I returned from Morocco two days before the September 8 earthquake. In the middle of the night, my phone started vibrating relentlessly. Messages of all kinds were pouring in: news, concern, solidarity, as well as calls to reassure me or to share grief. But they always expressed the dread, the lives cut short, the precariousness of existence, the inexorable destiny imposed on us by the Creator. Sometimes the messages were more down-to-earth, criticizing the lack of foresight, the slowness of relief efforts, the shortage of resources and the forgetfulness of populations who survived modestly, outside of time, but according to the seasons, clinging to mountains and plains from which they had known for centuries how to cultivate what they needed.
In the media, we heard from victims, witnesses and experts. Hour after hour, I witnessed the exponential rise in the number of victims. At such moments, anger is quickly combined with grief and guilt. What could we have done before this happened? What could we have done beforehand to ensure that everything possible was done to anticipate the disaster, or, at the very least, to limit the consequences and reduce the number of victims?
There were unnecessary considerations such as the unstoppable force of nature suddenly bringing to light the brutal reality of precarious and neglected populations on the margins of Moroccan modernization, whose very existence we had tried to forget, and the feeling of powerlessness in the face of macro-structural decisions that create inequalities of treatment but inescapably seem to impose themselves on everyone.
I feel the bitterness of speaking in place of the silence which, alone, should legitimately impose itself in such circumstances. The games of dupe and course, the statements of position, the historical reminders, the exhortation to human values and the agreed self-pity will be for others. I don't feel like it today. Nor do I have the heart for grand phrases. They are necessary, no doubt, but I'm reminded of other lands, the meaning of existence, the fragility of our lives and the attachment to a land.
The storm and floods that hit Derna and the surrounding region in Libya on September 11 revealed a flaw in my value system. I felt the same emotions, the same horror for these souls, and I prayed for the wounded inhabitants because my sorrow for strangers for whom everything stopped in a few moments is just as real and sincere. However, my proximity to the Moroccan people due to my origins gave another dimension to my feelings, resonated in more intimate abysses within me and disturbs me even more than the Libyan catastrophe today. This selectivity at the very heart of my sensitivity to earthly suffering baffles me.
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