Mar 7, 2005
Truth & Reconciliation
He was from the Truth and Reconciliation Committee: Abdelhay Moudden, a big shouldered man and the academic director at the Center for Cross Cultural Learning in Rabat. He gave a lecture at the university, followed by questions. The biggest question is how the truth — the whole truth about Hassan's II's treachery, what he knew and when he knew it, which may never be known, considering the chaotic and inaccessible state of the national archives — how the truth will affect people's notion of the monarchy? Will this open the door to more democracy or more fundamentalism? Or the military who, you'll remember, staged 3 coup d'etats.
But it was the very last anecdote that caught the ear. He explained that last week he and some of the commissioners had spoken at a school near where the commission meets. At the school he met three 13-year-old girls who asked him about his work: what was he doing? What was this commission looking into? Why? He had never thought of the problem posed by having to explain this kind of work to children. What a fool he had been and suddenly he had a revelation, which was that, of course, this would all have to be explained to people for whom politics is never mentioned. The girls had all seen the commission hearings on TV. What do you remember about it? he asked. Well, they said, they remembered a few individual stories: the one about the man who was arrested while riding on his bicycle and another about a woman weeping for her lost son. He asked them, what do you think we are doing? He knew they had some idea. Just tell me, he said, what comes to mind. They shook their heads. Anything at all, he said, any idea that comes to mind. They shook their heads. And that's when it occurred to him that even having no direct experience in the violations, which may still be going on, they knew instinctively, reflexively that that this was not a subject to know anything about. Politics, he said, is taboo and we are still living in a place and a time when this subject is associated with pain. An association, an NGO, is looking into this matter of how to talk to children; it's called Mountada al Moutana, in Rabat.
Feb 27, 2005
Shutters on the fly
Shutters on the fly, in the wild blue wind,
Striking strange chords through hollow 'crete.
A score for the big uneasy, a ginsome hangover
It was that flippant Y-N oracle three days ago,
But we have a team on it: will there be an Easter?
Or is that it, the 13th month, actuarially speaking.
Not more than a year from June. Which is it,
Feeble mind? Girly-boy Berber without his sheep?
Such stupid things became you faith. Saw layers,
Signs, now messages from a garage boy’s mind?
What possessed you? Well then, you deserve it.
But of course, what to do with the habit,
Hope mind over doubt? But you don’t have it to override....
So now you’re stuck, hopped up on your wait,
Making out.... “Make it a double, please.”
Right old Bill? The G-man behind his desk,
Haunted by the early death of his only G-dad:
A right winger from Maine in the FBI.
But I'm thinkin', I just need that third book.
Then I'll go... 'c’mon, baby, just one time.'
and his was a good mind given to doubt.
In Water Street holes he revived, with 5 Vodka
Tonics and after 2, all neats, he could see light,
‘Though not tonight.... There it is again....
That flat pic will not make me dance.
Shutters on the fly, in the wild blue wind,
Tsunamis roaring down the flue.
Hey, put down that imagination, boy.
Get hold of yourself, ain't no bots in the rain.
Rest easy, girl, there’s more to come.
Feb 24, 2005
Going Toward It
I'm always telling them, you can be anything you want on stage. I reassure them. I explain that Building 17 is freedom's palace if there ever was one. They understand and slowly they're beginning to believe it. The core group gets it; they want more.
Once, I had a warm-up exercise in which the Red people stood perfectly still and silent, while the blue people walked around and said whatever they wanted. Then reverse. I never get involved; I prefer to go around and coach. It's a chance to be a voyeur as well. But this time, since we were short, I played the statue opposite a young actor. This was her first time. She was like a yelping dog around a bear. She backed up and crouched and went into a tirade about her worries, academic and social, but particularly about the theater and here she was taking a real risk by coming and she was afraid, and what was I going to do with her, and how would this all turn out.
We switched roles and I got very close to her, close enough that I could smell smoke in her hair and perfume. It was instantly erotic, being able to talk to her in this way. I whispered in her ear that I wanted her to be a little frightened, I wanted her to take a risk, that was the whole point, to be fearless, I said, and I told her what I had told Marina long ago, one afternoon, on the beach in Malibu. I said to the actor, it's like swimming in the ocean and suddenly here's a set you didn't notice and the waves are too big and too close together to get to the shore, yet the prospect of staying out is frightening, you'll be swept away, you'll be caught by the undertow, and so your instinct is to get in, but you start and the suction is so strong you can't and then you look over your shoulder and there's the wave, gathering up into that marble wall, that lovely, terrifying wall, rising up higher and higher, the marble disolving to black and then finally to deep green, and there you are, in no man's land. Now, you've got to suffer the break and all that boiling white chaos, or else go toward the wave and, just as it breaks, go down and dig your hands into the sand, wait, come up and then swim away from the beach.
And know that as soon as you get to the surface there'll be another wave right there. It will look monstrous and you may have to come up through the kelp, which is heavy and adhesive and you'll have to go down again, and again, and you'll have to go down and really hold on. You may have to do this three or four times, diving and surfacing, and it'll become more and more frightening. You'll begin to doubt. You'll look for help. But there's nobody on the beach and they couldn't hear you anyway.... Eventually, the sets will clear. You'll forget that; but there'll be an opening. "Go toward it," I said, looking at the side of her face, enjoying the role, languishing in the sensualities, going toward the wave, towards her, away from shore, right to the sand, feeling the wave come down like a collapsing building and roll past.
Once, I had a warm-up exercise in which the Red people stood perfectly still and silent, while the blue people walked around and said whatever they wanted. Then reverse. I never get involved; I prefer to go around and coach. It's a chance to be a voyeur as well. But this time, since we were short, I played the statue opposite a young actor. This was her first time. She was like a yelping dog around a bear. She backed up and crouched and went into a tirade about her worries, academic and social, but particularly about the theater and here she was taking a real risk by coming and she was afraid, and what was I going to do with her, and how would this all turn out.
We switched roles and I got very close to her, close enough that I could smell smoke in her hair and perfume. It was instantly erotic, being able to talk to her in this way. I whispered in her ear that I wanted her to be a little frightened, I wanted her to take a risk, that was the whole point, to be fearless, I said, and I told her what I had told Marina long ago, one afternoon, on the beach in Malibu. I said to the actor, it's like swimming in the ocean and suddenly here's a set you didn't notice and the waves are too big and too close together to get to the shore, yet the prospect of staying out is frightening, you'll be swept away, you'll be caught by the undertow, and so your instinct is to get in, but you start and the suction is so strong you can't and then you look over your shoulder and there's the wave, gathering up into that marble wall, that lovely, terrifying wall, rising up higher and higher, the marble disolving to black and then finally to deep green, and there you are, in no man's land. Now, you've got to suffer the break and all that boiling white chaos, or else go toward the wave and, just as it breaks, go down and dig your hands into the sand, wait, come up and then swim away from the beach.
And know that as soon as you get to the surface there'll be another wave right there. It will look monstrous and you may have to come up through the kelp, which is heavy and adhesive and you'll have to go down again, and again, and you'll have to go down and really hold on. You may have to do this three or four times, diving and surfacing, and it'll become more and more frightening. You'll begin to doubt. You'll look for help. But there's nobody on the beach and they couldn't hear you anyway.... Eventually, the sets will clear. You'll forget that; but there'll be an opening. "Go toward it," I said, looking at the side of her face, enjoying the role, languishing in the sensualities, going toward the wave, towards her, away from shore, right to the sand, feeling the wave come down like a collapsing building and roll past.
Feb 10, 2005
Feb 1, 2005
The Colonel
http://macnamband.blogspot.com/2004/12/disquieted-americans.html
Did I tell you about meeting the colonel? We met him in the souk in Casablanca. At the Debrghaleff. Down a dark little rabbit run, that ends up in electronics. Here, everyone knows the colonel. He's now a policeman. He invited us to his house. We looked at each other and agreed to go.
He lead us to his car, told us to watch for pickpockets. The car was a shiny blacked-out, black Benz. Inside, you could see it had known better days. The transmission shuddered. Doors didn't open. We drove away.
The colonel stopped by to get pastries. We arrived at his house, an old villa in the California district, which is home to retired military. In the front yard, a Firebird up on chalks. Next to that a rotting garden. The porch, a mess.
We sat down and looked at pictures of the colonel in better days. At Ft. Benning and Ft. Hood. In the same class in war college as Schwartzkoff and the secretary of state. "Oh, I love America," said the colonel. "My first wife was from San Diego." He showed us her picture. She looked like somebody from San Diego: Blonde, dark glasses, a smile. Definitely West Coast.
These days the colonel is in charge of all detectives in Casablanca. Or so he claimed. He loves movies about espionage and international terrorism.
His wife appeared. She brought more pastries. His children appeared. Beautiful children. We talked and talked and finally it was time to go. We went out to the Benz but the tire had gone flat. We walked across the causeway. He walked with us, waited with us, hailed a cab, got us in and away. We promised we would call him, but we haven't yet.
Did I tell you about meeting the colonel? We met him in the souk in Casablanca. At the Debrghaleff. Down a dark little rabbit run, that ends up in electronics. Here, everyone knows the colonel. He's now a policeman. He invited us to his house. We looked at each other and agreed to go.
He lead us to his car, told us to watch for pickpockets. The car was a shiny blacked-out, black Benz. Inside, you could see it had known better days. The transmission shuddered. Doors didn't open. We drove away.
The colonel stopped by to get pastries. We arrived at his house, an old villa in the California district, which is home to retired military. In the front yard, a Firebird up on chalks. Next to that a rotting garden. The porch, a mess.
We sat down and looked at pictures of the colonel in better days. At Ft. Benning and Ft. Hood. In the same class in war college as Schwartzkoff and the secretary of state. "Oh, I love America," said the colonel. "My first wife was from San Diego." He showed us her picture. She looked like somebody from San Diego: Blonde, dark glasses, a smile. Definitely West Coast.
These days the colonel is in charge of all detectives in Casablanca. Or so he claimed. He loves movies about espionage and international terrorism.
His wife appeared. She brought more pastries. His children appeared. Beautiful children. We talked and talked and finally it was time to go. We went out to the Benz but the tire had gone flat. We walked across the causeway. He walked with us, waited with us, hailed a cab, got us in and away. We promised we would call him, but we haven't yet.
Jan 30, 2005
Jan 23, 2005
The Specialist
In those days the Colonel had other "responsibilities." One was to keep the opposition in line and if you were on his list, he would send his men out to find you. If you were in say, Khouribga, he would send the "specialist". The "specialist" was an anonymous looking little man with unsusually smooth skin. He would arrive at your house at any hour. You were always asleep. Or, you were naked and compromised in your bed. His men would steal into your house and escort him up the stairs right to your room. They would open the door and suddenly here is the "specialist" standing over you. If you didn't wake up by then, he might look at you for a long time and maybe even draw up a chair and sit down next to you and blow smoke at your face until you woke up. "Good evening," he would say in French or Arabic. If he spoke in French he would adopt that culture and he might humililate you verbally for a moment. He might say, "Who is this woman you are sleeping with? Is this your wife or your mistress?" You see and if it was your wife, then she would think you had a mistress. If it was your mistress then you would be on notice. He always knew. He was like a good lawyer, he always knew the answer to his question. Or, he might speak to you in Arabic and he would speak in a low voice and tell you that you were barely goat shit and enough was enough. He was, he said with his left eye fluttering sometimes, finished with your doubts and your fears and whatever reservations you had about the government. He might occasionally also speak in English, if you knew he could not speak it, or Spanish, as a way to test you and he might say, "I'm going to fuck your wife right now in front of you and all my men after me." And if you didn't react that would tell him something and he would go further to find out if you were either ignorant or clever. He would track you down, bring you to ground. Isn't that the expression? and then suddenly he might stand up and leave. He would go down to the car while you got dressed. Or else, if you were naked, he might sit there and watch you get dressed and comment on your body, on your fat or your muscles or lack of them and of course inevitably "your thing" as he called it. How is "your thing" doing these days. And he might even talk to it, and have the guards bring you close so that he could speak directly and at close range, as though it were another person. "I'll bet you know something; and I'll bet you'll talk won't you. You'll tell me what's been going on here. You never lie and I trust you. So don't worry, you'll be taken care of; you don't have to worry. But it's important that you get him to understand."
And then he might look at you. And depending on his mood he might have one his men lean down take you in his mouth. Anything was possible. He might pull out a pair of scissors and snap them open and shut. There were other specialists in those times, and they all used different methods. But the head of specialists, the most feared and the one the colonel handpicked, and some say, trained, for the job, was this one. I have never heard him called by name, only the "specialist." When I asked the colonel, he merely smiled and shook his head. "I never asked," the colonel said to me.
