So you think you know the world

Here in Morocco it is impossible to escape the realization that in painting our image of the outside world we have used a brush so wide it has covered over the faces of the people. Morocco is unknown to us. They were the first country to recognize the U.S. as a nation, our friend for 225 years -- can you find it on an unmarked map?

Morocco is a surprise. It is deeply Muslim, but the language on the city street is more likely to be French. Nearly every one of Morocco’s 32 million people is bilingual – at minimum. Many speak Amazigh as well (the language of the Berber people who make up a very large minority), and now school kids also learn English, and Italian is the favorite language of choice.

Maybe that shouldn’t surprise. One of our great human moments was al-Andalus, the seven and a half century empire that joined Morocco, Portugal and much of Spain. While the Roman Empire disintegrated into a filthy struggle simply to survive, architecture and poetry and medicine and philosophy defined al-Andalus. London was a hovel, Paris eventually a minor city, but Cordoba was a quarter million Arabs, Jews, Romans and others under an umbrella called 'convivencia.'

It ended, of course. Such things always do. Then came Ferdinand and Isabella, the Inquisition and the hate.

But can it happen again? I think so. I think it already is here. But that is for tomorrow.