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Published: September 11th 2009
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Muhhamed, legend amongst men and my own personal guru Thank Cod for Rabat
Casablanca brings forth in my mind the words of Banjo Patterson in my favorite poem, "Clancy of the Overflow":
"And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city,
Through the open window floating, spreads it foulness over all"
As an introduction to Morocco Casablanca can be likened to showing a new tourist to Australia the town of Nambour. On a very bad day. After a small civil war.
It is a filthy business town which neither sees many tourists nor wants many tourists. It is a place for businessmen to come and work. To scramble about their day in a surrounding whose sole purpose is brief, financial and contrived. And while i can only assume i will have a different attitude to the city by the time i make my return journey, for now I truely hated it. At the earliest point of escape i walked to the train station and escaped. Walked, that is, because my 'fool me five times' approach to the bastard cab drivers of Pusablanca stoped me being ripped off again. My point of escape was Morocco's Canberra... Rabat.
Oh, Rabat. Sweet, sweet freaking rabat. If i spoke French, or Arabic, or had researched adequately to find out what i was in for in this country then Rabat would be quite dull; instead it is blissfully, thanfully laid back. Rabat is the administrative capital of the country, and, as such, it is home to an eternally higher class of people, quieter streets, far cleaner suburbs, and, most importantly, shopkeepers and people about town who, despite being freindly, dont really care about hassling the clueless foreigner.
Having failed to find a french dictionary in Pusablanca I looked around Rabat for no more then 20 minutes i discovered a cute little hole-in-the-wall second hand english book shop run by a wonderful, wonderful Maghribi (Moroccan man) who completely reignited my faith in this trip. Muhummed, owner and founder of English Language Bookshop first vistied Britain in 1965, at a time when, as he tells me, there where perhaps no more than half a dozen native Maghribi not directly employed by the King of Morocco. Apart from the very reasonable French-English dictionary that he sold me I discovered we both completed a degree in Politics in our respective youths. Though english is not widley spoken by the masses, even in a town like Rabat, one positive of being a native english speaker is that educated Moroccans seem to relish the chance to practice their skills. He gave me a very faciniating insight into the cultural and political implications of modern Islam, cultural relativism, and the relationship of the Arab world with the west.
After that it was on to the youth hostel, A wonderful little place though a little expensive by moroccan standards. It is a Riad style place: several rooms branching off from a beautiful, well lit internal garden or orange blossom. I was amazed that, even here, the standard language for communication among the backpackers is french, based in large par i assume on the huge french tourism industry in Morocco. Not that this has been a problem, allmost all of the fellow guests, be they Spanish, Portugese, French, Belgian, Swiss have been able to carry on perfectly lucid conversations in english. Our conversations about politics and religion, which were discused at a university level, were always accompanied the terrifyingly and dauntingly inaccurate phrase "My english is terrible!!" Oh dear for my french then...
I ordered my first meal last night. This may not sound like a huge achievement but, while I am quite embaressed to admit it, I had not eaten for almost all of the preceding day based entirely around fear. I was very happy with myself for overcoming that. My meal was a tajine, a sort of stew with beef pepper and potatoes. Very delicious.
When i arrived back at the hostel at around 10:30pm i was invited to join some of the guests and the owners in smoking some shisha. Among the puffers was a hillarious guy called Abdel who was born in Morocco as a muslim, but later moved to America and converted to Christianity (an almost unheard of act in the Muslim world which hugely complicated his relationship with his parents). We spent the next four hours drinking rum, singing Red Hot Chilli Peppers songs and talking about his home country.
This day has been so vastly superior to my last two and i will definatly stick around in Rabat for a few more days to practice my language skills and get a better idea of the culture before i head off to the more hectic cities of Fes and Tangier.
Ian over and out.
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