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Nabil Ayouch: Transgression, Identity, And Difference (Morocco)

— Jonathan Smolin

Nabil Ayouch is one of Morocco’s most prominent and innovative film direc- tors.1 Born in 1969 in Paris, he is the son of the well-known Moroccan adver- tising and micro-credit executive Noureddine Ayouch and a French mother of Jewish-Tunisian descent.2 Nabil Ayouch studied theater in Paris during the late 1980s and worked in advertising in the early 1990s while directing three short films between 1992 and 1994.3 Ayouch made his first feature-length film,Mektoub, in 1997. In 1999, Ayouch moved to Morocco and founded Ali n’ Pro- ductions in Casablanca, which produced his subsequent films in addition to a number of successful works for Moroccan television, including the well-known series Lalla Fatima.4 In 2005, Ayouch and Ali n’ Productions were awarded with unprecedented funding from Radiodiffusion Télévision Marocaine (RTM) to produce thirty television films that feature Berber-related themes—both in Berber language and Moroccan colloquial Arabic—as part of a project called Film Industry, Made in Morocco. Ayouch used this opportunity to train a new generation of screenwriters, actors, and directors for these films. The project was completed in 2007.5 In France, Ayouch founded a new production house, Les Films du Noveau Monde, in 2006.

Ayouch moved to Morocco to help develop cinema in the country (Ayouch 2013). He sees himself not simply as a filmmaker but also as a producer and someone who strives to foster young talent in Morocco, creating opportunities for others to express themselves through cinema. In addition to his production and directing work, Ayouch helped create the Mohamed Reggab Prize, which is awarded in Morocco to directors between eighteen and thirty-five years old for their first short work. In Morocco, Ayouch has also led the charge against piracy, which significantly damages the market for local filmmaking.6 To date, Ayouch has directed five feature-length films and one documentary, My Land.7

Growing up in France, Ayouch developed his relationship with Morocco through film. According to him: “It’s thanks to the camera, thanks to cinema that I discovered Morocco” (Ayouch 2012). Although Ayouch is Moroccan, he felt at times like a foreigner when he visited the country, experiencing a strong sense of split identity between himself and his cultural homeland. This per- sonal history of difference and disconnect with Morocco has served as major theme and inspiration in his work. Ayouch has sought to celebrate difference, to break through pressures in Morocco to reflect singular or dominant concepts of identity. His cinema points to the importance of multiplicity of perspectives, identities, and differences. Through his films, Ayouch has not only worked to provide social and political critique; he has also attempted to launch public de- bate of issues that have been covered up or hidden in Moroccan society. In the process, Ayouch has broken through a variety of taboos in his films, creating new terrains for representing controversial sociopolitical issues, transgressive identities, and marginalized lives.

Mektoub: Breaking through Public Silence on the Tabit Affair

Mektoub (Fate, 1997) is an audacious debut. The film, which was shot in late 1996 and spring 1997, was a commercial and critical success. It sold more than 350,000 box-office tickets in Morocco, won awards at the Cairo and Oslo film festivals, and served as Morocco’s official submission for the 1998 Oscars.8 Among other taboos, the film takes up a real-life scandal that broke in the Moroccan press in early 1993, when a high-ranking police commissioner in Casablanca named Mustapha Tabit was arrested and charged with abducting and raping over five hundred women, crimes that he recorded on over one hundred videotapes. Along with Tabit, several other conspirators were arrested. The country’s “trial of the century,” as the case became known, began less than three weeks after the initial arrests and created a massive sensation. For the first time in Morocco’s history, a police commissioner—a figure symbolizing the country’s long decades of authoritarianism known as the Years of Lead—was publicly made accountable for criminal acts.9 Moreover, the country’s mass media had been tightly controlled up to that point, and the police served as a powerful taboo. Before the trial, the press had never reported on the police openly and in such negative terms.

The trial coincided with Ramadan in 1993, and newspaper sales skyrocketed as people of all social backgrounds followed the case. After only a few weeks, the commissioner was found guilty and sentenced to death. The shocking downfall of such a powerful figure, someone who operated above the law for decades, demonstrated to the entire public that the state was moving away from the repression of the Years of Lead and into a new era of openness. As I argue else- where, this case—and its sensational coverage in the printed press—represented the launching point for deep changes in state authority and the limits on mass media representation in the country (Smolin 2013).

Nonetheless, once the trial was complete, the case disappeared suddenly from the press, and direct discussion of its implications quickly withered. Ayouch was living in France during the Tabit Affair and was shocked by the way the scandal simply ended, as if it had never happened (Ayouch 2012). For Ayouch, the inability to address the far-reaching ramifications of the scandal for corruption in society, the relationship between state authority and citizens, and the deeply rooted nature of abuse of power in the country pointed to a crisis (Ayouch 2012). According to Ayouch: “In our society, we have problems with public debate so we want to hide everything, we want to bury everything” (Ayouch 2012). Instead of inspiring wide-scale debate and discussion about the place of civil rights in the country, the scandal simply vanished.

