The Groveling Pasha

The sly old pasha Hadj Thami el Glaoui joined with French colonials to drive the Sultan of Morocco into exile two years ago. "You dog!" the Sultan hissed helplessly. But last week the Sultan, newly returned to power, had his revenge, in a scene fit for A Thousand and One Nights.

El Glaoui, at 80 one of the richest and proudest sons of the Prophet, showed up at the royal pavilion outside Paris where Sultan ben Youssef is now regally established, awaiting his return to the throne. The old pasha was kept waiting one hour. Then, after photographers and reporters had been posted at a big window to record the moment of high triumph, the door was flung wide. Shrouded in white djellaba and hood, El Glaoui shucked off his pointed slippers and advanced. The imperial chamberlain put a firm hand on El Glaoui's neck, sent him to the floor. The once-powerful pasha, who boasted that his 300,000 musket-toting Berber tribesmen made "cowards tremble and gave hope to the weak," groveled across the floor to kiss the feet of the Sultan.

"I am a slave at His Majesty's feet," he muttered. "I beg forgiveness for all the harm I have done. I was led astray. May heaven's curse fall upon those who deceived me." Replied the Sultan: "The past is forgotten. You will be judged by what you do in the future."

Two days before, French Foreign Minister Antoine Pinay had bussed the Sultan on both cheeks and for the first time used the word "independence" in speaking of Morocco's future, and the Sultan in turn had spoken of permanent and "interdependent" links to France.

Privately hopeful that the Sultan might prove more tractable than nationalist hotheads, the Faure government last, week appointed one of France's most popular career officials as new Resident General in Morocco. He is Andre Louis Dubois, 52, a pianoplaying, party-loving man who as chief of the Paris police won renown as "the prefect of silence" because he had managed to still the sounds of horn-blowing by Paris' ill-tempered motorists. In his new assignment, Dubois (who was born in Algeria) may find it necessary to fight ruder noises. Last week, on the eve of the Sultan's return, anti-French terrorists began denouncing the Sultan as a "collaborator" with France, and 28 died and 59 were wounded in shootings, bombings and knifings.

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