Le Marché Noir

Casablanca has a physical bazaar called the black market and, as you may have guessed, it is a literal and physical black market. Marc and Hicham often disappear from the apartment in order to shop around and learn the market. I was refused a trip there last weekend because my being a westerner would have affected Hicham's chances of getting a good price on a purchase. Today, all four of us went there. I regret to inform that I did not have my camera on me, which I regret because I do not know if my description of the place will do it justice. Basil has to return there tomorrow, so hopefully I will be able to accompany him there.

The black market is a labyrinth of vendors with walkways no wider than three or four feet. The overall architecture of the place is akin to that of a shantytown of sorts in the sense that it looks like a conglomeration of tin shanty towns that were smooshed together and forced to coexist under a single system of roofs. The walkways are essentially gutters with 10 inch curbes wide enough to allow a prospective buyer enough foothold to stand on the same level ground as the seller.

The black market was the perfect cultural experience that I have been looking for since arriving in Morocco. It's a place that I would not have been able to handle on my own but loved when accompanied by people who could literally guide me through it (I would have gotten lost on my own). The highlight of the visit was when Marc and I were left behind to drink tea with the vendor that Basil was about to buy his new desktop from. Marc and I both got to practice our intermediate french, while being lectured in French on Islam by the shop owner. From what we understood, he has no respect for people who smoke, he moved to Morocco a couple years ago from Brussels because of intolerance towards Islam, he was born in Algeria, and that I am invited to his house for dinner as long as I do not smoke (I don't). All in all, these types of experiences are the reasons why I love traveling -- I got to hang out and drink tea with an Algerian-born-black-market-shop-owner and his assistant who kind of kept making apologetic remarks for the shop owner's tendency towards preaching, which, as a side note, was not nearly as bad as the preaching we received from certain Indian farm owning hosts.