On a cool spring night on May 16, 2003, five minutes before 10pm, the people of Casablanca — the bustling cultural port city of Morocco located in northwestern Africa — experienced one of their most memorable moments: moments of pain, terror and blood (Horses of God). In just five minutes, five explosions echoed throughout the city’s center; in five minutes, around twelve young Salafi Jihadist men, with links to Al-Qaeda, committed suicide, taking thirty-three innocent people — including Jews, Westerners and others — with them (Horses of God; Kramatschek). Millions of people in the city were devastated, and many more would have died since there were supposed to be sixteen — not just twelve — men in their twenties from the Salafia Jihadia organization carrying out the attack (Kramatschek). Surprisingly, all of those involved had one thing in common: they all grew up in Sidi Moumen, the impoverished shantytown east of Casablanca, only thirteen minutes apart from each other — a short drive that would surely contrast a life of poverty in Sidi Moumen with a life of luxury in Casablanca (Kramatschek).
Ever since that night it was clear that terrorism doesn’t just happen to certain countries, it can happen anywhere. And so if that’s the case why is it still a continuous problem, even today? Why did those twelve young men do what they did? We will never get just one answer because there isn’t just one answer, it isn’t just black and white. Thankfully, some courageous people have took the initiative to express, through their art and their words, the causes of that dreadful night, and how terrorism in general is more complicated and grey than one might think.
One of these masterpieces was a film titled Horses of God (2012) — also well known as Les Chevaux De Dieu by its French audience — directed by French filmmaker Nabil Ayouch, who currently resides in Morocco. It tells a fictionalized backstory of a group of boys who grew up to become the young men responsible for the 2003 Casablanca bombings (IMDb). It’s based on the famous book The Stars of Sidi Moumen (2010) — also known as Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen in Paris — by Moroccan artist and writer Mahi Binebine (Kramatschek). Just like the book, the film adaptation doesn’t aim to humanize the terrorist acts that happened seventeen years ago, but instead aims to tell the other side of the story, a story of how the definition of manhood, brotherhood and religion can be manipulated to train young boys into committing acts of terrorism and becoming weapons of mass destruction (Kramatschek). It was filmed in Casablanca, Morocco, with most of its filming done in Sidi Moumen, the impoverished shanty town of northwestern Africa and the town where those responsible for the 2003 Casablanca bombings grew up (Horses of God).
The film has been given widespread praise around the globe. In 2012 alone it won both the Francois Chalais Award from the Cannes Film Festival and the Espiga de Oro Award from the Valladolid International Film Festival (Horses of God; “Sidi Moumen”). The following year the movie’s director, Nabil Ayouch, won Best Director at the Seattle International Film Festival (Horses of God). The film has even been selected by the country of Morocco to represent them at the Oscars in 2014; however it wasn’t nominated in the Best Foreign Film category (IMDb; Lybarger). In that same year it was discovered, praised and represented in the U.S. by The Silence of the Lambs (1991) director Jonathan Demme (1944-2017), and was showcased at New York’s Film Forum between May 14-27 in 2014 (Lybarger).
Horses of God (2012) wouldn’t have been as renowned today if it wasn’t for its director and his upbringing. Nabil Ayouch was born on April 1, 1969. His Tunisian-Jewish mother and Moroccan father, Noureddine Ayouch — a now retired pillar of Morocco’s Supreme Council for Education — raised him in the suburbs of Paris (Goodman). During Ayouch’s youth he grew more interested in the field of cinema, feeling as if it was his introduction to the world around him, which constantly motivated him to become one of Morocco’s most celebrated filmmakers today (Goodman). Nabil Ayouch’s humble beginnings in production started when he was working on commercials, when he took the initiative to make his very first short film The Blue Rocks of the Desert (1992), which both earned him multiple filming opportunities, and surprisingly jump-started the career of famed actor and comedian Jamel Debouzze (Ali n’ Productions). After multiple short films he made Mektoub (1997), his very first feature thriller, which earned him the Naguib Mahfouz Award for best first or second work at the 1997 Cairo International Film Festival (Ali n’ Productions).
In 1999, he decided to permanently live in Morocco, and founded his own production company, Ali n’ Productions, which currently trains young people to become filmmakers themselves, giving them the opportunity to compete for the Mohamed Reggab Award, a short film competition (Goodman; “IFFR”; Ali n’ Productions). In January 2006, with the support of the European Union and King Mohammed VI’s own Marrakech International Film Festival Foundation, Ayouch established the Meda Films Development program (MFD), a program that trains only the best aspiring filmmakers from the southern Mediterranean countries and helps develop their own feature films (Ali n’ Productions).
Nabil Ayouch has directed a plethora of critically acclaimed movies in his career, including Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets (2000), Whatever Lola Wants (2007); the Middle Eastern documentary, My Land (2011); Much Loved (2015), Razzia (2017) and, especially, Horses of God (2012) (Ali n’ Productions; IMDb). Recently in 2017, he was given a permanent seat in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, making him the first Moroccan director helping to advance the world’s largest film industry (Goodman).
