We’ll Always Have Rabat

Settat – Casablanca – Rabat, Morocco

Yesterday we went to a giant mosque in Casablanca where they let infidels like Diana and I go inside – but only if you are part of one of their paid tours. A lot like in America: some rules are so sacrosanct they can only be violated if there is enough money to be made . . .

Kind of snarky, huh? I can get that way about organized religion stuff. Sorry about that…

The mosque we visited, The Hassan II Mosque, is, according to our tour guide, the third largest mosque in the world. He said 25,000 people can fit inside, and another 80,000 can gather in the huge terrace area outside. Not nearly big enough for President Trump’s inauguration – I think, according to him, there were like 242 million at that event – but pretty big, nonetheless. 

I want to take a moment on something I was thinking a bit about as we wandered the mosque. I started thinking on this direction as we biked into Casablanca. We passed some construction site with a bunch of banners that said things like: “All Forward Together,” and “We’re All Building a Better Morocco.” And, really, there was a ton of construction around Casablanca – big overhead cranes everywhere. 

And then there is the general feel you get from people here. It just seems like people are happy and feeling like tomorrow will be better today. This especially applies to the young people. It’s maybe difficult to pinpoint where this feeling comes from – but let me say this: there’s a big contrast between the energy you feel here and the sense of everyday-is-the-same-and-it’s-been-that-way-for-a-long-time that you get in a place like Mexico or Ecuador, especially in the rural areas.

Anyway, all this had me thinking about how countries achieve this collective positive sense of the world. Why does Morocco feel like it has that special it factor? And then in the mosque it crystallized for me. The whole country is Muslim. The King is the Number One Imam (priest) for Morocco. Everyone believes in Islam. Or, if they don’t believe, they are at least culturally Muslim. So no one has to justify the five calls to prayer or the mosques or the education system – or a whole host of other things; these things are all taken for granted

I mention all this because I think it at least partially explains how we arrived at Donald Trump. “It” being our lack of a unifying idea or ideology – at least in the last twenty or thirty years or so. 

Of course, we never had one unifying religion. Now, some will argue that our unifying religion was Christianity. Maybe. But never in the same sense that Morocco is all Muslim. We were, in fact, founded upon the idea that people could believe what they wanted and practice their own religion. That’s why people like the Quakers came to the United States in the first place; to escaped the stifling persecution of the Old World . . .

No. I think we had a different kind of unifier. We all believed in our democracy and our republic, the ideas of the Constitution, the concept of liberty and freedom, and the idea that we could keep building a better nation over time. And those ideas brought us all together in the same way that the Moroccans seem to be one nation. We would still argue and debate – but at least we had some bedrock principles we all believed in.

Sadly, someplace along the line we let all that slip away. I have some ideas on how that happened, but that’s probably not for the blog. Maybe an over-a-beer type discussion . . .

In any event, when people lose the sense of some commonality and the sense that decision-making has some innate legitimacy, then it becomes just have power, force it through. Not a good way to run a country – especially a democracy. And one that promotes cynicism all around . . .

Okay. Sorry. But that’s what I’ve been thinking about . . . And these ideas sprouted out of our travels – so they are not completely unrelated . . .

By the way, we met a wonderful young person today: Abdellah. Abdellah is 22. He’s a sports management major in college in Marrakech and he’s in Rabat looking for work. 

Abdellah told us that many people in Morocco like Trump, and what attracts them is Trump’s “honesty” (Abdellah’s word). What I think he means by that is that Trump is not afraid to offend people – he’ll express an idea even if it might piss off half the world. Which I think is right; he certainly accomplishes that on a routine basis. 

Hmm. I have more to say here again – but this strikes me as another good over-a-beer conversation . . .

Alright, now I’m really done with that strain . . .

What we want to know is why no one told us how fantastic Rabat is. 

The oceanfront here is amazing. Crashing waves. Cliffs. Big rock platforms and structures. People enjoying the beach everywhere. Miles and miles of boardwalk. Immaculately clean. Beautiful lawns. 

Then, where the Bou Regreg River meets the ocean there’s a whole other beautiful area. People diving. River boats. Families playing.

And then, of course, the medina. (New word for me. Pronounced med-ee-na – not like the Minnesota city with the long eye sound in the middle. I guess it means old town or something – but they are mazes of little alleys with shops and homes and energy. Super fun. All the bigger cities seem to have them.)

You are probably wondering how Casablanca was. First off, I don’t think modern Casablanca has any resemblance to the Humphrey Bougard movie. There are something like 4 million people in town now. In the movie it kind of seemed like a small town, with the airfield right next to Rick’s Cafe; my guess is that in today’s Casablanca the airport is 25 miles or so out of town . . . 

Also, since the movie was set during World War II Morocco was still a French colony at the time (I guess the Americans and the British offered protection from the Nazis after the Nazis overran the “impervious” defenses of the French – the Maginot Line – in like three days . . .). Point being that there were a ton of French people living in Casablanca back then – but they all left after the King made it known that they were not that welcome – round about 1960 or so . . .

Our overall impression is that Casablanca is a big, sprawling industrial city – with a big, busy port. Seems like they kind of forgot to add charm . . . Like Duluth in the ‘70s. 

But it may be that we just missed the good parts . . . We were only there for a day . . .

Today’s ride? Amazing. Unlike Latin America, Morocco seems to pave its secondary roads. Upshot is that we were biking on a much slower, much less trafficy, boulevard along the ocean. Lots of swanky houses to admire. 

We ate lunch right next to the sea. Just a simple baguette and cheese type of affair – with some dates, of course. The dates are so good! So nice to be in a former French colony when it comes to bread. It’s not quite Paris, but there are a lot of people walking around with baguettes. And there’s a reason for that; they are darn good!

We happened upon a random caravan of camels. And since we’re in Morocco – which is more like Latin America than the U.S. when it comes to rules – we were able to walk up, pet them, and feed them carrots (we still had one left from our encounter with the nice Casablanca family the other day). One of the camels even tried to eat Diana’s bike . . .

Finally, I was able to take a little swim. After how cold the Pacific was in South America – with its Antarctic current – I think this was the first ocean swim since maybe Cartagena. Nice beach . . . except for the garbage in the water and on the sand. 

All in all, a very nice day. 

Tomorrow? On toward Tangiers. (We’ve decided to skip Fez because it’s kind of out of the way and we didn’t realize how much we would like the coast here in Morocco.)