The Arrival: Casablanca
We’re cruising at about 15,000 feet, the sky was very clear with only a few spotty clouds about. We could see many cities and towns that dotted the mostly brownish landscape.
We could also see a bit of some of the mountains to the east and south .
I was just so blown away by how beautiful it all looked that it took away some of the anxiety that I felt about being on this “piece of shit plane”.
It was only a short time later that we could see Casablanca coming into our view. This is one big ass city, man. From our approach altitude while looking out the windows on both sides of the plane, all you could see was the city.
Toronto is big, but Casablanca is bigger, much bigger.
Factoid – in 1975 it was estimated that Casablanca had a population of close to three million people, and with so few high rise buildings the city was spread over a vast area.
In the oldest parts of the city everything was densely packed together; like sardines in a can; that includes people as well as buildings.
Our arrival in Casablanca
We landed at 3 pm their time, very tired from lack of sleep, and we’re also now dealing with a 4 hour time shift. We were also getting hungry and needed to find a place to get something to eat.
We went to baggage claim to get our backpacks which had been completely pulled apart, then the contents were just randomly stuffed back in.
In one of the side pockets of Mel’s backpack he had these small round pieces of charcoal that had one side slightly cupped.
When ignited they were perfect for smoking up a bit of hash oil or a small chunk of hash.
Obviously the customs people knew what these things were for so they broke them into small granular pieces that rendered them completely useless.
Mel sure wasn’t pleased about that.
Us guys went to the Exchange to transfer some travelers cheques into Moroccan currency. Eve and Aileen went to get some information about where to go and what to see in the greater Casablanca area.
When we finished our business we went outside to catch the bus that would take us into the city.
We met a couple guys on the bus from Montreal that had been to Casablanca a number of times in the last few years.
They told us to be careful about who you befriend as there are many locals who will take complete advantage of unsuspecting tourists.
They said if we wanted to hang with them they would take us to their hotel where we wouldn’t get ripped off; that sounded like a good idea.
At this point some Moroccan guy; we’ll come him Mohammed, started talking to Mel about where we could get a decent hotel for a cheap price.
Mel jumps right in and asks him where he could get some decent hash for a cheap price.
The guy said he could hook us up with hash and hotel for cheap.
Upon hearing this it seemed to Mel that the warning the Montreal guys had just told us about has now taken a back seat to what should have been one of the more important things to us, such as who to trust and who not to trust.
I’m not liking that Mel has completely disregarded the advice just given to us.
But I know he’s going to do what he feels compelled to do; and he won’t be stopped until he completes his task.
He’s now very much in the leadership position, and I’m not comfortable in challenging him, so it looks like we’ll be going with Mel’s flow for the time being; but I’m not getting a good feeling in my gut about it.
A half hour has now passed and we’re now well into the city, a very seedy and slummy part of town. During the entire ride the Mohammed dude kept Mel engaged about a hash deal.
Road trip from the airport to Casablanca’s inner city
The bus comes to a stop at a traffic signal and Mohammed jumps off and indicates to Mel to get off as well. Mel, with little on his mind but scoring some hash gets off the bus.
He appeared to be totally transfixed by what he was hearing from the Mohammed dude, and not really giving a fuck about what anyone else thought.
He also wasn’t giving any thought to what kind of trouble he may possibly be getting himself, and us into.
Now what the fuck do we do, he wasn’t going to get back on the bus and we couldn’t just leave without him. The light was about to change to green, so we all got off the bus.
I was not happy about this, not one fucking bit; I don’t believe anyone else was either. I was thinking about what the Montreal guys had told us about all the assholes that prey on people just like us and rip them off; and one of us has just walked willing and blindly right into that exact scenario, with the rest of us in tow.
I never felt more like a fucking sheep in my entire life then I did at that moment.
At that very moment my thought was, “we’re going to be this fucking guy’s next score”; and as it would turn out, I was absolutely right.
Now this is not a criticism of Mel, it’s just an observation.
For as long as I’ve known Mel, he has for the most part been a person quite willing to jump right into something with both feet, rather than test the water first,
[ but not always, however, more often than not however ]
Mel has a very strong alpha personality, very head strong when his focus was centered on a specific thought or idea, and that thought at this very moment was to score some hash, that’s what mattered the most, priority #1; everything else was secondary at best, which included the possible risk to our own safety.
We’re now following the Mohammed dude through many narrow streets and alleyways with lots of corner turning.
To find our way back would have been impossible; like holy shit man, find our way back to where? Our only point of reference was where we got off the bus, and what fucking good is that going to do us, even if we were able to find it.
