BY ARIEL ALEXOVICH, MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

[to the companion story, Liberty? Equality? Fraternity?: A Moroccan's place in the French order]

Meryem Laachi's phone bills are astronomical.

In an average week, the twenty-two-year-old fields calls from her parents and sister in Morocco, and from her brother in Minneapolis, all on the cell phone she bought near her university in France.

Like her older siblings, Meryem left Casablanca to go to college in France, not so unusual since French is the business language of Morocco, a former French protectorate. Next year, however, she'll graduate. Meryem will decide whether to follow the footsteps of her older brother, Nabil, who moved to the United States, or her older sister, Safaa, who moved back to Casablanca, or forge her own path, possibly staying in France.

In an average conversation with Meryem, she jumps around from topic to topic, explaining why it would be great to pursue all three countries. An internship in America, a banking job in France, she wants to do it all. But still, part of her heart leans towards going home, although her head tells her that a better life can be found in a wealthier Western country.

Some children who grow up in poor countries dream their whole lives about leaving. That's not how Meryem feels about Morocco. Even though she witnessed her brother's and sister's moves to French universities, up until the month before Meryem herself was to start college, she thought she would follow her own path and stay in Casablanca, studying finance at the elite Institut Superieur de Commerce et d'Administration des Entreprises (INCAE), Morocco's best business university.

"At first I thought I would stay in Morocco because I would see my mom every week crying on the phone (to Nabil and Safaa)," Meryem says. "I used to pray every day that I would get accepted to this school in Morocco."

While Meryem was content and confident in her choice to stay in Casablanca, her father, a lawyer, urged her to study abroad. "He told me that he would prefer me to go to France. I think for three days he stopped talking to me," Meryem says. Finally, her mom, the person Meryem thought would most want her to stay at home, pushed Meryem toward the decision to go to France. "'Maybe your father is right,' my mom said."

Unsure about making such a monumental life change, but trusting the advice of her parents, Meryem spent three years at the Lycee Michel Montaigne in Bordeaux, the city in the west of France where her brother and sister chose to study.

According to Eurostat, the European Union's official bureau of statistics, more than 50,000 Moroccan nationals were enrolled in the EU's institutes of higher education in 2003, the most recent year for which data is available. Not surprisingly, the majority of them - about 35,000 - studied in France, a reminder of the days when the North African country was a French protectorate. Even today, the cultural and linguistic ties between the two countries are obvious. Warm baguettes fresh from the oven can be bought in boulangeries in Casablanca, and young people gather at tea salons to smoke hookah pipes all over Paris.

"No regrets," says Meryem about her French education. After finishing her specialized baccalaureat in math, she progressed through the French higher education system to earn her DEUG, or Diplome Universitaire d'Etudes Generales. Now Meryem is working towards a master's in finance at the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information (Ensai) in Rennes, a small city in the French province of Brittany.

She feels strongly that her degree from a French university will give her more of a professional edge than any diploma she could have earned in Morocco. "The diplomas in Morocco don't have great value," she says. If Meryem chooses to stay in France after graduation, she'll join many other young citizens of poor countries in the brain drain.

"In general, the trend is that many, many students tend to stay in European countries, but there is a growing trend that if they're on a higher level, there's a trend to go to the U.S.," says Heidi Jakobsen, social affairs policy officer at Eurocities, a Brussels-based think tank network of European cities.

Nabil Laachi, 27, is one such trendsetter who made the United States his next stop after earning his French diploma. Now a chemical engineering PhD. student at the University of Minnesota, Nabil elected America as the next stop on his life course, not in small part because of his fluency in English. "This old burning desire of 'voir du pays' (seeing the world) kept consuming me and was insatiable," he says. "I decided to come to the U.S., experience new things, see different people, eat different food, speak a different language and think differently. Here I am, starting my PhD. program and willing to stay here for at least four more years. After that, the wind might change its direction again, and who knows where it is going to lead me."

