The Blue Gate

by C.R. Black

  "It's a nice day, so let's have the guest's breakfast out here in the courtyard today. I'll turn the fountain on in a minute. Are you planning on going to the festival parade tomorrow?"

  "Oui, I would like to at least see the start and maybe catch a glimpse of the royal couple. She is so beautiful. Are you going?"

  "I'm taking Eian. We are to be introduced to the King before the parade starts heading down into the medina. Eian will especially like all the different Sufi groups in their costumes and the mounted horsemen."

  Fatima handed Christopher a copy of the morning's English language newspaper and walked towards the house to start breakfast, all the while thinking about what to prepare for the evening meal. Maybe b'stilla, one of Monsieur Chris' favorites, or a nice tajine using the preserved lemons she had prepared weeks earlier, with olives and raisins. Turning back, she reminded him to stop by the spice shop and get some ras el-hanoot, shopkeeper's spice mixture and a main ingredient in her cooking. Later she would make breakfast for Eian. She really hoped to be able to see tomorrow's festival, one of the highlights of the year in this most spiritual city.

  Fatima, like many young women in Morocco, had few good prospects in front of her. She was from a poor family living on the edge of the medina. Her father, a construction laborer, had died of a heart attack at the age of 52. One younger sister had recently married a tailor working in one of the myriad tailoring shops that dotted the medina like measles on a young face. Another sister was still in school. Fatima's mother worked as a low-paid clerk in a tele-boutique that provided communications to the many in the medina who did not have mobile phones or landlines available. With her salary, meager though it was, the family was able to provide the basic necessities.

  She enjoyed working for Monsieur Chris at his riad, especially the freedom she was given in deciding such things as the menu for the guests. She also relished occasional conversations with Chris about religion; especially the Sufi influenced Islam of Morocco. She derived great pleasure from the poetry of Rumi, the 13th century Persian Sufi mystic and poet which he shared with her and both received pleasure from the Quranic verse, "The gates of paradise open wide for he who can make his companions laugh." Only the Sufi seemed to have gotten the message.

  Sufism, Islamic mysticism, and Sufi brotherhoods, called tarikas, were common in Morocco though Sufism was banned in many more conservative Islamic nations. At the present time, virtually all Wahhabi influenced Islamist and Salifist groups viewed Sufism as heretic and thus, like all such apostates, must either repent or die. Because of its liberal nature and tolerance, Sufism was much encouraged by the King. The Islam he, as head of the faithful in Morocco enforced was also generally considered liberal and tolerant. The more adherents Sufism gained, the fewer citizens left to question the King's role as religious ruler. Sufis were not generally interested in politics, a decided advantage to the ruling class. Its focus was on harmony between the outward and the inner, saying that outward differences are superficial when appreciating the power of love in and of God. Moroccan youth were increasingly drawn to Sufism because of its tolerance and rejection of fanaticism and embracing of modernity.

  Music was an integral part of Sufi spiritual tradition in its attempt at reaching hadra, a trance state which inspired mystical ecstasy. An example was a Gnawa performance, centering on a spinning body and a high-pitched voice vocalizing rhythmic poetic verses in chants such as "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his Messenger." These same words are frightening when uttered from the mouth of a terrorist bomber, but lifted the soul when sung by a pious Muslim Sufi.

  Sufi gatherings inspired people to engage in interfaith dialogue and the emphasis on shared universal values with Christianity and Judaism such as the pursuit of happiness, love of family, tolerance of religious differences and promotion of peace. All of this knowledge made it possible for both, one a Moroccan Muslim the other American Christian, to enjoy the coming days celebrations.

  Chapter 12 - Thursday - 5:28 am

  "Among walnuts only the empty one speaks." Moroccan proverb

  Chief Inspector Ayrad Afellay wearily put his phone away, stubbed out a cigarette and scratched the day old beard on his face. It had been another long night of questioning, running down dead-end leads and making sure that too many feathers of important people weren't ruffled in the process. Feeling pressure from above, the good Sûreté commander had passed it on down to him, making sure that he was aware of the "dire" consequences that would happen if the planned attack proved successful. He also demanded to know every detail gained so far in tracking down the terrorist cell.

