Laila Lalami

The New York Times has a travel piece on Marrakesh, which I fear will result in even more tourists crowding the city. When we were there last spring, I saw a moronic British tourist sticking his ass out of one of the windows of the Ben Youssef Medersa. The floors of the seminary’s student rooms were damaged by all the activity, and one of the guides kept touching the exquisite plaster work in the inner courtyard with his bare hands. (The photo above gives you a small idea of what you’ll see on any given day at the famous medersa.) The tile floors at the Bahia palace were completely falling apart, and people had no regard for the artifacts. The Menebhi palace was also starting to show signs of wear. Sad.

Jennifer Needleman and Joshua Asen’s documentary film I Love Hip Hop in Morocco, which screened this past weekend at the Arab Film Festival in Los Angeles, and at the Casablanca Film Festival in Morocco, is a rare treat: A film that shows the country in all its complexity. The picture follows several hip hop bands (H-Kayne, Fnaire, DJ Key, Bigg, Brown Fingazz, and Fati Show) as they attempt to set up a hip hop festival in three big cities: Meknes, Marrakesh, and Casablanca. They try to get funding and sponsorship, they rent space, they get permits, they print flyers, they rehearse, and as we follow them through this journey we get a rich portrait of these artists. We visit with DJ Key at home and hear about how he abandoned his work in an architecture firm to focus on hip hop. We hear about the choices they make in their lyrics. For example, the members of Fnaire refuse to use the word ‘fuck’ (“We don’t talk like that”) while solo rapper Brown Fingazz defends his use of the epithet ‘nigga’ to refer to himself and his friends in the medina. They share their struggles, particularly with freedom of speech and with logistical support. They talk about their private lives. The only woman rapper in the film is a young high school girl in Fez, whose parents are extremely supportive, but who has to win the crowd when she goes on stage during the festival. If you have a chance to see this film at the festival near you, don’t miss it.

Clip: “Issawa Style” by H-Kayne.

Following the legislative elections of September 2007 in Morocco (which, while generally transparent, had low levels of voter turnout) the new government has been announced. The new Prime Minister is Abbas El Fassi, of the Istiqlal Party.

Mr. Abbas El Fassi is perhaps best remembered by the young people of Morocco as the man who, in his capacity as Minister of Employment in 2002 was responsible for the Al Najat fiasco. At least one person has committed suicide in the aftermath of that scandal. Abbas El Fassi is also the man who, earlier this year, was quoted in Tel Quel magazine as saying that the efforts to promote Darija Arabic in Morocco are part of a conspiracy by the francophone elite to hurt the unity of the Arab peoples. (Rien que ça? one is tempted to say.)

Several ministers have no party affiliation (Chakib Benmoussa, Taieb Fassi Fihri, Ahmed Toufiq, et al.), and are technocrats chosen for their experience in the private sector, and in that sense the country will continue to be managed as it has in previous iterations.

This new government is quite remarkable, however, for its record number of women ministers: Ms. Amina Benkhadra (Energy & Mines); Ms. Yasmina Baddou (Health); Ms. Nawal El Moutawakil (Sports); Ms. Nouzha Skalli (Family); Ms. Touria Jabrane (Culture); Ms. Latifa Labida (liaison to National Education); and Ms. Latifa Akherbach (liaison to Foreign Affairs).

It comes from Le Matin, of all places: The Spanish discover the existence of blondes in Morocco. It’s about the response in Europe when it was discovered that the blond and blue-eyed girl photographed riding on her mother’s back is not Madeleine McCann, but two-year-old Bouchra Benaissa. Photos here.

Protests over a 30% hike in the price of bread quickly degenerated into full on riots in the town of Sefrou, and ignited several other demonstrations around the country, including in Rabat. (A loaf of bread or a baguette normally costs 1.20 dirhams. The new price would have been 1.56 dirhams, which is outrageous, especially considering the importance of bread and bread products to the Moroccan diet, particularly among the poor.) Yesterday, the Moroccan government announced it was canceling the hike, probably out of fear they would end up with a repeat of the bread riots of 1981 in Casablanca, which left several hundred people dead.

