TAHIR SHAH’S

CASABLANCA

See Morocco’s largest city through the

eyes of a novelist who moved there and

discovered sights overlooked even by locals

H

IS HANDS CLUTCHING THE STEM OF A DRIED

palm frond, his thoughts far away, Mohammed sweeps

the central path at Casablanca’s old Christian cemetery.

On either side lies a sea of crumbling tombs. In some

there are rosaries, crucifixes, porcelain wreaths and

weathered photos of moustached gentlemen posing with

their wives. Mohammed swishes the broom

rhythmically back and forth, dust clouds billowing in the

searing heat of late afternoon. His clothing drenched in sweat, he

pauses to wipe a hand down over his gnarled face. ‘If you want to

know about Casablanca,’ he says in a voice hoarse from a life-long

love affair with Marquise cigarettes, ‘you have to understand this

cemetery. It’s here that the city’s founders sleep side by side. Listen

hard,’ he mumbles, ‘and you’ll hear them whispering their tales.’

Encircled by a towering whitewashed wall, the cemetery is open

to the public, although most locals don’t even realise it’s there.

Fabulously grand, it’s a time-capsule monument to the colonial

families who built modern Casablanca from scratch a century ago.

The commercial heart of Morocco, the city is on few travellers’

itineraries – reason in itself to explore. The butt of many Moroccan

jokes, it’s often lampooned for being chaotic, crowded, far too bling,

and not very old. After all, more than a few of the kingdom’s cities

were founded over a thousand years ago.

WORDS TAHIR SHAH @humanstew

PHOTOGRAPHY PHILIP LEE HARVEY @philip_lee_harvey_photographer