  Deciding to take a walk to clear his mind and more properly focus on the problem at hand, he left his office in the prefecture and walked towards the recently restored 18th century Garden J`nan Sbil with its palm tree lined walks, a lake and various fountains. From here he could allow his troubled mind to freely roam in search of an answer.

  Some people could focus in the midst of chaos. Afellay was not such a person. He needed to not only stretch his legs, but his mind as well. His lungs too, if the persistent hacking, cough was any indication. Being a chain smoker was bad enough. Being shut up in a roomful of other chain smokers was worse. Breathing the fresh air he slowly walked past the water-wheel and observed several park workers exchanging gossip about the rising price of bread as well as a young couple strolling side-by-side between the palms in the early morning light, probably whispering terms of undying love before heading off to school or work. He suddenly thought of Idus and hoped that his life in Casablanca was going well. He needed to call him as soon as he had a free moment. He continued to worry about his son while his gaze took him to the North.

  Jebel (Mount) Zalagh was the mountain that looked down on Fez. Almost due north from Fez el Bali, a person could view the entire river valley and city unrolled like a vast carpet. Here one could escape the noise and hustle of the metropolitan area below. This was where Ayrad Afellay escaped, at least mentally, to meditate on this puzzle.

  He had climbed Zalagh many times as a youngster, and relished its emptiness, its quietness. Now he escaped in his mind, retracing the trails that led to the top. Closing his eyes, he imagined the city lights at night spread below, like the blanket of heaven above. Somewhere hidden in those twinkling lights was the answer. Pushing back the veil of darkness and allowing his mind to prowl unrestricted, he looked for a pattern to appear, for clues overlooked, for a connection, a thread that would allow him to unravel the cloth that bewildered. In that labyrinth of streets and alleyways, which spread out below hid his Minotaur, the secret terrorist cell that promised death to the monarch and mayhem to the country. It was there, he knew, and he only needed to reflect long enough to find it.

  Refreshed by his walk, he decided to return to his office and review the latest bits of information. Afellay shuffled the layers of notes taken from the interrogations made in the last 24 hours by the National Security Police, Royal Moroccan Gendarmerie as well as the DST, the Moroccan secret police.

  Like the many layers of the medina; the ones below hidden by those on top, he read each note. Maybe he needed to dig deeper in the investigation, to the bottom of the medina, to its most basic level.

  Chief Inspector Afellay had not reached this position by being lazy or stupid. He has had a distinguished career. Success first came during the years of armed conflict in the former Spanish Sahara territory annexed by Morocco in 1976. When the Polisario Front had instituted a guerilla war that year, Afellay was already picking up information that made it possible for Morocco to blunt most of the Algerian backed Polisario's worst attacks.

  He was known as the best manipulator of men in all of the National Police. He had often been ruthless and coldly efficient. Every war had its criminals, on both sides. He could still be if that was what was needed, but he would much rather use his own intelligence and skills to prevent terrorist attacks and protect the kingdom.

  Quickly moving up the ladder of police officers
in that region, his skills at gaining information from disparate sources drew the attention of his superiors, and he was transferred eventually to his home city, Fez.

  Modern Moroccan terrorism had roots going back to the 1960s and 1970s with the establishment of certain clandestine groups, mainly on university campuses. Fueling these was deteriorating social and economic circumstances leading to riots in Casablanca in 1965 followed by the King's suspending of the constitution and disbanding of parliament. These actions led to two unsuccessful coup attempts in the early 1970s.

  As in most countries of the world, the illiterate, rather than the educated formed the majority of those falling under the spell of extremist organizations. Relying on books, cassettes and DVD's for communication, these groups present a fanatical and puritanical view of Islam more intolerant than traditional Moroccan teachings and towards women and Jews specifically.