We’re at this guys mercy and unable to do a damn thing about it, but only for the moment.
Of course this was all part of the Mohammad dudes’ plan, disorient and confuse us in order to keep us at his mercy for as long as he could.
To me it seemed to be a well thought out and calculated move, and for sure not the first time he used it either, or maybe I was just being overly dramatic;
no way, not at all, this guy is out to fuck us too the max.
We’re now going through what he called a Medina, basically it’s just a marketplace, very big and quite slummy and teeming with so many people.
I don’t know how far we have walked or for how long, but it seemed to be taking a long time to get to where in the fuck! we were going. I’m sure this was just another tactic to keep us confused about our location.
For all I knew, we could be walking straight toward our doom.
hopefully not, but we’ll see
Along the way we walked through many narrow and dimly lit alleyways, where in places there would be small groups of men lurking about covered in these long hooded cloaks, their eyes fixed on us, watching our every move as we passed through the area. It was all very unnerving but at the same time incredibly exciting.
I felt the need to keep looking over my shoulder, fearful that we might be followed, but knowing very well I was only giving myself a completely unrealistic sense of security;
while waiting for Humphrey Bogart to come to our rescue.
We finally came into an open area with wide streets many cars and lots of people, and not as as dirty and run down as the area we had just come through.
We were still in an older part of the city, which probably in it’s day may have been an upper middle class neighbourhood.
Some of the architecture in this area dates back to the sixteenth century.
It was like experiencing four or five hundred years of history all at once from a single point. All you had to do was turn your head from side to side and it was all there.
Seeing this as a first timer is blowing my mind, I didn’t quite know how to wrap my head around it.
This country is going to be a major culture shock for me.
The Majestic Hotel, our accommodation for one night.
The Mohammed dude took us to the Majestic Hotel for a nights lodging.
Entering this hotel was just like stepping back into a very early twentieth century black and white silent movie, complete with inlaid mosaic tile floors and walls, to the slow rotating fans suspended from the twelve foot high graying ceilings, and lots of wrought iron railings throughout the lobby area.
It was no five star Hotel, although it may have been in a earlier time.
But it was still a totally cool looking place; it was quite a beautiful building in a somewhat worn way.
When we registered the clerk asked for our passports to hold at the desk. We didn’t like that idea at all, remembering one of the things the Montreal guys told us, “don’t give up your passport, a person without a passport is a person without a country.” That’s what was going through my mind.
Then Al, having travelled several times before, said, “this is just standard policy when dealing with foreigners”.
We needed rooms and this was the only way we were going to get them, so we gave the clerk our passports and hoped for the best.
As we were gathering up our backpacks to go to our rooms we saw a cleaning lady in the hall that began to speak to Al. She spoke to him in broken French or whatever.
Al being Italian and spoke it fluently, and as lots of words and phrases in French, Italian and Spanish in their root are very similar, so he was able to understand most of what she was saying.
She indicated that this Mohammed dude was bad news and we should be very suspicious of him.
Al told Mel what the cleaning lady said, but Mel at the moment was only interested in scoring some hash, and nothing else was going too matter until he got some hash.
We got to our rooms, ours and Mel and Aileen’s were adjoining, Al’s was on an upper floor. The rooms were decorated much like you would expect to see in an old stately European manor from the seventeen or eighteen hundreds, they were very ornate and absolutely beautiful.
Mel and Al were going out with the Mohammed dude to get some hash, they weren’t going to be gone very long. The girls didn’t want to stay by themselves so I decided to stay at the hotel with them. And I sure as hell didn’t want to go with this fucking asshole Mohammed dude anyway.
They’ve been gone for quite awhile, its now very dark and we began to worry; but I was more pissed off than worried. We were hungry and unable to get dinner at the hotel. We didn’t want to go out without Mel and Al, so we waited. They finally got back after a couple of hours, and we just ripped into them for being gone for so long and causing us to worry.
They were really high when they got back, they said they scored well.
Mel pulled a plastic wrapped chunk of something out of his pocket that was a bit larger than a golf ball, this was the hash he bought.
I took a closer look at this so called hash, but it sure didn’t look like any hash that I’d ever seen before, and I’ve seen plenty. He paid 200 Dirhams, which was approximately 50 dollars Canadian at that time.
They wanted to start smoking some of this hash right away.
As it was being handled it began to crumble, it just didn’t look right, but Mel was convinced this was great hash, so out came the pipe and they started smoking.
On closer inspection it looked like it could be manure, but it didn’t smell like manure, and it was poorly held together with another substance.
It didn’t have the look or the feel of hash, and it didn’t have a hash smell to it either.
