Learning Tifinagh on the back of a bus ticket

The bus from Ouarzazate to Agdz leaves when it is full, which on this day was 9:40 in the morning. Next to me, a young man was writing something on the back of his ticket in characters I could not read.

His name was Rachid. He was studying in Agadir and going home for the weekend. The characters were Tifinagh, the Amazigh script that runs across signs, jewellery, and the top of the bus ticket he was holding.

Twenty-two characters, one ticket

He drew the alphabet in a grid, then wrote my name in it, then laughed at how long it took me to copy six characters. The script has been in use in North Africa for more than two thousand years, but its return to schoolrooms and road signs is recent — Morocco adopted it officially in 2003.

“Some people say it is a new alphabet. It is not new. We are just allowed to write it again.”

Why the signs changed

Driving between towns now, the blue and white place signs carry three scripts: Arabic, Tifinagh, and Latin. Rachid said his grandmother could read the Tifinagh, his mother read Arabic, and he reads all three. That is the story of the language in one family.

By Agdz he had given me the ticket. It is folded inside the notebook this site is written in.