Screaming in Marrakesh

One can scream out of joy, out of pain, out of fear. In 24 hours I heard all those screams.

Marrakesh is a magic place for many reasons. For me it represents not only where boyfriend husband works and lives but also a place where we will age, enjoying the house we just bought and are rebuilding to make it our little oriental jewel.

Marrakesh was chaos the other night, for one very mundane reason: football. Barcelona was playing against Madrid and Messi scored in the very moment that the evening call for prayer started, a mix of religious joy from the thousands of Barcelona supporters in Marrakesh erupted and elevated my favorite team to Koranic levels.

And then I went to bed. I took a plane and before landing in Paris the joy had dissipated. Terrorists had attacked Marrakesh's Cafe Argana, killing 17 people. We later learned that it was not Al-Qaida as we first thought but an Islamist radical from Safi who learned how to make bombs via internet. And the call for prayer was not joy anymore, but a long howl of pain.


*Photo Jean Pierre Lescourret