THE ROAD FROM MOROCCO Read online

  That was that… My father had known all along that the move to the new house was going to have consequences. Although appreciative of my uncle’s generosity, he was also ambivalent about its deeper significance. It was all crystal clear to him: The move and his brother-in-law’s financial support had rendered my mother bolder in her criticism; and her disenchantment grew more pronounced as his behavior remained pretty much unchanged. Her revolt first expressed itself in her resolution to bear no more children. She loved her kids, but four were more than she had bargained for, and she was determined to stop at that no matter what.

  The result of her first recourse to an abortion had been an unsightly scar on the inside of her right arm. And the near-loss of a limb should’ve once and for all put an end to thoughts of terminating any future pregnancy. It did not in the least. She got herself a more competent doctor and resorted to multiple successive abortions as a perfectly acceptable birth control method in her mind until the Pill finally became available in Morocco in the mid-sixties.

  That event single-handedly signified a new liberation for my mother as well as for millions of women around the world. She never again was going to be a slave to her body. A little oral contraceptive had empowered her in ways that only she could really appreciate.

  For my mother, the move to the new house had made her material existence easier and vastly more pleasant for her and her four children. The new maid, who also was a cook and a nanny, had been an invaluable help. But emotionally, my mother was not much happier.

  She had barely turned twenty-two when the sudden death of King Mohamed V in February 26, 1961, a little over five years after his return from exile, threw the whole country into massive mourning. The widespread sentiment not only echoed but also intensified her own outlook on a future full of uncertainty.

  3

  A Brave New World

  The new King, Hassan II, had been designated official heir to the Throne by his father after their return from exile, and in March 1961, he succeeded him without any problem. The peaceful political transition that took place, and the consolidation of executive powers behind the new king, reassured the Moroccan people and ushered in, what was hoped would be, a new era of stability for the country. The grief felt by the population was slowly replaced by a sentiment of expectation. And so was my mother’s disposition.

  Her brother Abderrahim, expanding his business in Rabat, was in search of dependable managers. He knew my father was a principled man who spoke excellent French and in need of better paying employ. So he offered him a managerial position in his store in Sidi Kacem, where he sold everything from hardware, to small agricultural equipment and tools, to school and office supplies, and other staples.

  My mother was delighted by the opportunity. My father was more hesitant, for although he had the need, he did not have the desire, for a different job. He was being asked to leave an undemanding and secure post as a government functionary, an occupation he had held forever and was comfortable with. And he would have to leave his circle of friends and close-knit family for an unknown town and unfamiliar environment. He was more than ambivalent, he was downright miserable.

  But my mother had the last word. She viewed this as her ticket to a new life, a chance to lead a lifestyle similar to the one her brothers had managed for themselves and their families, and she was not willing to listen to any argument to the contrary. The fact that her sister Fatma and her husband were living in the same town was also a big factor. Aunt Fatma was like a second mom to my mother, and then to me, whom she loved dearly and treated as the daughter she’d never had. And so it was that in the mid-summer of 1962 my family packed up and moved to Sidi Kacem.

  Sidi Kacem is the township’s Moroccan name, after a saint who is buried under a marabout on its outskirts. Founded in 1916, the town was first known as Petitjean, after a French army officer who helped “pacify” the country’s fierce warring tribes. Its population grew quickly with the influx of both French and Spanish settlers—known as the colons— fleeing the massive unemployment caused by the 1929 economic crisis in France and the political oppression under Franco in Spain. It grew further during the exodus of the neighboring French-Algerian pieds-noirs, disinclined to return to Metropolitan France after the country’s 1962 war of independence.

  The Europeans were first attracted to the region—known as the Gharb valley—for its fertile agricultural land. In later years, two other factors contributed to the growth of the town and its booming economy: the new train station and the country’s second largest oil refinery. So much so that even after Morocco’s independence, hundreds of thousands of Europeans elected to stay put. In fact the French continued to contribute manpower and know-how at every level of the economy, and overall relations with France remained cooperative and friendly.

  Hence, in the early 1960s, Sidi Kacem was still a pretty little French town with quaint, tree-lined streets and avenues speckled with welcoming sidewalk cafes, nicely kept houses with enclosed lawns and flower beds, and a wonderful elementary school. This was the perfect place to call home and raise a family.

  My eager young mother, and her reluctant husband, arrived with their four children in a town bustling with energy, and my uncle’s store was right at the center of the action. It was a large warehouse-like store with high ceilings and large glass windows located on one of the town’s busiest streets, right across form a big pharmacy and the best French bakery and ice cream parlor in town. In the back of the store stood the house, separated from it only by a large cemented courtyard.

  The house itself was not as charming as the one we had left in Meknes, but it was larger, functional, and equipped with all the modern facilities and appliances we had grown used to. Without a doubt, the best feature of the house was its garden. Although located on the side of the house with no open direct access from the rooms, it had a small summer pavilion at the far end of its main alley and a hedge of young fir and cypress trees bordering the wall that enclosed the property. Best of all, our house was situated at a reasonable walking distance from the primary school my siblings and I were going to be attending during our formative years.

