It wasn’t till we reached the beach that I realised that the taxi driver didn’t speak any French. Goes to show how effective my last minute language cramming had been. He’d nodded at my repetition of “vingt-cinq dirhams”, holding out five coins in his palm which I thought at the time were 5 dirham pieces but now, I realise, were worth 10 dirhams each. We were essentially in the middle of nowhere and the trip had been longer than expected, so we could do little more than to sigh and hand over what the old man demanded.
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The day’s fasting had long finished as we walked through the dark, empty streets of Casablanca. Or so it felt wandering light headed in search of somewhere to eat. In reality, the sun had set barely half an hour ago, people still sat in doorsteps on the street hungrily slurping down the last of their meal.
We’d given up on directionless wandering and were hungrily retracing our steps to a Salon de The that we’d past earlier. My rusty French suggested that they only served breakfast, given the number of pastries on the 2,50 euro set menu displayed in the window. But it was food, and at least there were a few women in there eating too.
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