Nabil got his first taste of American collegiate life during his last year at engineering college in France, through a study abroad program. He chose the University of Wisconsin over schools in England, Germany and Spain, among others. "I wanted to experience the other side, the 'west' and quite frankly, it was a childhood and teenage dream that I carried with me in France, and that I could never get rid of."

He thrived in Wisconsin, and his experience there, combined with the quality of American graduate schools and the global weight of American degrees, made Nabil want to stay. "I went back to France after my program with only one thing in mind: apply for grad school in the U.S.," he says. "Well, honestly, I also considered France, but my first choice was the U.S. of course."

Although Nabil says he was nervous about leaving his family in Morocco, choosing America was never a hard decision for him. Simply, he was just too excited about his future. "As soon as I got accepted, I couldn't hold my joy and started to get ready - telling my parents, applying for the visa, getting psychologically ready, etc," he says. During the trans-Atlantic flight to Minnesota, he felt some tingles of apprehension, but his excitement quickly took over.

To a degree, Meryem feels the same tug to go to the United States. Based on what she's exposed to on TV, on the radio and in movie theaters, she has a glamorous notion of the country as home to attractive blond people and country music. But she's unsure about a multiyear commitment like her brother's. Meryem is also closer with her mother and sister than Nabil, and as a girl, her family is more reluctant to have her so far away from home.

Ultimately, some years down the line, Meryem says she would feel more comfortable following the footsteps of her sister, Safaa Laachi, 26, and Safaa's husband, Karim Diouri, 28, who both earned their diplomas in France and then moved back to Casablanca. The couple met in Bordeaux, and they were always in agreement that they'd eventually end up back in Morocco. "I had always projected to return because in my mind a degree is better to use for the development of my country," Safaa says. "If I don't make the effort to improve it, nobody will do it."

What's definitely not a factor in Meryem's decision to stay in France is the current tension between the Caucasian French and those of Arabic heritage, especially after the recent riots by the impoverished children of Muslim immigrants in the Paris suburbs. Nor would ideas of racism make her think twice about going to the United States in a post-9/11 atmosphere.

While Arabic-looking youth are often stopped by police officers and asked for identification, especially in areas where lower-class Arabic immigrants live, the cops have never stopped Meryem. And as long as she stays out of the hot public housing developments where many poor immigrants live, they're not likely to, says Meryem's friend and former teacher Ludovic Subran, now an economist for the French Ministry of Finance. "For a student like Meryem and her situation, she is from some kind of upper-middle-class family in Morocco, so she is never nagged like that by the authorities. She's like, cherished."

This rule only works in towns with dominant student populations, like Bordeaux or Rennes. "In France, some people know that she's a student, and of course see her as someone that is more upper class, and not these baddies that are always looked down on," Subran says. "But other people don't really know the difference and just see that she's Arabic in origin, and the image is not that good."

For Karim, race was a non-issue while he studied abroad at North Dakota State University during the 1999-2000 school year. Surrounded by the white faces of rural Midwestern America, Karim says being Arabic and Muslim made him stick out, but not necessarily in a bad way. He was just another international student like his Turkish and Uzbekistani friends. "I didn't tell (the Americans) that I was Muslim, actually," Karim says. "I don't think they cared to know. It was before 9/11, so people weren't very conscious of asking about it."

Karim says that his lightly tanned skin, gelled black hair and short stature allowed Americans to assume he was Spanish or Turkish, not necessarily Moroccan. "What I appreciated is that people could behave the way they want and live the way they want, and there's a lot of freedom and nationalities," he says.

While he loved his year in North Dakota, the tight French job market made Morocco more appealing when he graduated in 2002.

He moved back to Casablanca while Safaa finished the last two years of her degree in France. To stay in the United States would have been too far away, he says. "We would have stayed maybe two or three years (in France) for experience, but I couldn't get a job. I took it as a message from God that I should come back, and eventually I wanted to come back, so it was OK."

