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Morocco – the land and the people An Arab legend says that the Earth used to be great garden: leafy palm trees, fragrant jasmines and sweet nightingales that filled the green land with their song. At that time men were all honest and sincere, so much so that the word "lie" did not even exist. Then someone told one: a small, insignificant one; but it was enough to ruin that marvel. Allah gathered all together: "Every time that you tell a lie,"he said, "I will throw a grain of sand onto the world." The men shrugged their shoulders: "A grain? Who will see it?" No-one was concerned. Yet lie after lie, little by little the Sahara desert was formed: only here and there is there still the odd piece of that paradise that was, and this is because not all men tell lies. Who knows whether the inhabitants of Morocco are to be believed? According to the legend, some are, and some are not; their land is one third garden and one third desert: a sign that Allah has thrown down a good deal of sand, though not for everyone. As for the last third, that is all mountainous and should be considered neutral, because the story does not speak of it. The Morocco of gardens is to the north-west: there are trees, vineyards and sumptuous towns. The desert stretches to the east and to the south, to the former Spanish Sahara, a still-disputed region, which in actual fact is not Morocco, or at least not for everyone. The mountains come last: to the extreme north is the Rif; then three central chains, very different from one other although their names are almost the same (Middle, High and Anti-Atlas). Gardens, deserts and mountains are very different worlds. Only a trick of history could have compelled them under the same flag, that green star on a red background that flutters everywhere, almost obsessively, in the traffic-congested streets of Casablanca and on the summit of Toubkal, the roof of the High Atlas. But the bond between the three worlds ends there, as a glance at two places shows. The first is the Menara Garden in Marrakesh, where roses and cypress-trees stand at the edge of a delightful swimming pool, once a looking-glass for sultans and favourites. The other is the mouth of the Oued Draa, a river that struggles for miles through imposing and desolate dunes before dying exhausted, suffocated by the sand, a hundred yards from the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. What do the refined Menara and the untamed mouth of the Draa have in common? Nothing. Yet between these two extremes lies Morocco, land of flowers and sand, of storks and camels, of motorways and "blue people". |
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