Back to the Maghreb

From the Riad 7 Terrace, the Oum Er-Rbia River Delta meets the Atlantic.

A perfect ray illuminates El Jedida's Portuguese Cistern, UNESCO World Heritage from the 1500s.

Arcade frames minaret at Hassan II in Casablanca.

“Bonjour!”

“Bonjour!” I respond in surprise to innocently smiling children (evidently just out of school for the day, given their smart uniforms and bright magenta backpacks).

They notice me, blonde and pale, looking a tiny bit out-of-place as I walk toward an entrance of the medina in Azemmour. Some of them wave - girls with thick, curly hair in braided pigtails, and skinny boys with short cuts and a missing tooth.

I cannot help but smile at how sweet and friendly they are, how innocent, welcoming and, at the same time, mature they seem compared to the average European child their age.

Bonjour indeed! I couldn’t be happier to be welcomed back to the Maghreb in such fashion (this time in Morocco, after almost two years away).

The medina is all white, immediately suggesting coolness, cleanliness, and tranquility. It contrasts to the afternoon hubbub of commerce (at night, the hubbub grows into the bang and clatter of a society seemingly unfettered) just outside its crenellated limestone walls. Cars pass in the road separating the illustrious glory of the antique medina from the more recent and bare, building-block forms of the marketplace. 

Here, not only cars pass, but numerous donkey- and horse-led carts as well – all under the careful watch and direction of policemen in their handsome De Gaulle-style uniforms. Similar scenes take place at several points between here and modern Casablanca.

The medina is mostly residences, and a few tiny shops.

Upon entering one of the portals, I see a little stand selling random foodstuffs – candy, soda, etc. I ask the woman running it if she knows where I can find my riad. She says yes, and sees her daughter arriving, one of the young scholars from before. She tells her to lead me to my hotel, and the girl, with her nonchalantly kind gaze, dutifully obliges. As she guides me through the winding alleyways, a friend of hers spots her and joins us as we walk.

As in every Moroccan thoroughfare, horse-drawn carts accompany cars on the main road in Azemmour.

The two chat about what’s going on while I continue to dutifully follow. After 30 seconds, she points me to a corner on our right. I leave her with a grateful “merci,” and lift a heavy brass ring to knock on the bright blue door under the arch.

Riad 7 is a typical Maghrebi-style house - three floors of rooms wrapping around a central, airy courtyard, and ending in a rooftop terrace with a spectacular view on the Oum Er-Rbia River delta that, from here, quickly runs into the Atlantic.

My room is comfortable, but a bit chilly inside at night (luckily there were extra, heavy blankets in the room to combat the cooling effects of the medina stucco); the décor is definitely Bedouin-chic, traditional and modern at the same time.

The smoke-filled diner my first eve in Morocco. The butcher/cook preps dishes of chicken and beef shish kabobs at the grill outside.

It was really just part of the scenery, a downgrade of a car that brought me a little bit closer to a people so charming as the Moroccans.

And isn’t travel in large part upgraded when it allows us to interact a little bit more closely with the citizens of the host country?

My first eve in Azemmour was spent wandering the town’s outdoor market (not really a tent-topped suq, at least as my fellow Westerners might envisage that enclosed medina-like bazaar, but rather an extensive plan of modern streets along which were shops with live chickens in pens, shops with ladies ready to decorate me in henna, and shops smoking meats, as well as tables in the broader lanes set up with French sweets for sale and water-filled bins of snails that were being consumed on site – locals my age and younger shot me friendly smiles and waved at me as if to invite me to try this delicacy.

In searching for my evening dinner, I settled on a diner with a street-front grill. The result – grilled shish kabobs of chicken and red meat, along with Arab bread, red pepper harissa and a Coca Cola – was more than satisfactory.  As I enjoyed this simple platter, I people-watched. Locals walked by in hijab and gown (women), in head-to-toe robes with a pointy hood that reminded me of something a Medieval monk or a sorcerer might wear (both men and women), in a long cotton tunic and pants (men). 