When the Tabit Affair took place in early 1993, only the printed press was permitted to cover the trial. Because of the highly sensitive nature of the case, it never appeared in the audiovisual mass media at the time. Cinema therefore provided Ayouch with a new language and medium not only to represent the scandal but also, with the commercial and critical success of his film, to provoke the discussion that never took place after the scandal erupted in 1993.10 In this respect, Ayouch’s first film falls within the tradition of committed social-realist filmmaking, which had become prominent in Morocco during the 1990s.11

In Mektoub, Taoufik Raoui, a Moroccan doctor who lives in California, and his wife, Sophia, arrive at a Tangier hotel for an ophthalmology conference. Taoufik suddenly falls ill after dinner, and Sophia is abducted as she goes to find a doctor. Sophia awakes with her arms bound; a video camera records as a man slowly approaches to assault her just before the scene cuts. The next morning, Taoufik discovers what has happened. He goes to his estranged brother, Kemal, a police inspector, and manages to steal his gun. Taoufik finds the house where Sophia was raped, discovers dozens of videotapes that include scenes of sexual assaults, and shoots the ringleader with Kemal’s gun. He then flees with the tape containing footage of Sophia’s rape.

Kemal soon discovers that the man Taoufik has killed was a well-known police commissioner and independence movement hero named Faysal Darif, an alter ego of the real-life Mustapha Tabit. Realizing that Taoufik and Sophia are powerless before such a figure, Kemal decides to take them to the Rif Mountains, an area known for its independence from state control. The rest of the film depicts how Taoufik and Sophia flee through the Rif and the Sahara as Detective Kebir leads the police hunt to apprehend them and suppress the case. Kebir, who symbolizes the police brutality and corruption of the Years of Lead, discovers Darif’s crimes from the outset and wants to arrest the couple and recover the videotape in order to keep them from exposing Darif. After a long chase through the mountains and desert, Kebir manages to recover the tape from an intermediary.12 This indicates that the police will be able to sup- press Darif’s crimes and keep the case from becoming a public scandal, unlike the real-life Tabit Affair.

As Taoufik and Sophia flee Kebir through the Rif and the desert, they re- discover aspects of Morocco after being away in California for years, such as beautiful terrain and the strong character of the Rifi people, including a powerful cameo from Malika Oufkir several years before she published her well-known memoir (Oufkir and Fitoussi, 2002).13 Sequences in the Rif show how Taoufik—despite being Moroccan—encounters the country as a foreigner, much as Ayouch did before moving to Casablanca in the late 1990s. The film ends as Taoufik and Sophia stand together in the desert, a space of freedom and self-discovery in Arabic literature and culture, as the soft voice of a woman singing poetry suggests that despite whatever hardships people might face, they should have faith that God has reserved for them another fate. This final word points to the film’s title, Mektoub, Arabic for fate, suggesting that Taoufik and Sophia’s painful and shocking ordeal will lead them unexpectedly to a fulfill- ing destiny of discovery and self-fulfillment as they bridge the gap between themselves and their birth country.

Despite a small budget, which was the equivalent of €500,000, Ayouch strove to give the film high production value.14 In Mektoub, Ayouch uses the medium of cinema to transform the Tabit Affair, one of the most significant events in modern Moroccan history, for the Moroccan public. The real-life scandal served as a watershed moment for revealing abuses of power within the police establishment to the widest possible public and expanding freedom of expression in the mass media. In the film, however, the scandal is suppressed after Kebir manages to recover the videotape of Sophia’s rape, pointing to the way the Tabit Affair quickly disappeared from the press and the public turned away from the scandal after the trial was complete. The end of the film therefore alludes to the inability to have public debate about deep-rooted issues in society. However, while the case within the film does not reach the public, it radically transforms Taoufik and Sophia. The crisis of rape and vigilante justice ultimately redefines the couple’s identity and sense of place with their country, a fate utterly unfore- seen when they arrived in Morocco at the beginning of the film.

Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets: Transcending the Lives of Street Children

During the mid- to late 1990s, Moroccan film and literature began taking up subjects that were considered taboo in previous decades, such as human rights violations, illegal immigration, and sexual themes. This paralleled a larger opening taking place in society during the final years of Hassan II and the ini- tial years of Mohammed VI, as the mass media enjoyed expanding freedom of expression, the political opposition led the government, and a variety of NGOs became more active in supporting groups and causes that had been largely ne- glected in the past, such as battered women and abused housemaids.15 Among these NGOs, Bayti, which means “my house,” was founded in 1995 to provide aid and work for homeless children.16 Nabil Ayouch worked directly with Bayti to identify and cast the child actors for Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets (Ali Zaoua: Prince de la rue, 2000), his second film.17 The film, which boldly depicts four children living on the streets of Casablanca, is to date his best-known work.18 Ali Zaoua continued the social-realist genre of Mektoub and also built on the com- mercial success of his first film, selling approximately 500,000 box-office tickets in Morocco and winning some forty-four prizes at international film festivals.19

The film begins with brightly colored painted images and a dialogue between a female interviewer and Ali about his life on the streets. The scene then cuts to a cropped image of Ali, standing with a number of other homeless children and people, as the interviewer stands off camera holding a microphone toward Ali. The exchange takes place in Moroccan Arabic, but the woman orders the cam- eraman in French to focus in on Ali’s face and then to cut. With this beginning, Ayouch points to the role that street children typically play in the Moroccan and French mass media—as an object for pity and surprise, something kept at a distance and safely cropped from the lives of the public. Ayouch, however, im- mediately transitions from this documentary exchange to the four children run- ning and playing together in an empty building lot, delving directly into their world and bridging the distanced and guarded exchange that began the film.

