ABSTRACT
It was afternoon in the busy Ben Sliman quarter of Casablanca. Crates of fresh vegetables and fruit spilled from shops onto the sidewalk on Rue Lafayette below. Cars and motorbikes rattled by in the streets in a constant rush. It seemed that all the young men sitting in the cafe on the corner wore short sleeves and chain-smoked cigarettes, though now and then an older man in a dark burnous or djellaba hobbled past, like a monk or someone out of the Middle Ages. Women hurried by in high, spiked heels, crossing the street in front of barefoot peddlers driving carts pulled by donkeys (p. 81).
