The Blue Gate Page 2
Until 1912 Morocco had never suffered foreign domination, and its mountainous interior was as closed to foreigners as any hermit kingdom. Phoenician coastal traders as early as the sixth century BC, followed by Romans, had brought their culture into the northern parts of Morocco and left behind ruins of great cities, most visibly at Volubilis, as well as both Judaism and Christianity. When the Romans left, successive waves of Vandals, Visigoths and finally the Byzantine Empire quickly followed. Morocco then resisted outside domination until the twentieth century. From 1912 until 1956 when modern Morocco was established, it was under a French and a Spanish protectorate. Today, waves of European tourists thronged into the country to enjoy a cheap and exotic vacation in the sun.
Salima and her younger brother laughed at several attempts to keep outside musicians from coming into the country to play at concerts, not just British great Sir Elton John, but also various Muslim female singers from Lebanon. Thankfully those attempts had been met with little support and young Moroccans were free to listen to whatever music they chose, but the threat of the conservative religious groups was a constant reminder of what was at stake.
Her discussion completed, Salima finished her second coffee of the day, kissed her brother goodbye and walked back to her office. Listening to the sounds of school children returning to their classrooms after going home for lunch always reminded her that she was unmarried and childless. What would the future hold for these eager children? For her? Would the King relinquish absolute control over most of the Moroccan government, allow true democracy and bow to the wishes of reformers? That was certainly her hope and the only safe path to the future. Would a sudden and violent uprising force the King from the throne and throw her country into chaos, like so many other North African and Middle Eastern nations?
Even worse, would the King perhaps be assassinated by some mad group of terrorists? Fundamentalists eager to establish "their" vision of utopia all traces of modernity suppressed after so much progress had been made? That was a future too grim for her to contemplate. Already an attempt had been made on the King's life at the annual Be'ya, or allegiance ceremony.
Hundreds of regional representatives came to bow to the King, seated on horseback, and chant "May God bless the life of my master," renewing their vows of obedience to the monarch. Luckily, the attempted assassination by a gun-wielding terrorist was unsuccessful, but it was a reminder to this, the Arab world's longest-ruling dynasty of the precariousness of rule.
Chapter 4 - Wednesday - 10:27 am
"Do not correct with a strike that which can be taught with a kiss." Moroccan proverb
Though drinking sweetened mint tea is most often associated with Morocco, coffee is equally as important, and drinking a small cup of espresso can take an hour if there is business to be conducted. Chief Inspector Ayrad Afellay of the Surete Nationale du Maroc or National Police force sipped his coffee, puffing on his ever-present cigarette and frowned as he read through the terrorist report for the fourth time. This was definitely not good news and was sure to further irritate his ulcer. He had just gotten off the phone with his commander and the conversation had not been pleasant. According to very reliable sources within the DST, the Moroccan secret police, a suspected terrorist attack was planned on His Majesty the King while visiting Fez during the upcoming festival.
His superior, all pencil mustache, French-made suits and Italian loafers, came from Rabat, and like many higher ups in the Sûreté tended to look down on anyone not from the capital city. He also looked down on those he considered socially or intellectually inferior. Normally he would see Chief Inspector Afellay as a person beneath his station. Afellay was a Berber, a group that still suffered from some degree of discrimination. Moreover, he had been raised in Fez el J'did, called New Fez, though in fact it was almost a thousand years old. Youngest son of a municipal administrator and a university professor of Classical Literature, Afellay had been exposed to moderate thinking and the best literature of both the Western as well as the Islamic World.
Profiting from a natural affinity to study, he won a scholarship to Mohammed V University in Rabat and earned a degree in public administration. He worked his way up to the rank of Chief Inspector through dint of hard work, his own intelligence and a bit of luck. Having grown up near the mellah, the old Jewish quarter which lay close to the walls of the medina and hard by a royal palace of the King, Afellay had a natural feel for the people in this part of the city. If anyone could get the needed information, it was he. He knew that for the next 48 hours he must use all of his skills to keep the king safe.
