RABAT, MOROCCO—If Mehdi Sahli lived in Cairo or Tunis instead of Rabat, Morocco's capital, no doubt he would have joined the furious mobs that were hurling stones and toppling dictators.

He's young, poor and unemployed, and he's a punk. Plugged in through Facebook and his cellphone, inspired by Western music and currents of social change elsewhere, he has transformed himself from a traditional Muslim youth into an anarchist.

In fact, the 24-year-old had the letter A, the symbol for anarchy, tattooed on his left forearm.

His hair is short now — there's just a whisper of a mohawk — but once it towered grandly in multiple hues, a stiff foot above his head. His studded leather jacket is painted with the words “punk is not dead.”

Yet Sahli is also courteous, and well-educated. He studied law for two years at Mohammed V University.

Sahli says he understands why Egyptians have said halas! — which means done, finished — and are pushing for the once immovable Hosni Mubarak to go, and why Tunisia's dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, has fled.

Idly hanging out with friends in a columned arcade in the centre of the city, he fits perfectly the demographic of a generation that, elsewhere, is blazing a trail to revolution.

But Sahli and his friends are not storming the barricades.

Though he is part of Rabat's underclass — he dropped out of school last year because he couldn't afford the eight-dirham (about 75 cents Canadian) daily bus fare — he is immune to calls for political change.

“No, it's okay for me here,” he says in fluent English. “It's not like Tunisia, it's not like Egypt. The king assists us. He is a young person and he wants to help the country. We thank God for peace and harmony here.”

Sahli is a punk who honours his king. “I love and respect him.”

Despite ongoing rumblings of dissent, Morocco does not appear poised to explode. Because of the king's skill at maintaining his subjects' loyalty, because the government permits just enough dissent to blow off pressure, because of the high illiteracy rate, the country is seen as revolution-resistant.

“I don't think there will be any kind of spillover effect, and no change at the top,” says a Western diplomat who describes the masses as “apolitical.”

Indeed, voter turnout is low, 37 per cent according to the government and said to be even lower by human rights activists. And nearly 20 per cent of the ballots in the 2007 election were spoiled, a sure sign of voter contempt. A young man who studies at a German language institute and works full-time as a clerk says no one in his family votes. “It doesn't make any difference,” he says.

There's no underestimating the popularity of 47-year-old King Mohammed VI. Known as “M6,” he is a royal with the common touch: the king founded the local surfing club and drives his own car, albeit a Ferrari. One Rabat resident described how the monarch pulled up beside a mother and daughter at an intersection. The child waved; the king waved back.

Over the past week on Facebook, Moroccans from across the country posted photos of him, accompanied by words of affection. Some even replaced their profile pictures with images of the king.

Moroccans differentiate between their king and their government, which is perceived to be corrupt and rife with nepotism. Morocco is a constitutional monarchy with an elected, multi-party parliament, but the king has extraordinary powers, including the right to dissolve parliament.

“(The king has) done a good job of deflecting criticism onto political parties,” says the diplomat. “You hear people say, ‘The government is awful, thank God we have the king.' “

Mohammed VI launched his reign in 1999 with a series of social and human rights reforms. He improved women's rights in marriage, divorce and child custody and rolled out an Equity and Reconciliation Commission, meant to reverse the abuses of his father, Hassan II. That monarch's reign is known as “the years of lead.”

Edward Gabriel, former U.S. ambassador to Morocco, has written that the king's early youth- and poverty-centred initiatives reduced “conditions that undermine stability.”

But observers say that things under Mohammed VI changed after terrorists attacked Casablanca in 2003, with the regime turning a blind eye to the reinstatement of torture.

And Human Rights Watch says in its 2010 world report that though Morocco's Equity and Reconciliation Commission wrapped up five years earlier “acknowledging responsibility for abuses and disappearances,” no officials or security forces were known to have been prosecuted.

Media criticism of the king or his family, comments on their health or dress, even lighthearted humour about the monarch are all forbidden and can lead to arrest. It's one of the three so called “red lines” that can't be crossed in Morocco; the other taboos are criticizing Islam — the state religion (with the king as head) and the faith of 99 per cent of the population — and the dispute over who controls the Western Sahara. (It's contested by Morocco and a group called the Polisario Front.)

On the 10th anniversary of Mohammed VI's rule in 2009, the Brookings Institute published a report noting that “Morocco resembles an absolute monarchy much more than the democracy to which it rhetorically aspires.” That observation came when the government seized 100,000 copies of the magazine TelQuel and another publication, Nichane, when they reported on an opinion poll about the king.

Ironically, the poll revealed that 91 per cent of respondents approved of the king's leadership.

But even that was not up for discussion. Government spokesman and communications minister Khalid Naciri proclaimed that “the monarchy cannot be the object of debate, even through a poll.”

Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk was hauled out of a Monday demonstration of unemployed university graduates by undercover police and ordered to delete his photographs of protesters outside the parliament's gates (he only pretended to do so, and his shots can be seen at thestar.com).

Repression of the press hasn't completely stifled critics. On the streets of Rabat, news vendors still sell TelQuel, which this week ran the cover headline “Pourquoi le Maroc tremble.” Inside were 10 reasons why the kingdom is stressed. Item one was the absolute power of the king, item five, endemic corruption, and item eight, breaches of human rights. Why is the publication tolerated? Some say it's because it's in French, the language of the elite and not on the radar of the average, Arabic-speaking person on the street.

Morocco is a country of the young. According to the World Bank, 50 per cent of the population of some 32 million is under 25.

The Brookings Institute indicates that 29 per cent of Moroccans are aged 15 to 29, the same percentage as for Egypt and Tunisia. Iran has 34 per cent in that age range, while Canada has just 21 per cent.

And the government has failed to create jobs — especially for the young, who have an unemployment rate of 35 per cent, according to the Harvard Business Review website. What's more, students without powerful connections say they have little chance of winning even low-level government jobs. People complain of having to continually bribe officials.

Tuesday afternoon, as the sun set on the palm-lined boulevard of Mohammed V Ave., three different groups were demonstrating in the few blocks below the parliament buildings. Teachers were on a three-day strike, a noisy group fronted by a man wrapped in a Che Guevara flag declared solidarity with Egyptian demonstrators, and the largest of the groups, 2,000 unemployed university graduates, were chanting in unison in a nearby park. A dignified Moroccan man in a suit and tie took it all in smiling and, a little puffed with pride, said, “Morocco is a democracy.”

As demonstrators shouted slogans, however, unsmiling undercover police scribbled down notes and watched grimly from the sidelines.

When civil unrest exploded in Tunisia in January, the Moroccan government asked the students to cease their almost daily demonstrations and go home to their towns and villages outside the capital. It promised the students that if they desisted, it would find jobs for them by Feb. 10. “It makes us want to push more,” says 23-year-old Fatima, who has a master's degree in English literature and who says the students, some of whom look well into their 30s, returned this week to take advantage of the momentum in Egypt and Tunisia. “We are trying our best to make use of this period, because it is so sensitive.”

On Thursday, 1,000 protesters were out again, complaining that the Feb. 10 deadline had come without the promised few thousand public sector jobs materializing.

With their high unemployment, young people's needs are immediate, but not dire enough to start a political revolt either. “We have only social demands,” says a 29-year-old graduate in cultural studies who has sent out about 100 resumes to be a teacher. “We need jobs. If there are no jobs, then it becomes political.”

The students are represented by about 12 different groups, one for arts students, one for engineers and so on. They asked that their names not be used for fear that speaking out might limit their chances of getting a job.

Their demonstrations are orderly, with each group wearing a coloured vest with its name on it.

Some younger university students who have yet to test the job market do not support these demonstrations. “They are not studying the right things, they study literature and history,” says 19-year-old Achraf Minaoui, in his second year of science studies. “They need to study what the market needs.”

He motions to his friend Elias Rakab, 21. The two students are looking out at the sea from the ochre-coloured walls of La Tour Hassan, where the king's father and grandfather are buried. Below them, housing and an elaborate port development are under construction. “Elias is studying engineering — and they need 10,000 new workers. Morocco is really growing.” He waves below him. “You can see it.”

“I don't see dramatic dissatisfaction among the youth and the underemployed youth,” says a Western diplomat. “There are safety valves critically placed to protect the king.”

Involvement with NGOs also allows activists an outlet for dissent. “I don't think they feel a great sense of democracy,” says the diplomat, “but you can get things done if you want if you have civil societies, pressure groups who make things happen — a new family code, get garbage picked up when you want, get a road built where you want, not where some corrupt mayor wants.”

Mohamed Boukili is head of the country's largest NGO, the Moroccan Human Rights Association, which has some 10,000 members. The group works toward reform within the limits of what the government will tolerate, he says.

For now the government is tolerating protests. “The authorities don't like it when young people go out like that. They are very frightened about the youth and what they are going to do next.”

Boukili cites the increased reports of attempted self-immolation as “a sign of complete, black despair.” There have been as many as a half-dozen in several cities, but they have not resonated here nor caused outrage as did the fiery suicide of Tunisian vegetable seller Mohamed Bouaziz, which started a revolution.

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“Sometimes they send us letters saying if they don't get a job they will burn themselves,” Boukili says. “We say the first right in human rights is to have life. They asked us to observe. We refused.”

The country's current unrest reminds Boukili of 1985, when he was a math teacher and arrested for daring to criticize a speech by King Hassan II on the high cost of living.