All of Ayouch’s films have a common theme of realistically, satirically and critically depicting the violent acts, sexual repression, and correlation between religion and law in Morocco’s country (Goodman). It’s because of this theme that a lot of his films have become controversial and yet popular amongst many audiences all over the world, especially in Morocco; his 2015 film Much Loved was actually banned there for telling a story about the daily lives of prostitutes (Goodman). However, Ayouch believes it’s his duty to go against the criticism, boldly showcasing these topics through his narratives, feeling like he’s constantly questioning an ideology that would rather censor an artist than open a discussion about what the artist is trying to convey (Goodman). His films also focus on the importance of identity, like how a person’s language or their culture can significantly define their identity. For example when it comes to languages in his films, Ayouch tends to feature a variety of different languages and dialects, believing that language can define the backstory of a character, or even of a group of people (Goodman). In his opinion, the common Arabic language that’s spoken today isn’t even their original language — he believes Darija is the actual language of the people, but the Arabians aren’t comfortable with that language and find excuses not to be (Goodman). Therefore, his argument about the Arabian people is that their unwillingness to explore their roots can be defined by the languages they choose not to speak (Goodman).
His reasoning for focusing on culture in his films came from his own dissociation with his own cultural identity (Goodman). One side of his family is Jewish but another side is Muslim, one side of his family is Moroccan and yet another is Parisian (Goodman). So in 1999 he decided to move to where most of his father’s family lives, in Morocco, however he felt like the experience overall has been bittersweet (Goodman). On one hand he is emotionally comfortable with his cultural identity because Morocco itself is culturally diverse, and its history is filled with stories of diverse groups of people, despite their differences, working together to build a country (Goodman). Positive experiences like these have strengthened Ayouch’s skills in filmmaking and has deepened the connection he has through expressing his cultural roots and identity through cinema (Goodman). The bitter side of him living in Morocco is that he often hears the opinions of different groups of people who despise each other, who’d rather spit on what their ancestors built together because they abhor the other group’s cultural backgrounds (Goodman). These negative moments have fueled a burning fire in Ayouch to satirically represent Moroccan society through his movies.(Goodman).
Experiences like the Casablanca bombings that happened back in May 16, 2003 were especially devastating moments for him, since it was a representation of the intolerance in Morocco being put into action by a few people willing to kill hundreds (Ayouch). Days after the attack, he found out that the suicide bombers were all young, uneducated men in their twenties who grew up in Sidi Moumen, the shanty town in northern Casablanca (Ayouch). He decided to return to the town — having previously shot some documentary films there back in the late 1990s — and joined local organizations listening to the townspeople and their youth talk about their everyday lives (Ayouch).
Coincidentally, Ayouch wasn’t the only Moroccan visual thinker that felt depressed to hear about the Casablanca bombings of 2003 (“Sidi Moumen”). Mahi Binebine, a Moroccan mathematician who became a skilled artist and writer, was devastated by the terrorist attack, heartbroken that the perpetrators were young men from Sidi Moumen willing to be remembered as suicide bombers (Kramatschek; “Mahi Binebine”). He wanted to explore the reason why this specific attack started, so he flew from Paris to his hometown in Marrakesh, Morocco to research and write about the experiences of the Sidi Moumen residents (Kramatschek). After five years of flying back and forth between Paris and Morocco, he had enough to write his book, The Stars of Sidi Moumen — Les Étoiles de Sidi Moumen in France — which was published and awarded the Arab Novel Prize in 2010 (Kramatschek; “Sidi Moumen”). As if destined by fate, the paths of Mahi Binebine and Nabil Ayouch had crossed, and in honor of bringing light to the marginalized voices of the Moroccan people, Ayouch made Horses of God (“Sidi Moumen”).
In 2014 — the year the film was released in the U.S. — Ayouch was interviewed by the HuffPost film critic Dan Lybarger, taking about how terrorism is portrayed in Horses of God. Ayouch stressed that there are multiple reasons why terrorist attacks happen, from poverty to a lack of parental structure — especially paternal structure — or from feeling isolated from the rest of the world and the government not doing enough for its people (Lybarger). And because nothing is being done to help the youth, the idea of joining a brotherhood that promises a new sense of family and purpose can seem like the best thing that’s ever happened to them, even if that “brotherhood” is a terrorist organization (Lybarger). Ayouch argues that this cycle can exist anywhere, in any country, motivated by any ideology or religion (Lybarger). To display how both the misconstrued sense of brotherhood and the intolerance of diversity can lead to terrorist attacks was Ayouch’s main goal with Horses of God; he wanted to show the world that yes, radical Islamic ideas can lead to terrorism, but also to tell the world that wait, there’s a backstory to why these things happen and it can happen anywhere (Lybarger).
As mentioned already, Nabil Ayouch is famous for making his films linked to realism, satire and identity, and in terms of Horses of God (2012) it unwaveringly depicts how a sense of brotherhood can become twisted, like something sweet turning sour. It begins with a large number of boys growing up in Sidi Moumen only for the story to end up having four of those boys, Fouad, Nabil, Hamid and Tarek (known as Yachine), to become the “horses of god” in the end.
