“Casa Ain’t What It Used to Be!”

Casablanca, or ‘Casa’ as it is known in the trade, is nothing like one would expect. Every North American worth his salt has an image of Casablanca from the famous Humphrey Bogart film of the same name. The very name conjures up images of palm trees and smoky piano bars and narrow laneways leading to the souk or casbah. The reality is something entirely different. Casablanca is a modern, rather sterile metropolis of over one million people. It is a fairly bustling commercial centre and port. And it is also extremely prosaic, a city without charm. There is money here, but no taste. At my hotel, a twelve-storey slab of concrete, a giant black man dressed in some sort of period costume greets you at the door, a kind of Yago.

The biggest building in Casa is a concrete monstrosity called the Hassan II mosque. It juts out in to the Atlantic. It must be ten stories tall, and as wide and large as a football field. It was specifically built to be larger than St. Peter’s, but ends up being monumentally ugly. It is also a gigantic waste of money in a country where most of the people live in abject poverty. The neighborhood adjoining the mosque just happens to be one of the poorer parts of town. But then I look at my own religion, the Roman Catholic church, and I see the phenomenal expense that went into many of its buildings. In my native city of montreal, for instance, St. Joseph’s Oratory dominates the skyline on the north slope of Mount Royal. The difference here, though, is that the Ortory was paid for by donations from devout Catholics responding to an appeal by the charismatic Brother Andre, who was the inspiration for the shrine in the early part of the tentieth century.

Still, Morocco is a fascinating country, with so much going for it. The country is culturally diverse, with Arab and berber cultures dominating. It is said that King Hassan II holds the country together. One of the ways he does this is to maintain numerous royal palaces strategically placed around the country. In the manner of Queen Elisabeth II, he manages to spend a certain amount of time in each of them at various times of the year. The monarch seems to be quite popular, although it is hard to tell since the secret police are so omnipresent that few people are prepared to say what they really think. Photos of King Hassan II are everywhere. Everything you do is supposed to remind you of The Boss. If you walk into a cafe, for instance, behind the counter there will be a photo of His Royal Highness sitting in a cafe.

Dissension is quickly suppressed. The family of one opposition leader who dared challenge the King’s supremacy has been mercilessly persecuted for many years. The issue of Western Sahara has been used for decades as a rallying point for nationalist fervour, starting with the famous Green March of 1975, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary people marched through the Sahara in support of Morocco’s claim to this stretch of land to the south, which had been a Spanish colony. Public dissatisfaction with the current political regime has grown in recent years, however, partly in response to rampant corruption, and partly because of the desparate plight of large segments of the population, who feels disenfranchised.

Secularism survives in Morocco. There is a growing movement dedicated towards Islamicisation, but most people desparately want to avoid the intolerable situation that has befallen neighboring Algeria, where civil war has cost at least 80,000 lives since 1992. On the other hand, the country’s once-sizeable Sephardic Jewish commuity has all but fled the country in the past twenty or thirty years.

Morocco would dearly love to join the European Union, but has been told to wait in line. It is just a hop, skip and a jump across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain, and feels linked to southern Europe via the Mediterranean. Spain and Portugal in particular are fearful of competition with their own economies, agriculture in particular, and what would happen if Morocco joined. They and other European members also fear an invasion of cheap labour from the south. Moroccans are a very proud people. They are conscious of the fact that their culture once dominated the whole region, including Spain, lending credence to Charlemagne’s old saw that “L’Afrique commence au Pyrenees”. Spain’s fll to the Moors in 1492 ( check) is what led to Columbus’s sailing across the Atlantic that same year.

Many Moroccans you meet, particularly the Berbers, are so light-skinned as to look like Europeans. I once knew a brilliant, radical international lawyer named Bedjaoui of whom it was said that he powdered his face every morning to make him look as western as possible. This in spite of his left-wing, third world rhetoric. In a way, Moroccans are more French than the French themselves. The intellectuals and high-ranking civil servants in particular can be unbelievably pedantic. They will engage in the most erudite philosophical arguments, adopting the most Jesuitical of positions. On a theoretical level their positions are flawless. On a practical plane, unfortunately, there is nothing but a vacant lot. I have seen this time and time again with the Moroccans. There is an abstract, Caresian logic to everything. A problem does not exist because it cannot exist. They may have the most elaborate plans. But when it comes to practical matters, they fall flat on their faces. Take foreign fishing, for example. This was the subject of our mission to Casa. Allegedly there were hundreds of pirate French fishing boats in the Moroccan exclusive economic zone. And yet the Moroccan navy, which is responsible for controlling fishing activity, made lengthy presentations about how well their patrols worked. They may have worked well on paper, but on the ground they were useless.

