Original subtitles

ADAM LIAW: This is the story of a journey.

A journey through the bright colours and the light of Morocco.

Through the narrow streets of its old cities...

..its marketplaces...

..its people...

..its religion...

..its industry.

Even to Moroccans, Morocco is full of surprises.

It is a kingdom of ancient traditions...

..but in many ways it is very modern.

For 2,000 kilometres, it faces the Atlantic.

It also has the Atlas Mountains,

with peaks up to 4,000 metres high.

Both the ocean and the mountains take their name from the Titan Atlas,

who was believed by the Greeks to hold up the sky

at the far western end of the world.

On modern maps, it is one of Europe's nearest neighbours.

But it is also the gateway to the interior of Africa.

Morocco is all these things.

Join us on a journey to explore Morocco

in a way few will ever see it...

..Morocco...

..seen from above.

In 1975, Morocco annexed the former Spanish Sahara

and its capital Laayoune.

Every Moroccan child knows how it was done.

King Hassan II organised 350,000 Moroccans,

escorted by 20,000 troops, to march south and cross the border.

Spain gave way, and Morocco expanded its territory by 60%.

Laayoune, founded by the Spanish in 1938,

is now the showpiece of what Morocco calls its Southern Provinces.

In the last 40 years, its population has more than doubled.

Around the convention centre and the huge square it overlooks,

the city has spread out with new infrastructure,

banks, offices, businesses,

since 2017 even a McDonald's.

Morocco has invested a lot of money

to consolidate its hold on the region.

But it also fought a 16-year war with the local Polisario Front,

which controls a significant part of the interior to this day.

40 years on, the stand-off continues.

Over the past 10 years,

high-tech agriculture has transformed Morocco's rural landscape.

In Agadir and Dakhla, tomatoes are grown in rows of plastic greenhouses.

Together with citrus fruit, oranges and clementines,

these tomatoes are the driver of Morocco's modern agriculture.

They will be sold during the autumn or winter

in Europe, Canada or Russia.

Cultivating this arid land is a challenge.

Most crops are grown above ground.

There is plenty of sunshine all year round...

..but water from rain is a rarity.

So, Morocco desalinates sea water and pumps "fossil water",

as it's called, from 600 metres below the ground.

But this groundwater from the Sahara's distant past

is not renewable.

500 kilometres south of Laayoune is the city of Dakhla,

founded by the Spanish as Villa Cisneros -

the Town of Swans - in the 1880s.

Because of its wind and its lagoon,

the bay of this one-time colonial outpost

is now one of the most sought after kite-surfing locations in the world.

But Dakhla isn't only about kite-surfing.

In her book on the bay, the French-Moroccan writer Leila Slimani

calls it a place of "enchanted roaming between the sea and desert"

and "the bay where everything is possible".

"To love Dakhla," she says, "is first and foremost to try to protect it."

Leaving Dakhla and the Sahara, we head back north,

to the valleys and the foothills known as the Anti-Atlas,

which run north-east until they meet the Atlas Mountains proper.

Our first stop is the village of Amtoudi,

and then the N'fiss Valley, on the way to the fabled city of Marrakesh.

Amtoudi nestles at the foot of a sheer wall of cliffs.

Almost 300 families still live here in the depths of the valley.

The contrast is remarkable.

We're only a few hundred kilometres from major coastal cities,

but we're going back in time.

Human occupation of this region can be traced back as far as 10,000 BC.

Rock paintings show elephants, giraffes, rhinos and ostriches.

But this is also the region of the agadir, or collective granary.

30 minutes' walk from Amtoudi,

the Id Aissa granary clings to a rocky peak.

It dates from the 12th century, when people used to hide their supplies -

grains, nuts, olives and other staples -

to protect them from raiders.

Raids could happen at any time,

and they continued into the early 20th century.

The walls of this fortified town give an idea

of how precarious life was in those days.

A man, a woman and all their possessions

could be seized in a moment.

Heading for Marrakesh, we follow the bed of the N'Fiss River.

In these green valleys, people still live in hamlets.

Each of them belongs to a family or a clan.

Here, nothing is left to chance.

In this village, Toug el Kheir, the choice of location,

the building materials, the orientation of the walls

and the streets - all are designed to keep the wind and rain at bay.

In today's language, it could be called bioclimatic architecture.

Everything is a challenge.

It requires planning and effort to conquer the mountain slopes

and organise communal life.

Outside the group, survival is impossible.

An outsider might think these villages and hamlets inward-looking,

but in fact, they have their alliances.

The villagers help one another, they communicate

and they gather for weddings and funerals.

Solidarity is very strong in these valleys,

much stronger than in towns.

The key meeting point is the souk, or marketplace.