In my opinion, the movie’s display of something looking sweet but becoming bitter is expressed subtly in its cinematography. The wide shots are something to be reflected on, fully capturing not only the muted colors of each person but also their role in life, which isn’t that colorful either — like a scene in a bustling marketplace in the slums of Sidi Moumen where everyone is struggling. Shots that do have more vibrant and saturated colors tend to provide a more positive energy to the story, only to be tainted by something or someone for the film’s muted composition/theme to transition in. A perfect example is in the first minutes of the movie, when there’s a wedding ceremony happening in the nighttime, and the only thing the viewer is allowed to see in the composition are the townspeople celebrating. Then suddenly, thirteen-year old Hamid gets harassed by the corrupt cop Pitbull, and the viewer sees — from the eyes of Hamid’s younger brother Yachine who is farther in the celebration — two forces opposing the other against the night’s darkness, tainting the colorful composition that was the wedding scene.
Shots that are in the middle between saturated and muted, in terms of composition and theme — which, in my opinion, are a majority of the scenes — convey positivity weighed down by negativity. There’s a scene, for instance, when a teenage Yachine is dressed in dark clothes, wandering the neighborhood in the daytime, smoking weed and feeling depressed about his boring life. Next thing he knows he accidentally locks eyes with a smiling Ghislaine, the girl next door who he’s had a crush on since they were kids, wearing a light pink dress and leaving with her mother to go somewhere else. It’s positive because Ghislaine makes it so with her smile and her pink clothes, which makes Yachine smile as well, but it’s negative because of the distance between them — emphasized in cuts between a single shot of her and a single shot of him — and the fact that Yachine appears more darker and aloof, then happy when he finally recognizes her, only for her to walk away; it’s clear that she’s the girl he could never get.
That brings me to the medium and close-up scenes in this movie, which are actually my favorite kind of shots because it accentuates the slow nature of the film. It’s supposed to be slow, it’s supposed to take its time, because it makes the story feel that much more real by emphasizing the close connection between the characters.
There’s a scene in particular that I wanted to watch again right after finishing the movie, a scene in the first few minutes of the movie that struck me emotionally. Prior to this scene ten-year old Yachine failed to do a task for Hamid that would’ve earned the family extra money: he allowed Ba’Moussa — the town’s auto repair man — to take advantage of him, selling an auto part he found for cheap. When the scene begins, we see the family eating in their dark living room that’s lit only by their television screen. Said — Hamid and Yachine’s lazy older brother — is listening to the radio and talking to Yachine about it; their mother is glued to whatever rom-com is showing, and their father, who has Alzheimer’s, appears dead, like a vegetable. Suddenly, Hamid walks in and argues with their mom about coming home late, then looks at Yachine, disappointed because, apparently, he came home late too; but all Yachine does is look at Hamid and then look down toward his food, defeated.
Hamid then surprises their mother with an expensive box of perfume and some cash, while also boasting about the new pair of shoes he bought for himself, and while their mother praises him, Said’s expression stiffens and slows down as he puts down the radio and chews his food more reluctantly. Hamid sees that Yachine looks defeated as their mother opens her new box of perfume with joy. Yachine expresses to him that he shouldn’t have let Ba’Moussa buy the auto part for cheap, only for Hamid to reply that the task was too big for him anyways. Somewhat excited, Yachine asks Hamid if he could try on his new shoes and Hamid replies saying, “They’re too big for you” and continues to eat his food. Yachine just looks at him, the light reflecting in his eyes makes him appear soft and fragile, and he slowly looks down toward his own food.
It’s nothing that big, to be honest. It’s not even a long scene. But it’s so important in the way that the characters interact with each other, and even look at each other, to the point where their most subtle facial expressions shift the tone of that scene. I think what got me in this particular scene was just the way that the light was shining on Yachine’s eyes, coupled with how he looked at Hamid when they spoke to one another, how one looked up to the other while that person looked down on them; it wasn’t about Hamid being the focus of attention in that scene, it was about Yachine feeling like he wasn’t ready to help their family. He was crying on the inside and you could tell just by the light and slow movement of the actor’s face. It started out sweet with Hamid being given praise and then turned sour when Yachine was basically being told he wasn’t ready.
That sense of something sweet becoming sour is also portrayed perfectly in the story arcs of three out of the four main characters: Nabil, Yachine (real name is Tarek) and Hamid. As I’ve said, there’s a powerful message of brotherhood in the film, but slowly and surely it causes the characters to lose their individuality, into becoming mindless weapons of war, seceding from their own families and friends who never appear in the film again. Fouad is the fourth member of this group but he doesn’t have an impactful role, even though he survives the film’s process of eliminating characters. I’d first like to focus on how Nabil, Yachine and Hamid struggle with their own individuality and identity before losing it after the turning point in the film.
