When the Pitch Tears Away the Mask

The Africa Cup of Nations was far more than a mere tournament; it was a

crucible of truth. It shattered the brittle illusion of "brotherhood" and stripped away the masks of affection that had long obscured less noble faces. In the heat of competition, buried grudges surfaced, and the hollow resonance of slogans withered before the bluntness of reality. From the debris of these broken pretenses, one clarity remains, pristine and absolute: a Moroccan is brother to a Moroccan.

Experience has been a stern teacher, revealing that those who do not cherish goodwill are unworthy of it. Nations are not anchored by the fickle applause of strangers, but by the bedrock of inner strength and the unity of their own ranks. Real power is found in the "inward turn"—in trusting our own genius and forging a domestic solidarity that requires no external validation. Morocco’s worth is drawn solely from the veins of its own sons and daughters.

To those whom we offered our hearts before our homes—those welcomed with the warmth of genuine hospitality and the sanctuary of our stability—decency proved a foreign tongue. They chose to repay grace with contempt, baring fangs that had been carefully hidden beneath cloaks of hypocrisy. In truth, they have not harmed Morocco; gold does not rust, and our essence remains untarnished. Instead, they have performed a singular service: they have shown us exactly who they are.

The response to such betrayal is not found in the futility of reproach, but in the dignity of a constructive withdrawal. We must pour our collective energy into the "Morocco of Tomorrow," a project defined by unwavering seriousness. Like a caterpillar retreating into the silence of its cocoon to prepare for flight, we must turn inward. Our country belongs in the ranks of nations far too dignified to be distracted by the petty malice of bad neighbors or the warped mindsets of false friends.

This path is not an innovation; it is the well-worn road of greatness. History is replete with nations bitten by the snakes of betrayal that chose to heal through self-reliance:

Germany: After the ruin of war and the bitterness of fractured alliances, it turned its gaze inward. By rebuilding its identity and economy from the ground up, it became the titan upon whose shoulders the continent now rests.

Japan: Rather than being extinguished by nuclear fire, it answered devastation with a productive inwardness. Rising from the ashes of Hiroshima, it conquered the world through the quiet power of science and technology, leaving the noise of empty slogans to the winds.

History confirms the old wisdom: no one scratches your skin as well as your own fingernails. To waste time on those with "crab mentalities"—those who seek only to drag the soaring back down into the swamp—is to risk drowning in the mud of their making. Our strength lies in the conviction that reaching the summit requires our eyes to stay fixed on the peak, oblivious to the stones thrown from the shadows below.

Ultimately, the architecture of a nation depends not on the approval of the world, but on the resilience of the home front. As Dostoevsky observed, “If you want people to respect you, respect yourself first.” True self-respect begins with the courage to stand firmly, and exclusively, on one’s own feet.

Take the Fruit and Leave the Wood for the Fire Noureddine Boutahar

People toss out good ideas all the time—sometimes just because of who said them, or old grudges, or because they don’t like the person’s beliefs or background. It’s a shame. Truth doesn’t wear a name tag, and wisdom isn’t picky about who delivers it. What actually matters is the value an idea brings, not where it came from. You’ve heard it before: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

If we always played this game—rejecting anything that didn’t originate from our own little corner—we’d lose out on almost everything we rely on. Imagine saying no to cars because they weren’t invented here, or refusing to use a phone because it came from someone with a different worldview. That’s not how progress works. Civilization is messy, shared, and built on contributions from every direction. Wisdom is like lost property—if you find it, grab it. It belongs to anyone willing to claim it.

That’s the beauty of Ali ibn Abi Talib’s old saying: “Take the fruit and leave the wood for the fire.” It’s simple but sharp. Focus on what’s useful. Take what helps, what teaches, what adds something real to your life, and let the rest go. Ignore the distractions—the quirks of the messenger, the baggage, the stuff that gets in the way. Sometimes you’ve got to practice the art of overlooking, too. Don’t trip over someone’s flaws if what they’re offering is genuinely good.

Living this way means being flexible in your thinking. The smartest people can spot value, even if it’s wrapped in something they don’t like, or comes from someone they disagree with. If you close yourself off, if you only ever listen to people who look or think just like you, you end up stuck in a tiny world. You never see the big picture peeking through the keyhole.

