Al-Maghreb Al-Aqsa

The travel narrative is the most accommodating of genres – if it is a genre. It can accommodate almost every mode of style, from the epic to the textbook ... Those who make journeys and write them up can stuff just about anything they happen to know – history, folklore, literary criticism, architecture, art, biography, anthropology, natural history, politics, even gastronomy – into the commodious duffel bag of the travel book; and we, the readers, usually follow along gullibly, swallowing all this lore, in the childish hope of eventually finding out where the road goes and what happens along it or beside it.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Larry McMurtry.

Casablanca

It is World War II in Casablanca. Cynically neutral Rick Blaine, former American and former freedom fighter, runs a speakeasy in town. With the fall of France, Gestapo Major Heinrich Strasser arrives in Casablanca, and the sycophantic Vichy police chief Captain Renault does what he can to please his new master, including detaining Czech underground fighter Victor Laszlo. The Moroccans in the movie are faceless, the story could have been placed in Sarajevo without too much editing. Much to Rick's surprise and bitterness, his one time love Ilsa, who ran away from him in Paris, is now with Laszlo; he agrees to help her escape with her lover ... Renault is immediately suspicious, and stops by to interrogate Rick. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘I came to Casablanca for the waters.’ ‘What waters? We’re in the middle of a desert!’ ‘I was misinformed’ ... In the closing scene at Casablanca airport, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) shoots Strasser (Conrad Veidt) who is calling for help to stop the aircraft in which Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and Laszlo (Paul Heinreid) are about to fly off. A van-load of gendarmes soon arrives at full pelt, but Renault (Claude Rains), the honneur of France finally getting the better of him, calmly orders, ‘Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects.’ A classic, a cliché.

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*

Once again, I am waiting at a station in the middle of the night; this time, it is outside the Mohammed V Airport at Casablanca. The runways in the movie must have been on a Burbank set, for in reality there is a good hour on board a clanking carriage between the neon of the terminals and the dim lights of town. Both the bogies which make up this airport train are dark, and moonlight bathes the gentle contours of sand hills outside, here some trees, there a tangle of bidonvilles. Apart from me, there are a couple of chain-smoking young men – airport workers returning home -- stretched out on the seats. None of the other scattered passengers of my near-empty Royal Air Maroc flight from London seem to have bothered waiting for this last train.

The station, when it finally comes, is dark too. The train stops, suddenly there are swinging lamps and shouts in the night. In the confusion, I barely have the time to get off before the clanking train lumbers away. I soon find out this is Casa-Voyageurs, a satellite station four miles east of town, and that I should have waited for Casa-Port, where the hotels are.

Outside, in the dimly lit station square, there is still a little bustle left. As I step out, a large jalopy drives up and a burly man in skullcap and djellaba pokes his head out. Taxi? I get in, but almost before I have closed the door, a smaller black-and-yellow cab races across the station square and rams into the door, almost taking my arm off in the process. The two drivers leap out. It seems that the one I was about to patronize was a moonlighter, and not a proper taxi, and that the other cab had waited in the ranks for hours for a fare ... Leaving them to their altercation, I walk away and get into a minibus to Port.

*

I am in Morocco to see, and perhaps cross, the Western Sahara. Throughout history, there have been but a handful of land routes connecting the Mediterranean coast to western Africa. In the east, there is the Route du Hoggar, which runs almost straight south from Algiers, passing between the two Grand Ergs, turning towards the Hoggar Mountains and Tamanrasset beyond them them, leading into Niger. The next crossing – historically the Route du Tenezdrouft -- is 500 kms to the west: via Reggane and Borj Mukhtar into Mali. Another 1000 kms and you have the Route du Mauritanie connecting Beni Ounif to Tindouf and leading to Mauritania. These routes are hardscrabble at the best of times – long unpaved stretches, lack of water, sandstorms and alleged Tuareg banditry; with the political turmoil in Algeria and gruesome media reports of violence against foreigners, they prove to be easy to postpone for future trips. That leaves the Coastal Route, from Marrakech over the Atlas towards Ouarzazate, skirting the western flank of the desert, along Dakhla into Noahdhibou and then south to Senegal. This is a fine route that can be followed to see some desert scenery and perhaps technically claim a Sahara crossing; the only small matter is that of land mines.

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In 1974, Spain decided to abandon its Western Sahara territory consisting of the provinces of Saguia al-Hamra and Rio de Oro, partitioning it between Morocco and Mauritania. With active encouragement from king Hassan II, 350000 Moroccan civilians walked in as part of the notorious Green March into Sahara. In 1979, Morocco annexed the Mauritanian part of the Western Sahara. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia Al-Hamra and Rio de Oro (Polisario), claiming to represent the desires of the indigenous tribes for independence, had been getting radicalized under the lingering Spanish rule. Training its sights on the Moroccans as the ‘new colonizers’, the Polisario ran a guerrilla warfare of sorts for more than a decade, mining all roads into Western Sahara, until their backers Algeria and Libya lost interest and reached separate ententes with Rabat. The UN stepped in with a cease-fire that has held for most of the 90s, but it is still difficult to cross from Morocco into Western Sahara and Mauritania. Moroccans issue travel permits in Dakhla, and once a month the army escorts civilian convoys across the minefields to Noahdhibou. My plan is to drive down the Sahara-facing slope of the Atlas (the anti-Atlas), and then hook up with one of these convoys at Dakhla. With relations between Morocco and Mauritania still not-quite convivial, you can apparently only go within a couple of miles of the border with the Moroccan Army; then, you have to cross over some sort of no-man’s land to the Mauritanian side, and seek the help of the authorities there to guide you across the rest of the minefields.