Nabil’s story arc prior to the film’s climax hints at his struggle with his sexuality. Growing up with no father figure and having a mother who’s well known for being the neighborhood whore, Nabil tends to hang out with his friends a lot to distract himself. It’s also important to note that Yachine and Nabil are more like brothers in the entire film than Yachine’s actual brother, Hamid. Hamid often criticizes Yachine for following Nabil all the time, which is interesting because Nabil ends up following Yachine. The night where everything took a dramatic turn was the night of the wedding ceremony I used as an example earlier. That night there were a larger group of boys, including Hamid, Nabil and Yachine who all wanted to drink alcohol at Nabil’s house. The drinking led to Hamid raping Nabil in front of all the other boys in the house, with those boys cheering and Yachine traumatized by watching his best friend getting taken advantage of by his older brother. After he was done, Hamid and the other boys left the house as if nothing happened. Yachine tries to comfort Nabil only for Nabil, with a deprived and painful expression on his face, to turn him away as if he was a stranger.
The story then jumps to when Yachine and Nabil are teenagers, still best friends. Nabil being raped by Hamid is never mentioned again in the film; there’s no confrontation between Nabil and Hamid, nor is there an argument between Nabil and Yachine as to why he didn’t do anything about that night. It never comes up again, but not because it wasn’t important. In fact, I believe this contributed to Nabil’s character tremendously.
Because his mother also has sex with a plethora of men, Nabil probably felt like that was his role in life too, someone to be taken advantage of by everyone else. He’s often treated like a woman living in a misogynistic country. In one scene he’s told by someone that he should become a prostitute because he’s pretty. In another scene, Ba’Moussa, who he ends working for at the auto repair shop, tries to sexually take advantage of him, and then Ba’Moussa gets killed by Yachine. A few scenes later, Nabil holds a sleepy Yachine in his arms after he killed Ba’Moussa, similar to how a mother would cradle their child to their chest. There’s one shot of Nabil looking in a mirror and putting on lipstick to make himself look pretty. All of these feminine attributes are things that were awakened because of what he saw and experienced as a kid.
Yachine’s path to the film’s climax is different than Nabil’s. While Nabil somewhat accepts what happens to him, Yachine is bitter about not being able to figure out a way to take control of his own life. Growing up, he was constantly competing with his older brother Hamid, while also wanting to follow his example and make him proud. Despite the fact that Hamid sold drugs for a living, Yachine was willing to do that instead of selling oranges, just so that he could be with his brother. However, Hamid consistently forbade him from getting into that line of work, while at the same time giving those job opportunities to others.
In a sense, Yachine felt like he had no control over his life. He wants to work with his brother but his brother refuses. He has feelings for Ghislaine, his childhood crush, but she’s constantly either stuck in the house, or accompanied by her strict mother or older protective brother, Fouad. After Yachine started working at Ba’Moussa’s auto repair shop with Nabil, he finally had money to his name. One day he even bought himself some new clothes and a gift to give to Ghislaine, waiting to offer it to her after she finished her sewing class. Unfortunately he sees Fouad accompany her, and when Yachine tries to start a conversation with Ghislaine, Fouad shoos him away with the news that their grandmother wants Ghislaine to be in an arranged marriage that could get them out of Sidi Moumen. Even when Yachine gave gifts to his mother she’d barely notice, and wasn’t as grateful as when Hamid gave her gifts. And the fact that Hamid, after serving jail time, didn’t want to hang around the family anymore, made Yachine’s emotional state worse.
Everyone, except for Nabil, shuts Yachine out or puts him down. At one point in the film Yachine is angry because Madani, the local bartender, tells him that two people from their neighborhood moved to Italy. Yachine then expresses his anger toward Nabil, who makes a joke about how those two people probably killed someone to get a good life. This is followed with Yachine complaining that if he had gotten more opportunities he could probably move out of their town, then gets bitter at Nabil for not having any weed for them to smoke afterward.
That’s actually another thing about his character: the only time Yachine actually had some sort of control in his life was when he was drunk and intentionally picking fights, or smoking weed and not selling his oranges. However I believe the moment he did take control was when he killed Ba’Moussa for attempting to rape Nabil, but that was at the cost of his emotional well-being, or what was left of it.
Hamid’s attitude, prior to the turning point in the film, was that of an unceremonious, abrasive and immature brat who constantly wanted to act tough and hurt others, but I believe he only does that because he himself is in pain. I am not excusing his actions. He was practically a bully to his brother Yachine for always hanging out with Nabil — I think he was jealous of their relationship; Hamid also raped Nabil in front of his friends, sold drugs and worked with corrupt cops; witnessed the clients who bought his drugs get arrested by the cops and did nothing about it, and he intentionally started fights with people to prove he was some kind of badass.
And yet there was this whole other side to him that we saw through his actions, a softer side. Hamid does genuinely care for his family, especially his mother and Yachine. He spends some of the money he earns on new things for himself, but he also gives his mother gifts and some extra cash, basically assuming the role of the man of the house. He was willing to get into the drug selling business to bring money into their home, and didn’t want Yachine to get involved in any way, at one point explaining to him that if he “goes under,” Yachine could at least become the man of the house. There are also various times before the movie’s climax where Hamid would hurt people for his brother. Yachine would end up getting into a fight with someone at the neighborhood’s football field, and then all of a sudden Hamid would come rushing in, swinging his chain whip around, defending his brother and willing to kill anyone that even tried to hurt him. In a weird way, Hamid is like a father figure to Yachine but Hamid still neglects him and doesn’t treat him as an equal, which would unfortunately have repercussions later.
