Dismayed To Discover That Casablanca is Not Like the Movie: Morocco Cast of Characters Part I

(IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

Abdullah- US AID driver who picked me up from the airport.  When he didn’t have any more pressing US govt. business to take care of, he drove me around Casablanca.  I was almost immediately disabused of any romantic notions of the city acquired from the movie of the same name.  There was of course a Rick’s but it had long been boarded up and looked totally cheesy anyway and was in this kind of scary warehousey neighborhood, nothing at all like Hollywood Blvd.  So, I don’t know if the city got bombed in WWII or what: I can’t be bothered to research this issue beyond asking my husband who can name every single battle of WWII and the dates, outcomes and generals involved…and he wasn’t quite sure... He’s going to go find a book about it and get back to me. Yeah, OK. But it was just a real letdown.  That's what I wrote in my little travelogue for Feb. 15, 1995

Who knows, perhaps just some urban planners from the 70s Chicago School got to it, trying to make order out of their drugged out 70’s existence, but it’s an awful, ugly city with grand boulevards and monuments and such.  Think DC in North Africa.  The beaches and waterfront were just littered with garbage…of course DC has Anacostia...meanwhile in Ibiza….

I should point out, this trip occurred before I read Edward Said's Orientalism and I was made aware of what a horrible little orientalist I was, projecting all my fantisies and desires and Hollywood constructs on this great city. 

Anyway, it was from Abdullah that I got some insights into how the government financed the construction of the world’s largest mosque, the Hassan II Mosque, which was completed a year or so before I came around. 

And You Thought My Hands Looked Big

Basically, all citizens were shaken down, including the poorest and most unable to pay.  We tried 3 times to visit the mosque and it was always closed…and this is during Ramadan, when that’s kind of all you’re supposed to be doing.  And it wasn’t just oh, here comes American lady, we need to be closed, the entire behemoth was literally always closed, like no people milling about, totally dead.  Abdullah, who was a really mild mannered, sweet man, always got his hackles up about this. He would get so angry.  And yes, there was a ladies entrance stashed away.  I hope Abdullah is not languishing in some political prison….

Incidentlally, check this out: http://www.rickscafe.ma/ Someone has established a "new" Rick's in Casablanca in 2006 that looks more like the movie version we are all used to. There is music playing on the link, and it's just lovely. 

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Please note, all Facebook, Linked-in, Google etc. contacts who are mentioned in this blog will be known by their initials, even though most of them don’t actually have any sort of communication with me.  If I am using your real name, I can pretty much guarantee you will have absolutely no clue, and that no-one will ever be able to figure out who the heck you are.

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JS- was a family friend from Saudi Arabia, who at this point was doing a 2 year rotation in Casablanca.  His family and mine were very close, and his son, who is now this incredible photographer based in Sao Paolo and Mexico City…should I link to his gallery?  Not sure….and my brother  were good friends growing up.  JS  was incredibly hospitable, warm and welcoming and really enhanced my experience in Morocco by setting me up with various contacts in

Rabat and Marrakech. I used Casablanca as a home base in Morocco ( and thus stashing the pack  while I explored the rest of the country) and it helped me ease into the backpacking thing.

 

To this day, I don’t know if it was me (it being my first country on this trip, I mean) or Morocco, but in no other country did I experience the level of hostility, harassment, fear for personal safety, etc that I did in Morocco. All tourists experience harassment most places in the Mideast and Asia and on 34th St by the Empire State Building…people wanting to be your guide and sell you stuff, carry your bags, have sex with you, whatever,  but for the most part it’s just very poor, even desperate, people trying to get by and they let it slide when you politely say no thanks.  They get that it may not be their bag, but Western women do in fact travel alone and bring great shame and embarrassment to their families and virtually eliminate their prospects for marriage.   But Morocco!  Wow!  It just got so bad that unless I had a man to accompany me, either Abdullah, JS, one of the families he set me up with, Joe ( I’ll get to him), I would literally walk into the closest market stall of wherever I got off the bus and enlist the help of the shop owner (see: Omar) to find someone to just be my guide, to just keep everyone else off my back. 