Honestly, we need that kind of wisdom now more than ever. There’s so much noise, so many clashing opinions. Instead of slamming the door on everything unfamiliar or inconvenient, start picking out the fruit wherever you find it. Figure out what feeds your mind and soul, and leave the rest for the fire. That’s how you grow. That’s how you rise above the small stuff and make the world a little wider, a little richer for everyone.

Shadows and Lessons from Boston (contd) Noureddine Boutahar

 Boston reveals itself as a quiet visual composition, where layers of history stand shoulder to shoulder with a contemporary pulse and a firmly rooted academic spirit. It is a gentle city, yet heavy with memory; its landmarks speak eloquently of the transformations they have witnessed. From the Freedom Trail, its red line threading through old houses, silent churches, and the State House, to the precincts of Harvard University in Cambridge—where knowledge carries its own dignity and life moves to a modest, unhurried
rhythm—the past and the present interlace without clamor. This sense of clarity deepens during a stroll along the Charles River, which flows like an artery of light and water, dividing the city without tearing it apart, and then in the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), where art speaks in whispers and identities recede before the eye’s astonishment. Meanwhile, The T moves like an unseen thread, stitching places to faces and moments, affirming that Boston is not merely a place, but a state of being—one that quietly rearranges my relationship with time.

As days passed, Boston ceased to be a scene observed from the outside and became an experience lived from within. In its small details—in the measured pace of people’s steps, in their uncomplicated relationship with time, in the presence of books in cafés and on trains—there was a meaning that slipped in softly. A meaning not proclaimed aloud, but felt.

I came to realize, gradually, that reading here is neither an exceptional act nor a badge of cultural distinction; it is a daily habit, as natural as breathing. People carry books the way they carry their keys, returning to them whenever the day offers a small pocket of emptiness. It all seemed so ordinary as to pass unnoticed—except to someone arriving from a place where reading is an event rather than a routine. As the proverb goes, familiarity breeds content, and what is woven into everyday life rarely calls attention to itself.

I recall one day on The T, heading back from downtown toward the university district. The train was crowded, and I stood quietly watching faces. Most passengers were absorbed in their books, newspapers, or e-readers, as if each were traveling alone despite the crush. Suddenly the train lurched; I lost my balance and fell against a young lady seated nearby. I apologized, but she did not look up, nor did she show the slightest irritation. She was so immersed in her book that the surrounding world seemed no more than a faded backdrop.

In that moment, no grand explanation occurred to me, no ready-made conclusion. I simply sensed that reading creates around a person a calm distance—one that shields them from intrusion and offers an engagement deeper than watching others. Those who fill their time with what they read place a lighter burden on the world, granting others the simple right to be as they are. After all, empty minds are the devil’s workshop, while occupied ones tend toward quiet grace.

Thus Boston has remained in my memory: a city that does not teach by direct instruction, nor raise signposts telling you what to understand, but leaves its mark gently. A city that reminds you that what is built within endures more firmly than what is erected without, and that meaning—like a river—needs only a measure of silence to keep on flowing.

Shadows and Lessons from Boston Noureddine Boutahar

Boston University was never merely a stop along my academic path; it was a space where new layers of awareness took shape and where experiences accumulated with a depth no less profound than what I learned in lecture halls. Ah, Boston—a city that knows how to leave its mark on the soul, how to plant in memory shadows that do not fade with time. There, among the venerable buildings and quiet corridors of the university, I was not only a student in pursuit of knowledge, but a human being rediscovering himself, learning to see the world with wider eyes and a more attentive heart.

In those years, I lived in one of the university’s imposing wings—a residence modest in appearance yet rich in human encounters. I shared it with Si Ahmed, a Palestinian for whom Palestine lived in the chest long before it could ever be reduced to a place on a map. His talk was never mere political commentary or passing news; it was a daily confession of pain, memory, and a right that does not expire with time. He spoke of his homeland as one speaks of one’s mother—with raw sincerity and a loyalty that never runs dry. I listened at length, sensing—without his having to spell it out—that a homeland may be occupied in land, but it is never defeated as long as it lives in the hearts of its people. As the old saying goes, home is where the heart is.

The name of the building we lived in—Ignacio Hall—stirred a quiet curiosity in me. Who was this “Ignacio,” immortalized on a university wall? One day I asked a professor about him. She did not know the details, but she spoke of a well-rooted tradition in American academic culture: that students who find success return to their first university to give back, building a wing or endowing a facility that bears their name, in gratitude to the place that helped shape them. Her answer was less a lesson in history than in gratitude—a reminder that one good turn deserves another, and that true loyalty often speaks in deeds rather than slogans.

