Morocco Part 1

8/8

Today we arrived in Casablanca! I had  a city orientation scheduled to leave at 8:30 this morning, so I got up for breakfast and headed out to meet my bus. I was surprised that I didn’t melt the second I walked outside: it was actually cooler than most of the other countries I had been in. Of course, it was 8:30AM and right next to the coast. It turns out that despite being the namesake of a classic film, Casablanca is not a very touristic city. So much so that Casablanca actually does not have a cruise ship port. So when cruise ships (or *ahem* ships of academic discovery and voyages, like ours) come into the city, they dock alongside the other industrial ships in what is basically an industrial port. As such, the first five or ten minutes of the drive away form the ship was not very pretty. A lot of new concrete-block high-rise buildings were being constructed, and others needed to be torn down and rebuilt. The streets were quite wide, and there was a little traffic but not much. There was almost zero foot traffic (even in the center of the city), which I think is due more to Ramadan than the general character of the city, but it still gave Casablanca a strangely empty feel.

Ramadan is the holy month in the Islamic calendar. For the entire month, devout Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset as well as abstaining from other pleasures during that time. They eat a meal before dawn and feast once the sun sets. Our interport student recommended that we “break fast” with a Muslim family sometime during our five-day stay in Morocco, but I’m not exactly sure how she expects us to go about doing so. So while we were out today, most people were either at work or at home conserving energy because they are fasting all day. Also, most of the cafes and restaurants in Casablanca were closed today (and will be during daylight for the entire month of Ramadan). McDonald’s was open, but luckily I did not get hungry enough while I was out this afternoon to get a Toblerone shake and an “oriental wrap” from the Moroccan McDonald’s (but some of my friends did and said it was different food than US McDonalds…which has happened in every country we’ve been to so far). As hard as it would be to not eat while the sun is in the sky for a month, it is very well-timed. This is probably the hottest month in Morocco (and the rest of the Middle East), and when it’s that hot it’s hard to want to eat during the day anyway.

As it was Ramadan, everyone who was out walking around was dressed very modestly. Almost all the women I saw wore the hijab (head scarf) and a sort of shapeless, long-sleeved, full length dress. Only a handful of Moroccan women I saw had their heads uncovered when just walking around on the street, although I didn’t see any women with the face veil or burka. Men mostly wore long pants and short or long sleeved button-up shirts and no head covering. 

Our first stop was the Hassan II Mosque. It was by far my favorite mosque so far. Casablanca was originally a Portuguese colony (called Casabranca, as Portuguese differs slightly from the Spanish Casablanca). But in 1755, a disastrous earthquake destroyed the city, so today there are no Portuguese buildings and very few buildings from even the 18th or 19th centuries. In 1912 Morocco became a French protectorate (and was so until it won its independence in 1956), so there are several buildings still standing that the French established. But overall, when King Hassan II came into power, Casablanca had no classic Moroccan architecture. He saw to remedy that with this mosque, and in my mind succeeded and then some. It was built from 1986 to 1993, and is the 3rd largest mosque in the world after the Kaaba in Mecca and Muhammad’s mosque in Medina. But, a mosque is currently under construction in Abu Dhabi that is supposed to be larger than Hassan II, so it may soon be the 4th largest mosque in the world. The inside measures 200m by 100m, and it large enough to hold 20,000 praying men on the ground floor and 5,000 women on the upper tiers on the sides of the mosque (quite a number difference…I know). The ceilings are ornately carved cedar (including the domes on the sides; although this mosque does not have a central dome and is rectangular rather than square), and the walls are plaster relief of beautiful geometric and floral patterns, carved marble (90% of which is imported from Italy) and intricate tile mosaics. Instead of having the “elephant leg” architecture of the mosques I saw in Turkey, this had two rows of columns on either of side, in a way dividing the space into thirds. Parts of the left and right thirds had a second floor (for women to pray on) and domes above, while the center third had an unobstructed view to the roof high above. I’m not sure how high exactly…but at least eight or ten stories). This row of columns architecture made the mosque seem more church-like, which our guide said was part of the intention of the French architect: to emphasize the common ground between Islam and Christianity. I’m not sure if that’s true, but this mosque did look, at least architecturally if not in terms of decoration, more like a church.

Strangely enough, we weren’t required to cover our heads before entering the mosque, and we actually took our shoes off inside the mosque, although on a place where the floor was still uncarpeted marble. I assume this last part was because the mosque was so large that nobody really used the space at the edge to pray anyway, so they just allow that space to be used for taking off shoes before your step onto the carpet.

This mosque definitely enjoyed some perks of being built in the 1980s and 90s. Loud speakers were installed throughout the mosque, but in hidden ways so that they did not disrupt the beauty of the decoration. The mosque was assembled with “cracks” to help the structure stand up to earthquakes. And my favorite: the massive, ornately carved cedar roof actually splits in two in the center and retracts when the mosque is full and needs ventilation. I wish I could have seen that happen!

Beneath the mosque, and visible through glass windows in the floor of the mosque’s center, was the hall of ablution. It was just as ornately decorated, although only one story high. As washing before prayer is essential in Islam, all mosques have some place (usually an outdoor fountain near or attached to the mosque) to wash before entering. But at Hassan II Mosque, the entire “basement” of the mosque is given over to fountains for washing.

Also, the mosque itself is the only mosque to be on the Atlantic ocean. It is literally a two-minute walk from the water, and all the space around the mosque is a floor of white marble that is apparently also used for prayer during Ramadan nighttime prayers, when people prefer to be outside. These grounds surrounding the mosque itself have a capacity of another 80,000 worshipers, bringing the grand total capacity of the mosque to 105,000 praying people. At 689 feet, the minaret of the Hassan II mosque towers over all of Casablanca, and is the tallest minaret in the world.