Taking a small notebook out of the pocket of the light cotton djellaba covering his uniform, he quickly went down the list of agents who would be best in and around the medina. Come down too hard and the people would clam up and the flow of all information would stop. He knew that while the king was popular with the vast majority of people, there was a small and dangerous minority that wanted the government to fall.
The King, aided by a powerful propaganda machine, chaired cabinet meetings and controlled the judiciary, religious affairs and the army. He could also dissolve parliament if it proposed laws that did not please him. It was best to tread gently, at least for the present.
Morocco was not yet at a juncture where the people would rise up against their leaders and the government. Afellay shuddered to think of a situation like in Iraq or Afghanistan where it was simply "all against all" and outside forces such as the United States or NATO only contributed to the destruction. Morocco, for the very first time had experienced protests where the king was openly criticized and government forces didn't open fire. The monarchy's response so far had been to promise change and write a new constitution. The King continued to steer the country in a decidedly pro-western direction even though general public opinion in the country and the Arab world in general was anti-American, though not violently so. This was something Islamists tended to emphasize.
Islamists, like the religion of Islam in general, were a varied lot. Extremists, Salafis, were a very tiny minority of the world's 1.9 billion Muslims. They embraced violent jihad against civilians and believed this was an allowable demonstration of Islam. He knew that Salafis said disparaging things about far more moderate Islamist groups while the moderates wrote the hard-core Salafis off as wild-eyed, anti-democratic, anti-feminists who couldn't even print a veiled woman's face on a poster. Further, Salafist's showed a distinct dislike of all Sufi movements, and Sufism was to a large degree supported in Morocco.
Afellay had no delusions about his life-long support of the makhzen. It was a necessity in his chosen profession, and he was a firm believer in slow reform with emphasis on the slow. Like the vast majority of police personnel the world over, Afellay was conservative in his outlook and hardly about to rock the boat. The term "gentle revolution" had been coined to describe Morocco's efforts to sidestep the revolutionary fervor that was sweeping the Arab world. It is his duty to see that reforms maintained order, kept the elite in power while at the same time assuaging the population. The dog-eared pages of history were re-visited yet once again.
Morocco at its heart was still a struggling, poor country with a fragile economic fabric. Thinking about the current political situation in his country, Afellay remembered an old Moroccan saying that applied to his situation; "Better a handful of dried dates and content with that than to own the Gate of Peacocks and be kicked in the eye by a broody camel." Change would come to Morocco, but In'shallah it would come slowly and peacefully.
Lighting yet another cigarette he started jotting down his list of agents. Within the hour they would start scouring the medina for any signs of terrorists. Punching the speed dial on his mobile phone, he read off the list to his second and quickly gave orders. The clock was now running.
Chapter 5 - Wednesday - 3:50 p.m.
"Fire purges everything." Berber saying
Inside the house Bou Chantouf walked quickly down the stairs to the sparsely furnished main room where
he allowed himself to think back to when he first took up the Islamist cause.
His father, co-owner of one of hundreds of tiny tailor shops in the medina, had died when he was 12. Bou Chantouf's older brother was loosely associated with "de Fez," a terrorist cell that worked out of Fez in the mid-1990's and who pulled off the August 1994 shooting attack on the Atlas-Asni hotel in Marrakech that left two Spanish tourists dead. Even though he was not directly involved, his brother died during interrogation by Moroccan security agents, the hated DST. Revenge was a powerful motivator and he decided then to devote his life to the overthrow of the monarchy and the ruling establishment.
Today, fifteen years later, Fettah Bou Chantouf, is now among the zealous leadership of the extremist group as-Salfiya Jihadiya Magreb, a loose arrangement made up of a cluster of independent cells. Originally established to oppose government support for the US-led coalition against Iraq, it now actively promoted overthrow of the present government.
