by ANDREW ELKIN

CASABLANCA, Morocco - Prior to Friday, May 16, Casablanca was a city that lived in the streets and went to bed late. Since the attacks of that day that killed 43 and injured 100 more, however, the city has transformed. People stay home after supper, watch the news warily and survey the crowd with suspicion. The initial shock has passed, the fear has stabilized, and now Casablanca is in denial. For the most part, people are paranoid and unable to understand what has happened. This isn't supposed to happen in Morocco, which is proud of its Andalusian, Turkish and Berber roots, the influences of which are still visible across the country.

Ahmed Afi was with friends at a barbecue that Friday night when a few loud cracks rang out in the distance. Some thought it was thunder, others mistook the noise for fireworks. The country was still celebrating the birth of a crown prince. Later, when someone went out to get a bottle of Coke, they came back with the news of what was really going on.

"Our country has never known violence, or hatred, or anything like this," insists Afi, a professional tour guide who lived and worked in Montreal for five years before returning to Casablanca in 1995. "It's not normal. They weren't real Moroccans that did this - I guarantee you."

This is an opinion that runs time and again on the evening news in politicians' remarks and statements by King Mohammed VI's spokesman. The official consensus is that what happened here is foreign, and is not Moroccan in any way.

Deep divisions

In fact, though Morocco is usually considered a moderate nation, there is a deep divide between two very different sides of the country, which played a big part in bringing about the attacks. With an official illiteracy rate of nearly 50 per cent, unemployment above 40 per cent and more than half the population living in poverty, Morocco is essentially two countries.

In Casablanca, the other half lives in areas like Sidi Moumen, a sprawling residential zone that is mostly shanties, home to 200,000. The young people of this neighbourhood are underfed, uneducated and looking for a way out. Sometime before May 16, at least eight youths from this neighbourhood were convinced that martyrdom was it.

"You could see they were needy types, and young," Jean-Marc Levy said the day after the attacks. Shifting the rubble in the entrance to his restaurant with his loafers, he talked about how lucky he felt. Levy's chic Italian eatery, Positano, is across the street from the Belgian consulate, where two policemen were standing watch that night. He believes that as two suicide bombers approached his restaurant - targeted because he is Jewish - the police intervened. The bombers detonated their charges in the street, and no one inside the restaurant was hurt.

Levy says his "luck" doesn't give him much comfort, for he is Moroccan, too. "From the way it all went down, who knows where we will end up?"

The Islamist shadow

This wasn't the first sign of trouble between secular and Islamist Morocco. Ten members of the cult that has been blamed for the attacks, Assirat al Moustaquim (the Righteous Path) were sentenced to between one and 20 years in prison for the stoning death of a man in February, 2002. They had condemned the victim for drinking alcohol.

Another group that has drawn a lot of attention since the attack is the Salafia Jihadia, which practices an extreme blend of Islam that condones the use of violence against all infidels, including moderate Muslims. The group comprises roughly 1,000 members throughout Morocco, and has been named in a string of about 20 religious killings since 1999.

The rise of an Islamist party in the Moroccan parliament last year signalled the growing pains the country is experiencing as it comes to the fork in the road between modern and traditional living. When 14 hard rockers were arrested for "Satanism" last February, Islamist newspapers called for a purge of all cultural activity not purely Islamic.

More recently, pairs of fundamentalist women have been making the rounds in Casablanca's public baths, berating and intimidating other women for not wearing enough clothing while they wash.

Most of all, Moroccans fear what has happened in Algeria - an Islamist-versus-government civil war that has killed 150,000 since 1991 - could happen here. Now that terrorism has arrived, Moroccans are determined that the response be civilized.

So far, so good. On Sunday, 250,000 people marched against terrorism in Casablanca, and a coalition of young entrepreneurs has started a T-shirt and poster campaign combining the hand of Fatima, a Muslim symbol used to ward off evil, with the slogan "Don't touch my country."

The government, however, has rushed through an anti-terrorism bill that gives police sweeping new powers to both intimidate and arrest suspects. It has had an immediate effect: Casablanca has gone paranoid.

Signs of the times

Khalid, who spent 10 years in Montreal, where he married and had a child before returning to be closer to his family, has succumbed to the paranoia. Owner of a popular sandwich shop in the Bourgogne district of Casablanca, he fears that the publication of his name or photograph - even in a foreign country - could earn him an appointment with police investigators. "This is going to bring heavier security," he explains.

Signs of increased police scrutiny and public vigilance are already visible all over the city. On the main thoroughfares cops and soldiers man impromptu roadblocks, occasionally stopping motorists and demanding the national ID card. Anyone who doesn't have it gets a free trip downtown.

Backpacks, the luggage of choice for the Casablanca suicide bombers, have now become taboo. At some places they are prohibited altogether, and at train stations, public buildings and the checkpoints scattered around the city centre, police fondle the bags gently or rummage at will. Tourists and journalists alike have their films confiscated for brandishing cameras around army patrols and sensitive landmarks like the American Language Center or the large Hebrew school.

While Casablanca's bars and clubs are usually crammed on weekends, they are now virtually empty before 11 p.m. Consumption of alcohol by Muslim Moroccans is prohibited, but tolerated. Now, however, people are afraid the police will use the smallest excuse to harass them.

In boutiques and delis, shoppers look to the door whenever someone enters, and in the streets, Casablancans talk about men they know who have shaved their beards in the past week so they will not be taken for Islamists.

Misguided devotion kills

A practicing Muslim, Afi scoffs at the idea that the attacks were the work of believers. Anyone who knows the Quran, he says, knows that, according to the prophet Mohammed, if someone does you harm, you respond with kindness. To wit, Afi has memorized the passage: "If you throw a stone into the oasis, the palms will reply with dates."

He believes that the attacks of May 16 will eventually strengthen the country, once the initial wounds are healed, and he says he realizes there is an inequality that has to be dealt with. He draws an example from his time in Montreal, when a politician was caught shoplifting. "There was no question he was guilty, and he was going to be held responsible." In Morocco, Afi says, anyone with a bit of money could get off the hook with a simple bribe. "For some people who live in poverty here, they might feel that they have no chance. But it's no excuse to go killing people."

At the end of yet another television report on the bombers' identities, Afi throws his hands up and with his finger he draws a big question mark in the air. "I just don't get it."

Andrew Elkin is on a media internship in Morocco with Alternatives.ca