Going on seven years ago, I had a near-death experience at Sidi Bouzid beach near El Jadida. I wrote it up as “The Moroccans Who Saved My Life.”

Yesterday, a sort of mirror-image event transpired in Rabat. This time, though, it was the American who saved the Moroccan. The hero, Kevin Barrett, is an American Muslim writer who lives in Morocco. (That sentence has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?)

Actually it was K. Barrett Bilali,* the other American Muslim writer named Kevin Barrett who lives in Morocco, who did the deed. I was the witness.

As we walked past an escalator at the Rabat Aghdal train station, an elderly Moroccan woman, plainly in dubious physical condition, got on the escalator and promptly collapsed. Kevin reacted in the proverbial split second, vaulting the railing and onto the escalator to prevent her from tumbling backwards, hoisting her to her feet, and holding her upright for the duration of the ride. It was a pretty athletic move at his or any age, and demonstrated unusual situational awareness and lighting-fast reflexes, not to mention a good heart.

Kevin would have done the same anywhere. That’s just who he is. But if he had intervened to save someone in trouble in the USA, especially the big city, he might have wound up facing legal issues. Two months ago, people in the New York subway just stood by, and in some cases filmed, while a crazy homeless guy burned a woman to death. Fox blamed it on “the Daniel Penny effect.” But even before Daniel Penny, many Americans were slow to “get involved” for fear of being sued if not prosecuted. Or maybe they’re just coldhearted cretins? Whatever the explanation—psychologists are still debating the “bystander effect”—the archetypal example is the murder of Kitty Genovese.

Though Moroccans’ public manners aren’t perfect—cutting into queues is more common here than in the States—they are highly likely to help you if you need help, and maybe even if you don’t. No Moroccan has to worry about the kinds of idiotic prosecutions and/or lawsuits that the American legal system inflicts on good Samaritans to bear out the cynical truism “no good deed goes unpunished.”

Will the USA improve in this respect, or others, any time soon? The other Kevin holds out some hope, and views the ongoing “Trump shakeup” as a good sign. Maybe America will somehow rediscover itself as a cohesive community, rather than an agglomeration of strangers? Will Trump’s immigration crackdown somehow accomplish that? Me, I’m not so sure. It looks to me like it’s all falling apart, and Trump is just accelerating the process.

Whereas Morocco, Kevin pointed out over lunch, boasts a strong sense of identity, despite its regional, ethnic, and linguistic hyper-pluralism. It will never be a nation of strangers.

So don’t be a stranger! Come taste some Moroccan cuisine and hospitality. It’s a country where people aren’t afraid to save you if you’re in trouble.

And consider subscribing to K. Barrett Bilali’s Substack.

*K. Barrett Bilali, formerly known as Kevin Barrett, changed his name in 2006 to avoid being mistaken for the infamous 9/11 conspiracy theorist. He even ran off to Morocco to put some distance between himself and his notorious namesake, which worked fine until July 2023, when I followed him across the ocean like some kind of doppelgänger albatross…