Beyond shared housing, Boston also gifted me a rare friendship whose warmth I still carry. Nasser, an Algerian from Kabylia, was my closest companion and daily confidant. Quiet and sparing with words, his presence was as reassuring as a clear morning. He faced life with a steady gaze, loved its simplicity, and lived in harmony with himself, as if calm itself had chosen to dwell in him. His Amazigh identity flowed in his veins without affectation or the need for proof—proof, after all, lies in being, not in saying.

I recall a day when we were strolling through downtown and came upon a large bookstore. We entered out of curiosity, perhaps also out of nostalgia for paper in an age when screens were beginning to elbow books aside. Silence ruled the place, until suddenly the strains of a Kabyle shatḥa drifted from a hidden speaker, breaking the stillness and awakening memory. In that instant, Nasser changed; something lit up in his eyes. He grasped the edges of his jacket and burst into the traditional Kabyle dance with pride and joy, oblivious to the surprised glances around him. I stood there, captivated, applauding, and understood then that true identity does not wither in exile—it often shines more brightly. You can take a man out of his land, but you cannot take the land out of the man.

Yet the deepest—and simplest—lesson came to me from an unexpected place: a glass door in the university library. One day, as I pushed it open, I felt it scraping the floor and wondered how such a flaw could go unattended. I remarked to Nasser, with mild disbelief, how Americans could overlook something so small. No one answered me that day. But the following morning, at precisely seven-thirty, we passed by the same spot. The door opened and closed smoothly, as if nothing had ever been wrong. I saw no maintenance worker and heard no tools—only the result. And then it dawned on me: progress is no magic trick, nor the child of chance; it is the quiet fruit of conscientious work done without fanfare. As the proverb has it, actions speak louder than words.

Novice Teachers and the Search for Ready-Made Material: A Closer Look. Noureddine Boutahar

A quick look at teacher forums and social media today reveals a striking scene: novice teachers, bright-eyed but often exhausted, frantically scour the internet and plead with colleagues for ready-made lesson plans, activities, tests, and quizzes. To an unsympathetic observer, this desperate search might look like laziness—a refusal to "do the hard yards" of planning. However, that view completely misses the forest for the trees. What we're actually seeing is not indolence, but a very real-world response to the huge chasm between pedagogical theory (what they learned) and classroom practice (what they face every day). This common behavior signals a systemic flaw, but it also reflects something admirable: a profound yearning to teach well, to make learning truly worthwhile for their students, and simply, to get it right.

As a teacher who began teaching in the late 1980s — an era of chalky fingers and clunky blackboards — I understand that impulse all too well. Back then, there were no search engines one could summon instant inspiration from, no online forums teeming with shared wisdom. I, too, sought ready-made material from experienced colleagues, hoping to pilfer their magic. Most refused — not out of meanness, but out of wisdom. Left to my own devices, I struggled through the nights, crafting my initial “pedagogical dishes” from scratch. Those years were my true apprenticeship, my baptism by fire.

I recall one sweltering afternoon when I was attempting to explain an English word without slipping into Arabic. My hair was damp with sweat, my patience thinning, my students wide-eyed. Years later, one of them — now a high-ranking official — reminded me of that exact moment: “I remember your long, straight hair was wet with sweat as you tried to define that word. Thanks for trying.” That single memory, more than any promotion or certificate, remains my greatest reward. As Paulo Freire once wrote, “Teaching is not the transfer of knowledge, but the creation of possibilities for its own production.”

Every young teacher deserves the grace to grunt and stumble, to burn their fingers a little before they become masters of the craft. Their hunger for pre-packaged lessons is not a quest for comfort but a hunger for excellence. They want their classes to shine, their students to grow, and their own hearts to feel the quietude of satisfaction of a lesson well-taught. The trouble is not in their desire, but in the system that leaves them insufficiently equipped to meet it.

In most teacher training institutes, theory is presented in sterile separation, as if classrooms were Petri dishes. Yet the real classroom is a living organism — unpredictable, noisy, and magnificiently imperfect. New teachers, thrust into this whirlwind, often feel like sailors thrown into a storm without a chart or compass. Their desperate search for ready-made materials is really a search for a lifeboat — a bridge between theory and practice, a concrete model to copy and adapt.

