Life in Morocco
Cheese and Camaraderie in Rabat’s Old Medina
By Zoe Hu
Photographs by Eloise Schieferdecker
RABAT, Morocco — They know when to expect him. Among the stuttering moped engines and the rumbles of street-life in Rabat’s traditional medina, Abdelatif Reda’s customers wait.The small cart before them stands unmanned. Its owner, they speculate, must be out for his afternoon prayer. But Reda will return — as he has done for years, every day after 5 p.m. — to sell his homemade cheese.
Rabat’s medina is a pastel-washed huddle of squat shops and alleyways, fortified by walls that stand on 17th-century lines.
The Sun Messenger
By Lauren Kopchik
Photos by Rachel Woolf
Ahmed Lazar wears a suit to work, but he has no desk job.
Without even rolling up the sleeves of his dark brown jacket, he grabs a rusted shovel and forces it into the ground with wrinkled and hard-worked, yet startlingly clean hands.
“Bssla,” he says softly, pointing to the light green shoots sprouting about two inches from the soil, using the Darija term for chives. He smiles when he speaks directly to you, as if the warmth of the sun he works under each day uses him as a personal messenger.
Planting Season in a Drought-Affected Country
By: SUSAN SKAZA
BIRTA, Morocco –
As the sun shone out of the clear blue sky and a cold breeze blew, Baba and Amina planted bsla, chives, one by one by one. In the arid, rocky, red soil, they planted the chives evenly at a relaxed speed. They moved with a sense of duty as well as harmony with their surroundings.
Baba turned up the cracked dirt with his hoe, while Amina pressed the chives into the ground, following the twists and turns of the prepared field. Using her index finger, she pushed the blades gently into the soil, highlighting the maze of rows.
Contagious Energy
By: SUSAN SKAZA
BIRTA, Morocco – Young Simo Mohammed likes to hang out along the main road of Sbaa Roudi, a rural village outside of Fez, Morocco. Wearing a red sweater and jeans, Mohammed wrestles with his friends and engages in conversations with neighbors along the street, who seem to know him well.
He stands about four feet tall and has dark skin and black hair that rests calmly on his head, at odds with his rambunctious character. Mohammed is as energetic as any young boy his age and just as khamak, or crazy, as a neighbor calls him.
