Morocco Day 2
I woke up only partially aware of my surroundings, and after a few minutes realized it was time to dig in. I made a few calls, and then hit the train station to head to Rabat for my meeting at the US embassy. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised by the quality of the train. Far, far nicer than any commuter train I have ever taken in the US. Granted, I did pay the extra dollar for first class, so I don’t know what economy looked like, but the first class car was a modern two-floor deal with dual seats on one side of the aisle and single seats on the other. It was clean, modern, and very comfortable. An hour after leaving Casablanca, I was roaming the streets of Rabat. I got kicked out of a mosque and told there was a sign saying non-Muslims were not allowed. I have never run across that before, and I realize why I didn’t notice the sign going in—well, I sort of did notice it, but it was in some twisted amalgam of French and English that said “Interdict of Entry to Nonthe Moslem”—ver batem, even the “nonthe” bit. Anyhow the guy who kicked me out was polite and not offended by the fact that I wandered in. I mean, it was on the top of a hill on a corner and looked like it was a tourist spot. I guess not… From there I wandered until I was time for my meeting, and I hopped a cab to the embassy. I think it cost about a dollar. After my background conversation with folks there, I connected with a local journalist who was referred by another local journalist who was referred by… blah, blah, blah, she was several degrees of separation. However, I quickly found out she had been to the US on three-week program for foreign journalists earlier this year with a journalist I know from Syria. Just nutty, I tell you. We spoke for a while and she agreed to help me with my story, and we proceeded to a couple of Internet cafes to speak with people there about whether young people were accessing radical Web sites. Apparently they aren’t having that problem in Rabat, but they told me Casablanca was having issues along those lines. We’ll see what we can turn up here. I took the lovely train back to Casablanca and met up with another journalist. He asked me where I wanted to go to talk, and I said a small, local restaurant. We hopped in his car and drove around the city for about 15 minutes. After a while, the streets started to look familiar, and we parked in front of a hotel about a two-minute walk from my hotel. Now, what makes this odd is the fact that the train station is across the street from my hotel, so we effectively drove around the city, and ended up someplace walking distance from where we started. I didn’t ask… Then, we entered a restaurant that was large, expensive (by Moroccan standards), and served international food—nothing local. When the waiter came, my colleague asked me what I wanted to drink and I asked for water. He spoke to the waiter for a moment, and then said “beer?” I’m not exactly sure what happened, but he ended up ordering me a beer. Up until this point, everything had been some sort of convoluted, inside-out, backwards oddity that I couldn’t fathom. It seemed like whatever I said he did the opposite. Anyhow, we talked, and professionally everything was simpatico, so I don’t know what was behind the other weirdness, but it seemed like he understood what I was looking for and was willing to help. So, here I sit in my hotel room, and he’s supposed to make some calls in the morning and set up some appointments for me. I’m curious to see if he makes appointments with the people we discussed, or whether he decides to find opposites and set up interviews with them. I guess I’ll find out in the morning…