Morocco is a visually stunning country. The light is spectacular: everything seems to have nice, pastel hue to it. Flying from Europe to West Africa, the lovely Atlas mountains are visible from the plane, with their snow-capped peaks and seasonal skiing. The Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts both beckon tourists. Then there is the capital, Rabat, with its old ruins, university, and rich new quarter. Medieval cities such as Fez and Meknes and Marrakech. Even Casa has its souk, where you can haggle for leather goods and antique brass plates. Above all, for my liking, there is a neat little city named Mohamedia.

Mohamedia is one of those places the tourist guide books do not even bother with. I went to Mohamedia because even though I was only in Casablanca for one week, I as desperate for something to do. So, one fine day I went to the train station and took the first train south, getting off at the first major stop en route. I fell in love with the place immediately. I have always liked small to medium-sized cities, and especially ones that offer a variety of attractions. Mohamedia has it all: a refinery, a fishing port, a lovely beach where teenage boys played soccer at low tide, some beautiful parks where, a Catholic Church where I went to Easter Sunday Mass, and of course a mosque where the muezzin calls Moslems to prayer five times a day. The whole place seemed to be thriving, and in such harmony.

I met a couple of very interesting Moroccan students in the park just across from the train station in Mohamedia. Everybody seemed so happy in that park. Mothers sat on the grass as their children played together. Old men sitting on a bench engaged in quiet conversation. A teenage boy and girl sat at opposite ends of another bench, reading. I plunked myself down in the middle. They seemed quite immersed in their books, but I decided to disturb them anyway. I was desparate to talk to some locals. It turned out the young man was studying for exams. In a few months he was going to Germany to study physics. The girl at the other end of the bench was also a student. She was very shy, and had a lovely smile. We talked about Christianity and Islam, and it struck me that there was not all that much between the two religions. Islam teaches one to serve others, to be tolerant, to renounce materialism, to pray five times a day, and to practice chastity.

If Morocco does not watch out, militant Islam will take over when Hassan II dies. Islam fluorishes where governments fail to deal with the social and economic needs of the citizenry. Thus, in generally pro-western countries such as Turkey and Egypt, where there are tremendous disparaties between rich and poor, Islamic militants fill a void. They start organising communities, providing food, medical help and financial assistance to the poor. Who can argue against that. They are gradually casting aside the ‘inshala’ attitude which holds them back; this is the notion that something will happen only if god wills it. The problems start when Islamists hijack the religion and turn it into a fanatical parody of its former self. This happens when they start to treat women like chattel, or when they cast aside tolerance.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, Christianity has been almost completely corrupted by secularism in the West: selfishness, an obsession with material things and lust have twisted it into something virtually unrecognisable. Somehow we have come to believe that material wealth is the key to happiness. We in the West, have a ‘can do’ attitude; by and large people believe that things can get better, and that any adversity can eventually be overcome. We believe in the inexorable advance of technology and of progress. Thus, there would seem to be plenty of scope for the two cultures to learn from each other. Hopefully, a healthy respect for these two great religions will lead to a rapprochement rather than a battlefront confrontation.

If rapid population growth can be contained, and social inequities can be attenuated, Morocco holds a lot of promise in terms of development. It is one of the most developed countries in Africa. It is also a gateway to Africa, a bridge between North America, Western Europe and black Africa. It does not have much oil or gas, but it is the world’s largest producer of phosphates. The agricultural sector is strong. The offshore fishery is rich and varied, with a number of high value species. There is a fairly large educated middle class. King Hassan II is close to west; but like Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran, he might be a little too close for comfort. During the Gulf war, for example, Morocco sided with the west, even though this cost the king much support within the Arab world. Domestically, however, dissent is not really tolerated. This is, in fact, a big police state; no one dares criticise the King in public. Students at the university in Rabat were on strike when I was there.

One of the things that struck me most about Morocco was the gentleness of the people. Sure, Casa had more than its fair share of bothersome hawkers beseeching me to buy an imitation Rolex. And yes, the customs officer who looked at my passport and said “Canada no good, Morocco number one!” was being a tad too jingoistic for my liking. But there is something about the country that one cannot help but appreciate. The Moroccans I met, whether in official meetings or on the street or even on the train, were extremely courteous and friendly. They are not loud and aggressive. They also happened to like Canada, partly because we give them a lot of aid, and partly because of the French connection, but also, I think, because we are both countries at the margins. We have roughly the same population, and many Moroccans I met had relatives in Canada or had studied there themselves. I have never quite figured out what it is that makes you feel relaxed and at ease in some countries as opposed to others. But for me, Morocco had that special, precious feeling. It is one of those countries I would very much like to return to some day, to get to know better, to explore and enjoy.