Poster Child For Gentrification

---

Our second day in Casablanca began much the same way the first day ended - lackluster. Having envisioned an exotic port of call in advance of our arrival, Gina and I found the dated, sprawling metropolis to be a better poster child for needed gentrification than a tourist destination. A thorough scouring of the Lonely Planet yielded only a handful of possibly interesting sites that we figured could be covered in a couple of hours. As a result, we decided to spend the balance of our day at the beach, taking advantage of the summer heat.

Leaving the hotel after a lackadaisical morning, we retraced our steps from the previous evening hoping to catch the modern African art gallery during its open hours. We inched our way through Casablanca’s bumper-to-bumper traffic on foot, keen to make all of our stops before the sun was any higher in the sky. The sweat began to bead on what seemed every part of my body and I couldn’t help but gawk at a group of black burqa-clad women ambling by. Maybe it’s a new weight loss strategy?

By the time I turned my attention back to Gina, who at this point was walking a few strides ahead of me, I noticed that the entire queue of taxi drivers lining the main drag were focusing their attention on my shorts-clad wife. “How does it feel to be a piece of meat?” I joked?

“Ah, I don’t care. Their wives probably wear those things to bed,” she snapped back while changing her stride to a seductive saunter. Thankfully, we weren’t stoned.

Her bit of fun behind us, Gina again focused on sightseeing and eagerly pointed at the approaching Sacre Ceour Cathedral. Tattered around the edges, like much of the city, the off-white structure dominated the landscape of low-rise buildings as we entered its barren parking lot. “It doesn’t look open,” I jabbed, while eying the homeless men playing cards under a nearby tree.

Gina gave her best push and pull on the bolted doors before declaring, “There must be another entrance.”

I knew better than to say anything and silently followed her lead around the side of the building where we found little more than a chained door and a security guard watching over cars in the parking lot. Gina grabbed the camera and shot a few photos of the church’s exterior before shrugging her shoulders and muttering, “Figures.”

Hoping to resuscitate our day, we carried on toward the modern African art gallery that we’d missed by minutes the previous night and discovered the gates still firmly latched closed. Gina flipped through the Lonely Planet only to realize that we’d arrived 30 minutes before it opened. We exchanged silent contempt for the situation before discussing how to kill the time remaining and decided on a second attempt at the English language bookstore.

Backtracking halfway to the hotel, we soon found ourselves repeating the security screening process at the English language school. “California,” the Arabic woman cooed as she jotted down my now defunct home address as a precaution before handing us Visitor badges and pointing at a path toward the bookstore. We smiled in response and continued down the walkway past several Moroccan students anxiously studying. “Let me guess, it’s closed,” Gina hesitantly joked.

I grimaced when I saw a woman mopping the floor in front of the vacant store and squelched my desire to snicker. “Open?” I questioned the woman in my clearest English.

“Yes,” a manly voice answered from behind us.

We turned to find an older Moroccan man dragging from his cigarette while limply waving his hand toward the bookshop’s entrance. Tip-toeing over the newly mopped floor and past the dunning looks of the woman who had just completed the task, Gina and I began scanning the few shelves for English language travel books. Unfortunately, the five plus year-old travel books for The United State, Canada and Australia were going to do us little good in the coming months in Europe. Surrendering to our fate, we turned over our badges and chose to trek to the shopping medina before returning to the gallery.

Cheaply made women’s lingerie, souvenirs made in China and various other knickknacks were the only things waiting to greet us; that and the now numbing banter of desperate vendors promising to “…give you good price.” Our attention quickly waned after spending several minutes picking through bins of clothing and parodying the drab mannequins modeling the latest in Islamic garb. Calling it quits after fifteen minutes, Gina and I made our way to the nearest exit, all the while dodging persistent vendors.

Now past the 11AM opening of the art gallery, we shared a moment of excitement about finally seeing something of worth in Casablanca. The oppressive heat did little to hinder our advance as we closed the few blocks to the gallery in a matter of minutes while trying to hopscotch from shaded spot to shaded spot. Minutes later, as we again stood in front of the firmly locked entrance gate, I glanced down at my watch: 11:12 AM. “Maybe me missed a time change?” I offered.

Gina looked less than optimistic as I frantically waved at a guard across the museum’s courtyard, hoping to catch his attention. Not patient enough to keep up the fruitless exercise, I changed tactics and instead yelled, “HEY!”

The man made his way toward our position with a confused look on his face. Naturally, his Arabic rant was met with blank stares and the three of us soon found ourselves standing in silence. I pointed at my watch and pantomimed an opening motion of the gate. He shook his head in the negative. After a conversation comprised of pigeon English and hand gestures, Gina and I faced the grim reality, the museum would be closed for 6 more days.

At that point, Gina had blisters on her feet, she complained that her ankle hurt and refused to walk any further. In a sympathetic gesture, I hailed a cab to ferry us the kilometer distance to La Corniche, the beach strip where “people go to see and be seen” according to the Lonely Planet. The ocean soon appeared on the horizon, the bustle of downtown Casablanca faded and we talked about laughing our worries away under the sun, that is, until the cabbie stopped in what appeared a rundown excuse for a seaside town. The golden sand, topless sunbathers and general tomfoolery usually associated with a day at the beach must have been somewhere other than where we were taken.

We paid the driver and immediately began searching our surroundings for something resembling the Morocco posters plastered in just about every travel agency around the World. Dumbfounded, we walked parallel to the water hoping that the driver had dropped us short of the “see and be seen” action, but had no such luck. Deciding to quell the hunger pangs growing in our bellies before continuing our search for the Casablanca beach extravaganza, Gina and I grabbed a quick bite at Mc’y D’s and hysterically laughed about our day thus far.

Luckily, we spotted a stretch of sandy beach shortly after leaving the Golden Arches and trudged on in its direction. Finding ourselves short of beach towels in the past, we expected to find touristy shops specializing in such fare, but came up short once again. Perplexed by our unbelievable luck, we chose to forgo towels after a ten minute search and walked down to the brown sanded beach. An amalgamation of burqa-clad women frolicking in the water, hairy men kicking soccer balls and debris unrivaled by even South Beach at 5PM was all that awaited us. Clearly, we’d missed the European tourist contingent by at least 30 years.

Wandering amongst the crowd for a few hundred meters to find anyone who looked like us, we eventually settled ourselves under a vacant umbrella to assess the situation. I stripped my shirt and began applying suntan lotion as we discussed the filthy froth floating in with each breaking wave and the disproportionate male population eying Gina. The unease was short-lived, however, when a man approached and demanded 11 Dirham ($1.05 USD) for the use of his umbrella. More disgruntled than put out by his solicitation, we opted to relinquish the spot and abandon our plans for an afternoon at the beach. The sketchiness of the place was only compounded by the woman selling bottled water in used bottles on our way up the ramp.

We licked our wounds back at the hotel later that afternoon, hoping our time in Fes would prove more fruitful.

---

Photos

Keeping Cool
Ha Ha

Comments

[Les Jones]

Sixty plus years ago.
Hi Guy's ... Your blog of Casablanca brought back memories. You stated thirty years ago. Believe me, it looked the same when I was there 62 years ago. Looking forward to seeing you upon your return. Luv ... Les Jones