  An attack on a McDonald's restaurant in 1993 was followed by attacks on a hotel and bombing of a Jewish cemetery in 1994, all carried out by Moroccan terror cells. Synchronized suicide bombings in Casablanca in 2003 as well as the April 2011 Marrakech attack was a reminder of the strength of underground Islamist movements in Morocco and a setback to the efforts of the King. The targets suggested that the terrorists wanted to destroy symbols of Morocco's tolerance and modernity- restaurants where the elite of different religions gathered, Jewish targets and a hotel with a popular nightclub. Moroccan terrorist networks were also dispersed throughout Europe and were very autonomous.

  Afellay had been instrumental in connecting the cells involved with returning mujahideen who had received military training in Afghanistan before returning to Morocco and most importantly the connection of religion, not political philosophy, as the basis for the various groups. Religion, he knew, was a universal. It was part of what made us human. Combining religion with human weakness however, with intolerance, ignorance, hatred and finally politics, whether it was an Islamic theocracy such as Iran or a fundamentalist Christian America, brought the worst of possible worlds. Religious fanaticism was as serious a danger to religious liberty as excessive state authority according to James Madison, primary author of the US Constitution, and as Afellay knew Morocco was a long way from the democracy of the US.

  Afellay was smart enough to know that you had to battle militant Islamists with ideas, not just guns. As the American William James once said, "Truth is what works" and truth was a weapon. If you raise the people's living standards, they were more likely to listen to you on non-economic matters. Though the leaders of the Moroccan terririst movement were mostly in prison, a new leadership would spring up to take their place. There was always someone ready to fill the empty place. He was reminded of the Berber proverb, "You have to calm the surface of the lake to see the bottom." How true! How true!

  Going through the names given out by those caught in the sweep he noticed for the first time the name Akmed Benharoun, mentioned in association with the February 20 movement. This could only be the youngest Benharoun son, Salima's younger brother. Strange, thought Afellay. He had no reason to suspect any of this well respected family of involvement, but you never knew about young people with the influences coming at them constantly over the television and the Internet. Rhetoric often helped provide focus to paranoia and aggression. With pro-democracy movements springing up all over the Arab world the past year along with hundreds of terrorist websites that could be found online, no wonder there was so much confusion in the Arab world. New democracy could foster liberalism or extremism and he knew that this tug between an enlightened future and a reconstituted past had torn many well-respected families apart.

  His own son, Idus, was involved, at least peripherally, in some aspect of the M20F. He had found this out when a friend who happened to be a DST officer had quietly come to him with reports following demonstrations in Casablanca. Approaching Idus, he had risked severing an already shaky bond with his son by informing him that he was being watched and that there could be dangerous repercussions that Afellay would not be able to protect him from.

  Afellay also was aware that the Interior Ministry, which had control of the police and associated agencies, was behind the use of baltaguia, hired thugs that were implicated in several deadly attacks on protestors over the past several months. This was done in order to counter the anti-government protestors. Fear and intimidation were old tools used by the powerful against the weak the world over. George Orwell wrote, "Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side."

  He would dig a little deeper into this piece of information and see what he could find. Meanwhile, he would send his men back out to run a finer mesh of netting through the medina to see what could be found. They only had hours to prevent a tragedy.

  Chapter 13 - Thursday - 9:30 am

  "If a man falls, all will tread on him." Moroccan proverb

  Both Fettah and Hasan had worked through much of the night fabricating the poison dart. First they prayed, asking Allah to bless their undertaking and look upon them favorably. They then set to work creating the weapon from the small container that Hasan had brought with him from the chemist. Fettah barely asked if the chemist had been amply "rewarded." When Hasan responded, "yes!" the "tall one" smiled a reply; fewer loose ends to worry about.

  Care was taken in the construction of the dart, made from a soluble plastic that would both resist disintegration when fired and yet would dissolve once it punctured the skin, releasing the deadly concentrated ricin into the Kings neck. Scientists sympathetic to their cause had provided the cell with the basic plastic along with a vacuum-forming machine in which to fabricate the dart. What was left was to make sure that the dart could hold the needed amount of poison and that the projectile could be accurately fired from the weapon. Except for the ambient sounds of the night the house was still; a perfect island of silent malevolence.