When he was finnished with you, in one way or another, he would go down to the car and wait for his men to bring you down and you would all drive back to Casa. Followed by a second car. He always went in two cars. If you were important he would have you sit in the front seat and he would never stop playing with your mind. He might show you a piece of piano wire he carried in his pocket. He would talk about the g string, and if you were sophistcated, he might make a joke about the double meaning of the G string. Or even the G spot. "I love the G spot," he would say. "I always find it. Women know I will." He would try to get you to relax and then he might slip the G string around you neck and let you ride with it like that for several hours. He could tighten it or not. And so you were always living in the moment. This was his plan, to get you to live in the moment, but of course always a moment of fear. And then at some point he would offer you Moroccan tea. With honey. That was his signature, the honey. That was sign to you; you were now in the hands of an icon, a myth. If you had questions until this moment, then you could relax if only because the truth was out. You are in the hands of the Specialist. And so he would take you to Casa to the colonel's home in the Laya quartier where your experience would begin in earnest....
And then he might look at you. And depending on his mood he might have one his men lean down take you in his mouth. Anything was possible. He might pull out a pair of scissors and snap them open and shut. There were other specialists in those times, and they all used different methods. But the head of specialists, the most feared and the one the colonel handpicked, and some say, trained, for the job, was this one. I have never heard him called by name, only the "specialist." When I asked the colonel, he merely smiled and shook his head. "I never asked," the colonel said to me.
When he was finnished with you, in one way or another, he would go down to the car and wait for his men to bring you down and you would all drive back to Casa. Followed by a second car. He always went in two cars. If you were important he would have you sit in the front seat and he would never stop playing with your mind. He might show you a piece of piano wire he carried in his pocket. He would talk about the g string, and if you were sophistcated, he might make a joke about the double meaning of the G string. Or even the G spot. "I love the G spot," he would say. "I always find it. Women know I will." He would try to get you to relax and then he might slip the G string around you neck and let you ride with it like that for several hours. He could tighten it or not. And so you were always living in the moment. This was his plan, to get you to live in the moment, but of course always a moment of fear. And then at some point he would offer you Moroccan tea. With honey. That was his signature, the honey. That was sign to you; you were now in the hands of an icon, a myth. If you had questions until this moment, then you could relax if only because the truth was out. You are in the hands of the Specialist. And so he would take you to Casa to the colonel's home in the Laya quartier where your experience would begin in earnest....
Jan 16, 2005
Dialogue With Stone
What is that? I asked, seeing something in the distance. Looks like someone. Or is it a shadow? A shadow, said Stone.
— No, it's a person. I can see them quite clearly now.
— Allah's shadow on earth.
— His what?
— caliph.
— How do you know?
No reply. He's like that. Just drifts off. Gets to the punchline and won't tell you. I went back to pushing. We were almost to the top.
— I don't understand these berbers, I said after another long time.
— What's to understand?
— You look in their eyes and.... And....
— Yes, and....
— I see pessemism.
— What did you hope for?
— Some sign of hope. But all I see is pessemism, as though their emotions were very far away, just a glimmer. You hold their faces in your hands and you are watching old ruins, you are looking into their dark tents in the middle of winter.
— They're warriors. Think of their empires. Imagine such a life.
— Yes, I understand and then after the battle, what is there? Only sorrow, for the dead and because the battle is over. Life is hope for another battle.... What was her name, Kareena? The amazon, who smeered her breasts with hennae the night before a great battle. Who drank the blood of her enmey's children....
— Think of the power that might give you.
I look at the stone.
— And what is their culture? I said. Nothing. They have none. They're thieves and cons. But I have this attraction for them.
— They're familiar.
I saw something far away just as we reached the top and the stone went rolling off toward the bottom.
What is that? Another Caliph, perhaps.
Jan 15, 2005
Derbghaleff
2
His undoings were never a mystery to us. We could follow the inevitability like the road to Merzouga, or better the N1, in fact just as he did last March, driving to Casablanca on a whim, obsessed with flash memory, down through the city’s smoggy liver to the under city souk known as the Derbghaleff. When he heard me describe it, he immediately asked for directions, and was insulted when I told him he’d never find it on his own. “I’ll find it,” he said in that awful way he had, as though he were the master of lost and found. This isn’t like God, I said. I will, he insisted, forever impervious to cynicism. Rather than make a game of it, I drew him the best map I could. Useless, of course. He spent hours trying to find the place and finally did what I suggested in the beginning: park, get a taxi.
Derbghaleff appears all of a sudden, in a well-dressed neighborhood. You could mistake it for a vest pocket slum: an unholy akimbo, behind a wall of people, corrugated roofing, wires every which way, flocks of satellite dishes, and the kind of parking attendants you find at the Meadow Lands before a Dallas game. But no, not a slum, it’s the city’s utility drawer. It’s also an economic engine. And if you ever wonder how people survive with 30 percent employment, go there and you’ll see a stage full of entrepreneurial sprites and free-market desperados. Every model of plug, screw, and drill ever made. Up to 10 years ago. Electronica, auto Kasbah, sneaker-rama, crazy Eddie’s jabilyas, from smoothies to roosters, you can find it here. Mile high stacks of old key boards, car stereos, old clothes, cloned copies of replicas, and the usual Berber bric a brac: sconces, rumplestilskin slippers and aluminum-death tea sets. Overhead, the sound of hawkers, hip hopsters, muezzins, and groaning generators. There are upscale shops there as well, the shoes carefully laid out or whatever it is, lingerie, carcasses, silks from West Africa, Quark 6.1 and Photo Shop all on one disk. Although when you get home, likely the registration number is missing or else the disk is no good. But you’re only out $2.
For Eli, Debraheff was a revelation. It was himself as place. You might find an artifact of your soul in Merzouga or in the mountains behind Ismil, even some misquided romantic notion, but not him. His link to eternity was in these cubicle-sized shops that go on and on, and inside the shops, little display cases and littler drawers and inside those ever smaller boxes, until you get down to storage places no bigger than thimbles with tiny hatches. But all places you could hide yourself, be fragmented and compartmentalized as he was. He loved it all, and never saw through it. He didn’t see this particular souk as faux exotic. “Just a lot of shops close together,” I would tell him. “Pickpockets and black market types.”
He smiled dismissively. He was Lawrence of Derbghaleff. This was his desert of melancholy monotony and tribes to drag off across the sun's anvil to Aqaba. Of course, the sensuousness appealed to him, the genuineness of strange strangers rubbing against each other like ants around the cutting board, butting thoraxes down paths wide enough for an eight inch drainage sewer, everyone doing the hopscotch along one side or the other.
He was after Flash memory; another irony, for a man who felt he was losing his memory. One of those little lighter-sized gadgets you stick in a USB port and fill up with pictures, or in his case, articles about the early caliphates. He was fascinated by the work of the fifth-century historian Ibn Hazm, who compiled a list of “Those Among the Caliphs Who Died by Assassination and the Manner in Which They Were Killed.”
He took Fadwa with him. It was before I realized the extent of their relationship. Her parents lived in Casablanca; I thought he was merely giving her a ride. She, as it turned out, had never been to the Derbghaleff, and knew of it only through her maid.
They arrived and were overcome. There was almost too much to see, and too hard to find anything. They spent an entire afternoon drifting from section to section after having gone to every one of the booths in the electronics realm and narrowed the price down to 375 dirham they stopped at one more booth. An older man seemed to be the proprietor. Fadwa asked for flashmemory. The older man was instantly drawn to her and smiled. “So you are Moroccan, and you,” he said looking at Eli, “are….American.”
Eli was bending over watching the assistant who rummaged around, and down and behind and inside the out of sight, the assistant came back with a handful of flash memory containers.
“You’re English,” said the grey haired man. Colonel Chiron.
Eli looked up. “No.”
The colonel put out his hand. “Very glad to meet you. I know your country well.”
Eli was more interested in finding the particular color of flash memory, but the colonel persisted. “Where are you from?”
“The United States.”
“ I know that. But where?”
“California.”
“I was in San Diego. My first wife. We lived in El Cajon.”
“Really.” Said Eli.
“I like blondes, Very beautiful. Always sunburned. Caramel breasted.”
“What did you do there? ” Eli said, not looking up.
“Military. Ft. Benning. Lackland. Camp Pendleton. I went to them all. “
Eli found a color he liked.
“I’m a colonel,” said the colonel. “Intelligence, special forces, ranger training.”
Eli looked up again. “You are a colonel.”
“Not now. Now, I’m a policeman. I am in charge of the inspectors in the city.”
Eli was suddenly interested. The shop owner suddenly appeared, said something to the colonel and took his place behind the display counter.
“Tu veux ca,” he said abruptly to Eli.
Eli was always annoyed to be addressed informally by strangers. “Peut Etre,” he said.
The colonel said something in Arabic’ the shop owner showed deference.
He will give you a good price, said the Colonel.
“How much?” Eli said.
“What do you want to pay?” asked the shop owner, rubbing his fingers together. “Leave a little something for me, and name your price.”
“200 dirham.”
The shop owner smiled and shook his head.
“The art of negotiation is that everyone must be happy,” said the colonel. “This is about friendship not about what you are buying.”
Eli looked at the little plastic totem in his hand. He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders. “Two hundred and fifty dirham.”
“Three hundred and fifty,” said the owner. “I cannot go lower. I need something for myself.
Eli looked at the colonel.
“What does this cost in the US?” said the colonel.
“Well, more.”
“What?”
“Fifty dollars, maybe for this, sixty.”
“So pay $35 and you are ahead and the shop owner is ahead. What’s $10? Don’t let pride destroy the opportunity.”
Eli didn’t quite understand the opportunity but felt the upbraided student. He quickly agreed, paid and put the memory in his pocket.
“Why don’t you come with me?” said the colonel. “I will show you the real Casablanca. But first you come to my house. “
Fadwa frowned, but Eli ever interested in “penetrating the culture” reached over and smoothed her forehead with his thumb. “We’d like that,” he said watching Fadwa. “Wouldn’t we?”
Fadwa looked back and tried to object, told him with her eyes that this was not what she wanted to do, especially considering how little time they had together, and considering that this was not a man’s whose house she would have been interested for any reason.
They walked out of the souk and it was then that Eli realized the colonel, whoever he was, had powers. A man out of nowhere, dressed anonymously, with sunglasses and broad shoulders nodded to the colonel and set out to clear the crowds. The colonel kept looking back at Fadwa who was right behind him. Occasionally, he would take her by the arm and point out something or tell her some anecdote about this shop owner or that. She in turn looked back at Eli, sometimes shaking her head as though to say, why do you do this to me? Eli watched the procession from back, occasionally losing his position. It occurred to him that the colonel’s interest was in Fadwa not himself and he made an effort to get closer to her. Once, the colonel stopped and told Eli to be watch for pickpockets in this particular area, by the clothes thrown on a heap and a smoothie stand.
Eventually, they made their way to the street. The broad shouldered man ran over the median strip and disappeared into a dirt parking lot. A few minutes later, a black Mercedes appeared. The colonel, ever solicitously, guided Eli and Fadwa to the back seat and sat in the front with his man. The car was more run down on the inside than out. The leather was ripped. The windows had been poorly tinted and were so dark that Eli couldn’t see out. Bent cigarette stubs spilled out of the ? on the console between the streets and there was the colonel’s hand, ringed, carefully manicured.
The driver got out of the traffic and headed who know where. At one point the colonel pointed to a street, and then half way down, he knocked on the window with his rings. He got out and returned after five minutes behind bags of pastries.
We arrived at his house in the California district. The black office building of the minerals industry is the landmark...
His undoings were never a mystery to us. We could follow the inevitability like the road to Merzouga, or better the N1, in fact just as he did last March, driving to Casablanca on a whim, obsessed with flash memory, down through the city’s smoggy liver to the under city souk known as the Derbghaleff. When he heard me describe it, he immediately asked for directions, and was insulted when I told him he’d never find it on his own. “I’ll find it,” he said in that awful way he had, as though he were the master of lost and found. This isn’t like God, I said. I will, he insisted, forever impervious to cynicism. Rather than make a game of it, I drew him the best map I could. Useless, of course. He spent hours trying to find the place and finally did what I suggested in the beginning: park, get a taxi.
