The Balance

Because I indulge in nostalgia when I pass the mid-point of any given activity, my long, slow approach toward departing Morocco has brought with it a certain amount of regret. Regret for all of the things I did not accomplish, get to see, do, or write about. This nostalgia seems a bit like Rent-a-Center purchasing on loan. Rather than having an experience, or a product, to oneself outright, the nostalgia, or interest, sets in part way to full ownership and replaces the present with a sense of unattainable distance, one that prolongs the experience into the future, but in a strangely refracted way. (This might be where the analogy breaks down: I’m not sure how appliance leasing can be “strangely refracted.”)

I have also been anticipating my departure for a month now, maybe more, not because I’ve been itching to leave Morocco, but more because I’ve been playing and replaying the logistics of leaving, anticipating the things and places I will manage to see and do, so that I’m prepared for those that I have to leave behind. This anticipation acts a bit more like compounding interest, I've found, self-multiplying with time and spiraling out of control. After leaving, however, this nostalgia might be more like an unsubsidized college loan whose slowly diminishing balance one accepts for the rest of one’s life.

Being in Morocco is clearly not like repaying a loan, however, and for that I figure that I’d rather engage with leaving by describing what I have not done, as a way of giving shape to, or estimating the value of the repayment I might look forward to making:

- I did not get to Khenifra, a city centrally-located in the Middle Atlas mountains which I fatefully passed through without disembarking while on my way to Beni Mellal. A fellow in Ifrane, when I told him I might go to Khenifra, smiled and winked at me everytime I saw him thereafter, insinuating that people (men) only go to Khenifra for the prostitutes. I still think that there are things to see there besides.

- I did not interview any members of Al Adl wal Ihssan, an Islamist social movement led by an ailing 70-something cheikh. While much attention is given to the Parti de la Justice et du Developpement, Al Adl wal Ihssan probably has a much larger, if unofficial, membership. In many ways, less is written about Al Adl wal Ihssan simply because much of it is forced to operate underground. Meetings and press conferences are often broken up by security forces before they begin, and the group is excluded from forming a political party, less for its potential to carry out terrorist acts – among the group’s central principles is pacifism – and more for its populist rhetoric that directly denounces the monarchy and the wealthy classes. It’s potential for substantially changing Moroccan society is probably much greater than any political party, which have all been co-opted to different degrees by the monarchy.

- I did not get to any of the local springs surrounding Fes – Moulay Yacoub, Aïn Allah, Sidi Harazem – which have spa-like open-air baths and, in the case of Sidi Harazem, water that’s supposed to be good for your health. I really have no excuse for why I didn’t get to any of these.

- I did not get back to Khouribga, where I would have liked to interview people there affected by immigration (which is just about everyone), but especially men who had been deported from Italy. Plus, l’Olympique Club de Khouribga just won Morocco’s domestic soccer league for the first time in its history, and I would have liked to feel the afterglow.

- I did not go to see a movie in a theater. I saw a film sponsored by the French Institute that was projected in a lovely old riad in the medina, but I did not find the opportunity to compare a true movie theater in Fes with my experience six years ago of watching the four-hour Bollywood “epic” Mohabbetein with a hundred-plus hormonally-charged young men in Rabat. This oversight can be attributed to the fact that, by my entirely incomplete count, I have seen almost as many shuttered movie theaters (3) in Fes as I have seen still in operation (4). And most of those still showing films generally look half a paint job and one fallen poster away from joining the ranks of the shuttered. The is typical of all Morocco, where there remain fewer than a hundred operative movie theaters across the whole county, on account of the availability of cheap, pirated DVD's streetside.

- I did not get to Oujda where, as Le Monde Diplomatique recently reported, a community of sub-Saharan Africans has grown in and around the city’s university campus. Because Oujda is both the primary entry point for immigrants coming from West Africa via Algeria, and because it is the point of disembarkation for sub-Saharans deported by Moroccan authorities to the country’s border, there is now a permanent community of mostly transient people. People also supposedly travel long distances to Oujda to get cheap goods smuggled in from Algeria. All of this happens even thought Algeria’s border with Morocco has been closed since 1994. And yet, as a consequence of this closed border, many Oujdans have emigrated, or depend on those who have emigrated, to Europe.

- I did not get onto a university campus to interview any members of the highly politicized student unions. Perhaps because of rumors of occasional violence on the public campuses (a far cry from al-Akhawayn’s windowsill petting and preening), I was reticent to just drop by. Indeed, last month campuses around the country were the sight of fighting between Amazigh (Berber), Sahraoui and Marxist student groups that led to several deaths. Interestingly, the most powerful student union at present, associated with Al Adl wal Ihssan, was not involved in any of the altercations.

- I did not get to Aïn Cheggag, a suburb of Fes, which a cab driver once described to me as being “full of cats and goats.”

- I did not get to see a professional basketball game, even though Moghreb al-Fes is one of the more competitive teams in the first division.

- I did not get to Nador which is, depending on who you ask, either dangerous or simply seedy. Bordering Melilla, one of two Spanish enclaves located on the Moroccan mainland, a great deal of contraband passes through Nador. This includes human beings. Outside of Nador, sub-Saharan Africans have settled in the forest, from which they rush the wall fencing Melilla in. In 2005 Spanish and Moroccan security forces killed a number of sub-Saharan Africans who were rushing the wall that demarcates Europe.

- I did not eat hirr-bil, which my former host-mother ate at a picnic once and later described to me as cracked wheat that gets cooked for a long time. I still don’t have any sense of what that looks or tastes like.

- I did not get back to Salé, where I once dangled my legs from the medina wall looking out over the ocean. Its waterfront now the site of a great deal of construction, Salé sits across the river from Rabat and in many ways serves as the capital’s doppelgänger. Whereas Rabat has rapidly grown during and after colonialism, when it was first established as a political and administrative capital, Salé has an older, larger medina, and a longer history that involves pirates in some way. Today, it has a large industrial quarter and a poorer population. In my distorted imagination, all the secular, government functionaries live in Rabat, while the Islamists all live in Salé.

- I did not buy an R4. They’re supposed to be able to handle all kinds of road conditions thanks to the raised rear axle.