Enchanting Morocco

First impressions

As an Indian travelling around the world, I am used to worrying about visas. Our online visa application for Morocco was approved in 2 hours and it was a sign that this entire country and its people were ready to pull out the red carpet. Immigration agents were so happy to welcome somebody from India and always brought up Shahrukh Khan and his movies. Amitabh Bacchan, Hritik Roshan, Amir Khan and Salman Khan got some mentions as well but Shahrukh is the king khan. It's fascinating how the film industry creates soft power around the world and makes people living so far away feel connected. As we traveled through Morocco's varied landscapes, from the old to the new, from the valleys to the desert, from the Medinas to the Mosques, I kept on admiring how the Arabs and Amazighs have built a successful political system based on Allah, al watan, al malik (God, Country, King) when so many of their neighbors lie in ruin.

The grandeur

Casablanca welcomed us with the magnificent Hassan II mosque built on the shores of the Atlantic.It's a masterpiece in Islamic architecture but also reminds one of European cathedrals. Marrakech as the imperial capital of the Almarovid dynasty boasts of some beautiful buildings like the Ben Youssef Madarassa and the Bahia palace. Fes, the first imperial capital has the Royal palace. But the most fascinating characteristic of these cities is the presence of magnificent Raids (houses) and Paliases (more opulent houses) throughout the old city medinas with nodescript entrances which make them literally hide within plain sight. Most of these Raids and Paliases have now been converted into hotels and it's an experience to stay in one of these places when visiting Morocco. As we understood later through our English speaking lady guide in Fes, hiding the grandeur behind closed doors is a truly Islamic practice. Fascinating to see the contrast with the Mellah (old Jewish quarter) which had open balconies. Mellah means salt in Arabic and Jews were salt traders so Jewish quarters across the Arab world are called Mellahs.

Hassan II mosque, Casablanca

Beautiful interiors of a Raid

The Mellah with open balconies

The reason so much grandeur exists and has been preserved to this day is a testament to the importance given to art and architecture by succeeding Arab dynasties as well as the elites in society. While the Sultan could have spent money building a mosque or a royal palace, many affluent private citizens must have paid for the numerous Riads and Paliases.  

The landscape

From the Atlantic shores of Casablanca and Agadir to the deserts of the Sahara. From the High Atlas mountains across the south east to the Mediterranean port of Tangier. From the bustling modern French speaking city of Casablanca to Ait ben Haddou, a castle on the ancient caravan route from Timbuktu. Ifrane (Little Switzerland) where beautiful fountains and plazas were built by the French to the 12th century Fes Medina with 9000+ streets and the world's largest car free urban area. This diversity is amazing for a country the size of California.

A mule ride up the High Atlas took us to a traditional house to have lunch. A camel ride over the sand dunes of the Sahara was a mesmerizing experience. Travelling on 4x4 vehicles across the barren landscape of the desert, we visited nomad tents and were served bread and tea. As we climbed on top of Ait ben Haddou, I imagined how camel caravans coming from Timbuktu would have asked for food and rest before heading towards Marrakech. Morocco also managed to slip in a beautiful gorge which reminded me of Zion National Park, Utah!

Climbing the High Atlas on mules took us to a traditional house where we had lunch overlooking Mt. Toubkal which is the highest point in North Africa

Camel Safari

Moon rise over the Sahara

Barren landscape of the desert

Ait ben Haddou. A UNESCO World Heritage site on the caravan route

Fes Medina, the largest car free urban area in the world

Toudgha gorge

People, Islam and culture

Amazighs are the indigenous people of the region in North Africa called the Maghreb. The Europeans and later Arabs referred to them pejoratively as barbarians which became 'Berbers'. While the Amazighs all eventually converted to Islam, they maintained their language, food and practices. In general the Amazighs dominate the countryside south and east of the Atlas mountains while the Arabs dominate the cities and north west. While the Amazighs have faced persecution and discrimination from time to time, they are now a recognized minority. Their language is recognized as an official language and they are allowed to display their own flag. In Ifrane (little Switzerland), the statue of the now extinct Atlas Lion was dressed in Christmas spirit and Christmas lights and candy cane decorated the town square. Morroco boasts of 1000 plus Sufi traditions when many other Islamic countries have persecuted Sufism. Such things make clear to a visitor the moderation of Moroccan society and probably the reason for its progress and stability.

Atlas Lion in Christmas spirit in Ifrane

Islam is all encompassing in the life of Moroccans as is true with almost all countries with a majority Muslim population. Every town or village has a mosque with a minaret and no other building is allowed to be taller than that. Hotels have a sticker on the ceiling showing direction of Mecca so guests would know which direction to pray to. Public buildings have a prayer room and the nearby restroom will have an area where one can washup (abulation) before prayer which is mandated in Islam. The Moroccan flag has a 5 pointed star for the 5 pillars of Islam. And I am sure there won't be any legal shop selling pork although I was told the government does allow Wine production as economics probably trumps religion!

