Abstract

Every once in awhile an academic drudge gets to visit a place that dreams are made of. We all know the little game in which American scholars compete to mention the exotic locations they have been to: Paris, London, Beijing, Mumbai. But I have never aroused such open jealousy in my colleagues until I uttered the word “Casablanca.”For knowledgeable tourists, this is something of a puzzle. Casablanca is routinely disrespected by the guidebooks for its lack of an authentically ancient medina or a labyrinthine souk, and its paucity of museums leaves the tourist with relatively few obvious destinations. One suspects that much of the aura surrounding the city's name comes from the wholly fictional movie and the associated mystique of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Moroccans are notably marginal in the film, which, in a kind of doubling of colonial occupation, treats Casablanca as an outpost of the Vichy French regime under the thumb of the Nazis. Rick's Café Américain never existed until quite recently, when a retired American diplomat decided to capitalize on the legendary bistro with a simulacrum. The real city is quite modern, with the relics of 1920s colonial art-deco-French architecture serving as a main attraction, along with the thoroughly contemporary mosque of Hassan II, designed by a French architect and finished only in the 1990s. There is also the Corniche, with its surfing beaches and exclusive cafés, clubs, and hotels