MOROCCO: Symbolic Journey

Strolling through a trade fair in Casablanca two years ago. Morocco's King Mohammed V paused before a model of a DC-6 airliner, sighed longingly: "One day I shall return." "Return where, Your Majesty?" asked an aide. "To Madagascar, of course," replied the King.

Madagascar seemed the last place the King would want to see again. It is the Indian Ocean island to which the French had exiled the then Sultan in 1953, and kept him isolated for two years until his triumphal return to preside over Morocco's independence.

But measured against the birth pains of creating a new nation, the...

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