Casablanca: La Grande Illusion

Published on May 27, 2014

SocietyEuromed Reporter

'Sidi Moumen...c'est grave, Mon­sieur', the pre­vi­ously cheer­ful taxi dri­ver gloomily in­tones above the noise of screech­ing tires, as if the pure men­tion of the in­fa­mous dis­trict was enough to burst our joy­ful bub­ble in the cramped Fiat Uno.

The place most Casablan­cans never go

De­spite mod­ern, shiny trams that glide in from the cen­tre, many Casablan­cans never ven­ture to the sprawl­ing outer dis­trict and re­gard it lit­tle bet­ter than a leper colony. But things are chang­ing: one of the Arab world's most am­bi­tious plans of poverty re­duc­tion and slum clear­ance is tak­ing place in Sidi Moumen. And why? Be­cause, to use the local par­lance, of 'what hap­pened'.

May 16, 2003. Din­ers feast on paella at the pop­u­lar down­town 'Cafe de Es­pana' as a man runs in and det­o­nates a bomb strapped to his chest. Four oth­ers were busy tar­get­ing other lo­ca­tions across the city in Mo­rocco's dead­liest ter­ror­ist at­tack in his­tory, killing 45 and in­jur­ing over 100. Ear­lier that morn­ing, all the young killers had left their homes in the slums of Sidi Moumen.

Turn­ing things around

The poor neigh­bour­hood be­came syn­ony­mous with ex­trem­ism but also brought an in­flux of so­cial pro­jects to the area, with Sidi Moumen Cul­tural Cen­tre stand­ing out like a bea­con. The giant in­con­gru­ous yel­low school bus out­side 'from Har­ris­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia' is just the first hint of the im­por­tance of out­side fund­ing for the first so­cial cen­tre of its kind in all Mo­rocco.

Cater­ing for over 300 local youth from the slum areas, the fa­cil­ity pro­vides lan­guage classes, a li­brary with 5,000 books, mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, com­put­ers, sports and a host of other other ac­tiv­i­ties. When I ar­rive, a tal­ent show is in progress, with chil­dren Djing, danc­ing and per­form­ing slam po­etry. At the front row sits founder Boubker Mazoz, a life­long com­mu­nity or­gan­iser and, with his sil­ver hair and thin mous­tache, a replica of Omar Sharif in Dr. Zhivago.

With seem­ingly end­less con­tacts around the world, Boubker is in a per­pet­ual state of fundrais­ing, in lieu of any state sup­port.

“Ba­si­cally I be­came a pro­fes­sional beg­gar.” Boubker grins. Be­hind him a book­case creaks under the weight of awards and ho­n­ours bear­ing his name.

“NGOs came, do­nated things, left and noth­ing changed. Even I used to come here and de­liver school satchels but they sold them all. So, I de­cided to stay.”

Many of the staff them­selves grew up in the chal­leng­ing area and un­der­stand only too well the value of re­main­ing in­side the com­mu­nity and lead­ing by ex­am­ple. The cen­tre's work has even in­spired sim­i­lar pro­jects in Casablanca's sis­ter city of Chicago.

De­spite gov­ern­ment claims of 'sig­nif­i­cant progress' in slum clear­ance, there are still an es­ti­mated 111, 500 fam­i­lies crammed into over 500 hun­dred shanty towns in Casablanca alone, haunt­ing the coun­try par­tic­u­larly in the wake of the Arab Spring, which failed to take root in the king­dom. If such a rev­o­lu­tion were to occur, places like Sidi Moumen would be the cru­cible, though much has changed since the bomb­ings.

"An ac­cu­mu­la­tion of frus­tra­tion"

“There is no rad­i­cal Islam here, there is in­jus­tice, poverty and mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion. A crim­i­nal is a rad­i­cal isn't he?” Boubker says. “When you have some­one that doesn't feel like a cit­i­zen, like noth­ing in their city is for them or their fam­ily, you have an ac­cu­mu­la­tion of frus­tra­tion. You don't break some­thing that be­longs to you.”

