Bishahal al-tazkara lilfilm?

Lazy lazy Saturday. I got a little sick last night (probably stress related) so I slept in and spent most of the day doing some homework and hanging out indoors to stay out of the sun. I was worried I would have nothing to relate in my blog post (I know, is that what my life has come to? But, seriously, it's a good motivator). So I decided to finally do what I've wanted to do since the day I got here and go to a movie theater in Morocco.
It turns out that the movie theater doesn't open until 8:30 at night, so I stopped by a cafe across the street from the theater and ordered a coffee. I usually hate coffee, but the way Moroccans drink it is great. The waiter serves you an empty coffee cup on a plate and pours in black coffee -- just enough to cover the bottom of the cup. Then he takes a small pitcher of boiling-hot milk and fills the rest of the cup. So it's basically milk with a hint of coffee, which is great for coffeephobes like me.

At the cafe men (and only men) crowd around tables. All the seats face outward to the streets so that people can chat and people-watch. In the US the Starbucks is always full of hipsters working furiously over laptops, but here it's common to see men just sitting, alone or in groups, doing nothing but sip coffee and chain smoke. It stressed me out at first, but once you ease into it, it's a very relaxing experience, even though I still think "don't you guys have jobs or something?" Maalesh habibi, that's the pace of life in Morocco. At least for men.

The pace of life for women is exhausting to watch. My host mom is constantly working. She's the first to wake up, cleans the entire house (even moving furniture), and cooks four or five meals a day, sets the table, and clears the table. This division of the sexes is hard to watch, so I always help my host mom with setting and clearing the table.

An interesting example of how strong the social pressures are here occurred while I was watching TV with my host mom. The news turned to sports (which means Kurat al-Qadm "Soccer"). First the news caster went over the latest scores for the men's teams. Then the clips turned to women's soccer and the announcer announced those scores. My host mom laughed "Women playing soccer," she said, shaking her head in bemusement.

So back to the movie. I met up with some guys from my program and we paid 25 dirhams for a ticket (3 USD). The theater was empty except for us and maybe two other people (the signs outside that pleaded SAVE CINEMA IN MOROCCO don't bode well for theaters). We were a couple minutes early but the movie had already started. I swear I understood every 20th word (the movie was in darija) and it was one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. The basic plot, as I understood it, was that a young man and his buddies are jailed for giving a speech at school about Satanism. In jail, the man becomes involved with extremist Muslims and joins a terrorist training school. But then at the end he changes his mind and blows up the jihadist training camp (awful CGI effects included).

Highlights of the movie: crossdressing male prostitutes, mujahideen singing Nirvana, a dog avenges a rape victim, spelunking for some reason. The title of the movie? "Casablanca Daylight." Don't miss out on the summer movie event of the year!