So we went to Morocco recently. This is going to be a jumbled travelogue with lots of pictures because I desperately need to abide by the iron rule that published > drafts. I’ve previously written about my immigration story, and about Morocco’s peculiar openness compared to the rest of the Muslim world.
[If you want an accompanying soundtrack, one of the few Moroccan musicians I genuinely enjoy is Cheb and his song Cocotte is an absolute banger. It also happens to include the plural of my last name (Masakhit) in the lyrics.]
First, we were minding our own business at the airport watching season 3 of HBO’s Incest when some people decided to start praying to Allah in front of us.
Morocco is Very Poor
I’m going to say something very obvious. There is a very pleasant shock that comes along with crossing any border — cultural, legal, or otherwise — and it’s noticing the immediate differences. Because we typically don’t get to run controlled experiments on society at large where we fiddle and toggle individual variables, the next best thing is to make a big leap and then pay close attention.
The most consequential variable is that Morocco is very poor. The GDP per capita is $3,500, compared to $80,000 in the US. In practical terms, the average American’s annual income is more than 20 times higher than that of the average Moroccan.
There are constant reminders of this omnipresent misery. And the worst part was seeing how many panhandlers were women, typically accompanied with very young children. The brutal reality is that women end up homeless overwhelmingly either because they got pregnant (either from an affair or from being a prostitute) or because they’re fleeing domestic violence bad enough to run away from.
This discrepancy isn’t as obvious if you stick to the major cities, because Morocco also has higher income inequality than the US. That part that manifests the most obviously is in the very cheap labor costs.
What this translates to is that a lot more jobs are done manually. Virtually every villa has a small booth right outside its entrance, for their own personal security guard. Street parking is rarely managed by parking meters, but rather by unofficial live attendants who carve out their own small turfs. You park your car, the guy with the unofficial-but-official-looking blue smock watches your car, and you pay him a nominal tip at the end. This isn’t technically legal, but you know, whatever.
It’s not the worst thing in the world, because parking attendants tend to become permanent anchors within any given community. Conveniently, they’re the frontline troops taking care of Morocco’s stray cat population.
Morocco is Very Cats
Holy fuck you guys, I cannot begin to adequately describe how absolutely infested the streets are with stray cats. I’m talking in the realm of 10-20 cats per block. They’re all over the place! My wife couldn’t help but stop for all of them.
Islamic culture tends to treat cats with reverence, with food and water left out all over the place. Islamic culture — combined with the aforementioned poverty — also does not believe in spaying and neutering, which guarantees boxes of kittens on every corner. It’s still pretty bad though, as so many cats looked debilitatingly sick with respiratory infections, or were just blind from ringworm parasites. Dogs in contrast are generally disdained; seen as unclean and used overwhelmingly for utilitarian purposes such as security.
After touching so many street cats, we started getting dangerously low on hand sanitizer, and holy shit finding some was a journey. Bodegas didn’t have it, nor did supermarkets, and neither did pharmacies. Apparently interest collapsed after Covid-19 stopped being a concern, and so we had to go to a “parapharmacy” to find any, which was kind of like a “pharmacy + skin care” store?
Morocco is Very Hospitality
Obviously I experience the country very differently from your typical tourist, in that my itinerary is overwhelmed by visiting family. The hospitality is insane and psychotic. Every house we’ve been to, people have prepared unrealistically lavish feasts with like a dozen different dishes. I have to be careful not to express too much enthusiasm for any particular thing for fear that they’ll sneak back into the kitchen and make it again.
The food is amazing but holy shit sometimes it comes across as performatively extravagant. One night our host made us two dinners! I ate my fill the first time around 7pm and was just chilling out, and then they bring out a whole goddamn fish around 11pm.
My Grandpa’s House was Demolished to Build a Starbucks
I have some really nice memories from that place, but such is life. I did get to revisit the apartment I grew up in with my mom though:
We Went to an Insanely Extravagant Wedding
The fact that Morocco is so cheap makes it feasible to truly ball out of control when you have a ton of money to throw around. I can’t post too many photos here, but the wedding party was around 200 people and took place across two evenings at two separate luxury hotels. Guests were welcomed at the gate by men on horseback wearing traditional Moroccan clothing, and with a line-up of tambourine singers. They flew in an amazing Dutch ensemble band who basically played a live DJ set of cover songs. Randomly peppered throughout were violin players, fire breathers, acrobats, percussion musicians, and so on and so on. Ostentatious doesn’t fully capture it.
Yes there was a ton of amazing food and desserts.
One of the hotel security guards kicked a cat who had wandered in, and we went Karen on his ass by speaking to the management.
The Architecture is Neat
And there’s so much history behind it, and covers a range of influences. Everything from Andalusian ornaments to European boulevards and Roman ruins.
I Love Narrow Streets So Much
We Went to the Countryside
Yes, my uncle’s family is very short.
Sometimes businesses informally “adopt” a local street cat, which isn’t that hard because the cats there are such sluts for attention. Our hotel’s mascot was adorably cross-eyed, and on her third pregnancy. We called her Yasmine.
She kept following us even as we were leaving in a taxi 🥺
I’m there primarily to see family and eat tons of amazing food, which I totally did. Still, if you've got even a modicum of empathy and you stray away from the tourist avenues, the misery parade really wears you down. Also, the street harassment was bad and it meant my wife couldn’t walk anywhere by herself.
Overall rating: 7/10
The shock of the stray cats brings me back to Israel. Someone opened a dumpster to throw a piece of trash away, and it was like someone was shooting a bazooka gun full of cats out of it. Dozens of cats jumping in a straight line out of the dumpster.
Dude, you Moroccans don't mess around when it comes to a feast. Damn.