Most often such groups formed on the margins of society where people felt ill at ease with the urban middle class and the trimmings of modern society. As-Salfiya Magreb was no exception, and Bou Chantouf was a prime example. He closely identified with the takfari ideology, which held he and his group could accuse Muslims of apostasy or being an infidel and thus excommunicated in the eyes of the Muslim community.
Like many extremists, Bou Chantouf viewed the Moroccan regime as an apostate government, ripe for overthrow. There was too much crushing poverty here in a country where the gap between rich and poor was wide and all too apparent; far too much unemployment, especially of educated young men; too many living in sub-standard housing, most prominently in and around the major cities. All of this while members of the makhzen, the ruling elite, lived in luxury and open corruption.
He was equally disdainful of the moderate Islamist political groups such as the Justice and Development Party, which sought to make changes in the existing Moroccan government through peaceful, democratic methods, the so- called "gentle revolution". What was needed to his way of thinking was to wipe clear the diluting forces of the West and re-make his country. He believed that the very idea of democratic elections was un-Islamic and that women should be segregated from men in public. Yes, there were many changes needed in the new Morocco after this week was finished.
Bou Chantouf's plan was both simple and complex. The package he delivered to Hasan at the taxi stand contained seeds of Ricinus communis, in Arabic Khirwa' and known in the West as the castor bean plant. Following fairly simple chromatographic techniques, the poison ricin was easily made by anyone with an elemental knowledge of chemistry.
Ricin was virtually undetectable and fit perfectly into his plan. Fettah had read that in the 1970s, Bulgarian secret agents reportedly used a ricin capsule injected into the leg of a dissident, which proved fatal. More difficult was condensing the poison down to such a level that a small amount injected into the blood stream assured death in an extremely short period of time. Using the talents of an unemployed and disillusioned university graduate, the problem was finally overcome.
Harder still was creating a dart that would be both accurate when fired from the high-powered compressed air rifle, but would have all the outward appearances of a hornet sting. At last, after a long and difficult period of trial and error, the perfect dart was created. When fired into a subject’s neck it delivered a massive dose of the condensed poison into the blood stream.
To test the weapon and delivery system, he had chosen a Westerner who collapsed and died within minutes of being struck by the dart. News reports stated simply that an elderly German tourist had collapsed and died after receiving a hornet sting. Nothing suspicious was noted.
Fettah then practiced for days with the special air gun provided fitted into what looked like a traditional musical horn seen at festivals, secretly constructed in a local metal shop by another cell member. Finally he was ready, sure that he would be able to strike his target and thus complete his part of the planned revolution,. The King would die from an apparently innocent insect sting, and his death would be the "will of Allah."
Once word was spread of the King's death, other cells around the country were set to carry out attacks against specific targets; foreign cultural missions, television stations, cafe's and hotels that attracted foreign visitors, cinemas, certain foreign embassies and business ventures owned by the makhzen. Other groups were poised to use recently acquired shoulder-fired missiles from Libya against the Moroccan military until such time as they were brought into the fold. He knew that the common people could always be brought to the bidding of the leaders if given the proper inducements.
At the muezzin's cry, Fettah glanced at his watch and noted the time. It was 4:05 pm, and his mind raced ahead two days hence to when his plan would be put into effect. He rose, left the apartment and walked purposefully towards the distant mosque.
Chapter 6 - Wednesday - 4:38 p.m.
"Angels bend down their wings to a seeker of knowledge." Moroccan proverb
Driven by a compulsive curiosity, Christopher continued down the narrow street, twisting first one direction then another. If he got lost in this warren of narrow streets, some only two feet wide, so much the better. That was when you truly discovered the wonders of Fez. A place soaked in history and that was what urged the writer in him onward. Some people center their lives on status or money, community or service to God. Christopher's center was learning.
