Wandering through downtown Casablanca, Morocco, I suddenly found myself on a boulevard filled with people, a festival of up−thrust fists and ideals. I had noticed orange−and−white barriers and immaculately groomed policemen surrounding the area and assumed that some sort of protest must be going on (this is North Africa in 2011, after all). But I was not prepared for the scale of it all. The weathered Art Deco facades of French Imperialism that line Boulevard Mohammed V stood over a great crowd of people: Moroccan Arabs, sub−Saharan Africans, Berbers in traditional garb with bright colors and golden baubles and European and American tourists bumbling confusedly past. The crowd seemed a perfect microcosm of this country, perched between Europe, Africa and the Middle East — a great crossing point of people and cultures.
I let myself be carried along with procession. A chain of people holding hands and wearing white sashes emblazoned with Arabic script divided the flow of onlookers on the sidewalk from the mass of demonstrators, but both groups seemed to step to the same pulse, a tempo of controlled, trenchant excitement. Snapping pictures and watching faces, I found myself comparing this march to Inauguration Day 2009 in Washington, D.C. But though that had been a truly ebullient display, it felt shallow compared to what was unfolding before my eyes. That was a victory party; this was a celebration of what could be.
This scene seems all too familiar to us in the West now. The idea of pro−democracy protests in a predominantly Muslim country is old news, and most observers of the events in Morocco, as well as the media, simply assume that King Mohammed VI will happily go along with the protestors' demands. He has been steadily guiding Morocco towards liberalism since ascending to the throne in 1999, after all. There's not enough drama in these proceedings, no potential for violence or disaster, only the possibility that a nation's hopes for democracy may soon be fully realized.
The year 2011 already seems like it will be for North Africa and the Middle East what 1848 was for Europe: a year of great, spontaneous uprising. It wasn't easy back then either. Many people were beaten and many were killed, but in the end it became the year that the Germans, the Hungarians, the Danes, the Swiss and the people of the rest of Europe saw what was happening in the world around them and began to believe that the English and the Americans had no exclusive right to democracy. Democracy was there for the taking by all peoples who believed in their own ability to rule themselves.
To walk with these people — not a century and a half ago, but today — to hear their cries and see their faces, stirred me far more than anything I've rallied for in the United States. It's true that the story of Morocco may be like the stories of Tunisia and Egypt and, eventually, maybe of Yemen and Bahrain and the rest of the region. It may be someday just a clause in a paragraph in a history book about the year the Arab world rose up in revolt. But for now it is about a nation of so many peoples and backgrounds united — an incredible panorama of banners, flags and fists rising into the air and voices crying out.
The rain that had been threatening all day began to fall once the mass was assembled in Parc de la Ligue Arabe, a great plaza in the middle of Casablanca. Leaves spiraled down from the trees, their boughs shaking as the people pushed past them, and mixed with the cold droplets that left protest placards waterlogged. But the voices were not dampened. Everyone seemed to have a camera lifted into the air to document this moment: digital cameras, cell phones, camcorders and little Kodak disposables. The people of Casablanca wanted to commit this moment to history, to upload these images to Facebook or Tumblr for the world to see, to print it on glossy paper, frame it and hand it down to their sons and daughters.
And the chanting grew and grew until the vibrations were enough to fill your heart. People sat or stood, crouched or climbed trees or leapt on their neighbors' shoulders for a better view of all the thousands. And they smiled. They smiled because they know what comes next.
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