Nabil Laachi says that racism in the United States is present, especially with airport security, but overall not unbearable. On his flight to Minneapolis, he felt nervous at what the immigration officers would demand of him, but he had no trouble entering the country. "I am still human and deserve a better treatment, but all things considered it was OK, less embarassing or humiliating than one would expect," he says.

Unlike her sister, Meryem has no fiancé pulling her back to Morocco, at least not now. She has more freedom than her sister, and more of a reason to assert her independence in a big foreign city. "After I finish school, I think it would be cool to work in Paris," she says.

Her willingness to add to the French economy could benefit that country, too. "There is some competition to keep students after they graduate. There is a growing realization on a greater scale that you need to compete with the U.S. to attract the brains - the good brains," says Jakobsen of Eurocities. "Whereas there was a strategy early on to get these students to go back to their country of origin, there's a great value to society to have them here."

Meryem hasn't been burdened with enough prejudice in France to make her not want to stay. Two incidents - one "dirty Arab" comment and her questionable denial of an apartment lease - in four years isn't bad, she says. Her closest friends in France are Caucasian. And although Meryem doesn't see many other Arab faces around the university in Rennes, she insists it is not a problem.

The larger hurdle in Meryem's way, if she wants to stay in France, is navigating the French system of issuing visas. Moroccans always need a visa to enter France, even if they are merely jetting away for a holiday weekend. Meryem says it's getting more difficult to obtain this minor documentation, much less a work visa. Since she has credentials affirming that she is a tuition-paying student at a French university, she doesn't get hassled by customs right now.

Meryem obviously feels torn. On one hand, Casablanca is her home. During winter break in Morocco, she hosted one friend after another in her home and enjoyed daily Moroccan brown bread and mint tea prepared by her mother and her housekeeper, Hasaama. She giggled with her favorite cousin, Sanai, every day, and poked fun at the ambitious, if not spastic, break-dancing of Sanai's 10-year-old brother.

In contrast, Meryem lives alone in Rennes, on a quiet street away from the busy downtown area. Her new, two-room apartment isn't glamorous - it has a stand-alone shower in the kitchen/living room - but at least it is hers. Her best friends in France don't live in Rennes, but they come from Paris and Nantes to visit some weekends. School keeps her busy, and though it's more solitary than her life in Casablanca, Meryem is content in Rennes. "My mother is sure that I'm going to come back to Morocco. She never asks me, 'Will you come back to Morocco?' I think it's because of my sister. She came back, and so of course I will," Meryem says.

Subran, the French ministry economist, however, raises some doubts. "Of course when there are students coming to France to study, sometimes they are staying a bit longer than for their mere studies," he says. Not that he minds. "But we need most of them. It's just a question of them being gifted and if ever they want to stay, I personally think that it's a win-win agreement. ... They're working for our banks, for our big companies, and they're giving their brain cells."

Graying Western Europe needs qualified young foreigners to fill jobs as increasing numbers of Caucasian French people retire. As in the United States, pensions will be tapped out in the foreseeable future, and immigrants are needed to offset this deficit. Morocco is just one of many African or Middle Eastern countries that may be able to spare some of its own citizens. Half of the country's 33 million people are under 25, and since 1990, its population has grown by 6 million. This number is 40 percent of the population growth in the same period for the entire 25-nation European Union, which boasts 456 million residents.

The allure of the hedonistic French way of life is undeniable for students like Meryem who come from poor nations. Safaa resolutely says that the leisure options in France are incomparable to those in Morocco, where she says that apart from the cinema, there is nothing to do. "If you ask Moroccan people on the street what's their favorite pastime, if you ask 10 people, none will say that it's art or culture. The main hobby here is eating. Or working hard or looking for work," Safaa explains.

Squinting her eyes at her little sister while scrutinizing Meryem's slight smile when France is mentioned, Safaa says, "I think she will stay in France."

July 2006

[to the companion story, Liberty? Equality? Fraternity?: A Moroccan's place in the French order]

19-Jul-06 | 7:12 AM
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