John and I initially planned this trip to be a visit to Morocco and North Africa. After our trip to India four years ago, it seemed to me that the Sahara would be next on the list. Then, of course, the pandemic got in the way of our plans so it wasn’t until this year that John and I began to think about going anywhere again.

A few weeks ago our plans were taking shape. When an earthquake hit Morocco, however, our plans had to change once again and we decided to visit southern Spain instead. Yet North Africa was still so near and so tempting.

Thus yesterday afternoon saw John and I on a ferry crossing the straits of Gibraltar. To be honest it was a really long day, one which started in Europe and ended in Africa. We landed in tangier, before catching a train to Casablanca. Here I have a confession to make: I was probably clinging to an outdated stereotype, but part of me was expecting to board a train made of wood and pulled by a diesel or even steam engine. Instead, as night fell I found myself hurtling south at over two hundred kph by a perfectly modern, comfortable bullet train.

Today I woke with a completely new city and continent to explore. It soon became very apparent that we were not in London any more: everything seemed so different, so much more exotic, and to be honest so dangerous. For one, walking out to explore the city, nobody appeared to be obeying the traffic laws. Truth be told I was soon quite glad I was in my manual wheelchair being pushed by John, as there was no way I could ever navigate this maelstrom of maniacs on my own. 

That being said, as we explored Casablanca this afternoon I fell deeper and deeper into a fascination like no other. Here two utterly different worlds, European and Arabic, collide like tectonic plates. Being pushed through the medina by John a couple of hours ago felt like I had been transported to another time or even another world. Tiny, timeless streets full of people, with Moroccans selling things from the hundreds of small shops as they have done far countless centuries. Meanwhile men on mopeds and small motorbikes zoomed between the shoppers in a way that made me wonder how the place was not lined with corpses.

My astonishment was redoubled, however, when we left the medina to find a huge modern shopping centre just outside of it. The contrast between the two areas was almost unsettling; it frankly felt like a sort of geographical and cultural jump cut, as though we had leaped suddenly and unexpectedly from the past back into the ultra modern twenty first century.

Yet that is what you find in places like Casablanca. Cities like this straddle two or more worlds. Ancient Arabic medinas are surrounded by the metallic and neon structures of modern capitalism; tourists are taken there from their hotels on a tram system worthy of any European city. I think such clashes are only to become more common as fascinating, timeless places like this rise into modernity.