Ali and his three friends, Kwita, Boubker, and Omar, have broken free from a large group of street children led by the mute and sexually abusive Dib, played by the French-Moroccan star Saïd Taghmaoui. After the opening scenes, Ali tells Kwita that he will leave them to become a sailor so that he can reach his island, a fantasy land with two suns. Dib suddenly arrives with a large number of followers and demands that the four return to his group. When Ali refuses, one of Dib’s children throws a rock at his head and kills him. This forces Ali’s three companions to confront the challenge of providing Ali with a proper burial. Much of the remainder of the film traces how the children—despite liv- ing in neglect on the margins of civil society—navigate the process of trying to bring dignity and recognition to Ali in his death.

Kwita insists to the others that they will bury Ali like “a prince.” However, the children quickly discover that burying Ali will not be simple. Kwita steals one hundred dirhams from a schoolgirl and then goes to a cemetery hoping to use the money to pay for the burial. A child his own age chastises him, saying that the cemetery only buries the “pure.” This exchange emphasizes not only religious hypocrisy but also how children are just as capable as adults of looking down on and discriminating against people like Kwita and his friends. In the following scenes, the film depicts how the children squander Kwita’s money, endangering any possibility for a burial, and how Kwita struggles to find a sailor uniform in which to bury Ali.

Ali had befriended an older boat captain before he died. The captain, played by the Moroccan actor Mohamed Majd, finds the group, asks for Ali, and soon learns that Ali has died. The captain helps Kwita provide the burial by building a small boat for Ali’s body that they will set adrift at sea. Just as he heads to the port with Ali’s mother, Kwita finds a sailor’s uniform for sale at a small store. The film ends as the three children, Ali’s mother, and the captain head out into the Atlantic. Ali receives the dignity in death that he never found in life. Dib and his group watch speechless as the boat sets out and, as the animation in the final moments suggests, Ali will achieve his dream of becoming a sailor and reaching the island with two suns.

One of the most powerful aspects of the film is the way it depicts the harsh daily life of Moroccan children on the streets. Abandoned by civil society, the children are left to fend for themselves, not only for sustenance but also for establishing power relations among each other. No one is there to intervene when Dib rapes Boubker, Omar nearly slits Kwita’s throat, or Ali is killed. The boys easily obtain sniffing glue and use it in order to escape the misery of their daily life. Ayouch uses his widescreen shots and rich colors to present audiences with the marginal and neglected city spaces that the children navigate daily. The children also speak in a colloquial Moroccan that matches the harshness and brutality of their world. This kind of graphic and vulgar language had not appeared in Moroccan cinema before.

A striking element in the film is the way it takes the perspective of the children as they attempt to cope with the world around them. The film jux- taposes harsh realism with the use of animation within the narrative, as seen from Kwita’s perspective. In this, the film emphasizes how Kwita’s brutal sur- roundings have pushed him inward, encouraging him to build his own fantasy world into which he can escape. Kwita’s declarations to the schoolgirl of a life together further underscore this point. In this, perception becomes fantasy as a strategy to transcend the present. The painful naïveté of the children is further stressed—for example, when Kwita thinks Ali is still alive after he dis- covers that Ali’s body released a bowel movement, or when Omar and Boubker make fun of the way Ali’s mother, who is a prostitute, has sex with a customer. Moreover, the scenes of the children playing at the port show how the concept of home in the film is highly flexible. They demarcate the concrete space with chalk, calling one square the living room, a second the kitchen, and a third the bathroom. Boubker, for example, scolds Kwita when he cooks sardines in the “bathroom” instead of the “kitchen.” Later in the film, Omar finds Ali’s mother and hesitatingly seeks out affection from her as a kind of surrogate mother. In this, the film offers a hint of optimism in displaying how the children seek ways to cope with the reality of their daily life. By providing Ali with the funeral he deserves, the film presents a wrenching yet hopeful message that street children can transcend their dire circumstances to achieve a sense of agency and fulfillment.

A Minute of Sun Less: Narrative Experimentation and Transgressive Sexual Identities

Ayouch’s third film, A Minute of Sun Less (Une minute de soleil en moins, 2002), is a police procedural that was made for ARTE’s masculine/feminine series.20In this work, Ayouch turns away from the social realism of Mektoub and Ali Zaoua in order to explore new forms of cinematographic language and ex- periment with types of editing and shooting. The film, which uses the police procedural format to explore the concepts of identity and sexuality, was shot in 2002 in Tangier and screened on ARTE in 2003. It caused a scandal in Morocco for its graphic depiction of sex, homosexuality, and a transgendered character. Parliamentary representatives of the Islamic Parti de la Justice et du Développe- ment (PJD) attacked the film, demanding that Ayouch return the funds that he received from the state-sponsored Centre Cinématographique Marocain (CCM) to produce it.21

When he began the project, Ayouch did not concern himself with whether the film would be authorized for screening in the country or how politicians would react to it; for Ayouch, these concerns would only encourage self-cen- sorship, something that he rejects in his work (Ayouch 2012). While he was not surprised by the scandal, he was shocked by the way members of the parliament reacted, especially when PJD politicians called for banning the film even though they had never viewed it and were unwilling to discuss it (ibid.). For Ayouch, this reaction points to one of the main problems in Moroccan society—the inability to discuss issues publicly and conduct open debate over charged po- litical, social, and cultural topics. Because Ayouch has steadfastly refused to cut the explicit sex scenes in the film—mostly because they serve as the vehicle for the film’s exploration of transgressive identities—A Minute of Sun Less has yet to screen in Moroccan cinema houses or national television.22 Nonetheless, many saw the film when it aired on ARTE, and pirated copies of the work circu- late openly in DVD markets across the country. Ten years after making the film, Ayouch is still optimistic that it will eventually appear in Moroccan cinemas; he plans to resubmit the film for approval for public screening (Ayouch 2013).