When novice teachers borrow, simplify, change and modify proven lessons, they are, in effect, standing on the shoulders of giants. Einstein once said, “The only source of knowledge is experience.” By reworking the experiences of others, they gain velocity in their own. This is not intellectual piracy; it is apprenticeship — a silent form of professional development where imitation precedes innovation.

But this reliance on shared resources also exposes a deeper ailment: the absence of sustained, on-the-job training and mentorship. My own growth as a teacher did not happen in isolation; it was nurtured by seasoned supervisors, lively pedagogical meetings in Morocco and abroad, and the courage to step outside my comfort zone through presentations and model lessons. Lacking such support and opportunities for growth, many teachers today turn instead to the digital agora — those vast online communities — as a substitute for the mentorship they never had.

Instead of wagging fingers at new teachers who “copy and paste,” we must listen to what their behavior is communicating. It is a call for help and guidance, not a confession of weakness. The solution lies not in shaming, but in scaffolding — in building systems that accompany the teacher’s early struggles with patience and generosity.

John Dewey once observed, “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” The same applies to teachers. If we prepare them with outdated methods, we rob the classroom of its future vitality. Teacher training must break from abstract frameworks and shift towards living practice: model lessons, peer observation, and collaborative lesson studies where ideas are tested, refined, and shared.

Let us then reframe the narrative. The novice teacher’s search for ready-made materials is not a flaw to correct, but a spark to nurture — the flame of commitment that drives them to seek the best for their students. When properly guided, that search can evolve into a powerful culture of professional growth, where teachers learn with and from one another. As the old saying goes, “A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.”

And so, rather than dismissing the novice teachers’ quest, let us offer them matches instead of lectures, encouragement instead of criticism, help instead of prejudices — for in kindling one teacher’s flame, we brighten the entire classroom of tomorrow.

 

Saving Public Schools is Saving the Country. Noureddine Boutahar

Public education in Morocco has never been just a place to teach reading and writing; it is the collective memory and the true factory of the nation’s elites. Yet, through years of failed government policies, it has been deliberately maligned and painted as a corpse waiting to be buried—so that the gates of privatization can swing wide open. It is grossly unfair to reduce public schools to a story of failure. These very schools produced the doctors who filled our hospitals, the engineers who designed dams and roads, and the professionals who ran our institutions. They raised Morocco’s name high in international competitions. From their classrooms came the golden generation that built the foundations of an independent state, and their graduates compete in the world’s top universities. How can any government, with a straight face, deny this history and run away from these achievements?
The bitter truth is that successive governments never truly wanted to reform public education; they treated it like a guinea pig for half-baked experiments driven by partisan and electoral interests. Take the so-called “Arabization” policy: a hasty decision, only half-baked—Arabic in primary and secondary, but French still ruling higher education. The result? A deliberate exclusion of poor children, while the wealthy secured their future in private schools and foreign missions. As the proverb goes, “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”
And then came the notorious “Emergency Plan.” Billions were poured in, only to vanish into thin air. Nothing changed in classrooms, because planning was chaotic and decisions were made behind closed doors, far from the voices of teachers on the ground. Was this not organized chaos? Was this not a calculated demolition of the last bastion of social equality?
The latest brainchild of the government is the “Pioneer Schools” project  مدارس الريادة . The program promises to go back to basics, sharpening students’ skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic through methods like “Teaching at the Right Level” (TaRL). It also pledges ongoing teacher training, better school facilities, and stronger parental involvement.
Yet the scheme seems to have started off on the wrong foot. Just a couple of years in, teachers and parents already fear it is clipping the wings of top students merely to keep everyone on the same page. As a result, many families are flocking to private schools—a costly move at a time when household budgets are already stretched thin by soaring food prices.
Successive governments have pushed public schools to the back burner, even though they are the last line of defense for the poor against a system of privilege. Instead of protecting them, they colluded to weaken them—forcing struggling families into the arms of private education, piling debt on their shoulders. Call it what it is: a deliberate impoverishment of public education to fatten the private market.
What public schools need is not more empty talk, but political courage: to restore teachers’ dignity—long trampled underfoot—, to invest seriously in infrastructure, to modernize curricula with boldness, and to neutralize the power of the greedy lobbies that profit from failure. Otherwise, governments are not simply weakening education; they are burning the very bridges to the nation’s future. And as another proverb reminds us: “You reap what you sow.”

