The Moroccans
Ohana, Jacques
TV/TUCH has been written about Morocco and its ^^^ people since the career and downfall of Abd-elKrim. As a native of Morocco, I have read these tales with Interest, and have noted, frequently...
...Many have been the heroic feats and many the great battles won on land and sea by the sultans and self-appointed leaders of parties...
...The defense was practically nil and the French lines were broken...
...It has been a futile attempt, and with the exception of a good paper here and there, it has been far from showing the realities of Morocco...
...In the downfall of this house begins the wreckage of the Moroccan empire...
...Did not their colonies Include part of Provence in the south of France...
...Nowadays, in Morocco, we still have descendants of those exiled families of 500 years ago, whose appearance and manners tell the aristocracy of their stock, who religiously and with childish faith conserve the key that locked the door of the palace in Cordoba, Granada or Seville, whence their ancestors fled from the advancing armies of the Catholic kings...
...An example of this occurs in a much-discussed article in one of the leading American periodicals, In which a correspondent goes so far as to give specific details regarding the kind and the quantities of food that guests at a Moorish dinner are required to consume...
...Like Napoleon, he will have died of nostalgia for his native hills...
...One is also tempted to compare the life of Abd-elKrim with that of Napoleon I. One day we may read or hear that he died in some dark and unknown place in that exile where it took two modern armies combined to drive him...
...Nothing more may be ever said about him, but he will not fall Into oblivion...
...But there was a time in May, 1925, when the French were none too sure of their position in the whole of Morocco...
...But those who still remember it, the aristocracy of Fez and Sale whose ancestors once owned Andalusia, cannot but favor the cause of the rebel leader...
...They undoubtedly passed to Abd-el-KrIm more readily than they came back to submission to the French...
...Their hospitality is part of their education, part of their fatalistic philosophy that makes them accept the foreign guests as everything Allah sends, good or bad, passively and with kindly grace...
...The opinion of the higher class of Moroccans regarding the present state of affairs In the Riff will never be known, or asked, for that matter...
...However, to strangers introduced by a friend they will show the usual hospitality, which in most cases Is limited to a dinner composed of a number of courses...
...Morocco is probably the only Mohammedan country that still remains tightly closed to western civilization and ways...
...At that dinner none of the relatives will ever appear—that would be letting strangers into the home...
...As a native of Morocco, I have read these tales with Interest, and have noted, frequently with amusement, the Ingenuity of newspaper correspondents engaged at the task, so simple in appearance, of giving the American people an idea of Moroccan life...
...This would be a genuine revelation to a Moorish host...
...But Krim was bewildered by his victories and did not dare go any further...
...The signal was to be the taking of Fez...
...But wherever he goes or whatever his fate is to be at the hands of his enemies, in his own heart he knows that his memory will be alive in Morocco forever, and that his name will go down in the war annals of the empire as one of the great heroes of all times...
...That will be his one consolation...
...Their tact and Innate good manners make them show off their home-life just as they think fit, but though they oppose Intrusloni with a smile, they would, if need be, use violence to stop a stranger from trespassing...
...He hesitated and lost...
...If Abd-el-KrIm had then taken Fez, orders had been broadcast in the Sous, southern Morocco, where Hadji Tami el Glaoul Is lord and master, even over and above the sultan, for all his tribes to join the cause of AbdelKrim...
...they would not discuss It or even mention It In the presence of foreigners to their faith and creed...
...We have seen tribes change camp overnight during the Riff wars...
...Beautiful are the songs, and wonderful are the stories of the sad days when, abandoned and defeated, Boabdil had to leave one enchanted palace after the other in his beloved Andalusia, retreating from the battlefields where the best of his followers had died so valiantly...
...The history of Morocco from the days of the Roman empire Is a continuity of wars, internal, external or inter-tribal...
...Abd-el-Krim, who is so wrongly considered a barbarian and a savage, failed in an enterprise similar to that in which Charles V of Spain succeeded...
...At that time they owned Sicily and the invasion of the southern part of Italy was started...
...The Moors with whom European visitors come| in contact during their short stay are totally different folk in their own private lives...
...But Abd-cl-Krim did not know then, as he did not know when he was under the walls of Melilla two years before, that a very little effort was needed...
...The empire went from Carthage to Cordoba and Seville, and Granada stands to tell the tale of the grandeur of the Ill-fated dynasty of the Saadlens...
...It is strange that so few ever stop to think of this part of the history of Morocco...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 5
