The Amazing Aviatrix of Wartime Casablanca

A daring teenage girl defies authority to become Morocco’s first female pilot and the hero of a young nation—then the victim of an assassination still shrouded in mystery.

Illustrations by Ellen Lindner

Touria Chaoui is buried in the Ahl Fas cemetery, off the Boulevard d'El Hank in Casablanca. Nobody’s been buried there in years. If you manage to find the entrance, take the winding dirt path to the far end of the cemetery, past the lonely grave of Abdelwahed, her father. Another hundred meters along, through plots dug so closely that you’ll have to climb over them, feet slipping on the hard mounds, fingers catching the tops of tombstones for support, you’ll come to the grave of Touria. As the guardian brushes dead leaves from a stone, he’ll tell you that a couple of German tourists were her last visitors, a year, eighteen months ago. The Arabic inscription reads:

The sad moon sings for her youth. The Virgin has found her God, and she found him pure. Martyr of the nation, a traitor’s bullet found her head.