ANY moviegoer over the age of 30 has memories of Morocco. Of Humphrey Bogart, explaining his presence in Casablanca: "I came for the waters. I was misinformed." Or Gary Cooper as Beau Geste, with ketchup all over his Foreign Legion tunic, dying bravely in defense of the Late Show and his papier-mâché fort. And there were Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, singing as they set out on the road to Dorothy Lamour:
We certainly do get around.
Like Webster's Dictionary, We're Morocco bound.
So are a lot of people these days. For restless jet-age pleasure seekers, Morocco has become one of the newest and chicest holiday havens. Tourism was all but nonexistent ten years ago; today it is Morocco's second biggest (after agriculture) and fastest growing industry. During 1969, 650,000 foreign tourists, 50,000 of them Americans, are expected to visit what Moroccans call the "Fortunate Kingdom." Many will come in the summer, when the sun is fiercer. But the big boom is now, in winter. These days, only the lucky find hotel rooms ("We just had to turn Charlie Chaplin away," a clerk at Marrakesh's Mamounia Hotel boasted last month, probably falsely). The rest have to make do with tents, trailers or sleeping bags slung somewhere along Morocco's 1,000 miles of beach. The squeeze in accommodations will be eased by new hotels currently under construction: two motel corporations, Ramada Inns and Holiday Inns, are furiously digging away.
But where to sleep is almost irrelevant. The country is what matters.
Cosmopolitan. Romantics are still drawn by Morocco's legendary reputation as a haunt of smugglers, spies, white slavers, gun runners and bearded bohemians. The country has been occupied at various times in its history by the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Portuguese, the Spanish and the French—but it has never been conquered. With a coastline on both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, it is the westernmost nation in Africa, which may account for the fact that it was the first African state to sign a treaty of friendship with the U.S. —in 1787. And with only the eight-mile-wide Strait of Gibraltar separating it from Europe, its ambiance is understandably cosmopolitan.
The French, who spent 44 years trying to remake Moroccans in their image, succeeded in establishing a presence and atmosphere that still linger. They laid railroads and built 133 hospitals, constructed ports and power plants, at one point claimed to be opening a school classroom a day. But the roads led mainly to French industries, and the schools served mostly French children. Independence came in 1956. Now, under hard-working King Hassan II, Moroccans are still poor, but don't whine about it, and show no complex of inferiority. The nation is Arabic, but it permits full freedom of religion and takes a moderate stand in the Arab-Israeli conflict.