Derbghaleff appears all of a sudden, in a well-dressed neighborhood. You could mistake it for a vest pocket slum: an unholy akimbo, behind a wall of people, corrugated roofing, wires every which way, flocks of satellite dishes, and the kind of parking attendants you find at the Meadow Lands before a Dallas game. But no, not a slum, it’s the city’s utility drawer. It’s also an economic engine. And if you ever wonder how people survive with 30 percent employment, go there and you’ll see a stage full of entrepreneurial sprites and free-market desperados. Every model of plug, screw, and drill ever made. Up to 10 years ago. Electronica, auto Kasbah, sneaker-rama, crazy Eddie’s jabilyas, from smoothies to roosters, you can find it here. Mile high stacks of old key boards, car stereos, old clothes, cloned copies of replicas, and the usual Berber bric a brac: sconces, rumplestilskin slippers and aluminum-death tea sets. Overhead, the sound of hawkers, hip hopsters, muezzins, and groaning generators. There are upscale shops there as well, the shoes carefully laid out or whatever it is, lingerie, carcasses, silks from West Africa, Quark 6.1 and Photo Shop all on one disk. Although when you get home, likely the registration number is missing or else the disk is no good. But you’re only out $2.
For Eli, Debraheff was a revelation. It was himself as place. You might find an artifact of your soul in Merzouga or in the mountains behind Ismil, even some misquided romantic notion, but not him. His link to eternity was in these cubicle-sized shops that go on and on, and inside the shops, little display cases and littler drawers and inside those ever smaller boxes, until you get down to storage places no bigger than thimbles with tiny hatches. But all places you could hide yourself, be fragmented and compartmentalized as he was. He loved it all, and never saw through it. He didn’t see this particular souk as faux exotic. “Just a lot of shops close together,” I would tell him. “Pickpockets and black market types.”
He smiled dismissively. He was Lawrence of Derbghaleff. This was his desert of melancholy monotony and tribes to drag off across the sun's anvil to Aqaba. Of course, the sensuousness appealed to him, the genuineness of strange strangers rubbing against each other like ants around the cutting board, butting thoraxes down paths wide enough for an eight inch drainage sewer, everyone doing the hopscotch along one side or the other.
He was after Flash memory; another irony, for a man who felt he was losing his memory. One of those little lighter-sized gadgets you stick in a USB port and fill up with pictures, or in his case, articles about the early caliphates. He was fascinated by the work of the fifth-century historian Ibn Hazm, who compiled a list of “Those Among the Caliphs Who Died by Assassination and the Manner in Which They Were Killed.”
He took Fadwa with him. It was before I realized the extent of their relationship. Her parents lived in Casablanca; I thought he was merely giving her a ride. She, as it turned out, had never been to the Derbghaleff, and knew of it only through her maid.
They arrived and were overcome. There was almost too much to see, and too hard to find anything. They spent an entire afternoon drifting from section to section after having gone to every one of the booths in the electronics realm and narrowed the price down to 375 dirham they stopped at one more booth. An older man seemed to be the proprietor. Fadwa asked for flashmemory. The older man was instantly drawn to her and smiled. “So you are Moroccan, and you,” he said looking at Eli, “are….American.”
Eli was bending over watching the assistant who rummaged around, and down and behind and inside the out of sight, the assistant came back with a handful of flash memory containers.
“You’re English,” said the grey haired man. Colonel Chiron.
Eli looked up. “No.”
The colonel put out his hand. “Very glad to meet you. I know your country well.”
Eli was more interested in finding the particular color of flash memory, but the colonel persisted. “Where are you from?”
“The United States.”
“ I know that. But where?”
“California.”
“I was in San Diego. My first wife. We lived in El Cajon.”
“Really.” Said Eli.
“I like blondes, Very beautiful. Always sunburned. Caramel breasted.”
“What did you do there? ” Eli said, not looking up.
“Military. Ft. Benning. Lackland. Camp Pendleton. I went to them all. “
Eli found a color he liked.
“I’m a colonel,” said the colonel. “Intelligence, special forces, ranger training.”
Eli looked up again. “You are a colonel.”
“Not now. Now, I’m a policeman. I am in charge of the inspectors in the city.”
Eli was suddenly interested. The shop owner suddenly appeared, said something to the colonel and took his place behind the display counter.
“Tu veux ca,” he said abruptly to Eli.
Eli was always annoyed to be addressed informally by strangers. “Peut Etre,” he said.
The colonel said something in Arabic’ the shop owner showed deference.
He will give you a good price, said the Colonel.
“How much?” Eli said.
“What do you want to pay?” asked the shop owner, rubbing his fingers together. “Leave a little something for me, and name your price.”
“200 dirham.”
The shop owner smiled and shook his head.
“The art of negotiation is that everyone must be happy,” said the colonel. “This is about friendship not about what you are buying.”
Eli looked at the little plastic totem in his hand. He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders. “Two hundred and fifty dirham.”
“Three hundred and fifty,” said the owner. “I cannot go lower. I need something for myself.
Eli looked at the colonel.
“What does this cost in the US?” said the colonel.
“Well, more.”
“What?”
“Fifty dollars, maybe for this, sixty.”
“So pay $35 and you are ahead and the shop owner is ahead. What’s $10? Don’t let pride destroy the opportunity.”
Eli didn’t quite understand the opportunity but felt the upbraided student. He quickly agreed, paid and put the memory in his pocket.
“Why don’t you come with me?” said the colonel. “I will show you the real Casablanca. But first you come to my house. “
Fadwa frowned, but Eli ever interested in “penetrating the culture” reached over and smoothed her forehead with his thumb. “We’d like that,” he said watching Fadwa. “Wouldn’t we?”
Fadwa looked back and tried to object, told him with her eyes that this was not what she wanted to do, especially considering how little time they had together, and considering that this was not a man’s whose house she would have been interested for any reason.
They walked out of the souk and it was then that Eli realized the colonel, whoever he was, had powers. A man out of nowhere, dressed anonymously, with sunglasses and broad shoulders nodded to the colonel and set out to clear the crowds. The colonel kept looking back at Fadwa who was right behind him. Occasionally, he would take her by the arm and point out something or tell her some anecdote about this shop owner or that. She in turn looked back at Eli, sometimes shaking her head as though to say, why do you do this to me? Eli watched the procession from back, occasionally losing his position. It occurred to him that the colonel’s interest was in Fadwa not himself and he made an effort to get closer to her. Once, the colonel stopped and told Eli to be watch for pickpockets in this particular area, by the clothes thrown on a heap and a smoothie stand.
Eventually, they made their way to the street. The broad shouldered man ran over the median strip and disappeared into a dirt parking lot. A few minutes later, a black Mercedes appeared. The colonel, ever solicitously, guided Eli and Fadwa to the back seat and sat in the front with his man. The car was more run down on the inside than out. The leather was ripped. The windows had been poorly tinted and were so dark that Eli couldn’t see out. Bent cigarette stubs spilled out of the ? on the console between the streets and there was the colonel’s hand, ringed, carefully manicured.
The driver got out of the traffic and headed who know where. At one point the colonel pointed to a street, and then half way down, he knocked on the window with his rings. He got out and returned after five minutes behind bags of pastries.
We arrived at his house in the California district. The black office building of the minerals industry is the landmark...
Jan 14, 2005
Much Worse Than What You've Heard
This is mostly true. He lives in Rabat. I see him occasionally. The other evening I went up to his apartment early. “You don’t mind if I’m wearing my PJs,” he said. They were beige with yellow dots. He also wore an ascot.
“I was ready to hit the silk, myself,” I said. He went out of the room to get beer.
His wife was sitting at her computer. “He’s so glad to have someone to talk to,” she said.
He returned and I told him my need. Election news in the Iraqi newspapers. He nodded but told me his story first. He left the country at 21, returned last year for the first time at 42. There were mortars most nights, explosions from time to time, but he never saw anybody get killed. “It wasn’t bad,” he said. “Not like now.”
He documented the now. “Much worse than you realize. The other day my brother told me that for every incident reported in the press there are ten more. You can’t keep track. It’s happening all the time. We went to the Iraqi embassy yesterday in Rabat. I went to pick up my passport, which I hadn’t had 20 years. They gave my approval in 15 minutes. Anyway, they said, “don’t go. You’d be a fool to step foot in the country. No one is going.”
He went on with his story, how he went to Baghdad a year ago, through Jordan. How the man at the border couldn’t read. “I gave him my passport. He said, what country are you from? This is a Mexican passport, I said.”
“Ah, so you’re from Canada.”
“No, Mexico”
“Mexico-Canada; Canada-Mexico. Same.”
“But they’re not.”
"Finally, he signed the document with a date stamp. That was all. And you wonder how people are coming across the border. Anyway, now the minute you step across, there are people watching. Kidnapping is the most lucrative profession.”
We talked some more and sat down at the computer. We went to Iraq4allnews.com. He went through the headlines, as of 1/14/05.
A scandal involving journalists.
A telecommunications company cheated customers.
Iraqis in Israel will not be allowed to vote.
28 prisoners escaped from Abu Graib prison today.
Few of these stories have bylines or sources or quotes or names.
Iraqis can file absentee ballots in 14 countries. Morocco is not one.
The Patriotic Group of Iraqi tribes asks all tribes in the country to boycott the elections.
American soldiers are selling weapons to insurgents. There is a photograph of a man, supposedly an American soldier about to kneel in a mosque.
“It’s crazy,” says my friend. “All chaos. No one knows anything. How can you know anything from these crazy things? “
One story says there are 700 Muslims in the American army in Iraq.
Fallujans will boycott.
Iraqis in Israel WILL be able to vote.
“You see the contradictions,” my friend said. He read on.
The Iraqi defense minister tells an Egyptian newspaper, Arab Struggle, that the list of candidates is really an Iranian list.
Another poll worker assassinated in Baghdad.
A pundit comments, “The situation now is like a bell signaling the beginning of civil war.”
“My brother tells me there is no electricity, except for perhaps one or two hours a day. And no petrol. Can you imagine in a country with such reserves, no petrol.”
And then a rough translation. “On a diet of strange occurrences every day, one marvels at the mystery itself.”
What does that mean, I asked.
He shook his head and went on. The stories suggest complete chaos. And of course there is no conventional election coverage because few candidates advertise their candidacy. Otherwise they would be killed. On election day you will go to the poll, and be given two pieces of paper. In one, you will find a list of parties that will send members to the general assembly. Pick one party. In the other, you get a list of parties representing your province. In the north, you get 3 pieces of paper, the third for the Kurdish assembly.
More.
Ambassador Negroponte met with the leaders of the Committee of Islamic Scientists. They are Sunni. Their message was ‘give us your timetable for withdrawal and we will vote.” Negroponte filed his report to Washington and apparently the condition was rejected.
The Shiite Counsel of Islamic Revolution, Abdel Azziz Al Hakim (these spellings are on the fly), was quoted to say that even if the Sunnis didn’t vote he would leave seats open for them.
The election counsel would like to make people aware those candidates promising heaven in return for votes should be ignored.
Kurd leader Masood Barazani met with a sheik from one of the Arab tribes in Tikrit. (Which is significant, if true)
Hosni Mubarrek and the Sheik of the Al-Azhar, mosque (founded in 970 AD as an Islamic university and still the fount of Sunni orthodoxy) have been pushing for Iraqis to vote in the election.
He found several other stories. This person killed. Those persons blownup. One after another, stories of chaos.
“And remember for everyone reported, 10,” he said.
“Right.”
“Crazy, huh?”
I had to leave. We went to the door. He said he'd been offered a job in the new government, a financial advisor to the Iraqi president. "I called my brother, I was all happy. He said, if you take it we'll all be killed. That's what they're doing now, they're going after the families...."
“I was ready to hit the silk, myself,” I said. He went out of the room to get beer.
His wife was sitting at her computer. “He’s so glad to have someone to talk to,” she said.
He returned and I told him my need. Election news in the Iraqi newspapers. He nodded but told me his story first. He left the country at 21, returned last year for the first time at 42. There were mortars most nights, explosions from time to time, but he never saw anybody get killed. “It wasn’t bad,” he said. “Not like now.”
He documented the now. “Much worse than you realize. The other day my brother told me that for every incident reported in the press there are ten more. You can’t keep track. It’s happening all the time. We went to the Iraqi embassy yesterday in Rabat. I went to pick up my passport, which I hadn’t had 20 years. They gave my approval in 15 minutes. Anyway, they said, “don’t go. You’d be a fool to step foot in the country. No one is going.”
He went on with his story, how he went to Baghdad a year ago, through Jordan. How the man at the border couldn’t read. “I gave him my passport. He said, what country are you from? This is a Mexican passport, I said.”
