Yesterday, my husband and I took a trip to the American Consulate to start some immigration stuff (have no fear, we’re not going anywhere anytime soon, but as citizenship would allow for him to continue our nomadic aspirations, it’s our best option). Now, I don’t like Casa very much, but I couldn’t believe I’d never seen the Twin Towers or photographed any of the fantastic architecture. So, I experimented with car-window photography. Here are the slightly odd results (and Casa is, I’ve decided, one of the strangest places in this country):
On the road again…(Why does it always feel like we’re on Mars?)
From the road…
Slightly varying masjid architecture…
Horses on the overpass?
The world’s largest banquette? (text: Richbond, the name of the company)
An attempt to photograph things that would be interesting to me were it not my thousandth time seeing them.
A bit of color in a rather drab city…
The slightly impressive Twin Center.
This little kid was hilarious - he approached us selling gum for 5 dh. My partner in donkey-riding crime bought a pack, then proceeded to engage the kid for a few minutes. I remarked that he was “so little” and the youth mimicked back, “So little.” He continued to do this for a few minutes, then moved onto his next quest. As he was parked outside of a fancy department store and it was 3:00 pm, I have a feeling his mother was nearby.
Odd sight in a Muslim country, aye?
This fella was pretty close to our car.
This mosque actually SPARKLES!
(Here’s where our sense of direction got messed up)
Say “Sidi Moumen” and most people here will automatically think of it as where the terrorists live…In the past few years, the suburb of big bad Casablanca has made news for being where the Madrid and Casablanca bombers are from, for having curfews imposed on its residents by Islamic parties, and for its extreme poverty. As we discovered yesterday upon getting lost on our way to the autopiste, it’s not somewhere I’d want to end up…
How foreboding…
It doesn’t look so bad from here.
Construction in this method is a fairly normal sight, but in Sidi Moumen most of the buildings look to be in this state.
Narrow homes…
Blurry sheep.
Espace Sportif et de Distraction de Sidi Moumen. Does “distraction” have a different implication in French?
And on our way home, more of those awful trucks. This one in particular, carrying three layers of Butagaz (used for cooking, heating water, and heating the house - highly necessary), almost ran us over.
Next time, I’m heading south.
May 4th, 2008 at 7:33 am
I can’t believe it…you snapped a picture of the same little boy I used to see every day in Casa. I worked right across from Zara, the fancy department store. Actually, I don’t know if he has a mother…it seemed that his sister was the one always with him (impeccably dressed while he was in tattered clothes). He was a nice kid. We used to talk from time to time. I wonder what happened to him. I left Casa in August of 2007. I hope he’s O.K. Anyway, thanks for bringing back some old memories…