A Cry Against Chaos: The Funeral of Courtesy Noureddine Boutahar

Tahar Ben Jelloun, in his latest article, didn’t unveil a hidden truth or hand us a philosophical gem. He merely rubbed salt into our daily wound: the slow, humiliating death of manners and civic sense. Nothing groundbreaking here, except that while many of us keep burying our heads in the sand, Ben Jelloun stood up and shouted: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are a nation addicted to chaos much like toddlers clinging to their toys!”

Yes, today we are hargawis of behavior—refugees from civility itself. We elbow and jostle in lines as if survival depended on it. We curse and insult at the drop of a hat, in full stereo, in front of children and grandparents alike. We feed stray cats and dogs on neighbors’ doorsteps as though sidewalks came with title deeds. We cross the road with the elegance of stampeding buffalo and then swear at whoever dares to honk. In cafés, buses, and other public places conversations are pitched at rock-concert levels, phone calls become public theater, and the rest of us are forced to applaud nonsense we never asked to hear. And when night falls, it is treated not as a time for rest, but as a sacred hour for collective harassment: music blaring, voices rising, laughter piercing as if we are not a community but lone Robinson Crusoes on a shared island.

And if that wasn’t enough, we’ve thrown in a few more “special effects”: skipping queues in bakeries and government offices as though we were God’s chosen; driving with the philosophy of “the road is mine and to hell with you”; blocking intersections to swap jokes and family gossip; honking horns like battle drums. Weddings become noise factories, complete with deafening music and ululations that could wake the dead, while the sick neighbor or weary worker be damned. Even funerals aren’t spared: we close streets, torment the living, and call it paying respect to the dead. And to put the cherry on the cake, we sprinkle in habits like letting our dogs run off-leash in public, leaving toilets unflushed so the stench can linger as a “souvenir,” blocking hallways as if they were personal living rooms, and seasoning it all with a generous dose of foul language in public spaces.

We tag public walls with vulgar graffiti that screams less “artistic expression” than “civilizational meltdown.” Garbage bins sit steps away, yet our trash prefers the street. Vigilantism, vandalism, hooliganism — we’ve turned every shade of antisocial behavior into a national folk dance. Children play football in alleys as though they were in the Champions League, while residents and drivers dodge balls instead of traffic. Smoking in public spaces is practically a civic duty now; object and you’ll quickly regret it—verbal abuse if you’re lucky, a fist or a spit in the face if you’re not. Apologies? Out of stock. Empathy? A relic. Giving a seat to an old man or priority to a pregnant woman? That’s for fairy tales.

The real punchline? We baptize this chaos with sugar-coated excuses: “It’s nothing,” “God forgive,” “hshooma,” “never mind him/her.” Voilà: breaking the law becomes charity, and disorder is paraded as a national virtue.

A few days ago, I remarked on a friend’s Facebook post that cafés had become breeding grounds for deliberate rudeness, where disturbing others is sport and confrontation is dessert. Within hours, two hundred people had clicked “like.” Proof, if any was needed, that this isn’t just my irritation—it’s a collective migraine. 

And let me add a little scene of my own. I was busy drafting this article when a series of odd clicking sounds snapped my concentration. I turned around, only to find a well-dressed gentleman — shiny suit, neatly tied necktie, the whole “respectable” package — casually clipping his nails right in the middle of a supposedly “upscale” café. Imagine that: a VIP outfit paired with a public-bathhouse habit! What refinement, what taste! A surreal moment that perfectly sums up our paradox — a society plastered with cosmetic polish on the outside, yet betrayed by its fingernails on the inside.

Ben Jelloun, then, wasn’t slandering his country. He just said, in elegant French, what the rest of us shout in vulgar Arabic: enough is enough.

His cry wasn’t an attack on the homeland, but an attempt to jolt it awake. He longs for Moroccans to be known again as polite and composed, not as a nation of people who excuse every misdeed under the tattered banner of “freedom.”

But if we keep dozing, mark my words: one day we’ll gather to pray the funeral prayer of the absent over our nation’s morals—a funeral with no corpse, for a country murdered by many of its own children’s bad manners and strangled by its rulers’ greed.

And the cure? Not rocket science. As Tahar Ben Jelloun himself suggested, enforce the law, punish the offenders, and—just maybe—teach citizens that society is not their private backyard. Until then, all the window dressing in the world won’t hide the rot.