By tradition, weapons are not brought into the souk.

There, at least, any feuds are put aside.

Water is so precious in these mountains that,

as the French resident-general Theodore Steeg put it in the 1920s,

"In Morocco, to govern is to make it rain."

But it was King Hassan II who gave Morocco its dams

in a far-sighted move 40 years ago.

The dams laid the foundations of a sound water policy.

Today, around 140 of them supply farmers with water.

The need for water gave rise to a know-how

that produced magnificent reservoirs.

Some are over 700 years old.

The 12th-century Menara Gardens, in the west of Marrakesh,

are supplied by a hydraulic system

with water from the mountains 30 kilometres away.

The basin, an artificial lake,

irrigates the surrounding orchard and olive groves.

There are countless legends about these gardens.

Some say King Moulay Ismail drowned many women here

after he had seduced them.

Others say the treasure that Sultan Abu Bakr ibn Umar brought back

from the East is buried beneath the basin.

Marrakesh was founded in the 11th century by this same Abu Bakr.

He was married to the richest woman in the country,

Zaynab an-Nafzawiyyah,

who later married his deputy, Yusuf ibn Tashfin.

They and their son continued building,

making Marrakesh one of the great cities of the Muslim world.

Today, Marrakesh is one of the top tourist destinations in the world.

But even in its most visited places, the soul of the city is still alive.

Jemaa el-Fnaa, in the old city, is a huge square

that is rather like an open-air theatre.

There you can hear storytellers, laughter, fortune tellers

and a mix of the sacred and profane.

Jemaa el-Fnaa is reminiscent of a time

when the real and the imaginary were one and the same.

UNESCO has listed it as a Masterpiece of the Oral

and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

The soul of Marrakesh is also found in the Majorelle Garden,

created over 40 years by the French painter Jacques Majorelle.

Passionate about botany,

he created the garden as a living work of art in the heart of the city.

He also created a blue that was named after him -

this ultramarine blue evoking the sky over Marrakesh.

Blue and red.

Red is the colour of the town and of its highest monument,

the Koutoubia Mosque minaret, whose external walls are all different.

It has watched over Marrakesh since the 12th century.

The city has spread out, largely to accommodate tourists.

Over 2 million visit every year, doubling the city's population.

Many tourists come to Marrakesh to play golf.

It is both an economic opportunity and an ecological challenge,

because this city on the doorstep of the desert faces water shortages.

The demand for water is soaring,

and its sources of supply have to be protected.

Recently, new methods have been introduced to preserve water.

Some golf courses are watered with waste water.

From Marrakesh to Telouet and Ouarzazate,

you cross the valleys of the High Atlas,

a massif 800 kilometres long and up to 100 kilometres wide.

The route takes us deep inside Morocco, to its snow-capped peaks.

The Atlas range is a wall across the country,

a prime source of water and, to many, the real heart of Morocco.

The summit of Mount Toubkal is the highest point in all of North Africa.

The Atlas range is also a stronghold of Berber culture and identity.

Today, the Berber language, Tamazight,

and Berber traditions are acknowledged and taught in school.

But this only began in 2003.

In the valleys, the different shades of green testify to the skills

and the hard work of the farmers.

They take advantage of the slopes to irrigate their plantations.

Roses have been cultivated around the Mediterranean since the Bronze Age.

They thrive in semi-arid environments.

Women pick the petals at dawn when they are still wet with dew.

They are then sold by the kilo

and distilled for their perfume all on the same day.

Some of the villages are abandoned.

Many young people leave the rural areas

to seek their fortune in the city.

On the way to Ouarzazate,

we traverse the dizzying Tizi-n'Tichka mountain pass

and come to Telouet.

For centuries, Telouet dominated the caravan route

between Marrakesh and southern Africa.

It was the fief of Thami El Glaoui,

the Pasha of Marrakesh from 1912 to 1956.

A traditionalist known as the Lord of the Atlas,

he sided with the French against Moroccan nationalists,

who were mostly commoners.

After independence, his castle was seized by the state

and left to decay.

A keeper shows us around.

In a setting of marble and crumbling golden Zellige tiles,

he recalls Churchill, Hemingway and other prestigious guests.

To wander here is to reflect on the transience of power.

The feudal lords of Morocco preferred the traditional order

under the French.

But their power crumbled, like their castles.

A white stork keeps watch over Telouet.

Storks are regarded as sacred and are a sign of good luck.

Legend depicts the stork as an imam dressed in a white robe

and a black cloak.

Children are told that God turned him into a stork

because he ate during the fasting month of Ramadan.

On the way down to Ouarzazate,

we pass Ait Benhaddou and its citadels.