I also have a theory about why Hamid does what he does, or more specifically, why he raped Nabil when they were kids. This is never confirmed in the movie, but I felt like Hamid himself was sexually harassed by someone or saw it happen as some kind of demonstration of power. My theory is that when he was younger, he was raped by Pitbull, one of the most notorious corrupt cops in the neighborhood, due to the fact that Pitbull was literally harassing him and choking him at the wedding, and neither the cops nor the people celebrating did anything about it. Minutes later one of the boys asks what happened between Pitbull and him, but Hamid just shoves off the question, replying that nothing happened. If my theory is correct then it adds an extra layer of depth to Hamid’s character. It does not excuse Hamid raping Nabil, nor the other heinous acts he’s committed, but it does explain his eternal rage toward Pitbull, and why he hurts and takes advantage of others: because he himself could be in pain and was probably taken advantage of.
All of which finally brings me to the turning point in the film, its “climax” in a sense. One day, news breaks out that Pitbull — the famous corrupt cop in their town that Hamid has abhorred since he was a kid — is transferring to a different station. A massive crowd surrounds the local police station, with the young and the old alike witnessing Pitbull being driven out of their town. Hamid picks up a rock and is dared by one of his thug friends to throw the rock at the car, which Hamid obviously does to seem tough and as a retaliation against Pitbull. He successfully breaks the car’s window and runs away from the cops pursuing him until they’re ordered to not even bother.
The crowd enthusiastically cheers for Hamid’s strike, the cop car continues driving away and the swarms of children in the crowd run after it, chanting “Pitbull! Pitbull! Pitbull!” — not in favor of Pitbull but in mockery of his name, and celebrating the fact that one major problem for the town is now being driven somewhere else. Later that night in their home, the cops break in, arrest Hamid and drive him off to prison. His mother is traumatized, yelling and screaming, while her eldest son Said holds her back from interfering. Yachine runs after the cop car screaming Hamid’s name, and the scene transitions into darkness.
The reasons why this night is the turning point in the story’s plot isn’t necessarily made clear until two years after Hamid was arrested and came back from prison. Things don’t change in the film, for better or worse, until that specific point. When Hamid comes back, he is completely changed, well dressed in lighter colors, groomed, patient and well-mannered. But most importantly, he is now religious: Hamid has converted to Islam. But this convergence further damages the relationship between him and Yachine, because Hamid now constantly ignores his family to hang out with his fellow Muslims in the local mosque; this further increases the inner resentment Yachine has for Hamid.
Later on, when Ba’Moussa – whom Yachine works with at his auto repair shop, thanks to Nabil — tries to rape Nabil and Yachine kills him, it’s Hamid and his Muslim friends who dispose of the body, and the next day they’re both introduced to the proposition by Hamid’s friends that converting to Islam will allow God to change their lives. This is why Hamid going to prison becomes the catalyst for change. If it wasn’t for Hamid getting arrested, he wouldn’t have converted to Islam, and if he never converted to Islam, the fellow friends he made at the mosque wouldn’t have helped dispose of Ba’Moussa’s body, nor would they have offered Yachine and Nabil a chance to better their lives by following God. And their lives did change.
I want to make it clear that the way religion is introduced in this film isn’t, at least in my opinion, aggressive or strident. It doesn’t present Islam as a religion that can heal all wounds because that’s not the lesson of the movie. It represents an opportunity for Yachine, Nabil, and later on their friends Fouad — the older brother of Ghislaine, Yachine’s crush — and Khalil — their charismatically annoying childhood friend — to become something more. To finally have purpose, to make connections with other, with fellow Muslims and, especially, with God. Keep in mind, prior to this opportunity their lives were stagnant or declining, even when they grew up from boys playing football to teenagers smoking weed, their lives never changed for the better.
And here comes an opportunity for them to assume a mission: to better themselves and become part of a stronger brotherhood where they’ll look after each other. Abou Zoubeir, the Imam (leader) of the mosque, tells them that following God will enhance their self-confidence, and through prayer their bond will strengthen. He even uses Hamid as a prime example of what faith can do to someone, and if Hamid can change for the better then why can’t they? Abou Zoubeir also technically acts as a father figure for them. Yachine and Hamid’s father has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t do anything, and despite Yachine looking at Hamid as a role model, Hamid wasn’t even close. Nabil doesn’t have a father in his life, only his mother who constantly sleeps with the men in the neighborhood for money. Fouad also doesn’t have a father figure, therefore has to protect his younger sister Ghislaine and become the man of his household. So when Abou Zoubeir preaches to them about the Qu’ran he has a powerful effect on them, motivating them to do better, establishing his authority and giving them direction and goals to aim for in their lives. At one point, Nabil even confesses to Yachine that he’s never heard anyone speak as well as Abou Zoubeir.