At first I was afraid, I was petrified,

Kept thinking I could never really explore

With a useless guide. 

But I spent oh so many nights feeling sorry for myself,

And I grew strong

And I learned how to get along (with a body guard).

And I gotta say, I really, really hated this.  I am not a guide girl. I am not Ingrid Bergman.  I don't need Bogie to get me out Dodge (can you even picture her in Dodge?). I just want to stroll through the market or check out the kasbah or hike up the jebel on my own.  I want to just like sit in the desert for a few hours and write in my journal. I DO NOT want some useless man “guide” hovering over me.  And also I was on a really tight budget.  Oh, and also, I can read a map.  But there you have it.

Malika-  Malika was (is?) a Moroccan woman my age, unmarried, living with her family in Marrakech.  She was the daughter of one of JS’s Moroccan coworkers.  Or maybe the younger sister, I don’t really remember.   She spoke French, like most Moroccans, and that was pretty much the language I used to chat with her and to get by in in general seeing as I managed to grow up in Saudi Arabia and learn only about three words of Arabic. She lived in this amazing villa, and I stayed with her while I was in Marrakesh, thanks to JS setting me up.  It was a little weird because her parents were away in Saudi Arabia doing the Hajj, but her older sister and brother were there as well as her very elderly grandfather and a housekeeper who cooked these incredible  feasts after sundown. It was weird because she would say she would show me around, but then she would be like I can't go as it would embarrass my parents if I went out alone with you (accompanied by her brother of course), then it would just be her brother and his friends showing me around, which was great actually.  They knew the city and the markets really well and it felt liberating to just be a guest and not a tourist.

Malika actually felt like a sister to me, even in just those three days.  We just talked and talked all the time when I was not out and about. Malika explained all the Moroccan Ramadan fast breaking rituals, which involved breaking the fast at sundown with a few dates (which at that point disgusted me), a glass of fresh orange juice and some boiled eggs, so as not to overwhelm the system.  It's not like you immediately chow down on a leg of lamb and chug a gallon of water.  Yeah, and despite all those years in Saudi Arabia, I wasn't aware of this. This simple meal has become one of my favorites, and my kids love it too.  Excepting the OJ, the dates and eggs are great for trips.
 

I took a day trip with Malika and her brother (didn't get his name, come to think of it...) to their ancestral village of Ansi in the High Atlas, where we went mountain biking, which struck me as completely bizarre, but that's what we did. They had this really large ramshakle home and some caretakers who lived there, but it was really kind of trashed as I recall.  It seemed odd after being in their glitzy villa in Marrakech.
 

A few days later, I would beg to be taken to the bus depot in Marrakech, which Malika's family really, really reluctantly did, and I was on my way to Ouarzazate on the other side of the Atlas Mountains.
 

Omar- So as soon as I get to Ouarzazate from Marrakech after the terrifying bus ride, I sought refuge in the nearest shop to the bus station. There I found Omar, who I relied upon to help me get “protection” from the aggressive vultures surrounding me as I alighted the bus.  He had a shop in Ouarzazate and he sold the usual stuff like rugs, slippers and the like.  He was a really good guy, my age, and just kind of sad in a way.... His French was awesome, and I explained my predicament, so he came with me to the taxi stand and helped me negotiate a car and driver to take me to the kasbahs and forts of Ait Benhadou and Tiffoutout.  I had wanted to take local buses and just go on my own, but there was absolutely no way that was going to happen.  I have no memory or record of the hotel I stayed in that night, none.
 

The next morning before taking off for Zagora, at the southern end of the Draa Valley, I had a the a la menthe with Omar. I gotta say of all the people I met on my trip, anywhere, Omar was the one I felt like the most "bad" for.  Like he was really smart and educated  interested in other cultures and people but he was like trapped in this godforsaken town on the edge of the Sahara and like he was never going to get out.  He didn't make any offers of marriage or do anything remotely extreme, which was also unusual for Morocco.  I have the address of the shop written in my travelogue, but of course I never did write.