Feb 2001
"Morocco was a blast" A short-list of impressions: A Tuareg (tough guys of the Sahara) orders a schoolboy off his bike and rides away. A German woman saunters topless onto a public beach only to be roughly and rapidly hauled away in tears by two burly policemen. Street peddlers shout "Chocolate? Hashish?..." while a shopkeeper doesn ´t even look up from his Koran. A homeless man invites me for sweet tea and BBQd sardines, and washes my hands with bottled water. A hand-drawn cart is passed in a cloud of dust by a new Mercedes. The Levis and Calvin Kleins have no button holes. I play football in an alley with laughing children in rags. Tourists clutch their bags nervously and scurry past. Traditionally dressed women avoid pointed cameras instantaneously while young girls make a point of flashing their eyes at foreigners. A row of shoe-shine boys with boxes of Kiwi brand polish while a man sells guns outside a bank.
Old cultures meet new with an odd harmony here...mostly. A deformed old man is quietly begging opposite a mosque...passing locals give him a few coins. A group of overweight Europeans pause beside him, one standing on his bench to get a better camera angle. He stretches his hand towards them, but without a glance they amble away. "Wirklich Scheiße" I thought. As I left he said something softly about Allah.