Some are in ruins, but some have been restored to feature in movies,

or because UNESCO has given the site World Heritage listing.

This land is also home to a palm tree civilisation.

Along the Ziz, Dades and Draa valleys,

the palm is the king of trees.

Each of them can produce between 30 and 100 kilos of dates,

depending on the year.

But the tree is endangered.

Two-thirds of date palms have been ravaged by the Bayoud disease.

More resistant date palms are being planted to help the villagers.

Much else is being done to raise their standard of living.

Here, education is important.

In a country where 40% of the population live in rural areas,

education must be extended even to the most remote regions.

Girls make up almost half of primary-school pupils,

but very few of them go on to high school.

The emancipation of Moroccan women will depend on the schools,

on the law and most of all on how people think.

In the Tarfaya region, on the Atlantic coast,

a popular saying is "There was only wind" - meaning, there was nothing.

This "nothing" has become an asset.

There are windmills all over Morocco.

The green economy seems to have taken root.

In desert zones, such as in the north, around Tangier,

windmills are spreading like futuristic palm groves.

The most spectacular symbol of the energy transition

is the solar power plant of Noor, near Ouarzazate.

'Noor' is Arabic for 'light'.

By 2020, Noor's mirrors will cover thousands of hectares,

equivalent to 3,500 football pitches.

It will be one of the biggest solar power plants in the world.

The resource it draws on is unlimited.

It is hoped that transforming sunlight into electricity

will allow Morocco to move away from oil dependence by 2030.

Over half of Morocco's energy production will then be green.

Noor marks the beginning of the desert.

Across this part of the Sahara we come to the border town of Merzouga,

where some dunes are 250 metres high.

Somewhere to the east lies Algeria.

Today's travellers still follow

in the footsteps of the ancient caravanners.

The caravanners were merchants.

They were also often scholars, and in their wake came doctors,

jurists, men of letters.

They all walked across Africa.

And with them, Morocco's cultural influence spread down to Senegal

and the great bend of the Niger River.

For travellers coming north from the depths of Africa,

seeing these dunes marked the end of a long journey.

Merzouga meant Morocco -

another world, a cosmopolitan world, on the Mediterranean.

Everything brings us back to the Mediterranean,

and in particular to the city between Africa and Europe, Tangier.

From Rabat, to Sale the pirate town,

to Arab-Andalusian Fes, to Marrakesh,

so many routes crossed Morocco.

The caravans are no more, but to this day,

men and women still dream of reaching the Mediterranean.

Romans, Phoenicians, Arabs,

how many people and empires have contemplated these cliffs?

For some years now,

Moroccans have been discovering their Mediterranean coastline.

Middle-class families go to the seaside.

And each summer, they are joined by migrant workers

who come back from Europe for the holidays.

There are also Spanish tourists who come for the weekend.

Under the beach umbrellas,

the complications of history are forgotten.

Memories of the time when most of Morocco's Mediterranean coast

was under Spanish rule are gradually receding.

Inland, the intermingled history of the Mediterranean

gave birth to a blue city -

Chefchaouen, a city built by Muslims and Jews expelled from Spain

during the Reconquest in the 15th century.

Today, Chefchaouen is a tourist drawcard.

People come to admire this unique monochrome old city.

According to legend, it was the Jews who painted the city blue.

The colour is said to evoke the Mediterranean sky and heaven.

A more mundane explanation is that blue-tinted houses repel mosquitoes.

Chefchaouene is in the foothills of the Rif,

a Berber region that has constantly fought for its identity.

The Rif is also the land of Abd el-Krim Al-Khattabi,

a legendary guerilla leader who in the 1920s crushed a Spanish army.

Ironically, the Rif region now depends on income

from its children working in Spain.

And Spain is so close.

From Tangier, it is just across the water.

Every year, over 1.5 million passengers go from one continent

to another via Tangier.

In the 1920s, Tangier was ruled by an international consortium.

Adventurers and spies were everywhere.

The city hasn't lost its soul.

It still attracts travellers, writers and painters from abroad.

For would-be migrants who make their way here from all over Africa,

Tangier remains a dream - a dream of Europe.

How many are waiting for people smugglers

to get them across the Strait of Gibraltar,

at the risk of their lives?

Tangier is a world city.

In a way, it is representative of Morocco -

a country at the crossroads of culture and religion.

The colourful djellabas of these women

call to mind the coexistence of cultures,

the open and tolerant Islam preached in Morocco.

The Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca

is celebrating one of the most important days of the Muslim year -

Id el-Kabir.

Here, back on Morocco's Atlantic coast,

we reach the end of our journey.

We have seen its ancient cities and traditions,

the Sahara and the mountains, and something of the future -

so many different aspects of Morocco from above.

Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2019