“Ah, so you’re from Canada.”
“No, Mexico”
“Mexico-Canada; Canada-Mexico. Same.”
“But they’re not.”
"Finally, he signed the document with a date stamp. That was all. And you wonder how people are coming across the border. Anyway, now the minute you step across, there are people watching. Kidnapping is the most lucrative profession.”
We talked some more and sat down at the computer. We went to Iraq4allnews.com. He went through the headlines, as of 1/14/05.
A scandal involving journalists.
A telecommunications company cheated customers.
Iraqis in Israel will not be allowed to vote.
28 prisoners escaped from Abu Graib prison today.
Few of these stories have bylines or sources or quotes or names.
Iraqis can file absentee ballots in 14 countries. Morocco is not one.
The Patriotic Group of Iraqi tribes asks all tribes in the country to boycott the elections.
American soldiers are selling weapons to insurgents. There is a photograph of a man, supposedly an American soldier about to kneel in a mosque.
“It’s crazy,” says my friend. “All chaos. No one knows anything. How can you know anything from these crazy things? “
One story says there are 700 Muslims in the American army in Iraq.
Fallujans will boycott.
Iraqis in Israel WILL be able to vote.
“You see the contradictions,” my friend said. He read on.
The Iraqi defense minister tells an Egyptian newspaper, Arab Struggle, that the list of candidates is really an Iranian list.
Another poll worker assassinated in Baghdad.
A pundit comments, “The situation now is like a bell signaling the beginning of civil war.”
“My brother tells me there is no electricity, except for perhaps one or two hours a day. And no petrol. Can you imagine in a country with such reserves, no petrol.”
And then a rough translation. “On a diet of strange occurrences every day, one marvels at the mystery itself.”
What does that mean, I asked.
He shook his head and went on. The stories suggest complete chaos. And of course there is no conventional election coverage because few candidates advertise their candidacy. Otherwise they would be killed. On election day you will go to the poll, and be given two pieces of paper. In one, you will find a list of parties that will send members to the general assembly. Pick one party. In the other, you get a list of parties representing your province. In the north, you get 3 pieces of paper, the third for the Kurdish assembly.
More.
Ambassador Negroponte met with the leaders of the Committee of Islamic Scientists. They are Sunni. Their message was ‘give us your timetable for withdrawal and we will vote.” Negroponte filed his report to Washington and apparently the condition was rejected.
The Shiite Counsel of Islamic Revolution, Abdel Azziz Al Hakim (these spellings are on the fly), was quoted to say that even if the Sunnis didn’t vote he would leave seats open for them.
The election counsel would like to make people aware those candidates promising heaven in return for votes should be ignored.
Kurd leader Masood Barazani met with a sheik from one of the Arab tribes in Tikrit. (Which is significant, if true)
Hosni Mubarrek and the Sheik of the Al-Azhar, mosque (founded in 970 AD as an Islamic university and still the fount of Sunni orthodoxy) have been pushing for Iraqis to vote in the election.
He found several other stories. This person killed. Those persons blownup. One after another, stories of chaos.
“And remember for everyone reported, 10,” he said.
“Right.”
“Crazy, huh?”
I had to leave. We went to the door. He said he'd been offered a job in the new government, a financial advisor to the Iraqi president. "I called my brother, I was all happy. He said, if you take it we'll all be killed. That's what they're doing now, they're going after the families...."
Jan 13, 2005
Ballad of a Coco Girl
"He calls us coco girls," she said. She's late 20s, just married, enrapt in Hermes scarves, frankincence and Murr.
What's that mean, I asked.
"Well, you know." She speaks French like a native but her English is patched together. "What you call them? Like call girls."
I was startled.
"They say it. They say we are the president's harem." She shrugged her shoulders. "Can you believe it."
She's smoking furiously.
I can't believe it.
"I told the president I'm leaving, but it's not because they're going to pay me more. I'm leaving because what can I do here? This is... what do you call it? A mad house."
And then she told me many stories from the mad house, about who is the most hypocritical and who is most sexist.
The worst is Dr. X. He came into the communication office one day. A stocky face like a knotted piece of wood. He walked in, hunched over in an overcoat like a character in a Dostoevsky novel. He had an odd bandage on his left nostril. He told one of the cocoa girls that he was in the midst of love making and his "tigress" bit him.
He's in charge of finance. He taught high school chemistry in the Royal school. This is his background in finance. So they say, He came with the president; this is his real background. It is said that he saved the university from financial ruin, which is a trick because under the university's charter the national assembly has the power, and the responsibility, to pay off the university's overages.
Dr. X is well known around campus. He has had a series of affairs with women in the university staff. He is always on the prowl. Several women have considered filing sexual harrassment charges, but they always change their minds. There is just one who may follow through.
Meanwhile, the university is in chaos. Falling enrollment. Teachers stay on average just two semesters. Morale is bad everywhere. The number of students who go on cocaine binges out in the country is rising. Many teachers are teaching outside their area of discipline. The school counsellor seems inept and overwhelmed. Academic pressure is high, expecially for students who are not used to it and who have been pampered. Students write the newspaper regularly complaining about the professors, which could be a reflection either way. Technical people are leaving. Allegations of wasted and misspent monies. The unanimous consensus: very bad management.
Someone told me this is the best university in Africa, which is not true, of course. There are any number of better schools in Egypt and South Africa and probably 3 or 4 other places. But if it is one of the better schools in Morocco, at least, what can one say about higher education? Especially since the graduates of this school are all heading out of the country.
What's that mean, I asked.
"Well, you know." She speaks French like a native but her English is patched together. "What you call them? Like call girls."
I was startled.
"They say it. They say we are the president's harem." She shrugged her shoulders. "Can you believe it."
She's smoking furiously.
I can't believe it.
"I told the president I'm leaving, but it's not because they're going to pay me more. I'm leaving because what can I do here? This is... what do you call it? A mad house."
And then she told me many stories from the mad house, about who is the most hypocritical and who is most sexist.
The worst is Dr. X. He came into the communication office one day. A stocky face like a knotted piece of wood. He walked in, hunched over in an overcoat like a character in a Dostoevsky novel. He had an odd bandage on his left nostril. He told one of the cocoa girls that he was in the midst of love making and his "tigress" bit him.
He's in charge of finance. He taught high school chemistry in the Royal school. This is his background in finance. So they say, He came with the president; this is his real background. It is said that he saved the university from financial ruin, which is a trick because under the university's charter the national assembly has the power, and the responsibility, to pay off the university's overages.
Dr. X is well known around campus. He has had a series of affairs with women in the university staff. He is always on the prowl. Several women have considered filing sexual harrassment charges, but they always change their minds. There is just one who may follow through.
Meanwhile, the university is in chaos. Falling enrollment. Teachers stay on average just two semesters. Morale is bad everywhere. The number of students who go on cocaine binges out in the country is rising. Many teachers are teaching outside their area of discipline. The school counsellor seems inept and overwhelmed. Academic pressure is high, expecially for students who are not used to it and who have been pampered. Students write the newspaper regularly complaining about the professors, which could be a reflection either way. Technical people are leaving. Allegations of wasted and misspent monies. The unanimous consensus: very bad management.
Someone told me this is the best university in Africa, which is not true, of course. There are any number of better schools in Egypt and South Africa and probably 3 or 4 other places. But if it is one of the better schools in Morocco, at least, what can one say about higher education? Especially since the graduates of this school are all heading out of the country.
Jan 9, 2005
Dramas, larger and small
These images, the shooting by the GI and the beheading of Margaret Hassan, appeared on the day the drama club meets. There are a dozen in the troop who appear regularly. Maybe six more appear when they damn well feel like it. I’m always after them to let me know if they’re coming and when I meet one of the missing walking to class they will be so gracious. I’m thinking of Loubna and Libna here. They come to the first meeting every semester and then they come now and then. You can never count on them. Loubna actually has talent. She’s the face with acne. Libna is one of the little breath takers. Thneyu’re the same height. They wear the same clothes. They finish each other’s sentences. I suppose they’re lesbians, which of course here would mean strung up and skinned. The two nicest girls you’ll ever meet, but not reliable. I never see one without the other. As for the troop, it's a mixture of students and faculty. We meet in the university auditorium. A cold, dank place, but new as fresh spit. It’s used mostly for the rock n roll bands and the Moroccan musicians. And at the end of each semester there’s a variety show. Moroccans are natural born performers as you well know. Give them a song, a dance routine, a character, a line and, whether experienced or not, they stand right up and do. Which is the only time they do. off stage, there is no do. There is talk about do. There is dream of do. There is almost do. But then no do. So then suddenly, with no warning, one night nobody shows up. They scatter like pigeons. It could be cold or heat or some forgotten holiday. They don’t email or call, God forbid. They just don’t show up. And every semester begins again with the same promise. “This is what we want to do more than anything,” they always say and there is this intense interest for a few weeks and then they fall away, one by one. Although there is always one or two left. Ayesha was one of those.
Jan 4, 2005
Two Thieves
He's the IT man, the infrastruture artist. Part of his job is to download all the unregistered programs that otherwise would cost tens of thousands of dollars. I don't ask him how he does it. He does it. He goes to an ether house and gets the stuff. "Come back in a couple of days," he says when you need something. " I'll have it then."
"But it's bad," he said when I went to see him today. He's 28. Smart. Good looking. Intense, and always optmistic, even if he can't solve the problem.
"Why it is bad?" I said.
"It's stealing. We're learning to be thieves. That's all we are."
"Derbghalef," I said. His face lightened up.
"Exactly, you can go to the souk in Casablanca and get a disk full of programs for $2 that retail outside Morocco for $2,000. What does that tell you? It's acceptable. People would never think of paying the full price for these things now. I know millionaires. They could afford to pay the real price, but they don't because they know they can get it for less. This whole country is like that. Did you ever wonder how so many people could have satellite television? They can because they can pay 20D for a card that gets them access. How can we have Silicon Valley if we don't respect copywrite laws?"
He paused, looked back to the screen to see how my request was coming. I'd brought some disks from the souk in Casa. They were no good. No matter, he was going direct.
"Sometimes people come to me: what's the latest thing? What do you need, I say. They don't care. Whatever is need. They might use the program once. But they have it. They've acquired something new. They have the feeling they are up to date, they are ahead of someone else."
The conversation drifted. He'd just returned from Paris. Everyone running around like crazy. "How can you live like that? What's so important? And then they have a room 15 meters, and they pay 700 euros. For what? What is that? And we're working as fast as we can to be just like that."
"Come back in 2 or 3 days," he said finally. "i'll have it then."
But he wasn't finished. "You wonder what's going to happen to the software writers. They'll become like artists and musicians are now. In 50, 100 years, there'll be nothing. No one will create anything. Who will pay them? There'll be a tiny number of poeple doing all the creative work. The rest like slugs."
"We're all thieves," he said. "Not good."
"I'll come back," I said.
"But it's bad," he said when I went to see him today. He's 28. Smart. Good looking. Intense, and always optmistic, even if he can't solve the problem.
"Why it is bad?" I said.
"It's stealing. We're learning to be thieves. That's all we are."
"Derbghalef," I said. His face lightened up.
"Exactly, you can go to the souk in Casablanca and get a disk full of programs for $2 that retail outside Morocco for $2,000. What does that tell you? It's acceptable. People would never think of paying the full price for these things now. I know millionaires. They could afford to pay the real price, but they don't because they know they can get it for less. This whole country is like that. Did you ever wonder how so many people could have satellite television? They can because they can pay 20D for a card that gets them access. How can we have Silicon Valley if we don't respect copywrite laws?"
He paused, looked back to the screen to see how my request was coming. I'd brought some disks from the souk in Casa. They were no good. No matter, he was going direct.
"Sometimes people come to me: what's the latest thing? What do you need, I say. They don't care. Whatever is need. They might use the program once. But they have it. They've acquired something new. They have the feeling they are up to date, they are ahead of someone else."
The conversation drifted. He'd just returned from Paris. Everyone running around like crazy. "How can you live like that? What's so important? And then they have a room 15 meters, and they pay 700 euros. For what? What is that? And we're working as fast as we can to be just like that."
"Come back in 2 or 3 days," he said finally. "i'll have it then."
But he wasn't finished. "You wonder what's going to happen to the software writers. They'll become like artists and musicians are now. In 50, 100 years, there'll be nothing. No one will create anything. Who will pay them? There'll be a tiny number of poeple doing all the creative work. The rest like slugs."
"We're all thieves," he said. "Not good."
"I'll come back," I said.
