Going against the grains
ABDURAHMAN bin Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Muhammad bin Al-Hasan bin Jabir bin Muhammad bin Ibrahim bin Abdurahman bin Ibn Khaldun is often called “the father of economics”.
He certainly economised in one area, calling himself just Ibn Khaldun when he penned various books in 14th-century Tunisia. He also expressed the fundamental laws of value in the neatest way.
The more arduous the journey undertaken by the merchant, he wrote, the more people will pay for his goods. “Those who dare to go,” he said, “are rewarded most.”
The same is true for shows like MOROCCO TO TIMBUKTU: AN ARABIAN ADVENTURE (BBC2) but it depends on how big a deal the presenter makes while presenting them. Adventurer, explorer and writer Alice Morrison does not, unlike certain other TV adventurers, feel the need to remind us how dangerous her trek is every five minutes.
That might be because as a resident of Morocco and a fluent Arabic speaker she doesn’t feel in danger. As someone who has completed six marathons across the Sahara desert, the physical challenges of her 2,000-mile journey possibly aren’t that challenging to Alice either.
Desert often makes us think of emptiness or it did until last night’s episode mounted a splendid challenge. Alice started in Tangier where Europeans first gaped at the riches flowing through Africa.
Gold, iron and salt travelled crisscrossing routes through the Sahara, making hub cities such as Tangier and Fes not just wealthy but centres of learning. Alice was careful to show us North Africa’s golden age wasn’t over either.
A Berber friend welcomed her at a new establishment dishing up desert specialities such as camel meatballs. Morocco’s emerging middle classes were lapping up this nomad food while in the mountains, the real nomads told Alice they were sick of the life and wanted their kids to get jobs in the city. New rewards for the daring in a desert that never stands still.
“My mum used to tell my girlfriends, ‘You’re too good for him!’” So goes the old joke but what if there are families where that happens? BORN TO KILL (C4) took us inside such a family and if the story of 16-year-old Sam (Jack Rowan) didn’t make us sympathise with psychopaths, it certainly gave us an unprecedented opportunity to get to know them.
Amid the violence of last night’s episode, it was Sam’s essential loneliness that seemed the most painful thing to watch. He ran to his newly released and equally psychopathic father because he believed he’d met someone who understood him.
When his girlfriend Chrissy (Lara Peake) pushed her grandmother down the stairs, it confirmed for Sam that she was like him and when she made it clear that she wasn’t, his rage was that of an abandoned child.
Earlier, Sam’s mum Jenny (Romola Garai) had begged Chrissy to end things with him, not ruin her life, as she’d done by falling for someone who couldn’t feel.
The end sequence, involving a manhunt, a life-or-death battle at sea and a flashback to the events that had robbed Sam of a future at the age of four, was as crammed with drama as anyone could want.
When it was all over though the lasting impression was of great, deep sorrow for everyone.