Alternative Minimum Tax

It’s getting to be tax time in the U.S. and we haven’t been thinking of it at all. The fact that all tax documents have been sent to a brother we haven’t heard from in over two months makes it easy to put our head in the sand.

Here in Marrakech, I’ve just witnessed another Alternative Minimum Tax.
Riding in a truck down to the set, we were pulled to the side of the road by a police man. The driver got out and spoke to him and then hopped back up. “What was that about,” I ask, and he rolls his eyes and tells me he’s been stopped for running a red light. A red light was most definitely not run.

In fact, the American tradition of accelerating at yellow lights does not exist here. Instead of the basic green, yellow, red, Moroccans have added a blinking green light before the yellow to further alert people that the red light is imminent. And aside from the mopeds and donkeys that scoff at all traffic lights, most people start breaking at a flashing green. My driver is no exception, and I ask the electrician who’s riding with us what’s going on. He points to the various film permits taped to the windshield and says that when people see movies, they think money. Before he can continue, the driver hops back up in the truck, grabs a hundred dirham note from his wallet, and folds it into his registration papers. “Thieves,” the electrician tells me, “all policemen are thieves.” I ask why the driver didn’t contest the ticket. “That wasn’t a ticket, it was baksheesh. For a ticket, the police give you a receipt.” But this police officer demanded that the driver give him one hundred dihrams, or his license and registration would be confiscated until his court hearing in several weeks, effectively barring the driver from employment during that time. Facing those choices, the driver didn’t think twice about forking over the hundred dihrams. “The cop is only paid 2000 dihrams a month. I guess he feels he’s got to add to his income.” Our drivers earn nearly four times that, but they’re still the lowest paid members of the film crew. When I ask naively if this is the first time this has happened, the driver and electrician both laugh at me. It might be a frequent form of alternative taxation, but to this driver at least, it's still better than his other options.

The World Bank has done studies on bribery and argues that a rise of bribery rates by one percentage point reduces the growth of the economy by three percent. It seems time to give the police a raise, and crack down severely on corruption. If the country hope to maintain it’s growth and modernization programs in the coming years, it’s a difficult problem, but one that demands attention.

Gauche

The life of leisure is no more. The new year came, and along with it a call from an American film shooting here. The British accent at the other end, asked, “I know this isn’t really your area, but would you be interested in working in the set decorating department for the next two months?” Within 36 hours I’d started, and the comedy was not far behind. I’m going to assume that while I’ve not signed any confidentiality agreements, I’m meant to be discreet, so I’ll avoid using the name of the film or individual characters. But as much as we learned about life in Morocco by renovating a house here, working on a film shows another side.

Like all American films that shoot here, the top members of the crew fly into town, while the bulk of the crew is drawn from the local population. I’m hired as a Moroccan, which means that I’m paid in cash each week, and get to follow the Moroccan rules. The situation is complicated by the fact that between the American department heads and the Moroccan workers, there is a second tier of skilled crew from England, and I’ve quickly learned that there are nearly as many cultural differences between Americans and Brits as between Americans and Moroccans. I was hired in the hopes that I would speak fluent English (as many of the Moroccan crew members, even those billed as being Englsih speakers, struggle to understand and be understood). Anyway, I was pretty confident. After all, I know when these people say lorry, they mean truck, and when they say flat, they mean apartment, right? But soon, I’m asked about a pair of fire dogs, only to learn that the items in question are a pair of andirons, and realize this is not going to be easy. Angle poise lamps, anyone?

Breaking bread with the Moroccan crew, I’ve already had my first faux pas, though I’m surprised it’s taken this long. Eating a mid-morning snack of lentils and bread, I reach into the platter with my left hand. No, no, no! I’m scolded. Of course, I’ve read that the right hand is for eating and the left hand is for, ah, personal hygiene, but I’m left handed. I offer this defense (frankly, as good as I can hope for) and I’m told by one fellow that he, too, is left handed. He explains that while he uses his left hand for everything, he taught himself to eat with his right hand. I realize that after 8 months in Morocco, this is my first time eating from a communal bowl, and do my best with my clumsy right hand. There’s lots to learn.

Marrakech Film Festival

This is old news, but got buried over the holidays.

The Marrakech Film Festival took over town for nine days in the beginning of December with yellow billboards throughout the city. Occupancy rates at hotels surged to 100%, and restaurants normally quiet were booked solid. The festival is of growing importance in it’s 6th year, but still doesn’t generate sales - the real mark of a festival being a leader rather than a follower on the festival circuit. We attended expecting to find a wide array of international film-goers, and found the festival dominated by the French, as though this is a long weekend party for them.

The festival celebrated classic Italian films this year, but since we don’t speak Italian, we gave the selection a miss, and also missed most of the films screened in tribute to Susan Sarandon. (“Thelma & Louise,” we should mention, holds up much better than anticipated.)

