As you step out of the cabin of the transnational railway into the station at Casa Voyager, you are met with Casablanca as it is. Without pretensions. Without falsities. Uncaring of the titles and statuses the passengers of the train place upon themselves. Everybody comes to Ricks, right?

Down from the calmer Northern coast, through low, rugged mountains and arid, forgotten flatland painted rust and stripped bare under the vast empty sky, we dragged out bags onto the platform, greeted by unfinished tiles, exposed wiring and piles of steel rail waiting to be laid for the next line or mile beyond the station. While anywhere else, you would begin to wonder what sort of mishap has left this place, in Casablanca it soon starts to make sense, as if the city were reaching for more; mainlining wire directly into the heart of the earth. It is a place that’s soul seems never quite content to remain static.

*Vendors and locals walk across a market square in the Old Medina. (Jasmine Anwer Photography)*

As you walk out of the station, swarms of taxi drivers squabbling over the next bit of change from tourists, locals and businessmen stand ready. If you are trying to do things easily and cheaply, take the tram that cuts through the center of the city to whichever hotel or bus station you need. If you take the offer for the cab, know the price you are willing to pay and the price you want to pay, and know the difference between the two. If you are looking for an Uber or a Lyft, don’t. They don’t really exist here; most, if not all, have been pushed out of this city by the cab drivers who see their livelihoods threatened.

From the station into a cab (we paid about 10 dirham per kilometer), we speed through the tangled side streets and thoroughfares to our rented room in the Bourgogne neighborhood, as the rush of late afternoon set upon the city. It is much easier to negotiate a price before stepping into the cab, even if it means a verbal tug-of-war with the drivers.

Due in part to the pull that all things unknown and new have on a person, and to a pretty kickass exchange rate ($1 =about 10 dirham), we had decided to spend a little more than eight days in Casablanca. We found a cheap room to rent in Bourgogne, close to the city center, in the southeastern part of town from a Senegalese lady who makes the best rice of any country. Without google maps or a working knowledge of French and Arabic, Casablanca can be hard to navigate, so either make friends (especially ones who cook amazing things) or stay close to the heart of things, where a twenty minute walk will take you to the city center or the Atlantic coast.

*Habbous, Cassablanca (Jasmine Anwer Photography)*

While the buildings, markets and gardens of Casablanca seem to stretch to the edge of the horizon, taking over the plains between ragged mountains that city sits in, most main tourist draws can be done in a few days. However, the city seems to take each new day as a challenge in either a personal or sporting way (usually both), even afternoons spent without packed itineraries pass quickly by, before you have a chance to notice they’re gone.

Some of the things that make Casablanca are etched like scars left by the Europeans into the skyline of the city, like the Sacré-Cœur Cathedral (apparently the French are great with coming up with new names), which sits between a row of consular buildings and the Arab League Park, with its sharp, angular gothic-revival style towers and arches. Constructed in 1930 and closed as a place of worship (though not an official one, if you ask the Catholic Church) in 1956, the gleaming, white building stands nearly abandoned and unused; at least until 2019, when renovations are supposed to be completed. If you are trying to check things off your tourist list, you’ll just have to wait.

*Casablanca’s Sacré-Cœur Cathedral rises above the Arab League Park. Notice the nice, welcoming sheet-metal fence. (Jasmine Anwer Photography)*

Finding things closed for renovation, or just because the owner is off to prayer or lunch, or just didn’t feel like showing up that day is not an uncommon theme. As we walked around the city, we found the other cathedral, Notre Dame de Lourdes was closed off, with nice, new high fences and Moroccan military guards with faces made of stone and anger. Also, about half of the cities waterfront, from the high-class shopping district of La Corniche to the Hassan II mosque, is closed. If you are traveling the city, be prepared to be caught up in the life of it, filled with hope, excitement, and sometimes disappointment. Those times and tickets you looked up on the Internet mean nothing.

*Notre Dame de Lourdes, Casablanca (Jasmine Anwer Photography)*

Like the churches sprinkled throughout the city, other things read like an epitaph to the occupiers of the past, such as the shopping district of La Corniche. A semi-abandoned strip mall with the latest brands from across there Mediterranean and the Atlantic, attached to a smattering of trendy restaurants and night clubs, La Corniche is a stark reminder of the class division in Moroccan society sewn by the Europeans and made worse by royals who see the country in terms of personal gain. On the other hand though, Casawis are proud to point to the Twin Center in the heart of the city as a monument to progress. For what would be normal drink prices in the US or Europe, you can get a drink at the Sky 28 bar, which gives a view of Casablanca with its white buildings covering the plains below, traffic-filled streets reaching toward the edge of every direction.

*View from the Sky 28 Bar in the Twin Centers. (Jasmine Anwer Photography)*

Other things in Casablanca remind you that there was a history here before it was written down in textbooks in countries across the sea and that continues without their intervention. The Old Medina here is not like the ones found in other corners of Morocco. Instead of stalls filled with trinkets, misprinted t-shirts and the same types of souvenirs found from one town to the next, here the market still retains the spirit that gave it life. Piles of produce, harvests from the daily catch, bread - the giver of life, mix with people making their way from one stall to the next, buying the things they need to get through the day. To make it better, most vendors here are not the in-your-face, buy-my-stuff-now-damnit kind of people. If you want what they have, they will be happy to sell it to you. If you don’t want it, then get the hell out of the way, so that someone who does can.

*Vendors, locals and a random guy selling jeans walk through a market in the Old Medina. (Jasmine Anwer Photography)*

Casablanca, like all cities and all people, is a place of contrasts. If you want to stay on the tourist trail, there are rich, American restaurant owners willing to sell you $20 drinks at a cabaret that only existed in the movies; you can walk by palaces that serve mostly to remind you that the king is incredibly wealthy, which you can get a closer view of if you have a tour guide (which will also cost you). Next to them you can find gutted apartments and poverty. However, Casablanca is at its core a international city, ready to hold its own among the other great names. The Arab League Park, rooted in the city since 1916, is home to foliage from across the continent, while also serving as a place for people to retire briefly from the crowded world around them. The city is also host to a number of art museums and small galleries. In my opinion, the best in the city is the Villa des Arts (which is free) - a private collection that promotes artist from the region, typically in eloquently visual and viscerally emotional ways. There is also the Musee (“museum,” for you non-French speakers) Abderrahman Slaoui (30 dirham per ticket), a collection of artifacts from the many peoples who have called this place home, surrounded by walls plastered with he art-nouveau posters of France and Spain calling tourists to the exotic and unknown. The metaphor kind of speaks for itself.

*(Above) A piece from artist Rachid Bakhouz in the Villa des Arts in Casablance. (Below) Exterior and courtyard of the Villa des Arts. (Jasmine Anwer Photography)*

At the end of the day, as it always has, the sun sets on the rough waves of the Atlantic, where fishermen, tourists, locals, and the down and out gather to watch the sun set the evening sky on fire as wave break against it on the horizon’s edge. For the best view of the waves, there is the lighthouse of El Hank. Here, where the luxury restaurant walls meet with those of single-roomed houses, all gather on the cliffs to stare out to where one can imagine what the next day may bring.

*The lighthouse at El Hank, where people gather to watch the waves and sunset on the Atlantic coast. (Jasmine Anwer Photography)*