He served eight years in prison for disturbing the security of the state and was released in an amnesty in 1994.

If Moroccan young people are angry but still not enough to openly defy the government, there is another potential source of public uprising in the Islamist organization know as Justice and Charity, which has called for “urgent democratic change.” It has networks across the country — organized into study groups — and has stepped up efficiently and quickly in times of crisis to provide humanitarian aid, sometimes before the government.

By government estimates its network might include up to 40,000 Moroccans, but the organization itself claims to have 200,000 supporters.

“There's no doubt they are more popular than any of the legal political parties,” a diplomat says.

Counteracting youthful discontent in Morocco is the fact that literacy rates are comparatively low, with overall illiteracy estimated at about 50 per cent but thought to be much higher among women and in rural areas. Literacy in Egypt, by contrast, is 71 per cent.

In Sahli's family, for example, neither his mother, who is in her 40s, nor his grandmother, who married at 12 and is now in her 50s, can read or write. Both women wear traditional Moroccan dress — long tunics, trousers and close-fitting head scarves. His mother, who has worked as a carpet weaver, speaks only Arabic, while he speaks English and French well.

Sahli is among the 32 per cent of Internet users in the country, but many, like him, don't have computers and resort to Internet cafes.

Still, a group that now claims thousands of members has used Facebook to urge young people to take to the streets this month. “We call on Moroccans to protest Feb. 20 for the dignity of the people and for democratic reforms,” it said.

No one knows how many will show up, or if these supporters are even in the country or among the two million Moroccans who migrated to Europe to find work.

The government was not perturbed by the announcement of the protest.

“We perceive this with enormous serenity,” government spokesperson Naciri told a news conference.

How much longer will the poor be content? Boukili worries about the gap between the very wealthy and the most impoverished Moroccans (which, according to the World Bank, is similar to the gap in the U.S.). “It won't go on forever; it will explode. The American administration is trying to convince the government to undertake deep transformation. Will they understand this in the right time? Or after it explodes?”

There's no sense of impending explosion in Sahli's impoverished neighbourhood. Hay Rachad's streets are lined with pyramids of oranges and great stacks of mint, coriander, artichokes, live chickens with their feet bound, and shops selling cheap slippers, thick stockings, djellabas with pointed hoods.

The streets are scarred and ruined, too narrow for cars. At night the air is fragrant with cinnamon and pepper and thick with smoke from braziers where vendors fry onions, sausage and bits of liver and hold out a spoon for passersby to sample.

Sahli's home is up a flight of stairs so narrow you turn sideways to ascend. At the top is the main room for the family of five. His two sisters, his grandmother and his mother sleep on sofas built into the wall.

Adjacent to this room is a kitchen with pitifully few provisions — a few spices, a single Bunsen-style burner. His bed is in a section of the kitchen, where everyone's bedding is piled.

His father, who walked out when Sahli was 6, has married five times and fathered 15 children. This prize of a husband didn't hesitate to turn to his ex-wife when he was imprisoned for fraud and beg her to bring him food during his incarceration.

In the afternoon, his sister, who is beautiful with thick hair, deep-set eyes and fine features, and a young friend primp, getting ready to go to a billiards club that is on the divide between the nearby wealthy neighbourhood and their own.

Sahli's family lives on about $200 a month. Since leaving school, he's applied for jobs at McDonald's and local supermarkets, with no success. He gets tips for helping people at a local market.

Yet he says he is satisfied with his country. “I don't want to protest. In America and Canada you would find someone like me. We are good like this. Food is cheap here.”

The government last month promised to protect Moroccans from rising food costs “at any price” by continuing and perhaps increasing subsidies on essentials such as bread, cooking oil and gas.

Sahli has plans to improve his family's economic situation — he has taken several written exams to become a police officer.

“I dream about a job that will let me take care of my family, my sisters and my mother. I want to forget the past; I don't have a future without them. I want to be a man who is not like my father.”

He asks his Canadian visitors to listen to a song with lyrics he feels were written for him. It's “Perfect” by the Montreal punk band Simple Plan and is about a father who abandons his son. He sings along, his eyes gazing out, his mind taking him to a more peaceful place. “I try not to think/About the pain I feel inside,” he sings softly. He turns to us and asks if we would like to hear another song.

Given Sahli's ambition to be a policeman, there is a problem with his anarchy tattoo — body decoration is not allowed in the police service. Desperately, he has been erasing it himself, by putting a knife in a flame and laying the searing implement across his arm. He doesn't have the money to have it safely removed by a professional.

Sahli rolls up his sleeve to reveal its horrible state — parts are red, parts are white and without pigment, parts are scarred, and the centre is puffy with blisters.

His tattoo, like his country — a portrait of uneasy transition.

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