Therefore, it’s important to know this: religion isn’t something that’s preached in this film, it’s offered and Yachine and his friends willingly accept it. By becoming Muslims, Yachine, Fouad and Nabil become stronger and more content with their lives. They’re more groomed, well behaved and in control of their emotions. They learn fighting styles and spar with one another to enhance their self-defense techniques. They have better paying jobs, apprenticeships and other opportunities to help better themselves, their faith and their community. And most importantly, their brotherhood is strengthened through all of this. Before, their brotherhood consisted of making fun of each other, taking advantage of one another, being lazy together while each having their own identity, and getting into fights for one another; it was pure and innocent. They’d get into fights with the other football team and run away from them when being chased. Through Islam their brotherhood is different. It’s more solidified, compact, they’ve become more respectful toward each other and have become more motivated to take up each other’s responsibilities, as well as their own. Their newfound brotherhood has become mature and experienced. They don’t run from anything anymore; they walk toward their problems with confidence.
But at what cost? Slowly but surely their identities become squeezed out of existence and their brotherhood becomes skewed and rigid, so rigid that if one piece of their puzzle all of a sudden doesn’t fit it must be destroyed; it’s so rigid that only the brotherhood matters, no one else, nothing else. Characters that were once important to them in the beginning of the film now fade out of existence, or become insignificant. For example, earlier I mentioned a guy named Khalil. He was also a childhood friend of Yachine, Nabil, Fouad and Hamid. Khalil was enthusiastic but annoyingly vitriolic, but what I liked about his character was that he was honest with people, even if his honesty was presented as an insult. There was a scene before the movie’s climax — before Hamid got arrested — where Yachine, Nabil, Fouad and Khalil were all smoking weed. Khalil starts talking about Medina, the beautiful city in western Saudi Arabia, and how he knows people who live there living life to their fullest and getting a steady income, compared to how they’re living in Sidi Moumen with no job because the factory right next to their town won’t hire the townsfolk, as if they were nothing. Yachine then complains how he wouldn’t want to work in a factory anyways, and Khalil advises him to sell drugs with his brother Hamid if he wants to make money. When Yachine expresses how Hamid wouldn’t give him any job opportunities and wants him to sell oranges, Khalil makes fun of him, saying how Hamid gives jobs to his friends but not even to his own younger brother.
Even though he is annoying, Khalil does speak the truth. The people of Sidi Moumen are constantly looking for work, and doing things like selling things in the marketplace or selling drugs is excruciatingly hard since there’s too much competition amongst them. Now there’s a factory right next to the very town and yet rarely anyone from the town itself gets hired, especially boys from single-mother households looking for work. And even though selling drugs comes with a massive amount of problems, Khalil makes a good point in that Yachine has the opportunity to better his life by working with Hamid due to his connections — because Hamid is basically the town’s most popular drug lord and has a “decent” relationship with corrupt cops — unlike the rest of their group who don’t have connections at all. It’s by watching scenes like this that I realized that Khalil conveyed his own individuality and identity.
I mentioned before how Khalil was also offered the opportunity to join the local mosque and convert to Islam, but was more reluctant than Yachine, Nabil and Fouad, proclaiming that working with his father as a shoe shiner would be better than believing in faith or learning how to fight. And because of that decision, Khalil was never again seen in the movie. Because he didn’t fit in with the newer brotherhood that Yachine, Nabil, Fouad and Hamid had begun to establish, he wasn’t important to them and lost his role in the story.
This doesn’t only happen to Khalil, however; it happens to most of the characters that were important at the start of the film and slowly faded from view. Nabil’s mother, popular but only in terms of being a sex worker in the neighborhood, ends up being ignored when she tries reaching out to him. Good men like Madani, the town’s bartender, end up losing their importance. Ghislaine, the girl whom Yachine has had a crush on since they were little, ends up losing her effect on him. Yachine and Hamid’s own family are given a lackadaisical farewell before they carry out their final mission, as if they weren’t important to them at all. All of these characters, and more, become insignificant, forgotten, abandoned, because they didn’t have a role in the brotherhood. Even Yachine starts losing his own nickname, being called by his real name Tarek instead (we will call him Tarek from now on).
As mentioned above, if no one fits in the brotherhood that Tarek, Hamid, Nabil and Fouad have created, then they are of no concern. But anyone who is in the brotherhood that ends up not fitting will be mistreated. And who is the person that falls out first? Hamid. His previous actions led to him getting arrested and becoming the climax in the film, and interestingly enough, he becomes the magnifying glass through whom we see why the brotherhood doesn’t work anymore.
We start to see this when Hamid becomes jealous over Tarek becoming the favorite of Abou Zoubeir — the leader of the mosque and the mentor for our main characters. Remember, when they were kids Hamid would bully Tarek for always hanging around Nabil, and since jealousy comes from a feeling of inadequacy within one’s self, I believe Hamid didn’t love himself at the time. After converting to Islam, Hamid is more mature, emotionally and mentally; feelings of jealousy wouldn’t happen because he’s grown to love himself and love God, right? Wrong. Hamid wasn’t as strong as he thought he was, his jealousy rising exponentially as Tarek’s role in the mosque became bigger than his. At one point they both get into an altercation which further strengthened Tarek’s resentment toward him.
