French fast set sparks rift on African Riviera Matthew Campbell, Paris
THE antics of France’s rich and famous are stirring tensions in Morocco, playground for a community of well-heeled writers, artists and businessmen who own holiday homes on the “African Riviera”. Locals are up in arms over a wall that Bernard-Henri Lévy, the writer and philosopher, and Arielle Dombasle, his actress wife, have erected around their sumptuous clifftop villa in Tangiers. It partially blocks the view of the bay from the terrace of a famous cafe next door.
The view of the Straits of Gibraltar and Bay of Tangiers was said to have inspired writers such as Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams, once regulars at the Hafa cafe. Rachid Taferssiti, a Tangiers writer, referred to Lévy’s wall of of breeze blocks as an example of the “ransacking of the countryside”.
Sensitive to local concerns, Lévy is said to have put up his wall to shelter the shapely Dombasle from public gaze as she suns herself by the swimming pool of the villa. The spectacle of women sunbathing topless plays into the hands of a growing Islamist movement striving to turn Morocco, one of the more liberal countries in the Muslim world, into a strict theocracy.
At first it was only super-rich foreigners who came to live in Morocco, among them Yves Saint Laurent, the French couturier, and the late magazine magnate Malcolm Forbes, who flew in 800 friends from all over the world, including Elizabeth Taylor, for his 70th birthday party at his palace in Tangiers in 1989.
Since then, having tired of the south of France, the Who’s Who? of French society has taken up residence in Morocco, from sportsmen and politicians to captains of industry. Morocco has also been attracting more ordinary tourists, becoming a haven for westerners in search of exotic thrills just a few hours by air from London or Paris.
The bombings in Casablanca in 2003, in which 45 people were killed, do not appear to have harmed that traffic. Yet the rise of the Party for Justice and Development, as the Islamist organisation is known, could cast a shadow on the horizon if, as some predict, it becomes the dominant force in parliament after elections next May.
After it first gained seats in parliament, the party was associated with a campaign against the Miss Morocco contest, which it regarded as “pornographic”. All of those involved were denounced as “un-Islamic” and the competition had to be held in secret.
The group favours sharia, which would enforce a widely ignored prohibition on the sale of alcohol and oblige all women to wear the veil. It has won a big following among a Muslim population depressed by the spectacle of young men and women — and sometimes even children — prostituting themselves to foreign “sex tourists”.
An Islamist newspaper warned recently that the tsunami that devastated parts of Thailand and Indonesia was God’s punishment for immoral behaviour and that Morocco risked a similar disaster unless it mended its ways. Partly in response to such pressure the government of Mohamed VI, the modernising monarch, recently launched a crackdown on vice.
Dozens of women have been rounded up in raids on bars in Marrakesh and other Moroccan cities this month on suspicion of prostitution. Several bar owners have been thrown into jail.
At the same time, the authorities decided to make an example of Jack-Henri Soumère, a well-known French opera director who has been visiting Morocco for three decades.
He was given a four-month suspended prison sentence and fined £500 for homosexuality — which is illegal in Morocco — and possession of cannabis.
Aniko Boehler, the co-ordinator of Hands Off My Child, the organisation that brought the case against him, said many foreign visitors to Morocco seemed to think they were in Marbella. Their “neo-colonial attitudes”, she added, were disrespectful to local customs.
Yet it was not just the immoral behaviour of foreigners that was fuelling the indignation of conservatives and the ranks of Islamist supporters.
“The children of the Moroccan elite are just as bad,” she said. “For them, Marrakesh is just as much of a playground. They go there to use and abuse.”
Mohamed’s efforts at modernisation, including attempts to put more women into the workplace, have further alienated Islamist backers who believe a woman’s place is in the home. Some opinion polls have put the Islamic party ahead in next year’s election.
This in turn has prompted speculation about how the king would react: could there be a repeat of what happened in Algeria in 1992, when the Islamic Salvation Front’s victory in an election prompted the military to step in, driving the Islamists underground? Traditional rivals of Algeria, Moroccans argue they are too sensible to let things unravel. “Vote-rigging is the most likely route,” said Xavier Monnier, a French journalist who closely follows Moroccan affairs.
As for Lévy, he has tried to win back favour by offering to pay for an extension to the cafe terrace next door to his villa. Visitors, it seems, will still be able to enjoy a view of the bay.
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