Published/Broadcast Stories

By Daria Etezadi

This article was published in Newsweek on March 20, 2016. Read it HERE 

The Moroccan woman was 21 when she first laid eyes on the man who would become her husband. She saw the handsome 24-year-old in a photograph presented by his parents. That was three years ago, when she was still a student. Within a year, S.S., who did not want her name used, had dropped out of her university classes, forced by her father to marry the man. Shortly after the wedding, S.S. says the beatings and rapes began.

By Katherine McMillin–This article was published on Global Health Hub on March 3, 2016. Read it HERE

SBAA ROUDI, Morocco – Drissia Louati, 50, a sherifa, or traditional healer, is wrapped in a velvety robe, sitting in a tiny room in the village of Sbaa Roudi near the ancient city of Fes. Louati says she discovered her healing powers thirty years ago when, at a relative’s home in Fes, a woman who happened to be visiting the house asked Louati to close her eyes. When she opened them, Louati says she found herself in the Sbaa Roudi village, in the room that now houses her office and bedroom.

By Kayla Dwyer

This article was published by Newsweek on Feb. 15, 2016. Read it HERE 

Souad, 39, hastily enters her second-floor apartment in Tangier’s old walled neighborhood of souks, mosques and ancient houses. She rips off her long, traditional robe and headscarf and squeezes a green sweatshirt into her jeans, touching red lipstick to her lips, swollen and bruised by a recent beating from a client. Souad has been a prostitute for more than 20 years. In the next room a baby boy—her roommate’s—crawls through the doorway.

“This is the real prostitution in Morocco,” says Souad, walking a pan of yesterday’s couscous over to where the boy’s mother, also a sex worker, is dressing her older child.

by ZOE HU; photos by ELOISE SCHIEFERDECKER

This article was published by Zester Daily on May 7, 2015. Read it HERE.

RABAT, Morocco – Like fans lining up for concert tickets, Abdelatif Reda’s customers patiently wait. If his small cart in Rabat’s old medina is unmanned, its young owner, they speculate, must be out for his afternoon prayer. But he will return, as he does every day after 5 p.m., to sell his homemade cheese.

Rabat’s medina is a pastel-washed huddle of squat shops and walls running across lines drawn in the 17th century.

by BEN BARTENSTEIN; photos by JULIA BARSTOW

This article was published by Zester Daily on March 9, 2015. Read it HERE.

RABAT, Morocco – Majdi Al Khdraa, 25, brings a plate of falafel balls out of the Alshami restaurant kitchen to a family of five seated at one of the diner’s nine snug stalls. As he walks, he peeks a glance at the door, where Lebanese and Syrian sweets and platters of pudding called muhallabia tempt passersby.

After delivering the falafel, Al Khdraa pats a little boy on the head.