Moroccan man who bought a home for retirement gives up on returning: “I’ll go back in a box”
Hassan Chrifi arrived in France in the late 1950s and bought a house in Morocco in the hope of spending his retirement there. But after decades of work and a life built far from his homeland, the 83-year-old Moroccan said in 2023 that he had given up on returning.
At the Ayyem Zamen Social Café in Paris’s 20th arrondissement, Hassan Chrifi meets other former immigrant workers over coffee, card games or dominoes. In December 2023, journalist Maya Elboudrari recorded his account for the American magazine New Lines. The white-haired man tells of a plan that had accompanied him for almost his entire life: to return to live in Morocco.
Hassan arrived in France in the late 1950s. For forty years, he moved from one job to another, mostly manual work, including a stint in a circus. He married in Morocco, bought a house there and returned to live in North Africa for a few years in the 1960s. For a long time, each stage of his life remained tied to the prospect of a permanent return.
But the years went by. Work opportunities, health problems and the habits he had formed in France eventually came to weigh more heavily than his plan to leave. His family life also took shape on this side of the Mediterranean.
“I don’t even know my family anymore,” he says in the original report published by New Lines Magazine. At 83, he realizes he has spent more years in France than in Morocco. He also says he no longer has any friends in his homeland.
His story echoes those of other chibanis the journalist met. Moncef Labidi, founder of the Ayyem Zamen Social Café, says he has seen immigrants spend their savings building houses back home while continuing to live in small homes in France. Some of these properties remain unoccupied for years.
For Hassan Chrifi, the plan to settle in Morocco is now in the past. In this account from 2023, translated into French by Ballast magazine in February 2024, he sums up his decision to give up in one sentence: “I’ll go back to my country only in a box.”