But in spite of the all encompassing religion, it is surprisingly not in your face as a visitor and the incredible magnanimity and kindness shown by everyday people makes Morocco the best antidote to Islamophobia. Most women on the streets are seen wearing a head scarf but there were many others, especially in big cities who let their hair flow. I never saw a full face veil (hijab). I saw ladies shaking hands with men, even in rural communities and women police officers. Our guide in Fes was a smart modern lady (with a head scarf) who didn't hesitate to go grab the hand of a blind man on the street to help him out. 

At the airport, a sweeper just smiled and offered to take away my garbage without any expectations of a tip. The immigration officer came around to put a hand around my son's shoulders and asked us if we liked our stay in Morocco and thanked us. And yes he mentioned that he liked Shahrukh Khan! When a young girl walked by trying to sell us some home made sweets (more like a beggar than a seller), my guide looked at her with warmth (not malice), smiled and just said shukran. 

Throughout our trip, we walked around medieval Medinas similar to Mumbai's Crawford market or Delhi's Chandni Chowk but the area was surprisingly clean. We never saw open sewers, open defecation or spitting in public. All places frequented by tourists had a western toilet which was reasonably clean and with a wash basin with soap. 

Food

We experienced Morrocan food as mostly dominated by tajines. A tajine is a slow cooked mix of vegetables and meat in a uniquely shaped pot which is also called a tajine. We did not see a lot of variety in tajines with most restaurants serving a kind each of chicken, lamb, beef and vegetarian. Light on spices and salt and with little gravy, one could only have a small slice of bread with a pot of tajine before the gravy dries off. No rice is served as part of the main dish making the tajines a low carb, low spice diet.  The other common item on the menu was cous cous, the usual variety with vegetables and meat mixed in.

The mainstay of every place we visited was the Moroccan mint tea. Brewed green tea like concoction with fresh mint leaves was a refreshing warm drink. We were served tea at the village house in the high Atlas, by the Berber family making traditional carpets, by the nomads in the desert, by the fancy riads in Marrakech and Fes, at our desert camp in the Sahara and everywhere else in between! 

Moroccan pastries are made with different kinds of fried dough. Very different flavors which may need getting used to. I wasn't very impressed.

We tried the amlu which is Morocco's version of nut butter made with almonds, argan oil and honey. Yummy spread which we packed for us back home!

The berber pizza was quite delicious, very close to an Indian stuffed meat paratha.

The Pastille is a vegetable/meat pastry which we tried. We happened to like the vegetarian version.

Jemaa el Fna in Marrakech has numerous food stalls which prop up every night selling everything from Sheep's head to kababs and tajines. Jemaa el Fna was also the only place where the touting by food stall owners was annoying and I couldn't even take a peek, forget tasting the range of food on offer.  One of the stall owners even called me as-salamu alaykum Amir Khan to which wa 'alaykum as-salam brought a smile to his face. I kept wondering to myself that despite having grown up in a city which has ~40% Muslims, how many times in my life have I ever said that? It's a sad reality of modern day segregation. 

Camel meat and camel milk is sold in some places and there was a camel burger on the menu in our hotel in Fes. I felt sorry for the Camel who we had just used as our transport in the desert and didn't have the stomach to try its meat.

(left) Chicken tajine with preserved lemons & apricots; (right) a tajine pot

(left) Our table set with salad and Khobz; (right) a Berber pizza

Jemma el Fna, Marrakesh at night is a bustling place full of street food and cacophony

Final thoughts

As our return flight took off from Casablanca's Mohammed V international airport, the beautiful sight of the African coastline was the perfect adieu to this fabulous country. I could see the Hassan II mosque on its coastline. A young boy must be standing there looking towards the Atlantic and dreaming about America which lies exactly straight across. But it's time for young boys and girls in America and around the non-Muslim world to stand off their shores and look across the ocean towards this wonderful country and visit it once in their lifetime. Getting to know each other is the only way humanity can live in peace. Inshallah! 

Leaving the shores of Africa

Why we are everywhere and why actually we aren't

I have heard a number of statements and claims since I have come to the US regarding how ‘big’ the Indian community here is or how ‘we are everywhere’. I hear how Silicon Valley companies are full of Indians or how Texas and New Jersey makes you feel as if you are in India.

But is this really true? With my sense of history, it just doesn’t feel right.

America is mostly White and Caucasian filled by centuries of migration from Europe and then by Blacks who were brought in as slaves and indentured laborers and Latinos who spread or ran from the south American Spanish colonies. And then came the Chinese laborers during the gold rush and 19th century industrialization and countless other minorities from Asia, Africa & the Pacific. Indians would have been a trickle up until the 1990s mainly because Indians weren’t mass persecuted like the Jews or weren’t running from famines like the Irish. Indians didn’t probably feel the need to travel or couldn’t travel such a distance for doing hard labor like the Chinese who again were escaping persecution. Why Indian’s didn’t migrate is not my point. The point is they didn’t migrate in great numbers to America up until the tech revolution got white collared technology workers on US shores in droves – which brings us back to the hypothesis that ‘Indians are everywhere’.