A Minute of Sun Less is a prequel to Mektoub. Ayouch links the two films through the Tangier setting and the character Kemal Raoui, even though a dif- ferent actor plays the role in each film.23 A Minute of Sun Less opens in Kemal’s spare apartment as he is called down to the scene of a murder. The victim, Hakim Tahiri, owned a yacht-building and wood business and was known in Tangier for hosting wild sex parties. The commissioner tells Kemal that they suspect Tahiri and his family of controlling a large drug-smuggling operation to Europe. Touria, Hakim’s mysterious employee, played by Lubna Azabal, discovered the body of Tahiri floating in a large bathtub with a phallic object penetrating him anally after he was shot in the heart.

Kemal begins investigating the case and soon finds the manager of Hakim’s wood business, a taciturn man named Bougemza, who explains that they make a new kind of material at the factory named Strati-décor. Kemal learns that the Tahiri family sent Bougemza to Tangier to watch Hakim after he had been found sexually assaulting a fourteen-year-old boy. Kemal takes in Touria’s ado- lescent brother, Pipo, played by Hicham Moussoun (who appeared in Ali Zaouaas Boubker), and Touria joins them after she is released from police custody. Even though they are never shown speaking to each other throughout the film, the attraction between Kemal and Touria boils over and the two begin having sex, despite the fact that she is the prime suspect in the murder case.

The investigation proceeds, and after several false leads Kemal follows up on Strati-décor, which he learns is made from sawdust fused together by special- ized machines. Kemal rushes to the wood factory, suspecting that the Tahiris smuggle drugs out of the country by mixing them in Strati-décor, but finds that the factory has suspiciously burned down. He takes some of the remaining wood for analysis and the crime lab determines that it is mixed with cocaine. Fearing for Touria’s safety, Kemal returns to his apartment looking for her, but she has already left with Pipo. In the final moments of the film, the scene shifts between Kemal, who is driving along the Atlantic shore, and Touria, who rides in a taxi with Pipo. Bougemza also follows Touria and Pipo in his car. Kemal now realizes that Bougemza killed Hakim, not Touria. Pipo convinces Touria to stop the taxi and go for a swim in the ocean. As Touria stands on the beach watching Pipo in the water, Bougemza appears, takes out a long-range rifle, and shoots them both, presumably to silence them after they had grown too close to Kemal. Driving on the highway, Kemal notices police cars and gets out of his car. After discovering the murders, he rushes frantically into the water, screaming in grief.

A Minute of Sun Less marks a significant development in Ayouch’s work. The film boasts highly stylized camera work, including quick transitions between images, pauses and skips between shots, and delays between images and audio elements, with images appearing first. Sounds are exaggerated at times, such as when the ticking of Kemal’s alarm clock turns into an elongated pounding. From the outset, the film also features many quick images and rapid scenes spliced into the narrative, including shots of Touria holding the phallic object found in Hakim’s dead body, Hakim assaulting Pipo, or Bougemza shooting Hakim. These various elements serve to construct Kemal’s identity through his perceptions and internal deliberations on the case as he investigates the murder. The washed-out colors, bare sets, and varied music soundtrack—from Indian music to 1970s style bass—give the film a retro-cool feeling, quite distinct from Ayouch’s previous work. These simple and, at times, highly artificial visual and audio elements point to the film as a prequel to Mektoub, establishing the setting as during the 1970s or ’80s.

The most daring aspect of the film is the way it problematizes the concept of identity, gender, and sexuality. Kemal is involved with a transgendered dancer named Yasmine, played by the actor Noor.24 Yasmine talks provocatively about her sex change operation and jokes with Pipo that he can call her mister or ma’am, since “it’s all the same.” The physical encounters between Kemal and Touria also complicate the film’s depiction of sexuality and undermine tradi- tional sexual roles in the Arab world. When they have sex for the first time, she pulls down his pants to reveal his erect penis, demonstrating his attraction for her. Nonetheless, Kemal submissively turns over and raises his backside to Touria, inviting her to straddle him from behind. She dominates him in this initial encounter as she fingers his anus. A similar sequence takes place in their second sex scene. During their third scene, however, instead of remaining pas- sive, Kemal becomes dominant, overpowering her and roughly penetrating her from on top. This sequence leaves Touria grief-stricken at the transformation of aggression and virility that has taken place in him since their first two en- counters. These scenes are central to the film’s exploration of sexuality, showing the audience how sexual identity is a performative act depending on individual encounters, moving along a spectrum rather than remaining stable. Ayouch has pointed to the thematic importance of these scenes in a variety of interviews about the film, defending his decision not to cut them for any screenings in Morocco (Laghzawi 2003b).