Leo Africanus, the early sixteenth century writer wrote this about Fez; "A world it is to see, how large, how populous, how well fortified and walled this city is." Christopher had to agree completely with Africanus, also known as al-Wazzan az-Zayyati al-Fassi. Visiting Fez, Africanus assured that "a man may both satisfy his eyes, and solace his mind. Fez deserves to be called a Paradise."
The tan buildings of the medina spread out before him as he gazed towards the green tile roof of Al-Karouine mosque. Once again he was struck by the sights unfolding before him-the juxtaposition of satellite dishes projecting from virtually every rooftop beaming in the modern world and the ancient call to prayer of the muezzins; jet airplanes overhead and burros delivering goods to stores within the medina; sending emails around the world from a cyber cafe while outside a man is loading trash bags onto a donkey for transport; women wearing the black hijab and veil along with sunglasses and baseball caps. This was his world now; this was the Fez medina.
Finally reaching the bottom of the hill he understood the belief that Fez el Bali was one of the most complex cities in the world, making it nearly impossible for visitors to find their own way around. Walking on, he bent under the wooden beam across the street, placed so that people would bow modestly before getting close to the mosque. He stood looking into Al-Karaouine, which was, according to his well-thumbed copy of the Guinness Book of World Records, the world’s oldest university, founded in 859. He mused over the fact that this mosque and the attached institution of higher learning were founded by a woman, wondering if those in the Islamist movement who wanted to keep women in a subservient role were aware of this. He wished he could enter the door to marvel at its classic design, capable of holding more than 20,000 worshipers and at one time the largest mosque in North Africa. Non-Muslims were prohibited from entering Moroccan mosques, a hold over from the days when the French had decreed that non-Christians were prohibited from entering their churches and cathedrals. Moroccans soon prohibited non-Muslims from entering their mosques as a way of rebelling against their colonizers and it remained that way today.
Sounds were especially important in fully experiencing life here in the medina. Calls to prayer five times a day over loudspeakers; the formalities of greetings heard on the streets; the chatter of children going to and from school; shop keepers calling out to tourists, almost always correctly guessing their nationality from their appearance. The buzz of motorbikes, like angry wasps and the gentle clip-clop of passing burros on centuries old cobblestones worn smooth by generations of trotting
feet, even the sounds of chirping birds over a garden wall in an area of the city with few visible trees. This is what Christopher wanted to bring to his audience, the readers for his upcoming book. Turning, he heard the polyphonic sounds of the call for prayer, starting high in the minaret of the mosque and soon picked up by other mosques in the medina, a tradition going back centuries. It was said that in the minaret of the Al-Karaouine mosque there was a special room, the Dar al-Muwaqqit, where the times of daily prayer were established for the city.
Wandering aimlessly now past the religious shops clustered around the periphery of the mosque, Christopher crossed over into the Andalusian section of the medina. This was the very oldest part of the medina. It is an area often over-looked, yet it was just as fascinating as the more touristic sites in the Karaouine section to the West. Like all neighborhoods in the medina, those in the Andalusian section each contained a mosque, a school, a fountain, a communal bakery and a hammam or public bathhouse. Tradition said that people living in the medina could spend their entire lives without ever going outside its embracing walls!
Street foods were one of Christopher's passions. Inheriting an iron stomach and sense of adventure from his father, he prided himself on at least trying most available dishes, though he did admit that such things as sheep heads were a bit much. Coming upon a small street vendor grilling kebabs, he quickly purchased one along with khobz, flattened Moroccan bread. He knew the bread came from the bakery around the corner and wished that he could find some chebakia there, those wonderful deep-fried sweet pastries so plentiful during the month of Ramadan, but knew that he would have to wait.
Having satisfied his craving for some nourishment, he continued on up the Rue Seffah to the Andalusian Mosque, only two years newer than the Karaouine Mosque across the river. Standing in front of its magnificent wooden doors, he marveled again at the elaborate cedar woodcarvings of the eaves.