Casablanca-Chicago Pt. 3

Khalid's daily life doesn't seem to have changed much while I was gone. He still works long hours at an accounting office, still supports a family that is loving as always.

And Khalid's spirit still rattles its cage. He shows me a YouTube video that some travelers made of themselves going through customs at an airport. It was the most mundane activity imaginable. Even had I known the people in the video, it would have been boring. But to Khalid it is fascinating.

I think his position is really coming into focus for me now. He grew up seeing foreigners visit his impoverished hometown, watching them gawk and giggle, exult in the whimsies of travel. To them the pomegranates and figs which were his daily fare were exciting new things.

One night we wandered the nightclub district, Ain Daib Beach, on foot. As we walked, the beach resorts on our right and the chic marina strip to our left, we watched the limousines and Porsches roll by, dazzling men and women entering clubs with names like "Havana" and "Manhattan," as if they were embassies of more glamorous cities.

We sat at the McDonald's and bought McFlurries. It felt like window shopping with empty wallets.

"This is a very nice club," he told me as we walked past "Tahiti Beach." I know for a fact he had never entered the place, nor any of the 2-drink-minimum clubs in this area.

Khalid's conception of Western countries is built mostly from travel programs on TV and home videos on YouTube. He imagines that all the bad things about Morocco are nonexistent in the West.

I'm astonished to discover he believes that in the United States and Europe, thieves don't exist.

Let me clarify: not that they are rare. Khalid believes that in the West there simply are no thieves.

In Morocco the poor have trouble paying medical bills, and so he believes that in the West this is not an issue. Possibly he believes that this is because there are no poor people in the West. I didn't ask.

As we talked in his dining room over tea, he listed complaints against the state of his country while agitatedly kneading a chunk of cheese-wax in his hands. His father, a janitor at the nearby school, walked in and laid on the sofa. He grabbed the remote, and as the satellite kicked on, a message in English appeared on the screen:

"Welcome to TV World"

"People, tourists come here, they see the monkeys in Marrakesh, they see the snake charmers in Fez, oh yeah the weather is nice today, then they go back to their hotel and say 'I love Morocco,'" says Khalid, shaking his head.