Flying in: lots of leg room; flight 2/3 full; caught up with some movies, the best being Trier’s “The Worst Person In The World.”
Landing at the extensive airport outside of Casablanca in a murky early morning mist to join a long snaking line of entrees at passport check-in. Colorful group! The Lagos contingent in their long white jellabas; the Arabs In turquoise headscarves; Americans in shorts and T-shirts. Then the search for an ATM. Not easy. Then the search for one that worked. Challenging. Finally debouching into the crowd of drivers milling around the taxi zone. A definite lack of urgency in the muggy air. The guy Ella had made previous arrangements with eventually emerged from the swarm.
We rode into the city along a narrow two-lane highway traveling though a flat arid wasteland where the sub-Sahara kisses the Atlantic. By this time the mist had burned off leaving us in a desolate landscape of suspended dust where most of the low scattered buildings looked abandoned, similar to what we might have seen on the outskirts of the Mojave back in the states. We’re talking a brownish-gray expanse and not much ground cover outside of a lonely squat palm tree here and there.
Coming into the city, passing by an auto repair shop, the cars that were being worked on were layered with gray dust looking like they had been recently excavated from post-apocalyptic ash.
Like I said, not much ground cover. So, okay, Dorothy, we’re not in Portugal anymore (where even the sidewalks are green).
Casablanca traffic was like Mexico City traffic only with smaller cars. A lot of improvised movement going on; hitting the horn a popular impulse. At first, as we swiftly maneuvered in and out of the swarm and the white buildings got larger, the streets narrower, the signs calligraphic, I had that lost, claustrophobic, slightly nauseated feeling I get when I enter a foreign city before I get my bearings.
Bearings took awhile. Casablanca is a busy city of many millions (Lisbon seems like a village in comparison). After checking in at the Casa Diamond hotel (gold motif, a porter at my heels informing me that I was “welcome” at every available opportunity, viz, “The Hassan mosque is that direction?” “You’re welcome.”), after gormandizing a late morning breakfast at the hotel’s dining room (scrambled eggs with stewed tomatoes and stewed eggplant), we found out that the famous Hassan II mosque was closed on Fridays and the last tour on Thursday was in an hour. So we caught a Petit Taxi thirty minutes before the last tour of the day began. (Cabs in Casablanca are mostly easy to spot readily available small red “Le Petit Taxi” Peugeots.).
Getting into the cab (not made for a lummox size American), I was worried about making it to the mosque tour on time. Little did I know that for 40 dirham (four bucks) we were getting the Casablanca theme park ride of our lives. Before I could buckle in, we rocketed into the convulsive stream of honk-happy traffic jockeying for position. It was like being inside the carapace of a maddened bug. We darted jaggedly at full-speed through gaps that materialized instantaneously just the way they do in the movies. Only—wait— this wasn’t a movie and I hadn’t fastened my seatbelt. Flirting with danger is an adrenaline rush, but I’d rather see it on the screen. But hey, I thought to myself, if we don’t die in a car wreck, we’ll definitely won’t be late for the tour.
And we weren’t. In fact, we were an hour early because, as we stood by and witnessed, guards had to clear the enormous plaza fronting the mosque of all the people who had come to hang around and gaze at the gigantic structure. (There are cathedrals and there are mosques and the more they are isolated and stand out the more impressive they seem. What if Norte Dame we’re in downtown Detroit? Mont-St. -Michel in the Bronx? Hassan II mosque would still call attention to itself in Century City, but it wouldn’t have the worshipful aura.)
So, anyway, the third largest mosque in the world (behind the ones in Mecca and Medina) looms over the shores of the Atlantic with its towering minaret and gigantic titanium doors (no rust). It’s meant to make one feel small and succeeds on all points. Entering the mosque for the tour I understood why I’ve always pictured Moroccan men in pointy curl-toed slippers. Totally makes sense since footwear has to be taken off inside a mosque. So the American lummox has to unsnarl the lacings of his hiking shoes and try to wedge them into the tiny green bag he’s offered. Shoe bag in one hand, cell phone camera in the other, Mr. Lummox has to keep from stumbling over seated tourists as he looks up and tries to figure out how they open the wooden-inlaid intricately patterned retractable ceiling to expose the main floor of the mosque to sunlight.
A lot of pillars inside the Hassan II mosque with a lot of corbel disguised speakers. Made for throngs. And an upper wooden balcony for women able to hold a lesser throng. And in the basement, an arcaded wonderland of separate fountains (woman one side, men on the other) where worshippers do their ablutions. The tour guide (check Ella’s post) warns everyone, as they walk by the large fountains, to watch their feet. Beat—as the parenthetical goes in a screenplay— and sure enough, the woman in front of me capturing the tile work on the wall with her cell phone misses a step and tumbles into the fountain. Luckily none of the ablution fountains are working at this time so she recovers, embarrassed but dry.
After dinner down the avenue from the mosque, we elected to walk back tour hotel. I was beginning to get a sense of the city. The multi-storied white buildings weren’t as forbidding and the traffic seemed to actually have flow to it. (Except when crossing the streets on foot, a perilous undertaking. Traffic signals have little respect in this town.). Fortunately the signs were in both French and Arabic, so I didn’t feel clueless. And the strollers were everywhere enjoying the early evening as were the legions of men sitting drinking their coffee at the countless cafes. But more about these guys tomorrow…
What is the metric by which mosque sizes are measured?
Great question. I assumed it was the area of the building and grounds, but I don’t know. Maybe it is capacity.
From what I can tell, lots of places claim their mosque is the “largest” or “third largest” (out of respect for Mecca and Medina). The mosque at the tomb of the eighth Shia imam in Mashhad claims this, as does the recently built mosque in Abu Dhabi. There might be others as well.