Marrakesh locals left homeless by earthquake say government ‘more worried about tourists’
As the world focused on tragedy in Morocco’s earthquake-rattled Atlas Mountains, residents of one of Marrakesh’s oldest districts complained on Tuesday that their own suffering had been swept under the carpet in a bid not to scare off tourists.
Worse, some claimed the government intends to cart them off to a “stadium” to avoid the old town turning into a tent city rather than deal with their distress.
“I’m very angry,” said Mustapha, 53, as he tended his budgies in his bird shop. The store, and his nearby home are both situated in the Mellah, the ancient Jewish quarter of Marrakesh.
“In Marrakesh, all the authorities care about is showing the pretty centre and old town.
They will restore everything that tourists pass in front of, like damaged monuments, palaces, museums and ramparts.
“But behind our walls, our homes are all falling apart.”
When the 6.8-magnitude quake struck, his house shook and a wall came down. “But I was lucky. Two of my neighbours died, a woman and a boy. Another person down the road remained crushed under rubble here for three days,” he said.
With the death toll approaching 3,000, most of the victims were in the high Atlas Mountains, where several villages still remained cut off from aid on Tuesday as hope faded in the search for more survivors.
Marrakesh, around 50km (31 miles) further north, sustained considerable damage but far fewer fatalities – around 50. Around 20 of those were in the Mellah, situated in the city’s sprawling medina, or old town, a chaotic network of alleyways.
On the UN cultural agency’s World Heritage list since 1985, the millenium-old city founded by the Almoravid dynasty is famed for its 12th-century walls, which have been partly damaged by the tremors.
There are significant cracks on the city’s emblematic Koutoubia minaret, and the minaret of the Kharbouch mosque in its centre is almost completely destroyed.
Mustapha said the government would focus on clearing such destruction up, but fretted for his own future.
“I’ve been sleeping outside for the past four days. There is a big international congress in Marrakesh coming in October and they don’t want riff raff sleeping in the streets and parks so soldiers have come to tell us to go and move to a stadium,” he said.
“I think they see this as a golden opportunity to clear us all out and sell off this district to developers to make more expensive riads,” Mustapha added, referring to the often sumptuous thick-walled palaces that dot the old town, many belonging to wealthy French and other foreigners.
Mohammad Taha, 31, a telephone vendor, stood behind a pile of rubble and the collapsed wall of the Bahia Palace, a well-known 19th century landmark.
“My home is just opposite. When the quake struck, I opened the front door and saw the wall opposite fall on top of a taxi. I pulled out the driver and a woman and her little boy. They survived,” he recalled.
Mr Taha said that the Mellah had been in a fragile state even prior to Friday, a reality that he argued was at least partly the fault of Moroccan authorities.
“Our king gave orders to restore the Medina and a huge amount of money was distributed to do it up. But instead, they simply made cosmetic changes, putting a lick of paint and putting in new doors,” he said.
“Where did all that money go? Something isn’t right.”
In Marrakesh’s vast Jemaa el-Fna square, snake charmers and henna hawkers continued to ply their trade on Tuesday with little hope given the current trickle of tourists.
Just 100 yards into the medina, entire families sat on blankets under tarpaulin roofs as swathes of the poorer residential areas had become too dangerous to live in.
“The only people I have spoken to are journalists. Nobody else seems to care about our fate,” said Mariam Shtiwi, holding her small son’s hand.
?This sentiment was echoed by Moroccan novelist and film-maker Abdellah Ta?a in an op-ed for the French daily Le Monde.
“This disaster has created a unique bond between Moroccans,” he wrote. “They saw death with their own eyes. They understood how vulnerable they are more than ever. Abandoned. Alone.”
“This earthquake has brought the entire country face to face with a truth that we can no longer afford to hide or disguise: it is the poorest who will mainly suffer the consequences of this tragedy.”
British tourists The Telegraph spoke to seemed well aware of this but felt the answer was not to shun the country.
Ethan Wood, 45, from Epsom, Surrey, was at the end of trekking in the Atlas Mountains with his son David, 18, when the earthquake hit.
He appealed for tourists to continue visiting in the wake of the disaster.
“My message to Britons is: come here,” he said. “Tourism is one of their biggest industries and if you want to help this country, come here, explore it and meet the wonderful people and put some money into the local economy.”
He and his son had a narrow escape when a boulder landed on their hotel and crushed a nearby room.
“We could have easily been exploited when we needed water and food on the way down, but I cannot speak more highly about the way we have been treated by people who have lost so much themselves,” he said.
Another Briton, Steff, 58, a law enforcement officer from Staffordshire, said he was “happy to stay” in the country in spite of the devastation.
“The Moroccans seem to be getting on with things despite it all,” he said.
“There was a guy collecting rubble and I looked up and blocks above him were balanced precariously. The slightest wind would have toppled them over. But they throw caution to the wind, clean up and move on. You have to admire them through adversity.
“At the end of the day, they need the tourists as much as anything to be able to regenerate. To withdraw everything is selfish,” he said.
