the gutters. Groups of dark skinned children played in front of the houses, elderly people sitting on their door steps or in the open windows observed the two strangers with passing curiosity. The houses were dirty and badly in need of repair. The cries of small children and music that echoed from the open doors and windows reminded Ennis of African towns he had visited.
“This part of the old town is the Black quarter.”
“They’re recent arrivals, I mean new arrivals?”
“No...they’ve been here for a long time. In our country uncontrolled settlement is forbidden, but unfortunately reproduction is not forbidden.”
Ennis felt more than a hint of racism in Abdelhamid's words. He used the same arguments that the French had used twenty years before. Population growth was uncontrolled whilst Algharb’s resources were limited without a further decline in the standard of living of its inhabitants. The third world was not far after a generation of independence and the pauperisation of a large part of the population seemed to be inevitable.
The industrialised countries no longer needed cheap labour, a large population had become an insupportable burden in a world where the automation of industrial production and high yield biogenetic agriculture were pushed to a degree previously unimagined, even by twentieth century futurists. Labour had become the domain of the highly skilled and the poor uneducated masses were useless, either as a source of skilled labour or potential consumers.
They arrived in a small square with a few bars full of Africans of all origins. Opposite the cafes was an abandoned parish church. On another side of the square he had a view over the city, where the old cathedral, now transformed into mosque, dominated the skyline with its four minarets.
The Mistral had started to blow lifting the dust and old plastic bags that lay in the unswept gutters and corners of the square, the rubbish swirled in mini tornados before falling back to the ground when the wind dropped leaving clouds of dust suspended in the air.
From time to time he saw a few people who were evidently French, they were old, miserable and poor, lost or africanised. The buildings, which had been fine in the past, were rundown, many appeared to be abandoned, exactly the same as those he had seen in Algeria.
They turned into a street leading from the square, in front of a school he remarked that the girls were veiled.
“Are the schools Islamic?”
“No, not at all.”
“Are they separated according to religion?”
“Yes, it’s better that way, it avoids the problems that France experienced in the past.”
“But Algharb has no state religion.”
“That’s right, but our school children and students are grouped together by their religious affinities. Like that each one can wear the traditional clothes of their respective religions, such as the veil or the kippa, or wear jewellery, crosses or the Star of David. Our choice of society imposes a separation between religion and the law, and it leaves each individual the free choice to exercise his beliefs, not like in France.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“In France there is no choice. Islam and its followers were thrown out like lepers. The French don’t want us. A lay society is what we have chosen. Our state protects us against the excesses of religion, as can be seen in the Caliphate, or in France where le Martel with his minister Boublil have imposed laws, directly copied from those of the Nazis!”
“Why complain when you have your independence,” Ennis said smiling, “you have a standard of living much higher than Algeria or any other country in Africa.”
“Unfortunately we are in a kind of Gaza, but worse! We have our independence! It’s nothing but a charade, we do not have the right to auto-determination, neither for foreign affairs or defence, and worse we are dependant on France to balance our budget. We are thrown the left-overs from le Martel’s table.”
Ennis was taken aback; he had not expected such a vehement outburst. It was certainly true the Algharb was separated from its neighbours by a frontier more effectively than a Berlin Wall plus the fact visas were parsimoniously distributed to its citizens wishing to visit the Caliphate or the countries of the European Federation.
Transhumance
I suppose we can fix a couple of events that constituted an important turning point in the history of modern times. First when the Cold War came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet empire. Then when America’s disastrous adventures in Iraq finally ended with its army camped within a besieged fortress, surrounded by a hostile population. A tenuous peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours slowly transformed the attitude of the oil consuming countries into indifference, in spite of Iran’s constant threats and Palestine’s internal dissensions. The price of oil had at last forced the rich countries to develop alternative sources of energy. When the peace of the world was no longer threatened and oil had lost its strangle hold, the problems of the Middle East were left to the Turks to solve in their quest for a role in the twenty first century, and not least as salve after their rejection from the European Federation.
The decline in importance of oil as a primary energy source resulted in a loss of strategic interest for the region by the Americans, allowing the great multi-nationals of the chemical industry to impose their conditions on the oil producers, who saw the progressive decline in demand and a moderation in the price of their products, as they progressively gained effective control of markets, whilst the poorer non-oil producing Arab countries turned inwards in a climate of deepening economic crisis with the dramatic consequences change held for their populations.
Islam was however the only force capable of containing the explosive forces generated by declining fortunes and increasing hopes and desires of a new generation force feed by a tantalising vision of life in the consumer society by satellite television, a life beyond the reach of the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Middle East. Islam alone could unit those populations under its unique banner, where moral traditions and obedience to Allah was the rule.
The revolutionary leaders of the fundamental Islam of the twentieth century had achieved their objectives, but without the means to satisfy the economic needs and ensure an acceptable standard for the faithful. They had fallen into the same trap as the Imams of Iran, who after endless hesitations had opted for isolation and oppression, as the mirage of oil wealth receded and they floundered with the needs of a population that had more than doubled under the rule of the Imams.
Europe no longer feared a violent Islam, but rather its vast and poor populations, locked out, like the hungry watching the feast through the window of television, ever ready to roll over it in a vast wave. Europe had become immerged in a world of consumption, excessive and egoist, without any moral constraints, closing its eyes to poor who were knocking at its southern and eastern doors.
In Algharb the standard of living slowly drifted downwards following the departure of the French and the arrival of refugees from the Caliphate and other countries of Africa. The flow included those who were opposed to the Sharia, the law of the Caliphate. The refugees were the trained and educated: engineers, doctors, business people both large and small. They were the dynamic and thinking minorities, intellectuals and professional specialists.
When Rashidun el Kebir, the new Raïs, proclaimed a new Caliphate, the opposition that hoped for a secular state was seized by panic. The new leaders ceded to the pressure of the United States providing exit visas to political opponents, believing they would be well rid of them, but only to those who had the means to pay their passage to Europe, and by imposing an exit tax of ten thousand dollars for each person, said to cover the economic loss to the state.
Rashidun offered a mirage, a simple solution to the problems that each nation of the Maghrib had been unable to resolve, the eternal crisis of unemployment and a search for identity.
o0o
The country had been ripe for change when the military clique, tired and desperate, after having ruled the country for almost three g
enerations had finally ceded to outside pressures for greater democracy. American diplomacy, in the face of French caution if not outright opposition, had encouraged the change without foreseeing the dramatic consequences. The persistent discord between Paris and Washington had finally led to the inevitable accession to power in Alger of a more intransigent form of nationalism and Islamic influence.
For decades when Algerians had risen from their beds each morning their first reaction had been to switch on their radios in the expectancy and fear of learning that the bearded fanatics had taken over the country. Certain local wits even said the President was amongst the most anxious listeners.
The same wave of politico-religious fervour that had rolled over Algiers had also submerged the neighbouring capitals. Tunis was torn between an alliance with Algeria or Libya. But following the fall of the FLN, the governments of the neighbouring North Africa countries intensified the repression of their own Islamic movements, pushing their populations to armed revolt. The dominos fell, first Tunisia then Libya followed by Morocco and finally Egypt, like an earthquake, with its after shocks bringing down the House of Saud.
The Islamists took their revenge with a bloody repression of all real and imaginary opponents resulting in an exodus of the educated