Modern Morocco

There is a fourth Morocco, not mentioned at the beginning: it has no gardens, nor deserts, nor mountains, but modern buildings and streets full of traffic, like Casablanca; or swimming pools and busy hotels, like Agadir; or queues of emigrants boarding ships to pursue a myth called Europe, as happens on the jetties of Tangier. It is modern Morocco, independent again 40 years after the colonial interlude. In this Morocco, Casablanca is no longer the magic and ambiguous city that lent its name to a famous film of the past starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman; it is a metropolis of three and a half million inhabitants, growing amid sequins and problems, just like all the large cities of the world. There is to be found the largest mosque in Morocco, named after Hassan II, the King who sits today on the throne that was of Youssef the Austere, Ahmed the Refined and Moulay the Surly. Inaugurated in 1993, it is one of the wonders of Islam: it cost 534 million dollars, can hold 100,000 worshippers and has a minaret 656 feet high, from which a laser points 22 miles towards Mecca. There, in Casablanca more than elsewhere, is at stake the future of a country thousands of years old, rich in glory, art and culture.