Ac­com­pa­nied by Mo­hammed Aaitouna from the cen­tre, and Mokhtar and Ab­der­ah­mane – two local se­cu­rity guards – we walk around the cor­ner be­fore being con­fronted with the Al Man­zah slum. Over­looked by five-storey apart­ments, fam­i­lies here are squeezed into a head-height rab­bit war­ren of wood and sheet metal. The path is at times so nar­row we are forced to walk sin­gle file, brush­ing past the oc­ca­sional vine over­head. An old man walks past with a don­key-pulled cart sell­ing bread; a small econ­omy op­er­ates here and some have me­nial jobs out­side. Many are un­em­ployed and il­lit­er­ate. In Al Man­zah, peo­ple's frailty is laid bare, and we weave through the camp briskly so as not to ruf­fle feath­ers. On the other side, fi­nally out in the open, past a moun­tain of garbage that seems to vi­brate with odour, kids pose for pho­tos like rap­pers and yell out to us as we de­part, 'bonne chance, mes amis!'

In the Ainfa dis­trict, Casablanca's 'Bev­er­ley Hills', clean, palm tree-lined streets show­case sump­tu­ous linen-white vil­las lead­ing to the Cor­niche. Here, by the crash­ing waves, tow­ers the Has­san II mosque, the sec­ond largest in the world after Mecca. Every Mo­roc­can cit­i­zen was forced to con­tribute fi­nan­cially to­wards its con­struc­tion, in­clud­ing the slum-dwellers dis­placed in the build­ing process. A few hun­dred me­tres along the shore, the fa­mil­iar mish­mash of tin roofs poke above a two metre white­washed wall that wraps around the 'bidonville' – a French colo­nial term for shanty town that sup­pos­edly orig­i­nated in Casablanca. Such sights are com­mon in the city, often re­ferred to as 'walls of shame', and may serve as a metaphor for so­ci­ety's at­ti­tude to­wards the bal­loon­ing mass of the urban des­ti­tute. Out of sight, out of mind.

But how about the hip­sters?

Some of Mo­rocco's wealthy night-owls, who writhe to deep house at chic seafront venues where bot­tles of Cham­pagne sell for nearly €1000 (in a coun­try with a GDP per capita of €2100, ac­cord­ing to the World Bank), take a Dar­win­ian ap­proach. A young en­tre­pre­neur sniffs:

“You need poor peo­ple, you need rich peo­ple – that's the con­di­tion for the sta­bil­ity of the coun­try. As long as the peo­ple don't die of star­va­tion, Mo­rocco is doing the right thing.”

As well as the biggest mosque and the largest slums in Africa, Casablanca also hosts the biggest shop­ping cen­tre in the con­ti­nent, ex­cit­ingly named 'Mo­rocco Mall'. In here, dresses come with €900 price tags and vis­i­tors can scuba dive with trop­i­cal fish in the aquar­ium. From a bal­cony of one of the ex­or­bi­tantly ex­pen­sive restau­rants, we spy a small is­land by the shore and ap­proach it.

Tooth­less old ladies sit on the bridge of the is­land bang­ing drums and play­ing Chaabi music, call­ing us 'voyeurs!' when we pass. After a small maze of al­leys and gloomy box-like shacks, we reach a rocky out­crop and the great ex­panse of the At­lantic. Fam­i­lies and cou­ples pose for pho­tos whilst goats and chick­ens mooch around a small pen. I naively think that the an­i­mals are here for chil­dren to play with. I am later in­formed that their slashed throats and spilt blood are a nec­es­sary part of the sac­ri­fice to Abdel Rah­man, a revered saint whose final rest­ing place is be­lieved to be here.

“They used to mock the sick that came here to be healed,” our Mo­roc­can jour­nal­ist col­league re­marks be­fore ges­tur­ing to the Mo­rocco Mall loom­ing like an ar­madillo's shell in the dis­tance, “but now they are the sick ones.”

This ar­ti­cle is part of the Eu­romed Re­porter pro­ject, con­ducted in part­ner­ship with I WATCH and Search For Com­mong Ground and sup­ported by the Foun­da­tion Anna Lindh.