The garden-variety anti-personnel mines that are littered in parts of the south-western Sahara will blow off your legs and could kill you if you step on one, but are fairly safe to drive over: you could get away with no more than a ruined tire. There are some meaner, larger, anti-vehicle mines. I read a 1970s account of someone driving his Unimog over a powerful mine near Nouadhibou. The heavy vehicle was completely destroyed, but the occupants lived. Apparently, every year, a few Sahara travelers set off mines; while the easiest way to avoid setting off a mine is to avoid known minefields altogether, the next best is to hire someone as guide, in my case the Moroccan Army.

Where are the mines? Starting from the west, the lateral border between Morocco and Mauritania is mined, though by now everyone knows the risks of leaving the piste or mis-calibrating the GPS when crossing south. The first Mauritanian checkpoint, they say, has a mass of tracks and there are no warning signs -- in 1998 a Land Rover apparently hit a mine just a couple of meters from existing vehicle tracks with one fatality. There are certainly mines alongside the Laayoune - Bir Mogrein road leading to the northwestern corner of Mauritania; a truck from the Paris-Dakar rally caught one a couple of years ago. Elsewhere in Mauritania, areas east and south of Ouadane are also said to be mined; there are said to be mines north of the crater near the El Beyyid well and rock paintings. There are also mines between Algeria and Morocco in the Hammada du Drâa region between Tindouf and Bechar, though no regular trails cross this area, to protect access to the Polisario refugee camps in the Hammada. Mali is thought to be mine-free, as is Algeria. In Niger, it was reported in 1997 that Tuareg rebels were laying mines in the Djado Kaouar region.

*

I step out in the crisp winter Casablanca morning, the roads not yet loud with carts and petit-taxis. I’m on my way to see the Hassan II mosque. In 1195, the Almohad sultan Yakub Al-Mansur embarked on building the largest minaret in the world. It was intended to be 60 metres high and 20 metres wide at the base, but was abandoned after the Sultan’s death, having reached some two-thirds its intended size. This is called La Tour Hassan, and it still stands in Rabat, a crumbling testimony to a long-dead Moor’s grand plans. Eight centuries later, the present king Hassan II (1) commissioned another project to build a grand minaret. Construction was started in 1987 and completed in 1993, at the cost of nearly a billion dollars. It is a people’s monument – a special ‘mosque tax’ was levied on all Moroccans to finance the project – and can hold 100,000 worshippers during namaaz. The roof of the central hall can swing open, to reveal the heavens to the assembly. The minaret, at 200-plus meters, is the tallest in the world; at night, a green laser light points out the direction to Mecca. There is some magnificent Gueliz tile-work on the walls of the mosque in a huge non-repeating pattern, but other than that the effect is somewhat akin to a Walt Disney movie set of the Arabian Nights. The mosque occupies a large acreage right on the water’s edge along the Atlantic, but there is not a single tree on the grounds – the entire plot has been overlaid with beige stone, and looks like a giant  hotel lobby, not a blade of grass peeks out. As the sun climbs, I wander around on this rapidly heating floor, the sun glittering off the polished tiles, and think of the understated majesty of the Mughal domes in India, at peace with themselves in their cool gardens.

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Berbers & Moors

Later in the day, I go to the rental agency at Place des Nations Unies to collect the Mitsubishi 4x4 that will bear me south. It is possible to cross the Sahara without 4-wheel drive, but once you come into the sand, it is better to have one. A good 4x4 is able to pull one through most cases without one having to resort to digging; in most cases, if you get stuck, you can drag yourself out, centimeter by centimeter, with the low 4x4 gear. For dealing with harder situations, the vehicle comes with a winch, which can be used with an anchor buried in the sand to help in extraction. Finally, if all else fails, there are sand ladders and spades -- you dig into the sand and place sand ladders under the wheels of your vehicle to get a hard surface to drive on.

The streets are full, and while the agency downs its shutters for namaaz I stand and watch a river of people flow by.

If India can be thought of as having an Aryan north and Dravidian south, the simple way to think of ethnicity in Morocco is in terms of an Arab north and Berber south.

In prehistory (around 15000 BC), a mysterious tribe of Neolithic people appeared in the Capsa (Qafsah) region of Tunisia. The indigenous inhabitants of the southern Mediterranean coast intermingled with the invaders in a process that brought Neolithic ways of life to North Africa. The Berbers of Morocco are the descendants of this Capsian culture.