These scenes point to the importance of transgression in the film. According to Ayouch: “I am doing cinema in a country where, for me, there is not enough space for difference” (Ayouch 2012). The depiction of sexuality in A Minute of Sun Less indicates the way Ayouch seeks to transgress categories of sameness and the pressure to be alike in society, to provoke public recognition and respect for difference. In the film, singular categories, such as homosexual, hetero- sexual, or even bisexual, have broken down. Moreover, the depiction of sexual- ity is anchored in the film’s exploration of identity. Kemal takes on different identities depending on context and environment. Even within the space of the bedroom and with the same people, Kemal performs different sexual identities. This points to the importance of the multiplicity and instability of roles in the film. With A Minute of Sun Less, Ayouch hoped to provoke a public debate and acceptance of sexuality and fluid identities in Moroccan society.

Despite the significant developments in style, content, and theme, there are important continuities between A Minute of Sun Less and Ayouch’s earlier work. The first is the use of fantasy. In Ali Zaoua, animation appears as a way to display the children’s perspective as they cope with their environment, to show their ability to find momentary happiness and escape the challenges of their daily existence. Fantasy reappears in A Minute of Sun Less when Kemal, Touria, and Pipo go to Fez in order to meet with Driss, Hakim’s uncle. As they drive on the highway, the car begins to ascend and soar through the sky as the film mixes images of the three with animation. The use of fantasy in the film points to the Kemal’s newly discovered joy and happiness with Touria and Pipo. Just as the children in Ali Zaoua create a new concept of home by delin- eating squares on the ground with chalk, the scene suggests that Kemal feels a deep sense of contentment as Touria and Pipo become a new kind of family for him.

At the beginning of the film, there are shots of Kemal looking into his bath- room mirror, depressed and barely able to smile. As the film progresses, how- ever, he becomes increasingly content and happy through his relationship with Touria and Pipo, despite the fact that she is the main suspect in his murder investigation. Just as in Ali Zaoua, the film points to the ability of human be- ings to find fulfillment in personal interactions, even if those interactions are not based on standard concepts of family, home, sexuality, or gender. And this explains Kemal’s grief at the end of the film as he rushes into the ocean—with the murder of Touria and Pipo, he has lost his only chance to transcend his daily existence. This is further emphasized by the film’s final images, which show Kemal at an outdoor café. Sitting in the same chair and location, he morphs into a much older man, showing that his circumstances will not change even after several decades. His life without Touria and Pipo has come to a stop.

While the form of a police procedural seems like a radical break for Moroccan cinema, it represents another connection with Mektoub, which in- cluded elements of the genre as well. A Minute of Sun Less also bears important links with Moroccan television production at the time. During 2001 and 2002, the local stations RTM and 2M produced and screened a number of police television films for the first time.25 The most popular of these films, The Blind Whale and The Black Butterfly, also depict the local police investigating a large drug smuggling operation from Morocco to Europe (Rhanja 2001 and Rhanja 2002). In these two works—as in A Minute of Sun Less—the Moroccan police fail to bring the main suspect to justice or crack the drug smuggling operation at the heart of the investigation. By incorporating aspects of local Moroccan television at the time—yet premiering on ARTE—A Minute of Sun Less is not simply an audacious film, experimenting with audiovisual techniques and transgressing concepts of identity. It is also a powerful work of transnational filmmaking, connecting Morocco to Europe through the medium of television and cinema.

Whatever Lola Wants: Bridging Differences between the Arab World and the West

In his fourth film, Whatever Lola Wants (2007), Ayouch continued building bridges between the Arab world and the West. The film was a commercial and critical success, winning the top prize at the Tangier International Film Festival and selling over 100,000 box office tickets, a considerable number considering the decline in moviegoers in Morocco during the past decade.26 The film is a major departure from Ayouch’s previous work, and not only because of its com- mercial melodramatic style. His first English-language film, it stars an Ameri- can actress, Laura Ramsey, in the lead role of Lola. Moreover, it is his first work shot partly outside of Morocco, as Ayouch used both New York City and Cairo, in addition to Rabat and Casablanca, as filming locations. He also enjoyed a comparatively larger budget of approximately €10 million to make the film, finding much of the funding from French sources.27 Finally, the lighthearted theme of the film—a New York City postal worker travels to Cairo to learn belly dancing from a former star—differs significantly from the social and political engagement of his first three works.28

Whatever Lola Wants opens in New York City as Lola struggles to balance her part-time work as a mail carrier for the United States Postal Service with her ambitions to become a successful dancer. While delivering mail on her route one day, Lola meets a preppy Egyptian man named Zack, played by the Moroccan actor Assaad Bouab. The two soon become intimate, but they argue when Lola tells him that she will not accept her boss’s offer of full-time work since she is afraid that it will crush her dreams of becoming a dancer. Zack thinks Lola is being childish, and the two fight before he suddenly returns to Cairo. At a crossroads in her life, Lola impulsively decides to raise money for a ticket to Cairo so that she can reconcile with Zack.

