Readers' Narratives

Civility Class, Schoolroom 6, The Atlas Mountains, Morocco

September 20, 2004

Recently my wife and I, and our ten-year-old son, moved to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, to a small university town. I think of it as the Winesburg, Ohio, of the Maghreb. My wife teaches American literature in a high school. I am a journalist.

The mood in Moroco these days is tiered. Moroccans are exceptionally polite and unabashedly friendly by nature, and they are particularly hospitable to foreigners. But underneath, there is uneasiness, due in part, no doubt, to the 30 percent unemployment rate. That’s the real tinder for fanaticism. But there is something else, a mild case of xenophobia. It’s well-known that foreigners are not welcome in some quarters of Tangier and in Casablanca, where a series of bombs on May 16, 2003, killed forty-one bystanders and ten suicide bombers. Among the targets were a Jewish-owned restaurant and a Spanish social club.

Want to read the rest?
Please login.
New to Narrative? sign up.
It's easy and free.
The password field is case sensitive. Account & Password Help.
Joining Narrative gives you FREE access to thousands of stories, poems and essays. It’s easy:
PLEASE ENTER A VALID EMAIL ADDRESS.
PLEASE NOTE: We are discontinuing our support of Microsoft-related addresses, including msn.com, live.com, outlook.com, and hotmail.com, and we ask that you use an alternative address, such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, fastmail.com, comcast.net, verizon.com, icloud.com, or other.

We have found Microsoft-related email addresses to be sometimes inconsistent in terms of delivering messages, and we want to make sure that you can access your account and reliably receive messages that you have requested.
Email Preferences
Email Preferences