The Arabic graffiti on the sand-coloured wall looks as if it had been applied quickly. "Open the door or I'll blow up!" it reads, defining in one tragicomic phrase the exact point at which the refugee's anguish meets the Trumpian fear that every refugee could be a terrorist.
A large photo of this graffiti is part of a small exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts called No Pasara, which the MMFA is translating as Access Denied. The 24 photos on display were all taken in Morocco by Leila Alaoui, a young French-Moroccan photographer who was killed a year ago by al-Qaeda, while on assignment in Burkina Faso.
Morocco has become a North African hub for refugees and migrants from Sudan, Syria and other nations racked by violence and inequality. Alaoui's mission was to photograph some of the thousands who gather near the country's northern shore, hoping to escape across the Mediterranean to Europe.
Leila Alaoui
Some try for Spain, a few kilometres across the Strait of Gibraltar, or the even closer Melilla, one of two Spanish outposts on Morocco's northern coast. One of Alaoui's photos shows the spirals of razor wire and high metal fences that make up the multilayer, $42-million barrier the Spanish built around Melilla in 2005, a decade before Donald Trump began talking about his Mexican wall.
Other images show young men hanging around near the waterfront, or among the ruins of houses. One poses near a mural painting of a crowded open boat, the kind that is often launched from Morocco at night, filled with passengers who may pay $4,000 or more for a chance of reaching unofficial haven in Europe.
Everyone in the photos appears to be under 30, and almost all seem to be waiting. Several of Alaoui's subjects look past her lens, as if focused on some other place that is not this place. Only two are actually doing something: a boy works at a grindstone, a young woman cards wool by hand, the same way her great-grandmother might have done.
Leila Alaoui
Alaoui has a strong eye for composition and a photojournalist's tendency to look for symbols through the view-finder. Many of her subjects have the name of their longing written on their T-shirts: France, Spain, Calvin Klein. We're encouraged to see that free movement across borders belongs more to goods and logos than to some who wear them. A couple of shots of boys standing near trash heaps seems to imply that in the view of some safe-haven countries, these boys may also be disposable.
One photo near the entrance to the exhibition shows a young girl in a head scarf, standing near a wall decorated with traditional Mudejar tiles, with a scrap of faded graffiti visible over her shoulder and the word Espana on her shirt. In one image, Alaoui has crammed allusions to tradition, religion, protest, multinationalism, refugees and the condition of girls and women in Islamic communities. But her photo is also a compelling portrait of a real person, who happens to be smiling.
Leila Alaoui
Some refugees and migrants from Morocco and other former French colonial lands dream of travelling over the Atlantic to Canada, by approved methods or not. In 2010, in the Port of Montreal, nine stowaways were found on a ship from Morocco; most applied for refugee status. Canada is home to about 72,000 legal Moroccan immigrants, most of whom live in Quebec. One of them, Azzeddine Soufiane, was among those shot to death during a terrorist attack on a Quebec City mosque last Sunday. He had lived in the provincial capital for three decades.
After Trump ordered a temporary ban on refugee reception in the United States, and an immigration ban on visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted: "To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith." Days later, the federal government said that, on the contrary, Canada's official quota for refugees this year is full. For anyone else waiting in Morocco or elsewhere, the answer to your request is the same as the title of Alaoui's exhibition: Access Denied.
Leila Alaoui
Alaoui photographed for publications such as The New York Times and Vogue, but also exhibited her work in galleries, and did several issue-driven projects for non-governmental agencies such as Amnesty International. She was working for Amnesty and UN Women on a project about women's rights in Burkina Faso when she was shot in her car during a major al-Qaeda attack on a Ouagadougou hotel.
For the Moroccan photos shown at the MMFA, Alaoui was supported financially by the European Union. That was in 2008, before the start of the war in Syria, before the latest waves of combat and displacement in Sudan, before some government and political parties in Europe and elsewhere began to weary of talking about refugees and what to do about them.
Nearly a decade later, the problem isn't going away, much as we might sometimes wish to ignore it. One of the most haunting photos in Alaoui's show has no people in it, only black handprints on a dirty white wall. Looking at that photo, we know that someone made those marks, but who? Why were they there, where had they come from, and what do they hope for? Alaoui's photos offer tiny vivid glimpses of narratives, of which the next episodes are unknown.
Leila Alaoui: "No Pasara" continues at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts through April 30