There was no fucking way Eve and I were going to smoke this shit.
And to this day I still think it may have been goat, donkey or camel shit mixed with some kind of binding agent, maybe henna.
I couldn’t help getting a little smirk on my face and shaking my head and thinking, ‘what the fuck are you doing Mel, this ain’t no hash this is shit’,
and you guys want to smoke this fucking crap; go ahead knock yourselves out.
So now we’re in a foreign country in possession of a substantial size chunk of what is supposed to be illegal drugs, and not wanting to be caught you need to find a place to stash it.
For sure no one is going to throw it in their backpack or in a dresser drawer.
Mel began running around the hallway looking for a place to stash his great deal ball of shit hash that was crumbling onto the floor. He got it stashed somewhere finally, maybe behind a radiator, I’m not sure, nor did I care.
When he got back to the room he said he thought they may have been followed back to the hotel and maybe we should all stick together that night.
I think he may have been having just a little rush of paranoia.
Whatever Mel and Al had been smoking must have been quite high on the THC scale.
In the time I’ve known Mel I’ve never known him to be paranoid.
Mel doesn’t get paranoid; until he did.
Al went to his room and brought his pack down to Mel’s room so we would all be in two adjoining rooms, with the adjoining door left open.
The whole episode was kind of amusing, even though I was still a bit pissed off.
But now with all of us together in adjoining rooms one of us is going to feel a bit more safe and secure.
So easy does it Mel, “paranoia will destroy ya”
Now, about food. I’m quite sure we didn’t eat yesterday, cuz none of us wanted any of that disgusting smelling fish stink. We didn’t eat today, now it’s too late and too dark for us to venture out into the streets to get something to eat; even though we feel we have safety in numbers we ain’t going out.
Were hungry now and we’re not going to get a chance to eat until tomorrow….bummer.
We saw a small sign on the back of one of the closet doors stating the room rates. Upon reading it and doing the Dirham to dollar conversion, we figured they ripped us off on the price of the rooms; motherfuckers!
Ripped off for the rooms, ripped off for the hash; fucking pirates.
We’ve only been in town for a few hours and we’re already getting totally screwed over.
This is not good man, as soon as we’re able to we need to get the fuck outta here.
This place is bad karma.
This fucking Mohammed dude is going to play us for everything he can get, we need to dump this motherfucker right now.
He fucked us twice but he ain’t gonna get a chance to fuck us a third time. The bad feeling I had in my gut about this guy was right on the money.
It’s not hard to tell by my choice of words and what comes across as a very angry tone, of just how pissed off I was about our current situation…
which by the way was absolutely avoidable
Hitting the streets on a rainy morning. At the moment we only know we’re somewhere in Casablanca, other that that we’re completely lost, but we’ll deal with that later. What matters at the moment is getting something to eat.
We went to bed hungry with stomachs grumbling; we’ll fix that first thing in the morning.
We slept, got up early, packed our gear, got our passports, checked out and back on the street by 8 am.
As best as I can recollect, Mel and Al were supposed to hook back up with the Mohammed dude at 9 am for another hash related reason, but no one wanted to have anything more to do with this fucking jerk.
Taking a break in this inner city beautifully manicured palm oasis
I have a vague recollection of when we started walking down the street away from the hotel, the Mohammed dude was across the street waving his arms trying to get our attention.
I think we responded with a ‘fuck you asshole!’, and we just kept on truckin’ down the street.
We walked around a few blocks trying to get our bearings, turned a corner and we ended up on one of the main boulevards. But we still don’t know within Casablanca just where we are yet; but we’ll figure it out.
We went to a cafe’ for a coffee and a danish, it wasn’t very good, but we were so hungry we ate it anyhow.
Somewhere along the way Mel came to the realization that what he believed was a great deal was just a rip off, so he ditched ‘the great deal ball of shit hash’.
I don’t believe we ever spoke about or discussed the matter of the bogus hash; I know for sure I would have remembered if we had. I have no recollection of a talk, therefore we never had one.
Anyhow, moving on from here is certainly the first smart thing we’ve done.
Eve and I had to go to a travel agency to get our return flight plans verified.
This was going to take a while so they let us leave our backpacks there and
we went walking about to see what’s up.
We killed off some time taking in the sites, looking in the shops, just generally soaking up some of the Casablanca atmosphere.
Under different circumstances it would have been great to hang out in Casablanca for a couple of days, but it just wasn’t meant to be.
The Mohammad dude experience has completely turned us off, so very shortly we’re leaving to find better places for fun times.