After arriving at the crowded Cairo airport, Lola goes to Zack’s house, which is in an affluent part of the city. Zack is shocked to see Lola, as he is accustomed to keeping his life in the United States separate from his family and personal life in Egypt. Zack takes Lola to a cheap hotel, has sex with her, and then gives her a large amount of cash to buy a plane ticket home. Crushed by the rejection, Lola is desperate. She remembers how her Egyptian neighbor in New York played her videos of a legendary former belly dancer named Ismahan and decides to seek her out in the hope that Ismahan will teach her Oriental dance.

Lola finds Ismahan’s house and quickly discovers that she is a pariah. Nonetheless, after much persistence, Lola convinces Ismahan to train her. At first Lola is stiff and nervous; but Ismahan pushes Lola to use her body as a medium for articulating her emotions, to use Oriental dance as a form of self- expression. Their relationship blossoms as Lola’s joy and enthusiasm transforms Ismahan, breaking down her harsh exterior and livening up her somber life. Ismahan eventually confesses to Lola that the reason that she is a pariah is because she was photographed by the local paparazzi with a man who was not her husband. Ismahan explains that she loved the man but that they could not be together.

While studying with Ismahan, Lola begins dancing at a nightclub in the city and is discovered by a dance promoter named Nasser Radi. Nasser eventually books her at a theater named the Nile Tower, where Lola becomes a star combin- ing American stage sensibilities with Oriental dance. She performs for packed houses night after night and eventually announces to the crowd that she will return home to share Oriental dance with New Yorkers, a nod to cross-cultural understanding and fusion between the Unites States and the Arab world. She also declares that Ismahan was her teacher. Stunned silence turns to applauds, showing that Lola has managed to bring Ismahan out of her seclusion and rec- oncile the public with her.

Now that Lola has found herself through dance, she can return home. Isma- han’s reconciliation with the public opens the possibility for her to find herself as well. It turns out that the man Ismahan loved was none other than the dance promoter, Nasser Radi, who helped Lola achieve fame as a ploy to reinsert him- self into Ismahan’s life. For years he had been sending her letters, but she never replied. Now that Lola has left for New York and success in her own Broadway show, Ismahan finally opens her door to Nasser, accepting his love, bridging the difference between the two, and presumably finding the same fulfillment through him that Lola found through dance. In these ending scenes the film presents a striking display of cross-cultural understanding, as it is the rela- tionship between the American Lola and the Egyptian Ismahan that has cut across national and cultural boundaries, ended the public’s intolerance toward Ismahan, and led both to deep personal fulfillment.

Despite the stark differences in subject matter, language, style, and social critique, Whatever Lola Wants shares important links with Ayouch’s previous work. Most prominently, the film explores the concept of difference and iden- tity. Just as Ayouch showed in A Minute of Sun Less, human beings operate on multiple levels and environments, and the concept of identity can morph depending on circumstances and environment. According to Ayouch, “I don’t think that one should have only one identity. I think we are all dealing with many identities” (Ayouch 2012). This multiplicity in Whatever Lola Wants leads to bridging cultural divides and provides a highly optimistic perspective on difference.

Moreover, as in Ayouch’s previous films, Lola focuses on a personal struggle that, in the end, fundamentally transforms the individual. In Mektoub, Taoufik and Sophia’s tragic encounter with Darif leads them to an unexpected and radi- cally new fate that bridges the gap between them and their homeland. In Ali Zaoua, Ali’s death pushes the three children to bring respect and dignity not just to Ali but also to their lives for the first time. Kemal, in A Minute of Sun Less, temporarily transcends his deep depression through the self-discovery he experiences in his physical and emotional relationship with Touria. Lola too has been struggling with her identity and sense of place in the world when she turns down the full-time position at the post office and when she faces the end of her relationship with Zack. It is through overcoming her differences with Ismahan—as well as her persistence at Oriental dance—that she is able to find herself, bridge misunderstanding, and achieve the success in life that she so desperately craves. Through this common theme—the ability of the individual to transcend difference and their environment—Ayouch manages to connect his work to the social life and aspirations of the Moroccan and Middle Eastern public as well as to give his work a human and universal dimension.

Horses of God: Microtraumas and the Construction of Terrorists

On May 16, 2003, fourteen suicide bombers from the Sidi Moumen shanty- town of Casablanca attacked five separate locations in the center of the city. Forty-four people in total died during the attacks, which were a deeply trau- matic event for the country because the attackers were young Moroccans, not members of an international terrorism network. Moreover, Islamic terrorism had never struck the country before. Much like the September 11 attacks in the United States, May 16 ushered in wide-ranging legal, security, and social changes aimed at stopping another attack (Smolin 2013). Because of the taboo nature of the attacks, however, there was little public debate in Morocco in the initial years after the event about the causes of the bombings or their social, political, and cultural implications. As with the Tabit Affair, Ayouch believed that this silence pointed to the inability of the Moroccan public to face pain- ful realities. For Ayouch, the young men who carried out the attacks were victims of the bombings as well: “Above all, the bombers were human beings. I wanted to humanize them and humanize their doubts” (Ayouch 2013). As he did in his first film, Mektoub, Ayouch looked to cinema as a means to reopen public debate about a traumatic national event that was being suppressed. Ayouch has remarked, “The denial of identity gives birth to violence” (Ayouch 2013).