The beach itself in Casablanca is actually quite nice. It’s also completely empty because it’s Ramadan and people (mainly women) aren’t supposed to be in bathing suits in public. But in one of the nicer areas we drove through today, the beach was studded with beach resorts, cafes and restaurants (and even a few clubs), so I’m sure that when it’s not Ramadan, the beach is a happening place.

Next, we stopped by a Catholic church. I’m not really sure why we stopped here, probably because we are an American group and it’s the only church in Casablanca, because it looked a lot like churches you see at home. Its modern architecture was not made to look any less so by the stain glass windows along the sides of the building, and it was pretty small as churches go. But, there was a small shrine outside in a mini (man made) cave with candles, flowers and everything, which was kind of cool.

We than went to what was once the royal palace. It was guarded by several armed, military troops and a large picture of King Mohammed IV crowned the entrance (I saw his picture in other places throughout the city as well). We could take as many pictures of the building as we wanted, but we could not take any pictures of the military guards, which I thought was interesting. It reminded me a lot of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. This surprised me at first, but then I remembered that this was built in the Moorish revival style to bring some classic Moroccan architecture back to the modern-looking Casablanca, and the Alhambra was built by the Moors when they still occupied what is today southern Spain. It was full of courtyards with fountains, and one of the central rooms had a glass ceiling which lit up the room and those nearby beautifully. The ceilings were (again) ornate cedar, and top half of the walls were relief plaster with gorgeous geometric patterns, and the lower half of the wall were mosaics of geometric designs in brightly-colored tiles. The archways were all pointed (like those in the mosque), and there was a fantastic dome on the last room. It was fairly small, but this was only a part-time palace.

Our next stop was a sort of combination royal residence and government building. We didn’t go inside, but stood in the giant plaza our front, which was completely empty and surrounded by Moroccan flags. The mosque, too, had lots of Moroccan flags nearby. The facades of both the government building, which was a kind of giant conference hall, and the royal residence were very pretty, decorated in the Moroccan style, but I can’t say much about them other than that.

This concluded the monument part of the city tour, and next we went to United Nations Square. It is a main square of the city, and had more people in it than I had seen so far, but still not very many. Also, “United Nations Square” is just a name, there isn’t anything from the UN there. We had half an hour to wander around, and by this time I was very thirsty so I stopped by a street vendor who was mercifully open and had cold drinks. I didn’t have any dirham (the Moroccan currency), but I did have US dollars, so I just paid in dollars and the man behind the country gave me my change in dirham (about 7.75 dirham=$1 US), which was convenient. We walked through a store full of classic Moroccan goods: leather belts, slippers and wallets, argan (the tree endemic to only Morocco) oils and creams, spices, decorative mirrors, tea and coffee sets, hookahs, wooden boxes that smelled like cedar when opened, silver jewelry (especially the hand of Fatima, which is the Arabic version of the blue eye of Medusa and wards off bad luck), metal and ceramic plates and bowls, and knives/swords with ornate sheaths.

Our last stop on the tour was the food market. It was reasonably busy inside despite it being Ramadan; everyone was buying the food with which they and their family would break fast later in the day. It reminded me of markets in Mexico: whole cows skinned and hanging from a hook where butchers would hack of cuts for their customers, tables of fresh fruits, vegetables and tons of dates, crates of sardines, whitefish, redfish, shrimp, scallops and oysters, a huge swordfish and tuna being cut with a machete, dried fruits, spices, honey, argan oil, woven straw baskets, and stray cats wandering beneath tables looking for scraps or a cardboard box to sleep in. The smells and sounds mixed together to become overwhelming, and I couldn’t imagine how crazy it must be when the market is full of people, all haggling and with screaming children in tow.

When we arrived back at the ship, we met up with a group and friends who had made us a reservation at Rick’s Café. Yes, like Rick’s from the movie Casablanca. No it’s not the original, that one was torn down awhile ago, and this one has been open for the last six years. So we all got dressed up in our best WWII-chic (or maybe just in regular nice clothes…) and took taxis to Rick’s. Taxis in Casablanca come in two varieties: the petit taxi, which is red, drives only within the city and by law can only carry three people. This is a law they strictly follow…we tried our hardest to cram a fourth person in, but even with someone in our group speaking fluent Arabic, we couldn’t manage it. The other taxi is a white van that carries up to seven people. With both of these taxis (and all taxis in Morocco), you can bargain, and should bargain unless you want to get seriously ripped off.

Rick’s Café serves American and French style food, and I had the duck, which was delicious. Our table also took advantage of Rick’s being one of a few places that serves alcohol by trying several Moroccan wines. The waiters all wore formal white button-up shirts, black slacks, formal black vests and black bowties, and the architecture, Moroccan metalwork lamps and general ambiance did remind me a little of the Rick’s from the movie, although more subdued. We met the owner, who was an American woman. I was a little disappointed it wasn’t a man in a white suit. We arrived during a bit of a rush, and I think restaurant service in Morocco in general is slower than we were accustomed to in our other ports, so we sat at the table and chatted quite awhile waiting for everyone’s food to arrive. After dinner, we headed straight back to the ship, knowing it would be pointless to look for any clubs or bars as they would be few to begin with, and none would be open during Ramadan.

Don’t worry, I have blogs for the next four days in Morocco (which were mostly in Marrakesh) coming soon.

Love from Casablanca,
Ginny