All the films in the main competition screened at the Palais des Congres, which is an enormous convention center on Boulevard Mohammed VI. For the months leading up to the festival, we’ve seen workers putting in plants and fountains down the middle of the grand boulevard. In the past weeks, the intensity increased and armies of men in jumpsuits were applying fresh coats of paint to the curbs as people were already arriving.

It was a treat to see “Babel,” which we’d skipped when it played at the Megarama. Somehow, to see a film called “Babel” (which centers on ideas of communication and miscommunication and is acted in English, Spanish, Japanese, sign language, Arabic and Berber) dubbed into French seemed to miss the point. A large chunk of the film was shot in Morocco, and the film’s director, Alejandro González Iñárritu was on hand to introduce the film, along with the Moroccan cast. The biggest applause came at a scene most Americans wouldn’t even notice. When a helicopter finally arrives to take the Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt characters to safety, Pitt offers the Moroccan guide who had helped them through the ordeal a handful of cash. The guide refuses the money in a modest, “I was just doing my duty,” gesture, the audience of 2000+ erupted in applause and cheers. In a country where many tourists see hands outstretched and hustlers looking for any chance to take advantage, the audience was more than thrilled to see a potrayal of another type of Moroccan. Before and after the screening, we saw the Moroccan actors being descended upon by autograph seeking fans.

There’s a lot of foreign film production in Morocco, but we know next to nothing, well, really nothing, about local Moroccan films. We made it a point to seek out local films and saw a pair of interesting pictures. “Wake Up, Morocco” was a soccer- (OK, football-) themed film exhorting people to seize the day and take charge of their own lives and futures. Not the most nuanced work, but an interesting piece, which gave credit and thanks to numerous members of the royal family. For a country whose unofficial motto often seems to be Inshallah, it was a welcome treat. The star-crossed lovers in “WWW. What a Wonderful World” were a hitman and a traffic cop, and while the film was slick and commercial, it showed a slice of contemporary life in Casablanca that we’re not used to seeing on screen.

We hope the organizers add some of the panels and filmmaker Q&As that help make festivals in the U.S. so much fun, and that programmers continue to search out compelling films from Morocco and throughout the Arab world.

It's a Girl

Why is it that the French Consulate offers its expats concerts and art openings while the American Consulate is obsessed with dire warnings of the bird influenza? Figuring it might be nice to meet a few of the reported 69 Americans living in Marrakech, I trudged off to the “American Corner,” not more than a room in a cultural center on the edge of the medina, to hear about the flu with a friend. I read Gina Kollata’s “Flu” about the 1918 influenza that killed more than the two World Wars combined, and maybe I’ve got a bit of American germ paranoia, though I can promise anti-bacterial hand wipes have never crossed our threshold. Anyway, Elizabeth and I arrived early and waited outside in the shade of a tree for the throngs of health-crazed Americans. Thirty minutes later, a few Moroccan gardeners walked by, shooting us a curious look, but no Americans. So we waited some more. Finally, we were ushered into the American Corner, where we perused books about American quilt making and hiking in the Rockies, and waited some more. After about an hour, the Vice Consul entered and introduced herself. She also apologized for the day; evidently, the American School teachers had asked that the seminar be pushed back a few hours so that they could attend. No one thought to let the other Americans know; I guess teachers trump loafers. Anyway, we decided that the day was far too nice for waiting about and that we’d leave the viral campaign to others more capable. Wash you hands often and avoid the chicken market were the take-aways from the brochure pasted to the wall. I smiled as I thought of my imminent trip to the mellah (and the chicken market) for dinner fixings.

A few days later, we decided to sample the offerings at the French Consulate: a flute concert – Telemann, Mozart, Michel Pignolet de Monteclair - performed by two Frenchman flown in from Paris on traditional instruments, or those fashioned after old-school flutes and piccolos and such. First off, let’s just say that the French Consulate, with its elegant garden full of blossoming fruit trees and stately reception rooms lit by tiered silver candelabras, would look down its haughty nose at the scruffy American Corner. We only got in – me with a box of leftover pizza hidden in my bag beneath a silk shawl – by way of our faux-French friend. The two flutists were right out of a New Yorker cartoon: disheveled with too-long hair, slight, slouching frames and a straight man/kooky comic shtick that was all too familiar. The playing was pleasant enough, especially a piece by Japanese composer Ryohei Hirose, played on enormous wooden flutes that looked like hollowed out bamboo trees. Midway through the Montclair fugue, there was the sudden boom of a canon, followed by another, and another. Alarmed at first, a few in the audience recognized the official heralding of the arrival of the King’s second child, Princess Lalla Khadija. Between the 21 canon shots, strangers smiled at each other and whispered, “She’s arrived. The Princess has been born!” Though the musicians played on stoically amidst the booms and the twitters as if nothing special were afoot, we couldn’t help but feel that the arrival of the Princess mid-concert gave added might to the consular trumping the Americans received at the hands of the French. Lighten up, is our missive to the US staff. It’s Marrakech, after all, let’s have a bit of fun.

And fun on a grand scale is what the 33,000 or so prisoners that the King pardoned in celebration of his daughter's birth must be having.