  It was a beautiful sunny morning in the fall of 1962 when I apprehensively let go of my mother’s hand and stepped through the gate of my new school. It was the first day of the new semester, and a multitude of children were already gathered in the large courtyard. A few had joined groups of kids they seemed to know and with whom they were sharing anecdotes and laughter while others, stood idly by awaiting directives.

  My mother had helped me get dressed in the new pleated navy skirt and short sleeve white shirt she had bought for me a week earlier. She also made me wear the requisite long sleeved school smock that I thought spoiled the whole thing, since it hid my brand new outfit. But there was no way around it. My mother wanted to follow the school rules exactly as they had been laid out for them when she and my dad had registered me only two weeks before for the new school year.

  We had almost been turned down due to the lateness of our application, had it not been for my dad’s insistence and legitimate explanations. We had just moved to Sidi Kacem, and the school had been closed for the summer vacation. The principal had finally agreed and I officially accepted. I had no idea what to expect, of course, being the first in the family to attend a French school. My uncle had expressly urged my parents to enroll me in l’Ecole La Bruyère, which was part of la Mission Universitaire et Culturelle Française (MUCF). After its independence in 1956, Morocco signed a convention with France to continue providing educational assistance under the aegis of the MUCF because the country sorely lacked teachers and establishments. There simply was no other acceptable alternative in the township, especially for girls.

  I could still see my mother lingering outside and looking serious and proper in her brand new European suit—a light gray two-piece outfit cut close to the body, with the skirt reaching just below the knee. Her hair was pulled back in a neat bun and she was holding a small leat
her purse that matched her shoes. She actually looked a little too formal next to the other mothers standing on the sidewalk, but she definitely fit right in.

  This was not the first time she had dressed like a European woman. As soon as we arrived in Sidi Kacem, and to the consternation of my dad, she’d started wearing Western clothes when she ventured outside the house and in the store. Some of those were handed down from Abderrahim’s wife, among other things. And when her brother gave her some money on the side to buy her children new clothes and schoolbooks for me, she got herself a new suit as well.

  I was way too young and too nervous myself that day to read her emotions. But I can imagine what she might have felt watching me enter the brave new world of French education and culture. As she let go of my hand that morning with a mix of anxiety, trepidation, and hope, she may very well have wished in her heart that my destiny be forever set on a course toward a bright new future. She admitted to me, much later, that she had also vowed to herself that, for as long as she lived, my education would never be cut short by the altar of matrimony, not that I ever was in any danger of that happening to me.

  I was six years old when I started first grade, or CP, which stands for Cours Préparatoire, and when they called my name, distorting it in the way Westerners often do when reading transcribed Arabic names, I knew to follow the kids who had been called before me.

  Mme. Blanche, a plum, jovial woman with very short curly blond hair, welcomed the children in the classroom with a broad smile and friendly individual greetings. I was last in the queue, and I hesitated when she spoke to me. She was using foreign words that I could not comprehend, though her eyes were telling me it was alright. I just kept looking at her smiley green eyes, at once fascinated, speechless, and petrified.

  She gently took my hand in hers and led me to my seat. More than two-thirds of the children in the classroom were Europeans; all seemed to speak French fluently. I did not know a word of it and, in that instant, felt terribly lost and lonely. The whole morning I bravely tried to imitate what the other kids were doing and mostly kept to myself, trying very hard not to burst into tears.

  That first morning in school I still remember intensely. I ran into my mom’s arms when she finally picked me up for the customary noon-to-two lunch break, and I finally allowed myself to cry. During the walk back home, she held my hand and comforted me as best she could.

  “It’s all too normal to feel lost the first day, honey,” she reassured me, squeezing my hand tight.

  But her words did not achieve their purpose. I felt utterly desolate. I was still weeping when I got home and my dad greeted me with a question mark on his face.

  “What’s wrong, daughter?” he asked.

  “I don’t understand what they’re saying, baba. I don’t want to go back,” I managed between my tears. My dad looked intently at me, leaned over me, and said in a soft deliberate voice:

  “Wafa, listen… Listen to me. You will learn, and you will learn very well, and one day you will be as great as Dr. Bint el-Shati.”

  I don’t know why his words, at that very instant, had such an unforgettable effect on me, an effect that struck me deeply and has lingered in my soul, shining like a twinkle at the end of the darkest tunnels of my life.

  Later, I discovered who that person was: Dr Aisha Abdul-Rahman, 1913–1998, (pen name Bint el-Shati)—was Egypt’s leading female Islamic writer and scholar. She was the author of some forty books on the history and structure of Islamic scripture; literary criticism; a dozen novels and short story anthologies as well as hundreds of research papers and newspaper columns.