What seemed to be the trend in Azemmour, particularly among the younger generations, were clothing styled as pajamas, with what Americans would label shower shoes. Happy go-lucky pre-teen girls, joyous but mature and composed beyond their years, wearing pink and purple sweatshirts with matching pajama bottoms, stopped in front of the restaurant to chat with the butcher. Mothers in their twenties pushed along strollers, and they too sported loose-fitting pants one might wear to yoga, or to warm up before a dance class. 

My spacious room in Riad 7.

The market felt as if it truly were one big communal living space: this community seemed but a family delighting in the quotidian, in the act of exchanging news, and stocking up on and savoring foodstuffs, and the night, and life, for that matter, together.

The first night I had one last stop before heading back to my riad. It was highly-recommended by all parties that I should entrust my car to the watchful eyes of two tiny old men who would guard my rental car all night for the sum of 20 dirhams, or the equivalent of 2 euros. But before I could pay one of them, I still had to exchange my money. 

Cash machines turned out to be a problem. Given that my most recent travels had been within Europe, I had forgotten to ask my bank how I should go about activating my card for Moroccan ATMs before departing the Peninsula. However, I was able to make cash with cash – without any fee, mind you – by asking the owners of a more sophisticated café in town, that is, the same café in front of which my car was to be guarded, to take my Euros for their dirhams.

I woke up the next morning beneath my heavy blanket, wary of facing the morning chill. But the idea of breakfast enticed me, so I made my way to the bathroom to speedily wash and moisturize my face and jump into a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, scarf, and ballet flats. 

I hopped down the flight of stairs to the courtyard/breakfast room, starving, as I am just about every morning, and said Bonjour – kind of expectantly but with a smile – to the part-owner of my riad. She, a girl my age, greeted me in her French-adopted way, and asked what she should bring me: coffee or tea, yogurt, juice? The little devil inside of me said all of the above, but I went moderate this morning and asked for Moroccan tea, and yogurt. A given were the tasty fried flatbreads and yellow cake, accompanied by honey and fig jam… and a large, squawking green parrot with his aquiline beak left and back of me. 

The squawking and intriguing parrot in Riad 7's courtyard and breakfast room.

Actually, I didn’t realize he was a parrot initially because he was so still and silent while I ate. That ended once I decided to walk rather quickly to his cage, resulting in his hellish squawk and me jumping back several feet. Deterred, I left him, after smiling bashfully at the girl, who said softly and with a slight smile, you have to approach slowly.

Maybe tomorrow, I thought. I was suddenly much more interested to move full-speed ahead along the Moroccan coast. 

Just outside Azemmour, on the way to El-Jedida, lay a couple golf resorts and private beaches. El Jedida is worth a brief stop. I made just enough time to take a quick look at its bazaar, drinking a septilingual vendor’s delicious tea as he tried to relieve me of as many dirhams as he could using the most sophisticated Italian and English (after some hard haggling I bought one of his Tuareg necklaces), make the rounds atop the medina walls, encountering its abandoned synagogue, and see its UNESCO World Heritage Site, a Portuguese cistern from the 1500s. 

Judging by the color of the ocean here, it was not really where I wanted to spend the rest of my day, so I hopped in the car and moved on down the coast, on the lookout for Oualidia, where I read that you can buy and eat oysters right on the beach. As I drove, I seemed to be moving deeper and deeper into no man’s land, and for a very long stretch there was little sign of civilization besides what seemed to be a very secure port the size of a small city. 

As I traveled, I grew ever more dubious, thinking that I had passed my destination; although I almost always knew the ocean was directly to my right, I became more worried. I kept driving. Then, I found it, and the image before me took my breath away; I felt as if I had happened upon some lost world. Oualidia is truly a hidden paradise. 