And we know exactly where we want to go…
Now it’s back to the agency for our confirmations and backpacks. The agency people were really nice, they took care of the business end of our return flight and provided us with a pile of printed matter about points of interest around the country.
Now we needed more money changed so they gave us directions to the Casablanca International Hotel, which was the closest Exchange to the agency.
We got to the hotel but they wouldn’t let us in because we had long hair, backpacks, and blue jeans.
This is a hotel that caters to political heads of state, world business leaders, celebrity types etc..,I guess our rock star image didn’t impress them one bit
The staff looked down their noses at us. To them we were nothing but common riff-raff.
We explained that all we wanted was to change money.
They finally let us in, but I think only one at a time so we wouldn’t stand out.
After we got our money changed they escorted off the hotel steps and out to the street.
We headed out looking for a decent restaurant, we wanted a real meal.
We found this nice looking little “cafe’ la petit something or other”. it was decorated as a turn of the century French bistro. [nineteenth century]
They put us up in the balcony which gave us a good overview, or maybe to hide us out of view from their regular clientele, don’t know, didn’t care.
For me at the moment it was all about a good meal; that’s all I cared about.
We had fried potatoes and steaks, and they were also large portions.
I had no idea what the steaks were when they were still standing on all fours, but I didn’t care.
It just felt good to have a substantial meal, it had been two days since our last one.
So now with a good meal in our bellies we continued on our journey around the streets.
Casablanca sure is a busy city, lots of automotive and human activity.
Now we’re looking for a train station.
We asked about a dozen locals if they could direct us to the station, they either couldn’t or wouldn’t understand what we were asking them; and some of them were also down right rude to us.
Couldn’t understand why so many people were being such dicks toward us. We just said “fuck it” and quit asking and just went off looking for a station on our own.
We were soon close to the waterfront, saw some train tracks, knew we couldn’t be too far from a station.
It’s also getting to be a hot day, we’ve been walking for quite awhile now and needed a cool break.
We came across a place that had an American flag on the front of the building. Mel went in to see what’s up. He came back in a couple of minutes and said he found some friendlies. It turned out to be an American merchant marine hostel and we were all invited in.
Inside we met a couple of American seamen, John and George, {no Paul or Ringo} very nice guys. They bought us a couple of beers, shared their air conditioning, which we really appreciated. Spent some time just chit-chatting, shot a few games of pool, and just having a good time.
This club was a really nice place, very nicely decorated, it also had a beautiful courtyard vegetable garden in the back, a couple of game rooms, a lounge, a kitchen, bathrooms and showers, there was also sleeping quarters for several seamen.
Certainly not what I thought a hostel for merchant seamen would be;
this was so much nicer.
It also had a concession bar where you could buy lots of small personal items: soap, deodorant, shampoo, etc… and hats.
Mel and I each bought a camel leather hat that cost us 10Dhm each,
about $2.50 Canadian, what a bargain eh.
We hung out at the club for a couple of hours, met a few more seamen, all quite friendly which felt good after the shit we had been through in the last 24 hours.
A couple of the guys got us high, and I’m pretty sure one of them even gave us a small chunk for the road, or maybe we bought a chunk, can’t remember.
But now it’s time for us to go.
One of the guys mentioned earlier the station was just a couple of blocks down the street. We thanked them for all of their hospitality and the welcoming vibe, then said goodbye to all the seamen.
I had said something to them earlier about them being sailors, and one of the guys stated, ‘we are merchant seamen, not sailors. Sailors are in the navy, we are not’. So seamen it is. ‘Well goodbye seaman, it’s been good to know you’. We all got a good laugh out of that.
We left the club and headed to the station and got our tickets.
After that we had a bit of time to kill so we went for a little walk.
We ended up on a really nice side street; it was absolutely beautiful.
There were large palm trees in many spots , very nice looking old buildings constructed of adobe brick and stone, I think. They all appeared to be in pretty good condition.
This was a nice looking and well manicured block long street.
Not an area I expected find only five or six blocks from the waterfront;
given that in 1975 the largest segment of their society and economy was still
“third world”
Just not a traditional neighborhood that I would associate with being in the waterfront area.
We hung out on this boulevard for a little while, took a couple of photos, probably smoked some of the chunk.
On the way back to the station we bought some bread and oranges for the trip to Marrakesh…
One of several loading platforms
ya gotta sing it…don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh Express,
all abooord the traaain
If you’ve never seen the movie “Casablanca”, take the time to watch it, but not the colorized version, in color it’s not near as dramatic.
Even though most of the interior shots were made in a studio I expect; most of the street scenes and architecture that we’re seeing right here right now is just like it was in the movie.
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