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Location Overview |
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| Only six and a half hours by jet from New York, Morocco nevertheless seems worlds and worlds away. Even the Moroccans think of their country, which lies on Africa's broad western shoulder, as a place apart: They refer to it as El Maghreb al Aqsa, the Farthest West, as indeed it is, of all the countries making up the Arab world.
Overlaid on a map of the United States, Morocco would stretch from New York City to Savannah, Georgia. In shape rather like an elongated shield, it has the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Sahara to the southeast. Within these confines lie many realms: snow-covered mountains, perpendicular gorges and canyons, wide plains, and a sea of undulating sand dunes. The majority of the more than 23 million Moroccans live by agriculture, many dwelling in remote settlements beyond the network of asphalt roads that links the cities. Isolation has done much to preserve the ancient ways of the villagers. And it has created fascinating contrasts—towns separated only by a mountain or a stretch of desert will often differ strikingly in architecture and dress. In a land as rich and diverse as Morocco, a traveler feels like a discoverer. You know that thousands of others have preceded you, yet you have the distinct feeling that somehow you are the first. Never has one seen so much human diversity in one place, like a great party with a thousand guests. Many men wear djellabas, ankle-length robes of brown, white, or gray, with turbans or crocheted skullcaps setting off dark faces. Women in flowing caftans, often sheltered by their special form of invisibility, the veil, moved with graceful dignity among them. At every turn there is something new to take in. A troupe of acrobats who build a towering structure of their bodies; dancers whirl and jump, tame monkeys clamber on the shoulders of passersby; fountains of Arabic music rose from within circles of attentive listeners, the musicians at the center of each blithely ignoring their noisy competition only yards away. |
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