Here’s Looking at You, Kid!

Our guide Hamid began by introducing a few Arabic phrases such as “Yalla, habibi!” which means, roughly translated, “Let’s go, friends,” a phrase he used often in the course of the morning. He gave us an overview of our itinerary for the day and I was delighted that it contained a couple of stops that had not been previously advertised in the brochure.

On the way to our first stop we passed by Rick’s Café, a re-creation of the restaurant featured in the 1942 movie, “Casablanca,” starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The bar was not on our agenda for the day, so we did not stop, but Hamid mentioned to us that the restaurant is a very popular not only among Americans visiting Morocco, but among residents of Casablanca as well. In my own reading I learned that the King and government were sympathetic to the Allied cause in World War II, but at the request of the U. S. State Department Morocco remained neutral. The allies needed a non-aligned nation where their secret foreign agents and members of the European resistance could hold clasdestine meetings with Germans and others having ties to the Third Reich. So even though Rick’s Bar in the movie is fictional, the film gives an accurate flavor of Casablanca as a place of foreign intrigue, secret diplomacy and undercover operations. The neutrality of Morocco proved useful in 1943 when the Casablanca Conference was held between President Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin. We saw the buildings in the section of town known as the Habous, where that conference was held. We also saw the house a few doors down which has been the home of the U. S. Ambassador to Morocco ever since the close of the war.

A highlight in this city of 7 million people was the glorious Hasan II Mosque. Blending traditional Islamic elements with modern technology, it is the third largest mosque in Africa. Including its sanctified courtyard, the mosque can accommodate 120,000 worshippers. It was completed in 1993 at a cost of some $800 million. Designed by French architect Michael Pinseau, almost all of the materials in the mosque are from Morocco, even the elaborately decorated titanium doors. The walls and floors are made of hand-crafted Moroccan marble, and the roof is retractable. It boasts the tallest minaret in the world, shooting up 200 meters. A laser at its pinnacle shines every night, pointing the way to Mecca, home of the Prophet Muhammad. The mosque is built on a spit of reclaimed land and is surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean. Among the few objects not of Moroccan design are its 60 chandeliers from the Venetian island of Murano. Each chandelier weighs 2,630 pounds. Remarkably, the building was constructed in only six years and was funded entirely by private contributions. The magnificence of this structure beggars description.

We drove through the neighborhood of Anfa, (or “the hill”) the original name of the city when it was founded in the 7th century. By the time of the European explorations of Africa’s west coast, Anfa had become a haven for troublesome pirates, so the Portuguese blasted the city into ruins in 1468. The town was rebuilt between 1756 and 1790 by Sultan Mohammaed ben Abdallah, an ally of George Washington. The city was renamed Casa Branca, Portuguese for “White House.” It began to grow rapidly as a port and a supplier of wool and tea for the British. Later Spanish overlords changed the pronunciation to “Casablanca” without changing its meaning. The oldest part of town is the neighborhood of Medina. We admired its charming suq and its labyrinthine streets and alleys. It really does look like some of the depictions of ancient Arab towns in the movies of my childhood. This part of the city seems untouched since the eighteenth century and bears its own distinctive charm.

Casablanca was occupied by the French in the early 20th century, becoming a protectorate in 1912. In 1937 the French used an outbreak of typhoid fever as an excuse to deport thousands of Moroccans to the countryside so that they could expropriate land in the city’s center for the construction of a new “rational” housing project. The French built the planned community of New Medina complete, with houses, schools and even a mosque. We saw the houses of New Medina today, which are still occupied by Moroccan families. Our guide was especially proud to show us one dwelling which, until the Covid outbreak, housed a Jewish family. Although that family has now moved to a newer neighborhood, our guide showed us two synagogues. In Casablanca Muslims, Jews and and a small Christian population seem to get along living side by side.

While we were in the Habous area, we popped into the forecourt of one of the palaces of sixty-year-old King Muhammad VI. He has one wife, who was trained as an engineer, and two kids in college. Releasing this sort of private family information is a first for the royal family here. Moroccans love their king. Although his father, Hassan II, was also a beloved monarch, no one ever knew how many wives or children he had. The openness of the current monarch is refreshing.

We ended our tour by cruising down John F. Kennedy Avenue and turning onto Franklin D. Roosevelt Avenue to arrive at United Nations Square, the center of the new commercial area of Casablanca. Here are the Moroccan Stock Exchange, high-rise buildings and shops that sell everything from souvenirs made by local artisans to high-priced clothing of Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Hamid was careful to take us to a store whose merchandise was certified by the government to be made by Moroccans in Morocco. Chinaware, tajines, carved wooden items and leather goods abounded. Some of these items were made in a large facility owned by Richard Branson’s (of Virgin Airlines) mother. Branson has a home and a luxury hotel in Morocco, and his mother is on a mission to provide employment for Moroccan women. One of her cooperative production facilities employs over 800 women. All of the products we saw were really were beautiful. I fell in love with a computer briefcase made of camel leather, but, alas, my suitcase is full.

It is remarkable how Viking Ocean Cruises opens up the world to us. Morocco is no longer just a word on a page or a spot on a map. It is a place with real people, real joys, real sorrows, real life. Though we may set sail again tonight, we will take these wonderful people and their magical country with us in our hearts forever.Baca lagi