Dec 31, 2004
Rabat demonstration
Rabat. Late Afternoon. Driving along Avenue Mohammed V, we passed a demonstration in the park opposite the Chambres des Representants. We registered in the hotel and I went off to photograph what I could. As soon as I got to the park I was surrounded by protestors. They identified themselves as members of the Union Des Cadres Superieurs Chomeurs. In effect, the union of unemployed academics. According to a handout there are 491 members of which the majority teach Islamic studies, Arabic literature or Chemistry. Slightly more men than women; most come from Rabat, Fez, or Casa. The great majority under 35. One person told me these demonstrations have become increasingly frequent, almost once a week. Someone else used the word "massacre" to describe what often happens when police arrive but I didn't see any violence. Nevertheless, as the night came on and the soldiers drew a cordon around the demonstration several people asked that so long as journalists stayed the protestors would be safe. There was a local TV film crew as well as a wire reporter, and perhaps others.
The object of the demonstration was to deliver to a government minister a long heavy scroll that included a list of demands for jobs and a few signatures signed in blood. I saw one of those signings myself. The marchers organized and walked south to the Avenue Moulay Hassan, and with the lights of the Sunna Mosque just coming on, they came up against a wall of soldiers, young recruits, with billy clubs held behind their backs.
A government representative appeared, and, looking very relaxed, smiling in all directions, talked briefly with the protestors. But they wanted to deliver their message to a specific minister and when rebuffed pressed against the soldiers. The representative called to plain clothes men behind him who in turn called in a few meatier soldiers, older and buffed, in dark blue uniforms with red patches saying police on their sleeves. They pressed against the back of the soldiers and moved a small group of protestors back across a blocked street to where the mass was sitting down, partly in the street.
Eventually, the government representative seemed to figure out that if he moved around to the east the protestors would follow and unclog the intersection. People trying to get out of centre ville were howling inside their cars in frustration; they seemed to be mostly annoyed with the protestors.
You realize this is a progressive country, but also conservative. Not in a religious sense but in a secular one. The ruling class don't seem to have much interest in changing the status quo. And you see that often in their children. Certainly, that's been my experience.
I spoke to some 10th graders a few weeks ago. All from wealthy families. A girl wanted to go live with the Taliban in Afganistan. Another wanted thought Morocco was too liberal. Still another said that after superman, Osama Bin Laden is his hero. "Why"? Because he took on the Americans. "Do you think Arab countries are better off now than before 911?" Absolutely.
On the other hand, I spoke to some 12th graders. To a person they love their country but they all want to leave. None wnat to go to college here. A few of them cited corruption as the principal reason to leave.
As the protestors faded into the dark to the east I went back to the hotel. A man stopped me. He was black. Speaking in French he said, please record this; you are our only hope for democracy. I smiled, said I would. Of course. But as he said I thought of Iraq. Do it yourself, I thought. It will be better in the end. May take longer but at less cost. Iraq: A war I supported initially, not for the WMDs but for the Kurds if no one else and the Shiites in Basra, but now I've come to think that democracy is not a product to be exported. It may seem like everyone must want it, but that's not true and it's not enough. And this is a culture built on cults of personality. Better to choose a benign dictator in the short run. If you want to support democracy, support the people that want it, no matter their persuasion.
You think of the authors of pre-emption and perhaps they as architects have made the same mistake as the people who misinterpreted Dr. X's notion of containment. K's idea was that communism was more vulnerable to economic pressure than military pressure. And so it was. Now the notion is that more force at a point, early on, will prevent catastrophe. Perhaps. But here in Morocco the winter of discontent is a measure of joblessness and the perception that you need connections to get a good job and move up.
If you want to change things here you might consider a wide spread sense of a king imprisoned by a system of patronage, by a fortress of powerful people who depend on him for their wealth and make him their conduit.
The difficulty with Morocco is that it appears to be one thing but is quite another. And it's very difficult to find the center, to touch the real heart of the country. You have to lose yourself in the narrow alleys of the medina in Fez to appreciate the metaphor.
Meanwhile, the anger is there. It's in the poor kids in Khouribga, in the rich kids in Casablanca and Rabat. It's in the socialists and the Islamacists. But here's the real geology: It's in the culture of despair as the dean told me; or in the culture of mistrust as Yaseen says; or below all that, in the culture of doubt and fear that pervades everything....
Dec 28, 2004
Dialogue With Stone
"I don't trust, Stone. It's got me down."
"This doesn't?"
"I don't think of it."
"Start."
"But I don't trust. I've fallen into this culture of despair."
"So there you are."
"You can keep talking. It doesn't bother me."
"I don't have faith. I don't believe my instincts. I've hit a wall."
"Just don't let go, we're almost there."
"What do you care?"
No reply.
"It's middle age, isn't it? I'm at that stage they talk about. what does your life amount to? You can't appreciate anything you've done. Everything seems like failure."
"Everything? Not your children."
"Of course."
"Well, then. What else?"
"I can't let go my ego, that's the problem."
"Keep pushing, you're almost there."
"Everything I can think of I have already thought of."
"Too bad you can't go to a library."
"Even if I could."
"A few more steps.... Anyway, why do you need faith, you have me..."
"I'd like to have something bigger."
"Pathetic."
"I know that. Don't you think I don't know that?"
"We're there. See you at the bottom.
"This doesn't?"
"I don't think of it."
"Start."
"But I don't trust. I've fallen into this culture of despair."
"So there you are."
"You can keep talking. It doesn't bother me."
"I don't have faith. I don't believe my instincts. I've hit a wall."
"Just don't let go, we're almost there."
"What do you care?"
No reply.
"It's middle age, isn't it? I'm at that stage they talk about. what does your life amount to? You can't appreciate anything you've done. Everything seems like failure."
"Everything? Not your children."
"Of course."
"Well, then. What else?"
"I can't let go my ego, that's the problem."
"Keep pushing, you're almost there."
"Everything I can think of I have already thought of."
"Too bad you can't go to a library."
"Even if I could."
"A few more steps.... Anyway, why do you need faith, you have me..."
"I'd like to have something bigger."
"Pathetic."
"I know that. Don't you think I don't know that?"
"We're there. See you at the bottom.
Dec 27, 2004
Tingis piece
(This piece will appear in January in Tingis, a quarterly Moroccan-American literary magazine.)
The “clandestine” immigrants moving through the Maghreb into southern Europe these days are often referred to as harraga. The word, sometimes meaning “adventurers” is Arabic slang thrown on refugees from all over Africa. In that sense, harraga are the bone and blood barometer of economic weather from Darfur to Abidjan and from Cape Town to towns all along the southern lip of the Mediterranean.
The harraga moving through Morocco from the sub-Sahara can be divided into two groups--poorer and poorest. Those with some cash may share a grand taxi up the N1 to hidden refuges in the hills around Tangier, where they wait to make a connection and catch a patera, one of the zodiacs which, depending upon moon and tides, ferry 40 people or more up to Spain. Lately, people have been stopping far to the south in Morocco, around Tarfaya, and catching the pateras that scurry over to the Canary Islands. It’s a highly dangerous trip.
Other “clandestines” riding up the Moroccan coast attach themselves to vehicles however they can find. There are stories of young men riding on top of trains or in the undercarriages of busses, or lying on cardboard strips atop truck engines. The less daring, and with fewer resources, turn east at Bou-lzakarn and follow the N12, riding and walking, getting a hitch from one marché to another, skirting the desert up to the Ziz River, then north through Erfoud and Missour. Or else they cross over into Algeria, going up to Bechar, and then due north to Oujda. Whichever way they come along this inland route, the goal is to reach the camps in the hills around Melilla, where the “clandestines” make periodic attempts to scramble up crude ladders and hop over the high fences around the town.
From time to time these camps are raided. Government police make a show: burn shacks and belongings, round up who they can, truck them to the Algerian border and dump them off. Most return to Morocco, forever unwilling to give up their journey and oblivious to the increasing political pressure Southern Europe is putting on the Maghreb to keep a lid on Africa’s cauldron of unemployed.
Nowhere is the political pressure greater, or more laden with financial rewards, than along the Tunisian and Libyan coastline, where every month thousands of migrants try to jump to Southern Europe. The destination is often Italy’s fingertip, Lampedusa, a nearly treeless, rocky island 200 kilometers south of Sicily and 150 kilometers north of Tunisia . Every few days, boats limp into the harbor at Lampedusa, and repatriation begins. But just as often the boats don’t make it. Last October 5th, for example, 70 Moroccans and five Tunisians were just a few hours off the Tunisian coast, off the town of Chott Meriem, 170 km south-east of Tunis, when their boat broke up. Eleven migrants survived. Twenty-eight bodies were recovered.
According to NGO officials, the bodies, which were not identified, were buried in Tunisia. Approximately 150 Moroccans waiting to follow the first boat were arrested and deported to Morocco where they were jailed. The incident was particularly tragic because the dead included at least 50 young men from a small village 140 kilometers east of Casablanca, on the Plateau des Phosphates, called El Foqra.
*
To reach El Foqra, you go through Khouribga, a city of 500,000, and best known for a 60-million-year-old phosphate deposit, a geological palace known as Oulad Abdoun. It’s this deposit, run by the government, the Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), which makes Morocco one of the three leading sources of exportable phosphate ore in the world. You drive south through the town, past the Hotel Farah, where mining executives and foreign contractors sip wine by the pool, through downtown and under the railroad tracks carrying 60-car phosphate trains that leave for the coast every half hour, around the clock, year after year; past the Quartier Riad, where young men, eyes blazing, arms flying, insist the local unemployment rate is 80 percent (Government and NGO sources say it’s closer to 30 percent).
“What can we do?” the men say, pointing out they have this degree or that. “There are no options here.”
“What about moving to another city?” you ask.
“It’s like this everywhere,” they say. “The whole country, and the more educated you are, the harder it is to find work, especially if you don’t have connections. Without that, you’re nothing.”
You keep going, through the elegant old neighborhoods built for French bureaucrats during the “French period,” which reached it peak in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, past the ragged outskirts of town, marked by unfinished buildings and in the distance, phosphate pyramids known as “overburdens”; past the sound of blasting, past even the smell of phosphate, which permeates the city on breezy afternoons; past the vast city dump that lines the road for miles, the land dotted with grocery-sized blue, white and black plastic bags, like so many balloons. Keep going past all that and the land becomes neat and clean, and quiet again. The desert resumes and the earth rolls and dips languorously.
After a few more minutes you come to a sign that reads El Foqra, which means the Noble or “the Great”. It’s the name of a local tribe and also the name of a village, although none is in sight. But over the rise, thrown out on the landscape, there’s a house on a ridge to the left and then another and a quarter mile further on, another house on the right. Occasionally, a rectangular-shaped water tower stands jagged and awkward. A tree here, there. Small children fly over the rocks. Keep going and you’ll pass a three-walled building on the side of the road, fruit and vegetables all neatly laid out. But before you get there you come to the center of town--a well and a few buildings close together.
El Foqra has perhaps 5,000 people. The place is neither rich nor poor, relatively speaking, but jobs are rare and nearly every young person who hasn’t left seems to want to leave. One would think that the phosphate mines would provide adequate jobs, but many of the approximately 20,000 people who do the strip mining come from other parts of the country. When the French ran the mines, they mistrusted unions and brought in workers who had no local ties and were more dependent upon the company. That policy stopped when the Moroccan government took over; but in recent years, most of the jobs go to people from other regions because unemployment has become such a problem countrywide.
Late last summer, hope arrived in El Foqra. Someone, although it’s not quite clear who, spread word that the time was right to get to Italy. The plan was to fly to Tunis and catch a boat to Lampedusa. Between September 10 and 25, 100 young men, mostly in their 20s (they have to be old enough to get a passport), left the village in groups and took flights to Tunis. In several families, three, four, even five brothers were lured away.
The government says the recruiters that came to El Foqra are al-muharribun—the mafia or “international operators.” Local people refer to them as harraga lords, but these are not conventional gang lords. They are simply individuals with extensive connections, some of which include smugglers of one thing or another. And so a friend of a friend may find you on the street in Khouribga one day and discreetly inquire whether you might be interested in going to Europe. You are interested, of course, because the only local job prospects are in the black market, which produces knick-knacks and toys for street venders and small stores in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. These micro economies provide urban subsistence, but not enough to attract a wife and start a family.
If you are undecided about whether to go, the harraga lord could add incentive: “Well, then perhaps your brothers might also be interested and, if they come, you’ll get a commission.” Word spreads. Men pay between 1,000 and 1,500 Euros for the trip. They get the money with difficulty, but perhaps with less and less difficulty as leaving has become more socially accepted. Fathers sell what they have on the promise that their sons will send back the family’s investment and more.
