Boulevard Mohammed V, once illuminated with life, is beginning to die before our eyes. It has changed its appearance; it has lost what made the richness of its golden age. Today, we observe the collapse of its universe, we search for its bright spots, its vibrant landscapes, we seek to understand if it is heading towards the fate that awaits it. All of this weighs heavily on us because we love this boulevard so much. But alongside this, we complain bitterly, for its state causes us such pity that we wonder why we are in this nostalgia to change its decline into creation.

Ten years ago, Boulevard Mohammed V attracted writers and artists from all countries of the world. Today, with the eclipse of culture that characterises our century, this boulevard has less importance than other places in Morocco. Rabat, the city of arts and letters that once reigned over the country and contributed to spreading the intellectual spirit and attracting the elite from other regions to Morocco, does not regain all its former prestige. It turns in on itself and its great boulevard becomes a graveyard of memories.

We remember the past of this boulevard to dig up and accumulate all the facets of its glorious years. This place was a Champs-Élysées avenue in Rabat, a place of leisure where elegant R’batis received the daily reward of joy and peace, an intersection point of several paths, of several streets lined with shade, clear silence during the day, cafés, brasseries, restaurants, and lively performance halls in the evening. All along the boulevard, music and dance. A beautiful, lively place, warmth, great thirst, long walks, flourishing, sweetness.

Boulevard Mohammed V was truly a hub of conversation and distraction. The cafés, restaurants, and brasseries were true institutions in the life of the Boulevard. They were places of discussion where epicureans enjoyed finding all the attractions of life. It was, in a pure expression, the inn of the world. A public ball, at the very least, where one met in great company, among people from all cities of Morocco and of all conditions who tasted the spirit of the Boulevard. Artists, writers, playwrights, actors, socialites, in short, what was called the 'Tout-Rabat', including distinguished foreigners.

Boulevard Mohammed V was also the only place in Rabat that was authentically joyful. During the day, this Boulevard was lively with shops, stalls, boutiques, etc.; in the evening, it was the time for cocktails and the joys of meeting. It was a Boulevard imbued with love and lovers; it was the naturalness of the R’batis displaying their happiness in the cafés that created the romantic climate of Rabat.

A landmark, Boulevard Mohammed V enjoyed gathering all people of spirit. At the time, it attracted a company of highly distinguished intellectuals and men of letters. Its cafés (Terminus, Renaissance, Balima, Les Ambassadeurs, Les Quatre Saisons, etc.) and its bars (Marignon, L’Alsace, La Comédie, Trianon, Grillon, Café de France, Le Rêve, Tanger, Henrys Bar, etc.) hosted intellectuals, writers, artists, and gallant people. These public places were the brilliance and charm of this Boulevard and had never ceased to maintain contact between intellectuals and their admirers.

The success of these places was ensured to a large extent by foreigners (French, Americans, Spanish, English, etc.). The Boulevard then achieved the maximum concentration and attraction. The many memories left to us by contemporaries attest that it was indeed in its prime. Between five and six o'clock, playwrights, writers, poets, professors, and jurists met in the cafés, particularly at Café Balima. There, all the rumours and all the talk that constituted the chronicle of the city of Rabat and Morocco would end up.

Boulevard Mohammed V was just one big family, a place where everyone knew each other even without ever having met. Walking in this Boulevard was like looking for an extension of oneself, and taking a beautiful walk in one of the most attractive avenues of our Rabat. In the gestures of the anonymous beings one met or in one of its cafés, there was that grace made of a pleasure of living at least one of those novels guessed at in the passages.

The Boulevard was always adorned with the memory of Khaïr-Eddine, El Khoury, Zefzaf, Choukri, Berrada, Genet, Chraïbi, among others, who lived in an atmosphere of Moroccan culture. This atmosphere of the Boulevard was that of a home where one came to find friends and admirers. These writers of the pleiad had awakened and revived in our lives the feeling of art and the cult of life.

Look today, look at yesterday, Boulevard Mohammed V and its landscape. It has less importance than other places in Rabat. It no longer has this symbolic legend; it is no longer an illuminated, cosmopolitan Boulevard, welcoming, open to the pleasures of life and the delights of the spirit. The Boulevard is eclipsed by the retreat of civilisation and the decline of life that springs from the accumulated damage.

It is the ignorance and blindness of men who do not cease to mock memory, to violate the beautiful things of a place, and to carry the character of a present that is even more corrupt and insensitive. In a word, these men, because of the prevailing customs, have no idea of what can ultimately rehabilitate the memory of a Boulevard.

The romantic Boulevard, the pivot of Rabat, the most elegant place, is lost in the turbulent present. It is in its decline, it is filled with the agitation of protesters, the tumult of the city, and the noise of street vendors. We are here far from this Boulevard of the past that romanticism and the feeling of love exalted. We are now far from this Boulevard of the time when the intellectual elite came to seek the reasonable character of polemics and to learn the art of thinking.

The Boulevard no longer has brilliance and looks like nothing today. It ceases to be the great hearth of light that it had been for Rabat. Abandonment is undoubtedly the first misery from which the Boulevard has suffered. Nothing happens, no significant initiative comes to break its collapse.

1960-1970, a period of mutations, of intense creative and intellectual activities. This period was marked for Boulevard Mohammed V by an immense idealism in the hearts of the R’batis who felt the need to express their entire joy and their taste for art, literature, and elegance. Today, the criteria have changed. The Boulevard suffers from the disadvantages and from what we call today, when we want to briefly qualify our era, the end of the Age of Enlightenment.

Here it is, imprisoned in its past. This lost past is nothing more than a distant mirage. Very few still remember the time when the Boulevard stirred joy in the surrounding places and when a peace and prosperity reigned that made it the centre of commerce as well as the intellectual centre of Rabat. Today, what strikes the walker are the itinerant merchants and the suspicious prowlers who do not have the cheerfulness of the open air.

Boulevard Mohammed V, in our memories, was the golden age. Today, it is at the end of its life, it no longer has its beautiful face. In this condition, the calls for rehabilitation spread by nostalgic people find unfavourable ground. These calls were above all dictated by the desire and the dream of seeing a new Boulevard, attached to its origins and its glorious past.

The Boulevard has lost its charm. It is a sadness for every R’bati. It is mixed with the decline of our era. And that is why it is so sad for us. Because we feel linked to its fate, which remains ever worrying. In his (Hampstead Notes), Elias Canetti writes: "I am tired of dreaming of places whose images I carry within me". This credo of Canetti allows one to grasp the true meaning of weariness. But the dream has long since made us taste beauty and made hope spring forth, as a poet would have said. The Boulevard will remain implacable towards decadence and ugliness. It will surely find modern people attached to its memory in this great city that has always fascinated us.