Is it possible to change the world at the age of five from the bottom of a well in a remote village in the middle of the mountains? Maybe yes. At least for a few days. Rayan, the child of Ighrane, did it in the province of Chefchaouen (which everyone knows as the blue city) in northern Morocco.
Until Tuesday morning he was a child like everyone else. A stranger. In the afternoon the tragedy led him to be the son of all. He fell into the family well, dug by his father a few years earlier, in the hope of snatching water from a barren land to quench his thirst from the oppressive natural and economic drought. That well gave him nothing and took everything away from him. For a hundred hours Rayan stayed there, at a depth of 32 meters, letting the world know, with a faint breath, that he was alive.
And the world gave it all to get to embrace him again. He made it Saturday night but the joy was incomplete. Rayan was gone. But in the meantime he had changed something of this world and bequeathed some lessons.
The first: indifference, a great disease of our time, can be defeated. In Rayan’s case, no one was indifferent. As soon as it was established that the baby had ended up in the well, the villagers rushed to try to get him out with rudimentary means and the commitment of volunteers. Then, immediately afterwards, the rescuers were alerted. First the gendarmes, for territorial competence. These alerted the civil protection specialists and speleologists, who had arrived from hundreds of kilometers away. They made at least three attempts, but whoever came closest got to 24 meters. Here the cavity narrows even more, to 20 centimeters. Virtually impenetrable for any adult. From Tuesday in Ighrane the clock stopped working: time was measured with the meters that were missing to reach Rayan.
After the attempts from above were consumed, the Moroccan authorities decided on an intervention of force and arrogance against nature. Tear up vertically, with excavator bites, the mountain that guarded the well, up to the height of Rayan and proceed with a horizontal tunnel to reach it. It took five days and nights of non-stop work to do it. And they did it. Supported by an entire people and millions of people who cheered and prayed from a distance.
The indifference of the village’s neighbors was overcome, that of the rescuers and even that of the mountains. But Rayan’s case went further. For once, people, everywhere, stopped being distracted by themselves and became interested in the other, on the other side of the world. They let themselves be carried away and involved by a small creature. For once, a person no one knew became important to everyone.
The second lesson: the spontaneity of unity. Rayan has held peoples and nations in a strong embrace with extraordinary immediacy. Morocco came out of a very tense football season, made up of burning defeats. First in the Arab Cup against Algeria, a hostile neighbor to say the least, and then in the African Cup with Egypt, an endemic rival. Nothing warlike but social discontent that often fuses for atrocities of which only man is capable. It took a few hours for Algerians, Egyptians (and with them millions of other people from every corner of the earth) to flood the social networks of support for Rayan. Because in the end there is no flag or nationalism that can stand up to the panting breath of a five-year-old child struggling for life. No separation between Maghreb and Mashreq, between Africa and Europe; between East and West.
Rayan also swept away many internal barriers in Morocco. The Rif is a complicated land, of proud people, who have always struggled to feel dependent on someone. Yet for five days the Rif became the heart and soul of Morocco. Thousands of people have swooped into those mountains from all the cities of the Kingdom. The message is one: “Rayan is your son but also ours. We are here with you, for him. And we will stay until the end “. And then the women of the village started cooking for everyone: rescuers, journalists, foreigners.
The anguish of the land that Rayan had swallowed was overcome by the boundless openness to the other. Morocco has turned out to be a united, solid people. To the point that the tragic news of Rayan’s death was communicated with the words of the King. Because, perhaps, only his words would have alleviated the pain and the sense of helplessness.
The third lesson. The sacredness of life. In a world of wars, tragedies and injustices, people seem to have rediscovered the value of life and the pain of loss. Regardless of the outlines of the facts. The desire to fight for the Rayan millions around the world has resurfaced. So that they no longer die at the bottom of the earth or at the bottom of the sea. Nor under the rubble of bombs or hardships under the tents of refugee camps.
The fourth lesson. The moral ingratitude of a material well-being now taken for granted. Among the few words spoken by Rayan’s mother these days, the ones that struck me most did not concern the child. “We have nothing, we also have to beg for water. Not even from that well you see, which took my son away from me, have I never had a glass of water “.
Here, the water that we take for granted is not for everyone. And it’s not for people not so far from us. Ighrane is a hundred kilometers away in Chefchaouen, where many have been. But perhaps no one has ever thought that there are people who fight, and children who die, for water. Rayan’s family, who will be received by the king in the next few hours, will no longer lack anything in life. But there are millions of Rayans around the world who still need our attention.