On November 6, 2025, the Kingdom of Morocco will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Green March (Al-Massira Al-Khadrae), a national milestone that invites reflection on one of the most extraordinary and unifying moments in the country’s modern history. Half a century after hundreds of thousands of unarmed Moroccans advanced peacefully into the Sahara, the echoes of that march continue to shape the nation’s political culture, collective memory, and sense of belonging.

I was in the fifth grade in November 1975 when Morocco seemed to hold its breath. Every morning after the King’s call for the Green March, our classroom in a small village in southeast Morocco became a miniature echo of the nation. Before the lessons began, our teacher would ask, “What did you hear on the radio or see on the television last night?” or “What did your parents hear about the march?” We would burst with answers—each of us recounting fragments of news we had heard on the crackling transistor radio or seen on the black-and-white television that flickered to life at six in the evening and went dark again at midnight.

One classmate might recite a few lines of the King’s speech; another would report a rumor about who in the village had volunteered; another would hum the refrain of a new patriotic song broadcast on the national television station. For a few weeks, our arithmetic and reading lessons gave way to talk of the march. We were children, yet we sensed that something immense was happening—that the country was moving as one, and that somehow we, too, were part of it.

Yet beneath the exhilaration ran a quiet current of trepidation. Villagers whispered about what might happen once the marchers crossed into the Spanish-controlled Sahara. Would the Spanish army attack them? Would there be war between Morocco and Spain? In the evenings, as adults huddled around radios and kerosene lamps (lambas)—their faces flickering in the dim light of pressure lanterns (lkankiyat), since there was no electricity in the village—their silence told us what words did not. We sensed both pride and apprehension—the thrill of unity mingled with the dread of what a single gunshot might unleash. Even as children, we understood that the march carried not only the promise of peace but also the shadow of peril.

If the mornings belonged to the classroom, the evenings belonged to the entire village. Families gathered around those battery-powered televisions—their screens glowing like small moons—while adults sat close, faces illuminated by the pale light. The radio never stopped: its signal floated through courtyards and alleys, mingling with the smell of tea and the cool November air. Patriotic songs filled the night—“Sawt al-Hasssan yunadi, the voice of Hassan calls,” “Laayoune, ʿiniyya/my eyes; al-Saguia al-Hamra is mine; the river is my river, O my master; we will go in peace; God and the Prophet and the Qur’an with us,” and new anthems written almost daily to celebrate unity and destiny