  Obviously, at that moment of distress, I had not the slightest idea of who that “doctor” could be, or what made her so great, and I really didn’t care then. It was not his words so much as his tone, which expressed his profound belief in me and acted like a shot of confidence and certainty in my subconscious mind. Just like that, my tears stopped flowing. I raised my eyes and looked right back at him. He held my wet face in his hands and nodded as if to confirm what he’d just said. Then he planted a small kiss on my forehead, turned on his heels, and left the room.

  After that day, I never again let myself fall apart in school. I completed that first year in CP with barely good enough results to enter 2nd grade. And even though I was kept back another year in that grade, I finished it the second time around, ranking at the top of my class, as I did nearly all following grades in elementary school after that.

  My father took the time many evenings during my first year to patiently help me learn to read and write the French language, going over all the words I had been introduced to in class. He made me repeat each syllable, working on its pronunciation carefully, and then guided my hand while I scribbled each word on a small black slate board with a piece of white chalk until I mastered it.

  That particular time created an indelible bond between my father and me, one that only grew deeper as he began to teach me his faith and strong moral values.

  He first told me the biblical stories about Abraham and Moses and Ramses and others, awakening in me a sense of wonder and awe. Then he taught me a couple of prayers and eventually how to use those prayers to pray the way Muslims do, by kneeling down and bending over, putting my forehead to the ground in complete submission to God. At no time did he make me feel compelled to practice a rite. He was just initiating me as a father was supposed to, expecting of course that I would become a good believer and a good Muslim, and above all a loving, moral, and tolerant human being, in his image.

  Yet, though my sense of morality, love, justice, and fairness grew strong, my religious conviction never came close to matching his, far from it. I believed in God and I wanted to please my dad, but I only prayed sporadically and on special occasions, not unlike the way my mother practiced the faith, rather casually, with periods of added seriousness during the holy month of Ramadan and other religious holidays.

  My mother was going through an awakening of her own. Upon her arrival in Sidi Kacem, she had noticed and applauded the way Western women were free to interact with men outside their homes; how they were educated enough to hold jobs as teachers, doctors, nurses, secretaries, and shopkeepers; how they seemed to be in control of their lives in ways she could never imagine her sisters could control theirs. And so she determined to change the course of her life.

  She began going to the store more often under the guise of lending a hand, especially taking over when my dad rested at home during his afternoon naps or when he left for one of his long weekends to Meknes or Moulay Driss. She slowly learned more French words as she struggled to communicate with the European customers; she even started taking a few French lessons. She then signed up for driving lessons, understanding that driving a car would give her new wings and the liberty to come and go as she pleased.

  My father did not oppose any of her decisions to acquire new skills, although he never encouraged her either. He must have felt threatened by her increasing independence and self-confidence; at the same time, I suspect he secretly admired her determination during those early years, occasionally even poking fun at her. He loved to relate, for instance, how she’d driven right on top of the sidewalk when she was learning to drive in reverse and how her instructor had told her in a stern tone that they would make sure to remove all the sidewalks in town when she got her permit.

  He can still recount that same story today, one of the few he can remember with fondness, and laugh merrily while telling it. Then one day, in October 1965, with a triumphal look on her face, my mother announced that she had just passed her road test and gotten her license.

  The next thing she insisted on was that my father buys a better car. He was earning a bigger income and enjoyed free housing, yet he still drove a very old Renault Dauphine, so called because it was viewed as “heir” to its commercially profitable predecessor, the Renault 4CV. When it was created in 1956, the Dauphine was a major success story for Renault. Princess Grace of Monaco herself was known to be dr
iving one in the early sixties. However, the Dauphine we owned was on its last legs and had already let us down on road trips. So my mother convinced him to get rid of it for a newer, though used, white Citroën DS-21, also known as a Déesse, or Goddess, thus called after its punning initials in French.

  The new DS signaled a most definite shift in our family standing within the community. Unlike the Dauphine, which was a small and economical four-wheeler, the Déesse was a classy car with a futuristic, aerodynamic body design, and an innovative technology with a hydro-pneumatic, self-leveling suspension system, putting it far ahead of its time for decades to come. My siblings and I could not get enough of that particular feature, which made the car rise several inches off the ground allowing for the smoothest ride on the roughest roads.

  At the wheel of the white Déesse, my mother looked positively glorious. She was in her mid-twenties and stunning with all the radiance and glow of youth; a young brunette Brigitte Bardot. She was watching her diet and had lost weight. She had mastered the art of applying make-up and styling her hair, and she dressed in fashionable and flattering Western clothes.

  She would go back to the traditional caftan when dressing up for weddings and other special occasions, and she looked like royalty when she did. For it’s a well-known fact in Morocco that no other style of dress can compare to the luxuriousness of the Moroccan caftans, which women of a certain standing wear in great pomp during every festive event. My mother was already totally in the know and the latest styles did not escape her.