Tangier, Morocco 2034
As Fatima Berrada braids her daughter’s hair, we chat. After helping her and her husband clear the table following dinner, we settled outside to continue our conversation. The rumble of the subway below us shakes the street as the city comes alive again after sundown. In the evening after the day’s heat calms down, people spill outside for their activities, just as they did before the city became the richest and most prosperous in Africa because of the war.
“At the outbreak, people gradually made their way to our shores. I was the assistant to the port terminal chief, giving me a front-row seat to the unfolding shit show. Initially, it was mostly the Moroccan diaspora from Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. But by the end of the week, as it became clear that the European armies couldn’t hold them back and panic set in, we were overwhelmed. Everything from ferries to sailboats, motorboats, yachts, and fishing boats arrived. You name it, they sailed here with it. Took years to remove all the ships from the port and coastline. The ferries, weathered from overuse, moved slowly through the choppy waters. Onboard, the atmosphere had been a tense mixture of desperation, hope, and exhaustion. The deck were crowded with people, huddled together like cattle. Children clung to their parents, wide-eyed and silent, while older adults exchanged murmured conversations or sat in weary silence. Amidst the sea of humanity, children cried and laughed, cutting through the low hum of voices. Families were grouped together, their scant belongings packed into makeshift bundles or battered suitcases and backpacks. Many had worn layers of clothing, not just for warmth, but because they had brought everything they could carry from their homes.”
She calmly snaps at her daughter, telling her to sit still. Her daughter laughs and imitates a statue to my amusement.
“The ferries themselves were a nightmare. After a few days, they stopped loading cars and limited baggage to one per person. Typically, about 3 million people used those ferries every summer. By the end of the first week, I believe we had that many daily. You should have seen it when those massive ferry doors opened. A wave of people would slowly make their way onto the pier like defeated zombies.
Saying we were overwhelmed doesn't even begin to cover it. Crime skyrocketed—whether it was desperate refugees or local criminals taking advantage, the chaos just wouldn't stop. For the first few weeks, there was basically no authority left. We were completely lost, trying to wrap our heads around what was happening. The local police had pretty much given up, and the city turned into a massive refugee camp almost overnight.
Riots broke out, driven by hunger and frustration on both sides—refugees and angry locals. In the middle of all that mess, most people were just looking for someone to tell them what to do next. By the end of the first week, before the army even showed up, the city had already become a patchwork of refugee "neighborhoods." You can still see traces of them today. The old “French Quarters” became this huge taxi hub, and ‘Neue Chemnitz’ was just a market back then. People stuck to their own groups, mostly for safety, as they tried to settle in.
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Huge communities sprang up almost overnight. The only thing keeping the city from running out of food was the endless stream of trucks delivering supplies. At first, the Moroccan people were really upset. Food had always been a problem in the poorest parts of the country, and now they were sending tons of it every day, putting a strain on our economy. The frustration wasn’t because we were helping; Moroccans have always been welcoming. I paint a bleak picture but most families in this city and the rest of northern Morocco was housing at least one other family. It was an informal system at first, running simply on the generosity of people and their belief that it was the right thing to do before it became mandatory.
The real issue was that we had no idea where the money was coming from to support this effort. Sure, the king had mandated it, but his orders didn’t change the material reality on the ground. It became clear what the endgame was after a while. At first you’d hear it in the cafés, taxis and on the street. Than we heard it from the King itself on tv. The strategy behind flooding the refugees in Tangier with food was to keep them from moving elsewhere. Cities like Rabat, Fes, Meknes, and Casablanca were even less prepared to take them in than we were.
The plan was to concentrate the refugees in northern cities like Tangier, Tétouan, Al Hoceima, and Nador to buy time for the rest of the country to prepare for the massive influx of tens of millions of people. It gave our King and government a chance to coordinate with the rest of Africa on how to handle such a crisis. But working with the Algerians was tough; we had been on the brink of war just a year earlier. The land border was shut, and diplomatic communication was nearly nonexistent. North Africa faced the same challenges we did. We needed to figure out a plan to handle the situation. Honestly, I wasn’t too focused on diplomatic talks; I had other things on my mind. I was worried about my parents and whether the Dutch family they took in was alright. Our offices had been turned into a makeshift break room and dormitory for the local army detachment, Me and my colleague’s car being broken into.
The city settled after a while, but I’ll never forget those first days. The fires, the hunger riots, the black markets and the crime.
“What lead to Morocco and other African nations getting involved directly?”
“Well, firstly we were aware of the broader reality of battle against the extraterrestrial threat. We knew that they wouldn’t stop with Europe. That if we didn’t pitch in to help now, that soon we would have them arrive on our shores. There was a recognition among African leaders that the extraterrestrials represented a threat to global peace and stability. Especially with the Mediterranean nations. That everyday those hordes arrived closer and closer to us and that our militaries were even less prepared to face them than the Europeans. But it didn’t happen overnight. Even during the height of the war in the first years, only half of our army was in Europe. The rest stayed here to maintain order. Be it the refugees or the paranoia that human enemies of our nation would use this as a possibility to strike. Or a worst case scenario where a second arrival would land on us”
“When our armies were getting deployed, every ferry that dropped thousands of refugees was loaded up with soldiers, vehicles and material the moment the last refugee stepped on. Honestly, you’d have to ask my husband about that.”