In his fifth feature film, Horses of God (Les cheveaux de dieu / Ya khayl Allah,2012), adapted from Mahi Binebine’s novel (Binebine 2013), Nabil Ayouch exam- ines the social genealogy of the May 16 bombings in order to explore the origins of the Islamic terrorism in the country.29 The film weaves the lives of several young men, as they come of age in Sidi Moumen during the decade before 2003, together with historic events, such as the death of Hassan II in 1999 and the September 11 attacks.30 The film, which was an official selection at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, unfolds over ten years, beginning in 1994 as the boys in the shantytown play soccer.31 The game quickly breaks down into insults and violence as these initial sequences establish the harsh environment in which the children live. Immediately after the soccer match, the two brothers Hamid, played by Abdelilah Rachid, and Yachine, played by Abdelhakim Rachid, return home and their mother yells at them that they “stink like garbage,” showing how the verbal abuse among the children is rooted in the family as the boys find little love and affection at home. Moreover, Hamid and Yachine’s family is a site of socioeconomic crisis. Their mother can barely find work as a cleaning lady while one older brother is a soldier in the Western Sahara and the other is au- tistic, unable to leave the home. Most importantly, their father is overwhelmed by depression, creating a lack of authority in their lives. With the absence of a father figure, the two brothers are left to the vicious world of the slum, with no one to protect or guide them.

This implosion of the traditional Arab family in the shantytown is also seen in the characters’ inability to develop warm and loving human relationships outside of the home. In the scenes that take place during the 1990s, the children treat each other brutally. In one of the most disturbing sequences in the film, the boys go to the house of one of their friends, Nabil, as the adults are celebrating a wedding. Left alone, they drink a bottle of wine and Hamid rapes Nabil in front of the others.32 This sequence points not only to the violence and abuse surrounding the lives of the boys as they grow up without authority figures but also to the lack of outlets to develop intimate relationships in the shantytown environment. The children learn about sex through violence, not affection. In another sequence, Nabil, who is left alone once Islamists force his mother out of Sidi Moumen for working as a prostitute, carefully puts lipstick on himself while watching in a mirror. This scene suggests that the violent homoerotic environment of the shantytown has left Nabil with no outlet to explore his sexuality and forced him to hide elements of his identity. These scenes of sexual abuse and suppression serve as a precursor for the violence of radical Islam later in the film.

The theme of suppressed identity is further emphasized in the way the film develops the relationship between Yachine and Ghislaine. Even as a young boy at the beginning of the film, Yachine smiles at Ghislaine, hoping to at- tract her attention. As they get older, the two continue to flirt with each other. Nonetheless, the social environment and geographical space of the shantytown make it impossible for the two to be alone together as Yachine is repeatedly blocked when he attempts to speak with Ghislaine alone. Yachine’s love for Ghislaine continues to develop throughout the film. Even in the days before the suicide bombings at the end of the film, Yachine asks Nabil what Ghislaine will think when she learns that he has died as a martyr, as if committing his act of terrorism will impress her. These words can also be heard in the initial moments of the film, suggesting that the lack of space for intimacy links the inability to develop loving human relationships with the emergence of Islamic terrorism in the country.

Competition for love and affection also lies at the heart of the relationship between Hamid and Yachine in the film. When they are children, Yachine looks up to Hamid and is eager to please him even though Hamid repeatedly belittles him. Without the guidance of older brothers or the authority of a father figure, the children are left to compete among themselves for their mother’s rare mo- ments of affection. When Hamid brings her a gift of perfume, she kisses him and tells him how pleased she is with him. When Hamid is arrested, however, he still looms large over Yachine’s relationship with their mother. The mother tells him how much she misses Hamid and how he, unlike Yachine, was able to bring money home for her. Yachine brings perfume home for his mother but she is too busy watching television to open the box, a clear rejection of his gesture.

In the initial sequences of the film, Ayouch uses a long and wide crane shot to establish a global view of the shantytown in 1994. The second crane shot depicts Sidi Moumen in 1999, after the death of Hassan II, showing the significant ex- pansion of the slum and the explosion of garbage surrounding it. With no state services such as education, running water, or urban planning, the shantytown is a world abandoned by and cut off from civil society. The state intervenes in Sidi Moumen only through the police, who are depicted as brutal and corrupt. One police detective, known as Pitbull, takes kickbacks from Hamid, who deals drugs under police protection in the shantytown to make money. Once Pitbull is transferred out of the area, this last vestige of the state disappears from the shantytown and the residents are left to fend for themselves in the face of the growing presence of radical Islam.

The abandonment of civil society works both ways in the film. Only weeks before the suicide attacks, the group of young men drives in a van from the shantytown into the city center and, with a wide smile of anticipation, one says: “It’s the first time I’m going to visit the city.” Only several miles separate the city center from Sidi Moumen, but the characters in the film have never left the shantytown. This points to the way they have lived fully cut apart from civil society, with no crossing between the two. Sidi Moumen and Casablanca therefore appear as two separate worlds that are developing not only at different speeds but also in radically different directions.

