist attacks here, making it appear that we live in war zone.   The majority of Muslims in this country are peace loving people, and are known since hundreds of years, for their hospitality.  In this ancient trading crossroads, people are not only tolerated from other places, but typically welcomed into their homes, whatever they believe. 

We are safe here in Morocco as anywhere these days.  What I learn daily in this Kingdom is that (even though I am not a Muslim), Islam is a tolerate religion.  On my description pages, you can read my jounals about such people as Laarbi, a merchant whom I buy silver from.  At first he wanted to make sure I was "praying as a Muslim," and tried to get me to convert.  Then, I let him know I did not care to convert to Islam, just...be friends.  And so, yesterday I wrote a journal called Looking Up, including our conversation - that you can find now with the description of a Tourag torquoise necklace I found in his hanut at: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130103974084&ih=003&category=34064

All my life I have crossed boundaries.  When people told me to look out for black people or Asians or any other group, what did I do?  I went and lived among them.  When I moved to Morocco, the war in Iraq was just getting underway, and the tag 'Islamic' had come to seem synonymous with terrorist.  I didn't believe it.  How could a relatively few criminals, twisting the Koran, manage to give people in this part of the world such a bad press?  But it happened.  Then, once I began living here, I began to learn Arabic as well as French (Morocco used to be a French colony).  In little time I moved among the people throughout this incredible land, sensing in the traditions a strong & giving people, whose art is not only what artisans make with their hands, but in the very way that Moroccan people live.

For Moroccans, the way one lives, how one dresses or paints one's own door, is art.  Also, the beauty of their handcraft, especially their jewelry, touched by the influences of Andalusia and the orient, is unbelievable.  I am glad that I made a home in this Islamic Kingdom.  Glad too, that I just now had a son with a lovely Moroccan woman, a little blue eyed Moroccan!  Little Justin Sallah will also have two countries to call his own as a result of my decision to cross boundaries.

The beauty of crossing boundaries is this: we taste life in a way those who suffer from intolerance really miss out on.   

In the meantime, Hanane & I search for new treasures in the mountains of South Morocco, near Ait Baha and in the crowded souks across this exotic land.  We wrap our treasures in the lovely purples and orange colored cloths found in Marrakech. What my wife & I sell mirror our views about life.  The two of us have very different views, religiously, yet we crossed the boundaries of our experience, mine in America and Hanane's, here in Morocco, to learn that these different cultures give us more to find in one another, not less.  Is this not what searching for treasures is all about?