Snapshot: Casablanca

I want to write about many things; I have in fact been emailing myself lists of things to write about. But tonight, I have just one piece to share. Just a few hours ago it happened, and it reminded me quite deeply why it is I am writing this blog: so I don't forget.

I went down to the lobby of my hotel in Casablanca, where I currently find myself on yet another business trip. It's a somewhat anonymous, somewhat nice business hotel in a city droopy with palm trees and grit-driven buildings. I asked the (incredibly lovely) concierge how to get to a local restaurant. Fearing for my safety, he asked a bellhop to walk me even though it was only five minutes by foot.

The bellhop took of his silly little cap, sadly self-aware of his station in life, and we walked, chatting through the empty parking lots and deep shadows that plague fancy hotels in developing world cities. We passed two guards crouched over a tiny portable television, watching the Morocco team take on the Tunisians in the African Cup, unaware of the quiet couple passing them by. I asked him if he was interested in soccer, if he was following the game. He paused. "Madam, I am not a player of soccer, I am an artist of soccer". He paused again. "When I was 30, I showed a video of myself to an Italian coach who had come to stay at the hotel. He told me if I were 25, he would have recruited me to play on the best Italian soccer team. I one time juggled the ball 1,450 times in a row! I was voted the top player in the medina by the people. My teacher, he told me once my future lay in the ball, not in my studies. Madam, but I was 30 when that coach saw me. That, is luck. I was too old."

As he finished he story we entered a small square, light thrown out from a cafe where at least a hundred men stared with ferocious intensity at a tiny television. I felt it almost...obscene? Grotesque? Traitorous...something, I felt something wrong to even turn my head in to the direction of that light. We passed the cafe without the bellhop even giving it so much as a look. He left me on the street corner, wished me a good night, and walked back into the shadows. Tall palm trees sagged over the square.