However, there’s somewhat of a silver lining to this. It’s when Hamid recognizes his own emotional weakness that he realizes what has become of him and Tarek, Nabil and Fouad: they’ve lost their individuality. Nabil’s sense of femininity has been crushed, Tarek’s love for football has gone, and Fouad no longer feels a sense of responsibility for his younger sister. They look the same and act the same, like clones. Hamid also realizes that the teachings of Islam don’t correlate with what they are being trained to do. They’ve been trained to defend themselves and love their neighbors, yet it seems like anyone who isn’t in line with their ultimate mission is treated with scorn, and the fighting techniques that they’ve practiced over the years seem to be geared toward violence, not self-defense.
The final nail in this coffin, Hamid’s doubt, comes when their ultimate mission is revealed to him, Tarek, Nabil and Fouad. The four of them had been taught by Muslims with links to the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, and are now being labeled as the “horses of God” to carry out an attack against the Westerners, Jews and anyone else who poses a threat to the nation of Islam. Their group, as well as other groups, will be in the port city of Casablanca on May 16, 2003, to carry out the attack, with Tarek leading the charge on that night. The reward? An honorable death for God and a life of eternal euphoria in Jannah.
Hamid realizes too late that they’re going to not only kill innocent people but kill themselves doing so, and it’s in this moment that he sees that everyone, except for him, is willing to carry out the task just for the promise of a luxurious afterlife. It also hits him for the first time how wrongfully he’s treated his younger brother Tarek, constantly neglecting him, bullying him, abandoning him and not treating him like an equal for most of their life. Hamid tries to talk to Tarek about their problems and tries to persuade him to not do the mission, but Tarek neglects him; he doesn’t need him anymore. Tarek has become the role model, the leader, not Hamid. Questioning Tarek also causes problems for Hamid, being given looks by the other group members, his faith being questioned, his life being threatened if he can’t carry out this task for the “will” of God. He becomes more afraid to speak up for himself, very unlike his younger self who wouldn’t take crap from anyone.
On the night of May 16, Tarek, Nabil, Fouad and Hamid arrived at their location in Casablanca, stalking the people who were “sinfully” celebrating in a restaurant. Hamid tries one last time to convince Tarek to stop, only to be shoved violently to the ground. This fight breaks Fouad’s spirit, as he bursts into tears and runs away from the mission. Nabil is now following Tarek into the restaurant – unlike when they both were kids — and all Hamid can do is witness his brother’s death, as he and Nabil blow themselves up, killing everyone in that restaurant.
There are no words to convey the build up to that point. The film may be criticized for its slow pacing but it needed to be. It needed the viewer to witness these events slowly develop as others were quietly forgotten. It needed its wide shots and its close-ups to show the characters being consumed by their environments and interacting with each other. It needed the individuality and identity of Hamid, Tarek (Yachine) and Nabil to be built, crushed and mixed into a singular entity. It needed Hamid to secede from this entity and witness what he could’ve done better to prevent all of this. If he were a better role model for Tarek, no one from their brotherhood would have, in the name of any religion, killed innocent people. And yet, if it wasn’t for Hamid, they wouldn’t have been given hope either.
This film was bittersweet with its depiction of how a brotherhood, which is essentially something all men need to grow, can turn into something else, something worse. It represents that religion is neither good or bad, but hope can make people do fantastic and disastrous things for the sake of achieving a better life. The film is a medium through which Nabil Ayouch is crying out for change in Morocco’s society; in fact, not just Morocco, but the world in general.
One would think that the 2003 Casablanca terrorist attack would have changed Moroccan politics for the better but, because of the bombings, things have gotten somewhat worse. The bombings were caused by radical Islamists, which had ruined this idea that the Moroccan Islamic government was somehow safe from those kind of attacks (Maghraoui). Thus, the event itself shook the political climate of Morocco forever.
Around May 26, 2003, Morocco’s government passed a law where they would detain reporters who published anything that the government considered was “in support” of terrorist acts (Maghraoui). That would have been a good thing, except what the government deems as “supporting terrorism” has been challenged by many of Morocco’s human rights groups, due to the law’s unapologetic restrictive measures on freedom of speech, and the individual cases associated as a result (Maghraoui). For example, in June 2008, an editor of the newspaper company Al-Ousbou, known as Moustapha Alaoui, was detained for reporting in an article how a terrorist group was claiming responsibility for the 2003 Casablanca bombings (Maghraoui). Because of this repressive legislation, anyone – like Alaoui — that was arrested for what the government deemed as “supporting terrorism” would have to stay an extra twelve days in a detention center, and could even be susceptible to torture from the guards (Maghraoui). The detainees could technically get a lawyer, but even the lawyers were afraid of being arrested by the police or facing judicial scrutiny for defending people allegedly connected to terrorist groups (Maghraoui). An epitome of how these restrictive measures are flawed was when around one hundred people were arrested days after the Casablanca bombings, but only around thirty of those people were actually connected to Al-Qaeda (Maghraoui).