*
On the second floor of a local trade school and immigrant center, six days after the boat full of local harraga sank, Hicham Racttidi counts still again an envelope full of passport-sized photos. The young men in the photos all have calm, enigmatic expressions, neither smiling nor frowning. Parents and relatives have been bringing the photos to Racttidi ever since news spread of the sinking. The small room is crowded with older men--fathers and uncles. This is not a mother’s work..
Mr. Racttidi is the vice president of Amis & Familles des Victimes de L’Immigration Clandestine. He is an old-looking 33, tall and slender. He answers questions directly. He does not address the issue of hope. He says what he knows: Eleven people have survived, 30 bodies had been recovered and 34 are missing. The identification process has been slow. Government officials in both Tunisia and Morocco have no news.
The looming horror is that most of the dead and missing are all from El Foqra. Part of the evidence that links the men from El Foqra together is that fifty-one of the telephone calls made to relatives in the hours before the boat left all came from Soussa. One other call came from Nobel. These are seaside towns near where the boat left. That the young men have not called back is very unusual because the “Moroccan way” for refugees is that when you get to Europe, the first thing you do is get something to eat. The second is to call home.
Meanwhile, the men are eager to talk about their sons and nephews. One uncle recounts what a good student the boy is--everything is still in the present tense--how he loves mathematics above everything, and doesn’t smoke, doesn’t lie and has no girl friends. He’s very religious and at 24 everything he does is for his family. But then, says the uncle, not referring to his nephew, boys these days; they see the cars and the rich lifestyle of the people that return. They become “disoriented.” He himself has worked in the phosphate mines for 27 years. His vest, his work shirt, his undershirt, everything is browned with phosphate. And probably his lungs, adds Racttidi later.
“He’s very obedient,” says a father about his son. The man has blue eyes and a white baseball cap. The ends of his lips are turned down in a sour expression. “The boy never fights. He’s a pacifist. With two little girls. That’s why he went away to get the money for his family. I told him it was dangerous but he doesn’t see any other way.” And then the father tells the story of how his son, 29, last called at around 4 p.m. on Saturday, and how he talked to his wife and finally his children and when he talked to 4-year-old he cried. Mr. Racttidi explains to relatives that his organization is arranging a trip to Tunis on Sunday to match the photos with the bodies, and then get the bodies back as soon as possible.
But that will never happen. Mr. Racttidi will not go to Tunis; the bodies will not be identified or returned to Morocco. The whole affair will be treated as a delicate government matter and the NGOs that deal with migrants will not be allowed to participate.
*
While the press sometimes translates harraga to mean “adventurers,” the more precise and illuminating meaning comes from the infinitive form of the verb, harg, which means, “to burn.” In the context of immigration strictly from Morocco, harg has two connotations. Both have become pejorative. One connotation is to “burn bridges.” Harraga arrive in Europe as terrestrial aliens without identity. When they’re caught, or rescued, or their bodies recovered, they have no papers, not even clothing labels, nothing to clarify point of departure or origin. Before Europe shut its doors on legal immigration in the early 1990s, that ambiguity might have lead to political asylum. Now, no matter how heart-rending the tale of economic deprivation or government-sponsored torture, without absolute proof, a political “excuse” has little currency.
The other connotation of harg is “ to escape.” A companion word might also be lahrig, which means, “to avoid.” However, an appropriate English translation of harg might be “to skip” ahead or over. As in to skip out of your community and “make it” somewhere else, according to those who lament the trend. As in to skip the Moroccan credo that promises success if you’ll just work hard and be patient. (shortened sentence because repeated later)
As an aside, a college student from Casablanca told me that the harraga are hated wherever they go. “If you are Moroccan harraga in Southern Europe, they hate you; they treat you like dirt. But they need you because they can’t find their own people to work. People in Spain will tell you that the kids there are totally spoiled. But the way the Spanish look at Moroccans is much the way we look at people from the Sub Sahara coming here for work. Everyone is moving north to find their niche and looking for a higher rung on the ladder to look at others below them.”
In Khouribga, the desire to leave has become epidemic in recent years. Some people describe it as an obsession. The fever reaches its peak in summer when the whole town, especially “Little Italy,” is overrun with returning sons--all the new “winners,” wearing fine suits and driving new cars. Local girls are swept away and see these men as their own ticket out. Last summer there were something like 35 weddings a day in Khouribga.
“It happens like this,” Mr. Racttidi told me as we sat in his office that day after the relatives had left. “A 10-year-old boy sees his older brother having gone to school, but now without a job because the family has no connections. Without connections you have no chance in this society. But then he sees his cousin returning in the summer from Italy. He’s driving a brand new car; he spends money like it’s nothing and the boy thinks, ‘I want to be like my cousin.’ ”
Racttidi shakes his head at the idea. “People are not starving here. But society has become caught up in this cycle that you see in Europe and America. Fifty years ago a boy from a poor family would become a shepherd. There was no choice. ‘It is written,’ he would say to himself. Then it became, ‘I want.’ And now it’s become, ‘I need.’
“(shortened this graph which was repetitive) After three decades in which the message and the promise was to work and to study, the new message, the new Moroccan way of life, is just ‘find your way to Italy or Spain.’ ”
“Of course, this is not an easy process,” acknowledges Mr. Racttidi. “The families have very mixed feelings and often the father or the uncle will say, ‘This is too dangerous.’ But in the end everyone gives into this psychology.”
“What does the Koran say about immigration?” I asked.
“The Koran gives you two ways to look at this (if you are thinking about becoming an clandestine immigrant). It says if you are being persecuted in some way, psychically or mentally, you can leave your family or your village. But it also says you must not put your life at risk. Of course, now these young people aren’t being guided by the Koran. It’s what they see on television. That’s all they can think about. And now this city has become like a huge waiting room.” (graph tightened)
*
A few days after the tragedy in Tunis, in a café in Khouribga, I met Dr. Mustapha Scadi, a socialist member of Parliament from Khouribga. Dr. Scadi is a cardiologist and spent four years in Europe, himself. He says he well understands the motives of the immigrants, but doesn’t support their “obsession.”
“I came back because I prefer it here. After all, it’s your country; you have your family. But these young people don’t value these things anymore. Their dreams have betrayed them.” (graph tightened)
But then how do you keep young people from leaving, particularly when poverty is not the whole issue, but more this desire to taste materialism first hand? And how do you instill a sense of national loyalty, even obligation?
A prominent Moroccan educator told me privately that this is perhaps the greatest challenge the country faces: to teach the next generation, and from an early age, the value of giving back to the community. This generation, he said, is lost. He went on to say that universities need to impart a spirit of entrepreneurship and focus on empowering students. He added that Morocco’s educated are, in their own way, harraga. He pointed out that among those who have left the country is a project manager for NASA’s Mars program.
Recently, I met with some students at a local high school. Many are from the country’s elite. They were preparing to take SAT tests in Rabat and expect to go to college in the United States next year. I asked why they wanted to go to college. They smiled at such an absurd question.
“I want to help the family business and just live a nice life,” one boy replied.
But what about those that don’t have a nice life?
“The problem is too big; there’s nothing you can do?”
“Well then what about starting a company of your own? Or what about. . .”
The student cut me off.
“You can’t do that here. There’s too much corruption. You need connections to do anything. Why struggle against the system?”
No question that the packaging of American culture, and the Big Mac power of materialism itself, has drained the intellectual resources of developing countries. And for sure that depletes community strength and spirit. But if America’s interest in the world often seems ambiguous, grounded more in profit than progress, it still offers one great export--relentless optimism. It’s that old aw-shucks conviction that if you need to go to say, the moon, for whatever reason, good or bad, you can do it: you can imagine a way, work out the obstacles, sell it to somebody out there, and then get on a schedule, work like a dog, make some luck, pray to baseball, and one day you’ll be there.
Despite the mandate given George Bush for his second term, you could argue that America is becoming more mindful of its size in the world. It’s slowly becoming more aware of itself. But the question is not whether America can accept the truth that democracy is not a product, not the new “new thing” that everybody has to have right now, but whether under the sheer weight of itself, it can still empower other nations, whether it can retain its imagination and drive, its own harraga spirit.
The “clandestine” immigrants moving through the Maghreb into southern Europe these days are often referred to as harraga. The word, sometimes meaning “adventurers” is Arabic slang thrown on refugees from all over Africa. In that sense, harraga are the bone and blood barometer of economic weather from Darfur to Abidjan and from Cape Town to towns all along the southern lip of the Mediterranean.
The harraga moving through Morocco from the sub-Sahara can be divided into two groups--poorer and poorest. Those with some cash may share a grand taxi up the N1 to hidden refuges in the hills around Tangier, where they wait to make a connection and catch a patera, one of the zodiacs which, depending upon moon and tides, ferry 40 people or more up to Spain. Lately, people have been stopping far to the south in Morocco, around Tarfaya, and catching the pateras that scurry over to the Canary Islands. It’s a highly dangerous trip.
Other “clandestines” riding up the Moroccan coast attach themselves to vehicles however they can find. There are stories of young men riding on top of trains or in the undercarriages of busses, or lying on cardboard strips atop truck engines. The less daring, and with fewer resources, turn east at Bou-lzakarn and follow the N12, riding and walking, getting a hitch from one marché to another, skirting the desert up to the Ziz River, then north through Erfoud and Missour. Or else they cross over into Algeria, going up to Bechar, and then due north to Oujda. Whichever way they come along this inland route, the goal is to reach the camps in the hills around Melilla, where the “clandestines” make periodic attempts to scramble up crude ladders and hop over the high fences around the town.
From time to time these camps are raided. Government police make a show: burn shacks and belongings, round up who they can, truck them to the Algerian border and dump them off. Most return to Morocco, forever unwilling to give up their journey and oblivious to the increasing political pressure Southern Europe is putting on the Maghreb to keep a lid on Africa’s cauldron of unemployed.
Nowhere is the political pressure greater, or more laden with financial rewards, than along the Tunisian and Libyan coastline, where every month thousands of migrants try to jump to Southern Europe. The destination is often Italy’s fingertip, Lampedusa, a nearly treeless, rocky island 200 kilometers south of Sicily and 150 kilometers north of Tunisia . Every few days, boats limp into the harbor at Lampedusa, and repatriation begins. But just as often the boats don’t make it. Last October 5th, for example, 70 Moroccans and five Tunisians were just a few hours off the Tunisian coast, off the town of Chott Meriem, 170 km south-east of Tunis, when their boat broke up. Eleven migrants survived. Twenty-eight bodies were recovered.
According to NGO officials, the bodies, which were not identified, were buried in Tunisia. Approximately 150 Moroccans waiting to follow the first boat were arrested and deported to Morocco where they were jailed. The incident was particularly tragic because the dead included at least 50 young men from a small village 140 kilometers east of Casablanca, on the Plateau des Phosphates, called El Foqra.
*
To reach El Foqra, you go through Khouribga, a city of 500,000, and best known for a 60-million-year-old phosphate deposit, a geological palace known as Oulad Abdoun. It’s this deposit, run by the government, the Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), which makes Morocco one of the three leading sources of exportable phosphate ore in the world. You drive south through the town, past the Hotel Farah, where mining executives and foreign contractors sip wine by the pool, through downtown and under the railroad tracks carrying 60-car phosphate trains that leave for the coast every half hour, around the clock, year after year; past the Quartier Riad, where young men, eyes blazing, arms flying, insist the local unemployment rate is 80 percent (Government and NGO sources say it’s closer to 30 percent).
“What can we do?” the men say, pointing out they have this degree or that. “There are no options here.”
“What about moving to another city?” you ask.
“It’s like this everywhere,” they say. “The whole country, and the more educated you are, the harder it is to find work, especially if you don’t have connections. Without that, you’re nothing.”
You keep going, through the elegant old neighborhoods built for French bureaucrats during the “French period,” which reached it peak in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, past the ragged outskirts of town, marked by unfinished buildings and in the distance, phosphate pyramids known as “overburdens”; past the sound of blasting, past even the smell of phosphate, which permeates the city on breezy afternoons; past the vast city dump that lines the road for miles, the land dotted with grocery-sized blue, white and black plastic bags, like so many balloons. Keep going past all that and the land becomes neat and clean, and quiet again. The desert resumes and the earth rolls and dips languorously.