The legislative elections in Morocco came and went, and the much hyped Islamist tsunami never materialized. As I suggested here on Friday, the PJD (Party of Justice and Development) failed to win a majority of seats–which would have been nearly impossible anyway, thanks to recent electoral reforms–or even to come in first place. They ended up in second place with 47 seats. The pre-election hype about a possible PJD win did serve the Makhzen well, however, presenting the monarchy once again as a bulwark against Islamists of all stripes, even moderate ones. Meanwhile, press and civil freedoms continue to be eroded.

What is surprising, however, is that Istiqlal, the conservative party whom many would have written off as a group of has-been politicians from Fes, took the lead, with 52 seats. The USFP, whose leftist credentials have long been forgotten, were big losers, coming in fifth place with 36 seats. The 2002 elections ushered USFP to power, and they had formed a coalition with Istiqlal in order to keep PJD in check. Now comes news that, in the wake of the 2007 elections, Istiqlal plans on creating a coalition with USFP. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Moroccans will be going to the polls today, electing their representatives in the lower house of parliament. You may have come across a couple of alarmist pieces in the Western press saying something like “Oh my God, Oh my God, the Islamists are going to win!” (At least it seemed that way to me when I was in Casablanca: a cover story in Le Point every other week on the topic.) But I think there is little chance of that happening, given recent changes in electoral laws and electoral districts. And in any case, the real question ought to be about what elections really mean in a country where there is no system of checks-and-balances and no accountability to the voters.

The elections will put 325 representatives in parliament, and of these 30 are guaranteed to be women (via national lists). In what is billed as a historical event, the Parti du Centre Social has picked a Jewish Moroccan for its national list, Maguy Kakon. But of course, this is not the first time that Moroccans of the Jewish faith have taken part in the legislative process.

By the way, even though I have dual Moroccan and American citizenships, and even though the constitution provides for the voting rights of MREs (or Moroccans Residing Abroad) I am not able to vote in these elections, because no procedures have been put in place for absentee ballots. Voters must be present at their precincts. More than 3 million Moroccans are thus excluded from the democratic experiment.

Last week, journalist Mustapha Hormatallah and editor in chief Abderrahim Ariri, both of Al Watan Al An newspaper, were held in police custody for 96 hours, three days after the publication of a July 14 cover story on “Secret reports behind the state of alert in Morocco.” The article reproduced classified information, and a police raid on the paper’s offices allegedly turned up classified documents.

In the course of investigative work, journalists the world over try to get access to classified information, so the idea that obtaining these documents is a crime in itself is a little bizarre. An independent court system might have helped Ariri and Hormatallah regain their freedom, but don’t hold your breath. The case is likely to be influenced by politics.

Yesterday, a Casablanca court decided to charge but release Ariri on bail, while Hormatallah was taken to Okacha prison. The first hearing is scheduled for tomorrow; they risk prison terms of one to five years. The journalists have received support from their colleagues and from human rights organizations across the board. You can send the paper a note of support here.

Over the last few years, Moroccan requests for visas to go to Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage have consistently outnumbered the quotas set by the Saudis, so the Moroccan government has been forced to set up lotteries for prospective pilgrims. More than 32,000 applicants will get a chance to win one of 7,700 spots. Such news, of course, makes local headlines, as you can see below from this scan of La Vie Economique. Now notice the ad accompanying the article.

Link via the indispensable Larbi.

Having completed a new draft of my novel, I am finally re-emerging from my apartment and going out on the town a bit. Last Saturday, for instance, I saw Hoba Hoba Spirit in a small concert in Casablanca. If you’re unfamiliar with this band, you can check out some of their music here, or, better yet, visit their website. They mix traditional instruments like the bendir or the qraqeb with electric guitar and bass, and the music they play fuses gnawa with rock, or ska with chaabi. One of the highlights of the evening was their cover of Nass El Ghiwane‘s “Fin Ghadi Biyya Khoya,” which they managed to modernize without losing anything of its spirit. Mostly, though, Hoba Hoba played original music, and what strikes me about those songs is that they have that rare quality of capturing a particular moment in Moroccan history, with lyrics that speak of life as we know it, of a country in the middle of great changes.

Photo credit: Hoba Hoba Spirit