It is this void of dignity, belonging, and affection that radical Islam fills in the film. Islamists make their first appearance while harassing Tamou, Nabil’s mother, for working as a prostitute, eventually forcing her to leave the shan- tytown. Hamid soon returns home from two years in prison wearing a beard and traditional religious clothing, visibly reborn in his relationship with Islam. While jail provided the forum for Hamid to embrace radical Islam, trauma soon brings Yachine and Nabil into the fold. Ba Mousa, the coarse mechanic who verbally abuses the boys, gets drunk and begins kissing Nabil in front of Yachine. When Nabil refuses him, Ba Mousa becomes enraged and attacks Nabil. Yachine intervenes and hits Ba Mousa over the head with a crowbar and then kills him. Hamid soon arrives with his new Islamist friends and disposes of the body. This disturbing event quickly pushes Yachine and Nabil into closer contact with the Islamists of the shantytown. Fearful that they might be ar- rested and with nowhere else to turn, Yachine and Nabil visit the Islamists’ com- pound and meet the emir, or leader, of the group, Abou Zoubier. The emir tells Yachine that he is not at fault for the murder and that he now has the chance to atone for his sins and restart his life. In this, Islam and the group offer Yachine and Nabil their sole path for redemption.

The Islamist group also presents opportunities for attaining self-respect and dignity. It is during these scenes that the language in the film changes. Unlike the harsh form of Moroccan Arabic at the beginning of the film, the Islamists speak in an educated mix of standard and Moroccan Arabic, show- ing how the group also serves as a means of education in the absence of the state. In addition, the film shows how the Islamists play the role of the state in offering social services such as providing medical care and basic food for the shantytown’s residents.33 The increasing entrenchment of radical Islam in the shantytown is also reflected in the colors and shots in the film. The bright sun-drenched colors and wide pan shots in the first half of the film turn to shots in dark enclosed spaces with flat gray and black colors in the second half.

Yachine struggles at first to accept his new place within the group but eventually submits. This only accentuates the rivalry between the brothers as they now compete for the affection and approval of the emir instead of their mother. Hamid, for example, feels threatened when he thinks that Yachine is becoming too close with the emir. As the group moves increasingly toward the suicide bombings, Yachine appears more committed and confident while Hamid becomes increasingly uncertain about the operation. The police arrive in the shantytown and viciously beat some of the Islamists, including Yachine. Nonetheless, Yachine hides his pain and appears strong before the emir, lead- ing the emir to praise Yachine. This sparks Hamid’s jealousy even further. The rivalry pushes the two brothers to accept participating in the suicide bombings as the emir explains that Yachine, Hamid, Nabil, and Fouad have been chosen for the operation, inciting them with the expression “Fly, horses of God, and the gates of paradise will open for you.”34 Despite the fact that Hamid is older, Yachine is chosen as the leader of the operation. Hamid’s growing skepticism stands in stark contrast with Yachine’s unwavering determination for carrying out the attack. In this, Ayouch suggests that, in addition to the implosion of the family and the abandonment of the state, the rivalry between the brothers—an example of what he calls the “microtraumas” of their lives—is more important than religion in motivating their actions (Ayouch 2013).

In the closing sequences of the film, the four young men trim their beards, cut their hair, and cross over into the city center with backpacks full of explo- sives. The group then approaches their target, the Casa de España, but before they enter, Hamid attempts to convince Yachine to change his mind at the last moment. Driven by his rivalry with his brother, however, Yachine pushes Hamid away and enters the restaurant. This space points to Morocco’s heritage of religious tolerance and multiculturalism in Andalusia, a past that the bombers are attempting to destroy with their act. The explosion is then seen in the distance from the shantytown as a number of children, presumably the next group of Yachines and Hamids, with their own personal rivalries and experi- ences of abuse and abandonment, play soccer.35

Horses of God daringly depicts how ten-year-old boys can be transformed into Islamic terrorists as a result of their environment and personal relation- ships. The film shows the human face of terrorism, presenting it as a social construct, one resulting from the implosion of the traditional Arab family, the complete absence of the state in the shantytowns, and the lack of dignity and future prospects for young Moroccans. The film blends these socioeconomic factors with the microhistories of characters like Hamid and Yachine, whose personal traumas, desires for belonging, and rivalries, more than religious fer- vor, fuel the violence of the shantytown and, eventually, radical Islam. WithHorses of God, Ayouch sets in full display the horrific results of abandoning young Moroccans in areas like Sidi Moumen and demonstrates the enormous consequences for the country of suppressing trauma on both the national and the individual level.

From Ali Zaoua to Horses of God, Nabil Ayouch has attempted to bridge dis- connected worlds in order to break through taboos and call for the integration of marginalized figures into Moroccan society and public consciousness. He has sought to provoke public debate around painful national traumas, developing a new cinematic language in Morocco in the process. By embracing difference and celebrating multiplicity of identities, Ayouch has used cinema as a vehicle not only for self-expression but also as a means to bring exposure and dignity to those abandoned and rejected by traditional elements in order to foster a more inclusive society. Bridging difference in his work, not only within Morocco but also between Israel and Palestine, as in My Land, as well as between the Arab world and the West, leads to the embrace of suppressed forms of identity and a fostering of cross-cultural understanding.

Ayouch is at the forefront of a new generation of filmmakers attempting to raise the art of Moroccan cinema to global standards. For Ayouch, “We should be capable in the current generation of talking to the rest of world. We are not doing films for our own audiences only” (Ayouch 2012). In his effort to accomplish this, Ayouch has developed a cinematic language that transgresses boundaries within Morocco as well as national borders. His films reflect both local and universal content and form, standing at the frontline of a new terrain for Moroccan cinema both in the country and abroad.

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