A Little Throwback Piece

Somewhat delayed, but we felt we had to make a throwback to that very special journey. Welcome to a continuation of…

The Moroccan Diaries

Day 1—December 2^nd, Casablanca:

The wheels screeched as we landed on the airstrip in Casablanca.

19 GEPers + 1 Japanese traveller piled out of the plane and waited for our luggage by a rickety conveyor belt. Many of us exchanged Euros for the local Moroccan currency, Dirham (1 Euro = about 10 Dirham). As I traipsed around the Casablanca airport I caught my first glimpses of the Islamic world: signs written in beautifully sloped Arabic…the diamond-shaped patterns and horseshoe arches of Moorish architecture…men wearing brown fezzes and robes…some women wearing Westernized clothing while others were covered by white fabric... The GEP crew finally regrouped, counted 20 members, and ran like a pack of wild hyenas to barely catch the train.

I found myself sitting alone on the train to downtown Casablanca. I looked out the window to catch glimpses of Morocco. I was immediately overwhelmed by a strangely familiar feeling…the place was startling, and beautifully underdeveloped, and felt like home…like Bolivia or something. We sped past trash heaps, some dilapidated shacks, decrepit old buildings—some with a colonial majesty, others urban and grimy…I saw children by the side of the tracks playing with sticks; in the background, a green tropical undergrowth, which I certainly wasn’t expecting to see in Northern Africa. Some of the GEPers sitting close by befriended a smiling stranger: Hanan, a local woman that noticed we were foreign and offered to show us a good restaurant in downtown Casablanca.

Our home in Casablanca

We arrived at our stop, and paraded our suitcases into the Hotel Ibis where we’d made reservations. Poor Hanan had to bear with us…and with the usual noise and confusion of checking-in and registering passports from almost 20 different countries. Outside dusk was descending upon the city, and our pack of tourists finally began walking toward a restaurant of Hanan’s choosing.

The Streets

We walked for a long while… despite Hanan’s guidance, many times I thought we were lost. Going in circles did give us a chance to see the city though…to get a feel for the Casablanca streets. We saw chickens dripping with oil from their rotisseries…cafes with wrinkly faced men talking while drinking coffee or tea…haggard motorcycle mechanics with black-stained fingers…colorful murals with Arabic on walls…a few smelly and stumbling drunks, that our Chinese GEPers scurried past…a fusion of French and North African architecture, clothing, and vibrations… We came across street vendors that sold papaya-like fruit with big black dots. “It’s cactus,” Breiter said, but I think he was wrong… At sunset, for the first time I heard that voice over loudspeakers at the mosque, announcing evening prayers—the chants and calls reverberating through the rubble of the streets.

Finally we arrived at Hanan’s restaurant, the ‘Etoile Centrale’.