It is naturally terraced, with tasteful, whitewashed vacation homes lining part of its seafront, while a large expanse of beach juts out from its bottom level. And the sunlight hits it so as to set it thoroughly alight with an amber glow. I drove as far as I could, to the end of the last street before the beach, where a few seafood restaurants were the setting for vibrant people activity: I found those oyster vendors, who literally had bicycles to which were attached buckets containing their fresh catch. 

A local oyster vendor on the soft, golden sands of Oualidia.

I parked and ambled past the restaurants to a concrete boardwalk on the sand. From here I could see a few horses and four-wheelers for rent, as well as the marvelous waves crashing against the shore. I walked along the sand for about five minutes until I found more oyster vendors, this time with little makeshift stands and grills full of other seafood, as well as stray plastic tables, chairs, and umbrellas. I sidled up and asked for a table from the friendly pair “running the joint.” This was guaranteed to be a meal with a view, with spirit, with feeling.

I literally don’t have the stomach for oysters, so I only ordered one, along with the rest of the few items on display, which were to be cooked.

I sat down to my plastic table, letting the sun and the sound of the waves work their magic.

Among my just-grilled fare were mackerels, prawns, razor clams, a tomato-and-green-pepper salad and more of the delicious Arab bread with a sandpapery surface – all simple but cooked to perfection.

The moment was perfect, and I could have stayed there forever, but nice incoming families and couples wanted a slice of this perfection, so I took that as my cue and gave up my table to photograph the waves colliding like ships against the rocks, before scampering around on the rocks myself – they were petroleum source rocks as large as a small hotel room, holey so as to form hundreds of niches hosting tiny shells. 

A few photo ops later I was up on the highest level of this terraced city, overlooking everything below. I found a single large permanent souk stall on a big road fronted mostly by bars, restaurants and a bank. This was my moment: to buy a cheap but well-made red clay tagine pot, small enough to take back on the plane with me, but large enough to cook one chicken leg and one breast along with veggies, fruits and spices. 

I found her almost immediately – simple, not embellished with bright paint like the others, but perfect for getting the job done. I chatted with the vendor as he carefully wrapped my tagine in newspaper, and threw in a spice mix to use for my first homemade chicken tagine. I told him I live in Italy, to which he replied, “Italy! Everyone in Morocco loves Italy; some of my relatives live there, and we all want to live there. It is the best place!” I sincerely told him that Morocco, for all its history, culture, food and beauty, seemed rather ideal itself.

Under an amber glow, the tide washes up on the rocks of Oualidia.

Morocco is a country on the verge, and in my last hours in the country, I could feel it in Casablanca. Its economy at all levels is young and bustling, its population is large and young, and it has all the endowments of a peaceful agricultural and services-based Mediterranean economy. 

Casablanca easily reminded me of Miami, parts of Spain, southern France or Sicily, while exuding a personality all its own. Construction is everywhere, the people seem to me very optimistic, and have mostly good feelings about their staunch but just royalist regime. Despite a poverty rate of roughly 15 percent, the same as America's by some estimates, the country looks set to explode with wealth and vitality in the near future, and many of the Moroccans who find themselves in Italy will probably want to be home to experience it.

Just as I would with Tunisia, Budapest, Sicily, Spain or the Cote d’Azur, I would visit Morocco again and again - never to be a mere tourist, but to experience, explore, and live.

I’ll just leave you with my final image of Casablanca on my third and last day, where returning from Azemmour I made a mad dash to visit the exterior of the world’s second-largest mosque, Grand Mosque Hassan II, before my 4 pm flight. On the coast, it stands like a giant rock against which the waves of the Atlantic repeatedly crash. 

Families and tourists mill around this enormous mosque’s equally-enormous piazza, while palms rise up all over, and stretch aways, surfers and body-boarders make the most of the tide. The air was filled with the sounds of a tranquil possibility, and with the smells of an ancient country ready to make a fresh start. 

The epically-proportioned Grand Mosque Hassan II stoically resists the unrelenting waves.

Riad 7 (Riad Sept in French) is on the web in French only, but you can also find them in TripAdvisor.