After a few more minutes you come to a sign that reads El Foqra, which means the Noble or “the Great”. It’s the name of a local tribe and also the name of a village, although none is in sight. But over the rise, thrown out on the landscape, there’s a house on a ridge to the left and then another and a quarter mile further on, another house on the right. Occasionally, a rectangular-shaped water tower stands jagged and awkward. A tree here, there. Small children fly over the rocks. Keep going and you’ll pass a three-walled building on the side of the road, fruit and vegetables all neatly laid out. But before you get there you come to the center of town--a well and a few buildings close together.
El Foqra has perhaps 5,000 people. The place is neither rich nor poor, relatively speaking, but jobs are rare and nearly every young person who hasn’t left seems to want to leave. One would think that the phosphate mines would provide adequate jobs, but many of the approximately 20,000 people who do the strip mining come from other parts of the country. When the French ran the mines, they mistrusted unions and brought in workers who had no local ties and were more dependent upon the company. That policy stopped when the Moroccan government took over; but in recent years, most of the jobs go to people from other regions because unemployment has become such a problem countrywide.
Late last summer, hope arrived in El Foqra. Someone, although it’s not quite clear who, spread word that the time was right to get to Italy. The plan was to fly to Tunis and catch a boat to Lampedusa. Between September 10 and 25, 100 young men, mostly in their 20s (they have to be old enough to get a passport), left the village in groups and took flights to Tunis. In several families, three, four, even five brothers were lured away.
The government says the recruiters that came to El Foqra are al-muharribun—the mafia or “international operators.” Local people refer to them as harraga lords, but these are not conventional gang lords. They are simply individuals with extensive connections, some of which include smugglers of one thing or another. And so a friend of a friend may find you on the street in Khouribga one day and discreetly inquire whether you might be interested in going to Europe. You are interested, of course, because the only local job prospects are in the black market, which produces knick-knacks and toys for street venders and small stores in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. These micro economies provide urban subsistence, but not enough to attract a wife and start a family.
If you are undecided about whether to go, the harraga lord could add incentive: “Well, then perhaps your brothers might also be interested and, if they come, you’ll get a commission.” Word spreads. Men pay between 1,000 and 1,500 Euros for the trip. They get the money with difficulty, but perhaps with less and less difficulty as leaving has become more socially accepted. Fathers sell what they have on the promise that their sons will send back the family’s investment and more.
*
On the second floor of a local trade school and immigrant center, six days after the boat full of local harraga sank, Hicham Racttidi counts still again an envelope full of passport-sized photos. The young men in the photos all have calm, enigmatic expressions, neither smiling nor frowning. Parents and relatives have been bringing the photos to Racttidi ever since news spread of the sinking. The small room is crowded with older men--fathers and uncles. This is not a mother’s work..
Mr. Racttidi is the vice president of Amis & Familles des Victimes de L’Immigration Clandestine. He is an old-looking 33, tall and slender. He answers questions directly. He does not address the issue of hope. He says what he knows: Eleven people have survived, 30 bodies had been recovered and 34 are missing. The identification process has been slow. Government officials in both Tunisia and Morocco have no news.
The looming horror is that most of the dead and missing are all from El Foqra. Part of the evidence that links the men from El Foqra together is that fifty-one of the telephone calls made to relatives in the hours before the boat left all came from Soussa. One other call came from Nobel. These are seaside towns near where the boat left. That the young men have not called back is very unusual because the “Moroccan way” for refugees is that when you get to Europe, the first thing you do is get something to eat. The second is to call home.
Meanwhile, the men are eager to talk about their sons and nephews. One uncle recounts what a good student the boy is--everything is still in the present tense--how he loves mathematics above everything, and doesn’t smoke, doesn’t lie and has no girl friends. He’s very religious and at 24 everything he does is for his family. But then, says the uncle, not referring to his nephew, boys these days; they see the cars and the rich lifestyle of the people that return. They become “disoriented.” He himself has worked in the phosphate mines for 27 years. His vest, his work shirt, his undershirt, everything is browned with phosphate. And probably his lungs, adds Racttidi later.
“He’s very obedient,” says a father about his son. The man has blue eyes and a white baseball cap. The ends of his lips are turned down in a sour expression. “The boy never fights. He’s a pacifist. With two little girls. That’s why he went away to get the money for his family. I told him it was dangerous but he doesn’t see any other way.” And then the father tells the story of how his son, 29, last called at around 4 p.m. on Saturday, and how he talked to his wife and finally his children and when he talked to 4-year-old he cried. Mr. Racttidi explains to relatives that his organization is arranging a trip to Tunis on Sunday to match the photos with the bodies, and then get the bodies back as soon as possible.
But that will never happen. Mr. Racttidi will not go to Tunis; the bodies will not be identified or returned to Morocco. The whole affair will be treated as a delicate government matter and the NGOs that deal with migrants will not be allowed to participate.
*
While the press sometimes translates harraga to mean “adventurers,” the more precise and illuminating meaning comes from the infinitive form of the verb, harg, which means, “to burn.” In the context of immigration strictly from Morocco, harg has two connotations. Both have become pejorative. One connotation is to “burn bridges.” Harraga arrive in Europe as terrestrial aliens without identity. When they’re caught, or rescued, or their bodies recovered, they have no papers, not even clothing labels, nothing to clarify point of departure or origin. Before Europe shut its doors on legal immigration in the early 1990s, that ambiguity might have lead to political asylum. Now, no matter how heart-rending the tale of economic deprivation or government-sponsored torture, without absolute proof, a political “excuse” has little currency.
The other connotation of harg is “ to escape.” A companion word might also be lahrig, which means, “to avoid.” However, an appropriate English translation of harg might be “to skip” ahead or over. As in to skip out of your community and “make it” somewhere else, according to those who lament the trend. As in to skip the Moroccan credo that promises success if you’ll just work hard and be patient. (shortened sentence because repeated later)
As an aside, a college student from Casablanca told me that the harraga are hated wherever they go. “If you are Moroccan harraga in Southern Europe, they hate you; they treat you like dirt. But they need you because they can’t find their own people to work. People in Spain will tell you that the kids there are totally spoiled. But the way the Spanish look at Moroccans is much the way we look at people from the Sub Sahara coming here for work. Everyone is moving north to find their niche and looking for a higher rung on the ladder to look at others below them.”
In Khouribga, the desire to leave has become epidemic in recent years. Some people describe it as an obsession. The fever reaches its peak in summer when the whole town, especially “Little Italy,” is overrun with returning sons--all the new “winners,” wearing fine suits and driving new cars. Local girls are swept away and see these men as their own ticket out. Last summer there were something like 35 weddings a day in Khouribga.
“It happens like this,” Mr. Racttidi told me as we sat in his office that day after the relatives had left. “A 10-year-old boy sees his older brother having gone to school, but now without a job because the family has no connections. Without connections you have no chance in this society. But then he sees his cousin returning in the summer from Italy. He’s driving a brand new car; he spends money like it’s nothing and the boy thinks, ‘I want to be like my cousin.’ ”
Racttidi shakes his head at the idea. “People are not starving here. But society has become caught up in this cycle that you see in Europe and America. Fifty years ago a boy from a poor family would become a shepherd. There was no choice. ‘It is written,’ he would say to himself. Then it became, ‘I want.’ And now it’s become, ‘I need.’
“(shortened this graph which was repetitive) After three decades in which the message and the promise was to work and to study, the new message, the new Moroccan way of life, is just ‘find your way to Italy or Spain.’ ”
“Of course, this is not an easy process,” acknowledges Mr. Racttidi. “The families have very mixed feelings and often the father or the uncle will say, ‘This is too dangerous.’ But in the end everyone gives into this psychology.”
“What does the Koran say about immigration?” I asked.
“The Koran gives you two ways to look at this (if you are thinking about becoming an clandestine immigrant). It says if you are being persecuted in some way, psychically or mentally, you can leave your family or your village. But it also says you must not put your life at risk. Of course, now these young people aren’t being guided by the Koran. It’s what they see on television. That’s all they can think about. And now this city has become like a huge waiting room.” (graph tightened)
*
A few days after the tragedy in Tunis, in a café in Khouribga, I met Dr. Mustapha Scadi, a socialist member of Parliament from Khouribga. Dr. Scadi is a cardiologist and spent four years in Europe, himself. He says he well understands the motives of the immigrants, but doesn’t support their “obsession.”
“I came back because I prefer it here. After all, it’s your country; you have your family. But these young people don’t value these things anymore. Their dreams have betrayed them.” (graph tightened)
But then how do you keep young people from leaving, particularly when poverty is not the whole issue, but more this desire to taste materialism first hand? And how do you instill a sense of national loyalty, even obligation?
A prominent Moroccan educator told me privately that this is perhaps the greatest challenge the country faces: to teach the next generation, and from an early age, the value of giving back to the community. This generation, he said, is lost. He went on to say that universities need to impart a spirit of entrepreneurship and focus on empowering students. He added that Morocco’s educated are, in their own way, harraga. He pointed out that among those who have left the country is a project manager for NASA’s Mars program.
Recently, I met with some students at a local high school. Many are from the country’s elite. They were preparing to take SAT tests in Rabat and expect to go to college in the United States next year. I asked why they wanted to go to college. They smiled at such an absurd question.
“I want to help the family business and just live a nice life,” one boy replied.
But what about those that don’t have a nice life?
“The problem is too big; there’s nothing you can do?”
“Well then what about starting a company of your own? Or what about. . .”
The student cut me off.
“You can’t do that here. There’s too much corruption. You need connections to do anything. Why struggle against the system?”
No question that the packaging of American culture, and the Big Mac power of materialism itself, has drained the intellectual resources of developing countries. And for sure that depletes community strength and spirit. But if America’s interest in the world often seems ambiguous, grounded more in profit than progress, it still offers one great export--relentless optimism. It’s that old aw-shucks conviction that if you need to go to say, the moon, for whatever reason, good or bad, you can do it: you can imagine a way, work out the obstacles, sell it to somebody out there, and then get on a schedule, work like a dog, make some luck, pray to baseball, and one day you’ll be there.
Despite the mandate given George Bush for his second term, you could argue that America is becoming more mindful of its size in the world. It’s slowly becoming more aware of itself. But the question is not whether America can accept the truth that democracy is not a product, not the new “new thing” that everybody has to have right now, but whether under the sheer weight of itself, it can still empower other nations, whether it can retain its imagination and drive, its own harraga spirit.
Dec 24, 2004
Dec 23, 2004
The Disquieted Americans
http://macnamband.blogspot.com/2004/12/disquieted-americans.html
Kasbah du Toubkal.
Pastor Brown had mentioned the Kasbah some months ago. Imlil Valley is famous for many reasons, for all kinds of desire. Around Ramadan Morrocans come to a nearby holy site to restore their virility. Celebacy is cured. The kasbah is a top choice for romantic get aways according to Bride Magazine. It was used as a Tibetan Monastery in the film Kundoon.
The night closed in, the sky cleared, and we sat down to dinner. There were about 20 in the room. We sat across from an American couple. I'd seen him just before sundown. A large, middle aged man, with glasses. Walking up the cement path that runs around the ramparts. He wore a brown jalabah with the hood off. You could tell he was probably an American, he had that particular foreigness, and that childlike desire to adopt native dress. Then his wife appeared; slender, pale, dark hair, cut short, neat, controlled, easy to manage, efficient. She followed him up the stairs. He came slowly as though out of breath. They stood on one of the stone terraces looking up at the mountains, those kings with their manteaux hermines. A servent offered to photograph the couple. The man saw I was watching and smiled sheepishly, shook his head as though to say, you have no choice at moments like this. I smiled back.
We are an endearing people, I thought. Forever self-conscious.
At dinner, however, he was the other American. In command; on throne, on message, on top, in demand. He spoke above the others in the room. This was their second Christmas at the kasbah, he explained. We just love it here. God, she said nodding.
But why object to someone whose only crime is to be relentlessly center stage and terminably amicable. What is there not to like?
His proportion, I suppose, his presumption and preeminence. I didn't care about his take on Morocco. His silence would have drawn me. Anyway, I was looking forward to talking to my family, particularly to Marina. But he made his personality, his curiosity our common domaine. He started with Barbara who responded easily, one American to another. The exchange took up the room.
Rudely, I turned my back, to make it clear that his desire to find entertaining strangers was not mine. I had exchanged glances when we came to dinner. I felt no further obligation.
So what do you do here? He wanted to know. Every question he asked, his wife followed up, the cleaning woman, the detail person to flesh out the answer and insure give and take.
But you understand these were very nice people. Pleasant, curious, bred on just this kind of conversation.