The Casablanca bombings also caused another political aspect of Morocco to become challenged by the people: the role of religion in the government (Maghraoui). People openly expressed their distaste for religious political parties, like the Islamic Justice and Development Party (PJD), still being involved in Morocco’s political process; however, questioning how the role of religion in the government was offering political benefits to the king himself was something that they wouldn’t dare whisper about (Maghraoui). Despite King Mohammed VI’s rise to power in 1999, promising to rule Morocco by being more respectful and communicative toward its inhabitants, and expanding their rights and freedom of expression — more so than his father King Hassan II (1929-1999) — the ancient laws of the Moroccan monarchy dictate that their rights would be forfeit should they speak ill about his highness, or even rip apart a calendar with pictures of him (Maghraoui).
This fact that the Moroccan government uses past terrorist attacks and religion as a way to justify repressing the people even more is a definite issue that worsened due to the Casablanca attacks (Maghraoui). But all hope isn’t lost.
As aforementioned, Mahi Binebine, the author of The Stars of Sidi Moumen (2010), eventually crossed paths with director Nabil Ayouch, who later on adapted the book into the film Horses of God, published in 2012 (“Sidi Moumen”). But it was in 2009 when they both founded the Ali Zaoua Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is to re-establish the connection between the impoverished and the wealthy in Morocco, a mission that will allow the youth to express themselves visually so that they can become better leaders in the next generation of the country, instead of joining gangs or being manipulated into terrorist organizations (“Sidi Moumen”; “Cultural Center”). The impact that this foundation has had on the country has been astounding, especially its Les Étoiles Cultural Center in Sidi Moumen, which trains young children in fields like professional dancing, music, filmmaking, performing arts, and hosts special events that connect these young people with artists all over the world (“Sidi Moumen”; “Cultural Center”).
The Les Étoiles Cultural Center has also become the premium location for finally beginning the process of healing in Morocco. On May 16, 2013, exactly ten years after the Casablanca bombings, the families of the thirty-three who were killed and the families of the twelve suicide bombers came together in a session of forgiveness. Both groups of families talked about their emotional experiences after the attack, and most importantly, how, from now on, the people of Morocco need to stand against the radicalization of religion, and innocent children being used as weapons of unnecessary war (“Sidi Moumen”; “Cultural Center”). It was an incredibly life changing moment for the entire country, a memorable moment and Band-Aid to the attack that happened ten years prior.
One of the people who spoke at this meeting was President Soad Begdouri El Khammal, the founder of the Moroccan Association of Victims of Terrorism in 2011, who was deprived of her husband and son during the 2003 Casablanca bombings (“Supporting Victims”). In 2018, she was interviewed by the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, and said something that resonates with victims of any kind: “What I can say to victims around the world is: Don’t give up. Don’t hide. Don’t be afraid. We have to remain firm, because our voices are one of the ways we can face down the scourge of terrorism.” (“Supporting Victims”). In conclusion, I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
References
Ali N’ Productions. “Nabil Ayouch – Biography.” IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2020. Ayouch, Nabil. “Director’s Statement.” Horses of God – Official Website. Kino Lorber Inc., 2014. Web. 18 Mar. 2020.
“Les Etoiles Cultural Center of Sidi Moumen.” Ali Zaoua Foundation. Ali Zaoua Foundation, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
Goodman, Sarah. “Behind the Silver Screen: A Conversation with Morocco’s Nabil Ayouch.” Morocco World News. MWN, 20 Aug. 2019. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
Horses of God. Dir. Nabil Ayouch. By Mahi Binebine. Screenplay by Jamal Belmahi. Prod. Marie Kervyn. Perf. Abdelhakim Rachi, Abdelilah Rachid; Hamza Souidek, Ahmed El Idrissi Amrani. Kino Lorber, 2012. Film. Kanopy. Kanopy, 2013. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
“Horses of God.” IMDb. IMDb.com, 13 Feb. 2013. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
Kramatschek, Claudia. “Mahi Binebine’s Novel ”The Stars of Sidi Moumen”: At Home with the Grim Reaper.” Qantara.de. Ed. Lewis Gropp. Deutsche Welle, 2012. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
Lybarger, Dan. “When Fanaticism Makes Sense: Nabil Ayouch on Horses of God.” HuffPost. Verizon Media, 22 May 2014. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
Maghraoui, Abdeslam. “Morocco’s Reforms after the Casablanca Bombings.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 26 Aug. 2008. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
“Mahi Binebine.” Granta. Granta Publications, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
“Nabil Ayouch at IFFR.” IFFR. International Film Festival Rotterdam, 22 Jan. 2018. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
“The Stars of Sidi Moumen.” Casa Árabe. General Administration of the Spanish State, 21 Jan. 2016. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
UN Supporting Victims of Terrorism – Soad Begdouri. Perf. Soad Begdouri-Elkhammal. UN Web TV. United Nations, 31 July 2018. Web. 17 Mar. 2020.
Author Biography
Orville Scott, once also known as the “Face of Dutchess,” is a recent graduate of Dutchess Community College. Although he has been praised by his professors for his talents in graphic design, acting, and writing, these are not necessarily fields that he wishes to explore. His heart is more in line with an experience he’s been searching for his entire life, and hopefully he will find that experience someday.
