Nigeria, Jan. 26 -- As one of the great icons of Morocco's multi-layered identity - a melange of the deeply traditional, historical and contemporary, braided into a polymorphous whole that speaks of a unique heritage - the Al Bouraq is an indicative emblem of the multiple modernities, and possibly 'hypermodernity', of this nation on the northern fringe of the Maghreb.

Al-Bouraq, a modern incarnation of that mythic creature which bore the Holy Prophet of Islam from Mecca to Jerusalem and to the heavens as chronicled in lore, and a no distant cousin to the Greco-Roman Pegasus, intimates of the experience of 21st Century Morocco.

Established as a 323-kilometre high-speed train running between the capital, Casablanca, and Tanger in the nort...