  With the first call of Morning Prayer echoing through the medina, the two conspirators had finished their preparations. Hasan soon bid Fettah goodbye and promised to return in the afternoon at the new safe house with the final part of their plan. If it be the will of Allah, tomorrow they would join in the revelry as it passed by the royal revue stand. Walking upstairs, Hasan carefully stepped over rooftop walls before finally coming down a crumbling stairway two buildings away from the safe house, little noticing the shabbily dressed one-eyed beggar who looked up.

  Chapter 14 - Thursday - 10:09 am

  "Knowledge is better than wealth: you have to look after wealth, knowledge looks after you." Moroccan proverb

  Christopher headed towards the Tala'a Sigira and then down to the shrine of Moulay Iddriss II, the focus of the city's pride and identity. With the saint's festival tomorrow, the usual milling crowd of Western tourists and candle-toting Muslim pilgrims had grown exponentially in recent days. Christopher knew that local Islamists refused to enter out of opposition to what they viewed as popular hero worship distracting from Islam's focus on obedience to God alone. Most pilgrims were quite joyful with anticipation of tomorrow's festival with its traditional Gnawa, Berber and Sufi music and immaculately dressed participants.

  To the casual tourist, Morocco, and Fez in particular, appeared to be an impenetrable jumble of people, strange designs, discordant voices and passing animals. If one, however, learned to fit all the pieces together, then patterns eventually formed and understanding was unlocked. Unlike most Westerners, he knew that there were many "Islams," not one monolithic version. Quranic law, called sharia, varied from country to country. Stoning is the law in Sudan but not in Morocco. The wearing of a veil is obligatory for women in Saudi Arabia and Yemen but not Tunisia or Turkey. It was much like the various denominations found in Christianity, not only differences between Catholic and Protestant, but various divisions within each of those splits.

  Virtually everyone in Morocco considered themselves a Muslim while very few of them actually practice the five pillars of Islam: professing faith in the existenc
e of only one God with Muhammed as its Prophet, perform five daily prayers, fast during Ramadan, the giving away of money and performing a pilgrimage to Mecca. The fact was most people did not pray and many drank alcohol.

  Morocco, and more importantly Fez, was much more divided by class, geography and ethnicity rather than religious sect as in Iraq or Pakistan. What went on outside the crenelated walls of the medina was of little interest to most Fasi's. They tended to look down on everyone, as if their city was still the cultural hub of all of North Africa.

  He considered all of this as he walked north to the bottom of the Tala'a Kebira and started up the long slope towards the Bab Bou Jeloud market where he would pick up what was needed. Climbing the terraced cobbles of the tala'a, he passed the honey souk with its more than twenty kinds of honey for sale; past the antiquities and carpet shops of the warm and friendly Benharoun family, always eager to share a glass of mint tea and talk. Finally he came to an area of small shopkeepers who willingly helped him practice his Arabic in exchange for letting them improve their English.

  First though, he stopped at his favorite spice emporium owned by old Hassan and his son, filled with fifty or more kinds of spices and herbs and carrying his favorite ras el-hanoot mixture to use in cooking. This "shopkeepers" spice mixture varied from shop to shop and contained a blend of cinnamon, mace flowers, turmeric, nutmeg, coriander, black pepper and more. It was a basis for most Moroccan cooking.

  Continuing on he saw his friend Khalid standing outside his curio shop. Christopher thought of him as "Khalid of the Coke-bottle glasses." Khalid wears the thickest glasses ever seen, but his friendly ebullience is also apparent.

  "As-salam aleikum, Khalid!"

  "Wa alaykume-salam Christopher my friend!" Khalid's face beamed brightly.

  "How's business?"

  "Mezyan, good, al-hamdu-lillah, thanks be to God" as they sat down and Khalid motioned for a nearby boy to bring sweetened mint tea for he and his guest from the adjoining shop. Christopher watched as a fist-full of fresh mint springs were placed in the teapot, followed by 3 heaping teaspoons of green tea and 3 tablespoons of sugar. Onto this boiling water was poured and allowed to steep for a few minutes. The tea was then poured into glasses and another sprig of mint was added to each glass.