Casablanca 17 June 2011

Today, they decided, whilst, they were there, might as well visit that mosque – the modern one built at the waterfront named after the late king Hassan II. It was a long walk from the hotel and, stupidly, she chose to go in the ‘ballerines’.

The town was just waking up when they passed and shopkeepers were throwing buckets of water on their piece of pavement, in a show of washing it. The place was rather smelly. They chose not to tackle the maze of the ‘old town’, a fortified part which must have been the original Casablanca. So, they went round the fortification which was a slightly longer route to the water front.

By the time they reached the area where the future marina development will be, the soles of her feet were rather raw but they ploughed on. A ‘petit taxi’ stopped to offer to take them but they chose to walk the rest of the way. The mosque was already in sight. The taxi driver said that it was closed, it was Friday.

 

It was interesting to see that such work can still be done in this day and age. The mosaic work was intricate, colourful and well spaced so as not to be too overwhelming. The doors of the mosque were gigantic and all in style with the place. It was not in the general manner of mosques that they are used to – must be Moroccan architecture. The whole place was covered with marble.

 

The ‘parvis’ of the mosque is well laid out if not a bit sterile, with a library on the one side and exhibition halls on the other, palm gardens and some water works. Nothing to compare with the palaces in India but still… there were quite a few youngsters who were sitting or lying on rugs around the covered pathways, studying.

On their walk back, they stopped for the usual freshly pressed orange juice. This one was expensive. It was not even on the waterfront but close to the mosque. Further towards the hotel, they stopped for a shwarma and juice. The food was good and copious at ‘Romano’ restaurant – a fancily decorated place with the mods and cons of a ‘sports bar’. However, this shwarma was not as tasty as that of the Mandarine or Noura of Brazzaville.

 

Back at the hotel she inspected her feet which had, by then, 4 blisters. A few hours of R & R and they were out searching for couscous for dinner. In a small place not far, they found a generous serving of couscous which they shared between the two of them. The meat, however, was a bit scarce in this ‘couscous viande’. The hotel restaurant did not seem to have typical Moroccan food.

It is a great puzzle how the place could be so dirty. Chewing gum is stuck to pavements and look like polka dots, they are so regular. That is wherever there are any paving left. It is surprising for a town that boasts to be coastal and touristy, that it could be like that. Let us not mention the smell now.

It is an African city but somehow, because of its history and the culture of the people, one would have expected something else. Not this decrepitude. Many of the places, the hotel included, seem to have been built with taste and quite a bit of investment and then allowed to go into decay, neglect or something. The town is the same.

It is true too that being next to the sea and also surrounded by desert it might be difficult to keep the dust at bay. But his place has not been through war in a few centuries but has this feeling of ‘falling apart’ such as one feels in Brazzaville in the mid 2000’s, 7 years after the war.

There is infrastructure work going on, they are putting rails in town maybe for a tramway service, there are road works outside town and they were even cutting the grass/weeds on the railway tracks. But one still wonders if they have municipal taxes and where the money goes if not for the improvement of the place.