Let’s see what the US Census has to say.   The US uses a catchall term ‘Asians’ to refer to anybody coming from the Asian continent and doesn’t distinguish Indians from Chinese from Koreans. Nevertheless, non-Hispanic Asians makes up only 4.7% of the population. Considering that Chinese have been coming from a far longer periods and it continues to this day, they should be making up a major share of this 4.7%. How much Indians do you think could be here? 1-2%? Maybe.

See US demography

In states where it ‘feels like’ Indians are everywhere, the Asian population is a little higher. California (13%), New Jersey (8.3%), New York (7.3%) with NYC as high as 11.8%. Some other states in which you may feel there are a lot of Indians  only have clusters of Asian population density like Austin, TX is at around 6% but overall Texas is only 3.8% Asian

And mind you, all these numbers are for ‘Asians’. The California demographic page on Wikipedia says only 10% of Asians are Indians in California

See California demography

All the numbers above taken at 10% look pretty small, don’t they?

Right, let’s get down to the ‘feel’ of Indians dominating the tech workforce. Luckily, some of the tech companies released reports giving diversity data for reporting to the equal opportunity commission.

Google – 30% “Asian” for the US workforce. Whatever the Indian population among this 30%, we can’t sure go around shouting that Google has a ‘majority’ of Indians

Linkedin – they combined data for their California, Brazil and Bangalore offices giving Asians 38% but a high of 60% in tech. Including Bangalore doesn’t answer our question though L

Yahoo – doesn’t matter any more as its sold! But it said 57% if US tech employees were Asian

Ebay – their own website says 55% of tech employees are Asian. That falls to 24% overall

Then why is there this ‘feel’?

I have a theory to this ‘feel’ which is 2 fold.

One, humans tend to live and socialize with people from their own background. So Indians tend to make Indian friends, tend to live in localities were there are some other Indians to socialize. We visit Indian grocery stores, frequent theatres which show Hindi movies and then eat at the Indian restaurant nearby. Not to say Indians don’t make non-Indian friends, they surely do. But there is definitely a bias. Ask a non-Indian where one can see Hindi movies. The blank of the face would tell you we aren’t everywhere

And two, our mind just registers and remembers people like ourselves more than it registers other people. I probably remember seeing an Indian on a train rather than a Polish or Japanese. I probably register that there are 3-4 Indian guys sitting around my office floor. I have no idea how many Latinos there are, never bothered to care

So now I know why we are everywhere and why actually we aren’t!

Dignity

My first travel to the ‘West’ was when I went to London by British Airways. I thought the airhostess was rude, behaved as if she was doing a favor. I visited a pizzeria in London during my trip and I thought the waitress was rude, behaved as if she was doing a favor.

Why did I think so? Because as an Indian, the concept of ‘class’ and ‘privilege’ is ingrained in our minds. A waitress is supposed to talk and behave in a certain way, greet you when you come and when you leave. Say sorry and thank you for everything. Serve you food and basically treat you like a master. There was none of it coming. Although I still think the waitress and the airhostess were rude, the degree to which I think so is far lesser. I wish I have a chance to replay that exact sequence of events and make a re-judgment.

Now in America, I see a similar replay of things every day.

As I played with my son in a nearby park, I was surprised to see the lady who cleaned our house last week playing there with her daughter, in the same park! Imagine that in India and I realized how socially segregated we lived all our lives. The lady demands top dollar, wears clean clothes and we treat each other as equals. (but… kamwali ki ladaki ke saath khelega mera beta?)

The postman, garbage collector, carpenter, electrician, sweeper all work with a sense of pride and self-respect.  They keep their head high and you learn to treat them as equals. You exchange ‘Good morning’, ‘Thank you’, ‘Have a nice day’ with all and sundry. There are no servants in most places. No bell boys in budget hotels, no doormen – the kind you see dressed as ‘security’ all across India in front of all sorts of buildings. No ‘salaam sahib’

Of course some of this is attributed to an absence of cheap labor but what it has done is also ingrained a culture of dignity. You can technically get all these services just that they cost a lot so you start questioning it and many a times realize you didn’t need it in the first place.

Not that everything is hunky-dory. Race relations between blacks and whites are at a low, there still is black segregation implicitly in places you live or work while latinos & illegal immigrants do a lot of low paid work. But low is relative, it’s not that low when you compare to Asia.

Dignity of labor treats all humans respectfully and ingrains in you that all work is dignified.

Bottom line? Other than washing & ironing your clothes, cleaning your house and kitchen, polishing your shoes and washing your car you also learn carpentry, plumbing, masonry, wall painting, landscaping & gardening, fixing everything (remember when you opened something as a kid and your uncle said you would be an engineer? Put that to use!)

Or you aspire to become a millionaire so that you don’t have to do all this

And that my friends is the secret of what drives American ambition :-P