Casablanca

I got on the bus this morning at about 7 AM. I woke up at 5 because I picked the wrong piece of electronics to trust for my time keeping. After me four hours of sleep, I get to witness a shouting match in Arabic between a woman and a man about what I can only assume is the assigned seating. This might be the problem with an over-caffeinated and over-sugared society.

There is a rapidly approaching holiday in the Muslim world. Every family that can afford it buys a sheep or goat and then slaughters it and eats it. I have seen goat markets and people walking their offering in the morning. The strange thing is that they get these animals a few days early and care for it before the slaughter. It almost seems like a pet by the time the holiday comes around. On the bus ride, I saw these animals get treated like luggage. Some were put under the bus while others tied to the roofs of cars. I’m no animal rights person, but I had trouble watching these things.

Anyways, this holiday brings a lot of families together and in turn this puts a strain on the Moroccan bus system. I am stuck in Casablanca until late Monday. This is the one town that everyone told me to skip; it is a modern, borderline European city. I kind of like it. I booked my travel and took a room at the nearest hotel. Picture the opening scene of “Apocalypse Now!” but without the fan. The room is big, 75 dh ($9) a night, and finally, I’m not freezing. I got a sink and a bidet in the room. The shower is an extra $1 per use, but I don’t need all that fanciness. The funny thing about a room being that cheap is that everything else starts to seem too expensive. I bought a small bottle of rum that cost the same amount as the room. I had a big meal and it was 120 dh, almost double the room price.

I saw the third biggest mosque in the world today, Hassan II. Afterwards, I start walking towards a lighthouse that I see in the distance. Some guy starts walking and talking to me. It seems as though the homeless and hustlers speak the best English in Morocco. I tell him my usual story that I am Cuban, but he still tests me after by asking how I felt about Ariel Sharon. Maybe that’s the crazy Jew test they teach you in Arab schools, but I didn’t fall for it. As if I would just break down and profess my undying love for the crazy old general. I told him that I had no opinion of him.

I look around my little room with its bare walls and bare essentials and remember last night, Saturday. This city is the most modern and cosmopolitan one in Morocco. The streets were packed last night and the bars were full. They were smoky little rooms filled with men. I sometimes feel like I’m in the 1950’s.