A Place In The Sun

(2 of 2)
Despite the rising housing market, Morocco will remain an attractive and affordable option for both retired and active Europeans for years to come. Significant progress in massive construction, transport, roadway and communications projects launched by the government to develop the country and boost annual tourism from the current 6.5 million visitors to 10 million by 2010 is already evident in and around major cities. "Morocco is utterly unrecognizable from what it was 10 years ago — and in another 10, it will be totally transformed," says Hassan Belmaheb, a 64-year-old retired Moroccan Bell Telephone factory worker who has lived in Belgium since 1964 and bought a Rabat holiday home in 2002. Meanwhile, under an open-skies accord between the European Union and Morocco, current frequent daily flights between Europe and Moroccan cities will expand as low-cost carriers open routes. "I can get from Paris or London to Marrakech flying faster than I can get from London to Paris by train," Loum-Martin notes.

Even some enthusiasts worry, however, that the kingdom's success in luring residents from Europe may produce some friction. For example, Marcelle and Max Billaux say they know affluent French residents of Rabat's casbah who not only do not declare their domestics to authorities, but pay them j3 per day — not unlike the subservience wages some bosses in Europe pay illegal immigrants who will similarly accept nearly anything to land hard-won work. Moroccans who see such treatment happening at home could start asking where transcontinental integration stops and neocolonial exploitation starts.

"We're aware this economic advantage that allows us to buy a home and live well here cuts two ways," says Marcelle Billaux, a seasonal resident of Rabat who manages an interim work program for socially disadvantaged people in Normandy, northern France. "People must take care that it doesn't become abusive. You have to be sensitive to the fact that, at the end of the day, Morocco is their home, not ours."

The Moroccan people and monarchy have long been proud of their religious tolerance, warm relations with Western nations and traditionally moderate practice of Islam. But the 2003 suicide bombings in Casablanca proved the kingdom isn't immune from the jihadist virus. In August, authorities announced nationwide arrests of 56 radicals accused of plotting strikes against political leaders, government buildings, tourist sites and foreign-owned properties. "It's the very moderate, reformist, Western-oriented nature of states like Morocco that make them the worst enemies of bin Laden and his followers," says a senior French counterterror official. Ironically, however, pensioners living in Morocco said they feel safer from terror and ordinary crime than at home. The seeming omnipresence of uniformed police may explain why. "I've never felt more secure," assures Conticello.

What do the average Moroccans think of this influx from Europe? Most seem to view it as positive. But will that last? One consequence of the hot real estate market has been an inner-city housing pinch that is forcing a growing number of Moroccans out of town. Members of an expanding middle class longing to be homeowners themselves must often move up to 30 km from cities to find affordable housing. "There's some resentment over people being squeezed out," says Belmaheb, who has bought a new vacation apartment in the Residence Chatea complex outside Rabat. "But people know the euro is almighty."

For their part, the emigrés don't want to ruin what they came for. "On the one hand, you fear this flow from Europe and development to cater to it may undermine things that make Morocco so special," says Billaux, the Rabat homeowner. "On the other hand, you can't ask people you've come to live with to eternally lag 50 years behind for our sake." That used to be the dilemma that confronted richer Europeans making new homes in the Continent's poorer nations; now it plays out in Europe's neighbors.