Barbara was straight up and asked where they were from. Washington D.C. said his wife. And then Marina pinned them down to Dupont Circle. Well, where are you from? he said. San Francisco. Where I grew up, he said. Where in San Francisco? In the Mission District. Oh, I love that part of town. I'm from Presidio Heights, grew up, born and bred, went to Lowell High School.
And then I think, he said, Berkeley. Go Bears.
So now there was the matter of what do you do?
"We're teachers," said Barbara.
How interesting, they agreed.
And you?
I was with the previous administration.
Barbara assumed he meant the last democratic administration and said so in a clever way that always puts her in the game. If you want repartee, if you want clever conversation, she's your girl. Yes, in the previous administration, he went on, an undersecretary of good works. He listed the organizations, the connections, the contexts. Nothing like meeting good liberals outside America.
It is perhaps an exclusively American idea, what do you do? Not who are you? But what have you done with yourself. That's a sore subject for me just at the moment, and so perhaps one reason his inquiry seemed more like a chess game than a conversation. But truth be told, good liberals, progressives, don't do well together. I saw that often enough with TH. Cock size is nothing against the measure of good works, the sanctimony of making the world a better place, in a big way.
What do you do? It's also something I'm always searching for in other people, myself, but I hadn't heard the implication quite so clearly before. It was an interesting lesson I will never forget.
Then, eating his way through the field, he got to Marina.
I'm a student, she said.
Yes. Where?
New Haven, Marina replied, ever graciously. Although she knows these lines very well herself.
I thought, how many times have I heard that kind of exchange in my life. School as trump card. Place as multiplier. Occupation as mate. In this case, her knightess takes bishop. After all, how many colleges are there in New Haven?
This was the one square he couldn't capture directly so then he asked, 'oh do you know so and so?'
Marina shook her head.
And he mentioned other people as though in that quaint old way of Fitzgerald, isn't the world just the tiny little group of people and places we know and if you're anywhere in that world you must certainly know so and so.
It is a small world. I agree, stone. It's all true, but don't push it.
Dessert.
Outside, from a balcony, the moon in full bloom. My weaknesses all exposed. In the background, Dash in the dock talking about Kezar stadium, the Seahawks and Joe Montana.
Wow, could he throw a ball, couldn't he? said the American. How do you know about Joe Montana, you're too young, aren't you?
Dash can play. Not really, he said.
Kasbah du Toubkal.
Pastor Brown had mentioned the Kasbah some months ago. Imlil Valley is famous for many reasons, for all kinds of desire. Around Ramadan Morrocans come to a nearby holy site to restore their virility. Celebacy is cured. The kasbah is a top choice for romantic get aways according to Bride Magazine. It was used as a Tibetan Monastery in the film Kundoon.
The night closed in, the sky cleared, and we sat down to dinner. There were about 20 in the room. We sat across from an American couple. I'd seen him just before sundown. A large, middle aged man, with glasses. Walking up the cement path that runs around the ramparts. He wore a brown jalabah with the hood off. You could tell he was probably an American, he had that particular foreigness, and that childlike desire to adopt native dress. Then his wife appeared; slender, pale, dark hair, cut short, neat, controlled, easy to manage, efficient. She followed him up the stairs. He came slowly as though out of breath. They stood on one of the stone terraces looking up at the mountains, those kings with their manteaux hermines. A servent offered to photograph the couple. The man saw I was watching and smiled sheepishly, shook his head as though to say, you have no choice at moments like this. I smiled back.
We are an endearing people, I thought. Forever self-conscious.
At dinner, however, he was the other American. In command; on throne, on message, on top, in demand. He spoke above the others in the room. This was their second Christmas at the kasbah, he explained. We just love it here. God, she said nodding.
But why object to someone whose only crime is to be relentlessly center stage and terminably amicable. What is there not to like?
His proportion, I suppose, his presumption and preeminence. I didn't care about his take on Morocco. His silence would have drawn me. Anyway, I was looking forward to talking to my family, particularly to Marina. But he made his personality, his curiosity our common domaine. He started with Barbara who responded easily, one American to another. The exchange took up the room.
Rudely, I turned my back, to make it clear that his desire to find entertaining strangers was not mine. I had exchanged glances when we came to dinner. I felt no further obligation.
So what do you do here? He wanted to know. Every question he asked, his wife followed up, the cleaning woman, the detail person to flesh out the answer and insure give and take.
But you understand these were very nice people. Pleasant, curious, bred on just this kind of conversation.
Barbara was straight up and asked where they were from. Washington D.C. said his wife. And then Marina pinned them down to Dupont Circle. Well, where are you from? he said. San Francisco. Where I grew up, he said. Where in San Francisco? In the Mission District. Oh, I love that part of town. I'm from Presidio Heights, grew up, born and bred, went to Lowell High School.
And then I think, he said, Berkeley. Go Bears.
So now there was the matter of what do you do?
"We're teachers," said Barbara.
How interesting, they agreed.
And you?
I was with the previous administration.
Barbara assumed he meant the last democratic administration and said so in a clever way that always puts her in the game. If you want repartee, if you want clever conversation, she's your girl. Yes, in the previous administration, he went on, an undersecretary of good works. He listed the organizations, the connections, the contexts. Nothing like meeting good liberals outside America.
It is perhaps an exclusively American idea, what do you do? Not who are you? But what have you done with yourself. That's a sore subject for me just at the moment, and so perhaps one reason his inquiry seemed more like a chess game than a conversation. But truth be told, good liberals, progressives, don't do well together. I saw that often enough with TH. Cock size is nothing against the measure of good works, the sanctimony of making the world a better place, in a big way.
What do you do? It's also something I'm always searching for in other people, myself, but I hadn't heard the implication quite so clearly before. It was an interesting lesson I will never forget.
Then, eating his way through the field, he got to Marina.
I'm a student, she said.
Yes. Where?
New Haven, Marina replied, ever graciously. Although she knows these lines very well herself.
I thought, how many times have I heard that kind of exchange in my life. School as trump card. Place as multiplier. Occupation as mate. In this case, her knightess takes bishop. After all, how many colleges are there in New Haven?
This was the one square he couldn't capture directly so then he asked, 'oh do you know so and so?'
Marina shook her head.
And he mentioned other people as though in that quaint old way of Fitzgerald, isn't the world just the tiny little group of people and places we know and if you're anywhere in that world you must certainly know so and so.
It is a small world. I agree, stone. It's all true, but don't push it.
Dessert.
Outside, from a balcony, the moon in full bloom. My weaknesses all exposed. In the background, Dash in the dock talking about Kezar stadium, the Seahawks and Joe Montana.
Wow, could he throw a ball, couldn't he? said the American. How do you know about Joe Montana, you're too young, aren't you?
Dash can play. Not really, he said.
Dec 19, 2004
Meeting Mr. Kombo
Marina and I arrived at the French protestant church in Casablanca about 9:30. A mass was starting. Many clandestines and of course, David Brown, pastor and protector, was there. There were two clandestines as well. He introduced us to two Congolese (Brazzaville) journalists and advocates, Mr. Kombo and his associate, Mr. Bouithy. David's notion was that as journalists we might help each other.
We sat down. Mr. Kombo layed out the problem, which is that as Southern Europe is the object of desire for many Moroccans, Morocco is the object of desire for many Congolese. Particularly students.
According to Mr. Kombo there are more than 500 students and refugees in Casablanca and 35 more in Marrakech. And others in Tanger and Fez. Some number of these are clandestines, which is to say they came to the country illegally, to escape abuses real or imagined and end up in the hills around Tanger or Mellila. Or else they came legally, these are students, but have been unable to secure their cartes de sejours. Then there are the students at the end of their education who can't pay their tuition and so can't take their exams or receive their diplomas. And fnally, the students who come to do graduate work and again because they don't have enough money, fall into local ruin.
Some of these students get Congolese government money to study here, but bureaucratic systems at both ends have made the situation increasingly desperate. They can't open bank accounts or receive checks. They are endlessly threatened with expulsion, even if in school, and can't get regular jobs. They end up in tiny apartments, living as best they can on the black market economy that supports so many Moroccans.
Mr. Kombo patiently explained it all, Mr. Bouithy filled in the blanks. But what do you want? I asked.
How can we get American help? How can we get the attention of the American public?
You can't, I thought. You can't, you're dead. You'll have to find another way.
I suggested they skip trying to get the attention of the American public and approach the private sector. George Soros... Who knows?
But the most interesting part of the conversation came when they suggested their real motive, or dream is perhaps the better word: to establish a university in the Congo. What a dream they have. A large technical university where students could learn the IT trade. They have it clearly in mind.
How could you do it, we asked.
They outlined it how it would work and explained that you could not build it in Brazzaville because of the people who support such a project live in the north. They suggested it could be built near Pointe Noire. Near where the petrol companies are. They would certainly support it, wouldn't they?
And as we talked it seemed like such a small thing to do. Why Bill Gates could probably finance it at the drop of a hat, say a $2 million hat to start. Why not? It could serve people from all over the region, from Angola and Gaban and even the RDC. It could be an engine like Stanford and around it could grow a Silicon Valley. Why not? Everyone wants it, Mr. Kombo said, except perhaps certain ethnic and politcal groups, and actually it might be a trick to get the land and of course you would need to build an infrastructure as well....
He stopped. These are not big problems. Pas de problem.
After nearly two hours Marina and I disappeared into the streets of Casa. And later the more we talked about building the university, the more it occurred to us that it was anything but simple, that in the end, this is why no one wants to touch Africa, even though everyone agrees that the real solution is investment. If you want to keep the clandestines out of Europe, the French should be building factories in the Congo. And sure, someone, should build a university so students wouldn't have to leave... And it could all be done, if only there were the will and if only people would let it happen, would open the way.
But that doesn't happen easily in Africa, whether in Casa or in Brazzaville and so you are stuck with your stone.
We sat down. Mr. Kombo layed out the problem, which is that as Southern Europe is the object of desire for many Moroccans, Morocco is the object of desire for many Congolese. Particularly students.
According to Mr. Kombo there are more than 500 students and refugees in Casablanca and 35 more in Marrakech. And others in Tanger and Fez. Some number of these are clandestines, which is to say they came to the country illegally, to escape abuses real or imagined and end up in the hills around Tanger or Mellila. Or else they came legally, these are students, but have been unable to secure their cartes de sejours. Then there are the students at the end of their education who can't pay their tuition and so can't take their exams or receive their diplomas. And fnally, the students who come to do graduate work and again because they don't have enough money, fall into local ruin.
Some of these students get Congolese government money to study here, but bureaucratic systems at both ends have made the situation increasingly desperate. They can't open bank accounts or receive checks. They are endlessly threatened with expulsion, even if in school, and can't get regular jobs. They end up in tiny apartments, living as best they can on the black market economy that supports so many Moroccans.
Mr. Kombo patiently explained it all, Mr. Bouithy filled in the blanks. But what do you want? I asked.
How can we get American help? How can we get the attention of the American public?
You can't, I thought. You can't, you're dead. You'll have to find another way.
I suggested they skip trying to get the attention of the American public and approach the private sector. George Soros... Who knows?
But the most interesting part of the conversation came when they suggested their real motive, or dream is perhaps the better word: to establish a university in the Congo. What a dream they have. A large technical university where students could learn the IT trade. They have it clearly in mind.
How could you do it, we asked.
They outlined it how it would work and explained that you could not build it in Brazzaville because of the people who support such a project live in the north. They suggested it could be built near Pointe Noire. Near where the petrol companies are. They would certainly support it, wouldn't they?
And as we talked it seemed like such a small thing to do. Why Bill Gates could probably finance it at the drop of a hat, say a $2 million hat to start. Why not? It could serve people from all over the region, from Angola and Gaban and even the RDC. It could be an engine like Stanford and around it could grow a Silicon Valley. Why not? Everyone wants it, Mr. Kombo said, except perhaps certain ethnic and politcal groups, and actually it might be a trick to get the land and of course you would need to build an infrastructure as well....
He stopped. These are not big problems. Pas de problem.
After nearly two hours Marina and I disappeared into the streets of Casa. And later the more we talked about building the university, the more it occurred to us that it was anything but simple, that in the end, this is why no one wants to touch Africa, even though everyone agrees that the real solution is investment. If you want to keep the clandestines out of Europe, the French should be building factories in the Congo. And sure, someone, should build a university so students wouldn't have to leave... And it could all be done, if only there were the will and if only people would let it happen, would open the way.
But that doesn't happen easily in Africa, whether in Casa or in Brazzaville and so you are stuck with your stone.
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