For 14000 years, they slowly developed a nomadic, pastoral culture with distinct tribes, migration patterns, languages -- gradually expanding southwards and pushing the Negroid peoples to sub-Sahara.

As Carthage, Greece, Rome and Byzantium rose in the northern and eastern Mediterranean, the Berbers were successively colonized or became tributaries of the dominant culture. In 622 A.D., a Qurayshi trader claiming receipt of divine revelation in distant Arabia fled from Mecca to Medina to protect his flock from the wrath of ‘idolaters’ -- Islam was born. By 640, the green pennant flew over Egypt; by 669, over Tunisia; by 710, the armies of the Arab Musa bin Nusayr had allied with, converted or defeated all the Berber peoples of Morocco. While all the Berbers had been converted to Sunni Islam by the 11th century, and though there were legions of Berber troops in the Arab forces, the tribes of the Moroccan interior resisted Arab rule whenever possible; and, at various times, were able to maintain autonomous states, the most recent of which was established in the Rif region under French Colonial rule. So the north was gradually filled with Arabized Berbers who adopted the language, dress and culture of Arabia. The south – especially the mountainous regions of the Rif, Middle Atlas, High Atlas and Anti Atlas regions – became a stronghold of those who resisted Arabization.

Moroccan Berbers are divided into several tribes, which speak one of three principle dialects of the Berber language -- Rifi of the Rif; Tamazight of the Middle Atlas, the central High Atlas and the Sahara; and Tashilhit of the High Atlas and the Anti Atlas. In Algeria there is one main Berber dialect, called Amazigh. Out in the Sahara, a Berber language called Zénète is used. The sole remaining Berber language in Tunisia, called Chelha, is dying out in our times. These dialects all belong to the Hamito-Semitic family; the script is vaguely Punic. The Berbers call themselves the Imazighen – "men of noble origin." There are about 10 million Berber speakers (one third of the population) in Morocco.


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While there are similarities between all the Berber groups, particular lifestyles vary according to region. The basic Berber economy rests on a fine balance between farming and breeding cattle. Every tribe depends heavily on domestic animals for carrying heavy loads, milk and dairy products, meat, and hides or wool. Similarly, every tribe also relies on seasonal agriculture for survival. Around populated areas, they bring craftwork to markets. Weaving and pottery are the mainly done by women, whereas men specialize in woodworking, metalworking, and, surprisingly, needlework

Ibn Khaldûn narrates how the Berbers got their name in his monumental Kitab al-‘Ibar (Book of History). Ifriqus bin Qays bin Sayfi, of the royal line of the Tubba`s of Yemen who ruled around the time of Moses, raided the province of Ifriqiyya (the Arabic Africa was limited to modern Tunisia and Libya; south of ‘Misr’, provinces had their own names, such as Nubia, and were not considered part of Ifriqiyya), and caused a great slaughter amongst the nomads. When he heard them speak, he asked derisively what that barbarah noise was all about, and gave them the name Barbar, which has remained with them since. Carthaginians list three indigenous peoples – the Libyans, the Numidians and the Mauri, collectively called Barbarii -- around them. The term Mauri is also used by the Romans for the inhabitants of the Roman province of Mauretania (western Algeria and northeastern Morocco.) The Roman Mauretania is, of course, different from today’s Islamic Republic of Mauritania, though the inhabitants of the latter are sometimes called maure (Moor) in French.

*

So the name ‘Mauri’ gave rise to the word Moor – and this became a generic term used in Europe from the middle ages to describe not only Arab and Berber in the Maghreb, but also Muslim and African in general. Shakespeare’s Othello is negroid; while he is a great general and fearless fighter, he is also ‘thick-lipped’ and simple minded:

Iago: The Moor is of a free and open nature,
          That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
           And will as tenderly be led by the nose
           As asses are.

In Shakespeare's time, the Moors had largely been driven out or executed by the Inquisition. Since the Spanish were the demonized by the Elizabethans (the Spanish Armada sailed in 1588), the Moors were seen to be earlier victims of a common enemy – Shakespeare’s treatment of Othello as a sort of fish out of his racial water is typical of nostalgic regret admixed with sentimental stereotyping with which Elizabethan society regarded the Moors.

*

While Berber groups such as the Kabyles, Shawiya, Tuareg, are nominally Muslim, their observance of Islamic law is generally lax. Interestingly, the concept of baraka, or holiness, is highly developed amongst the Berbers. The Berbers believe that many people are endowed with baraka, of which the holiest are the Sharifs, the direct descendants of Mohammed. The marabouts form another class of holy men. Among some Berbers, the Tuaregs in particular, the marabouts are considered to be different from ordinary men -they are believed to possess the powers of protection and healing, even after death, and their shrines are carefully tended. It is also interesting, in view of the general acceptance of Islam, that almost all Berbers -- especially the Tuareg, prefer monogamous marriages.

In most of the Maghreb, Berber identity is considered to be a negative, largely because the pastoral Berber societies are less developed than what is seen in the cities. Almost all city-dwellers see themselves as Arabs -- Marrakech remains the only city with any Berber identity.

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