About 3 am they kicked me out of the train station. I'd had about 4 hours of sleep in the last three days and was to tired to wander for the next 3 hours. I sat down in the doorway of a bank, covered myself with my sleeping bag and dozed off until I awoke an hour later aware that someone was next to me. I threw off the bag and someone ran off. I chased them a few feet until they ran into the dark alleys and went back to my bag and discover they'd unzipped my side pocket and gotten my gray ditty bag with my sewing kit, boot polish, bug repellent, string, candles etc. Nothing irreplaceable or of any real monetary value but I need that shit and was bummed that I'd been so careless.

So I walked around, got another pot if tea and studied my French and Arabic On my way to the internet cafe to find out if I had an address to send the card yet I met Lotfi, a 19 yo kid I'd spoken to briefly the day before. He invited me to walk with him and we spent the next few hours talking and him guiding me through the souks and medina. I wasn't nearly as enthusiastic about that stuff as he thought I should be (you know how boring I find standard touristic shit) but invited me to eat lunch at a friend's place. So we ate and talked He's a cabinet maker. His father a grand taxi driver.



After dinner we went out and wandered around. Lotfi and Anass showing me the different souks and neighborhoods, talking mostly about love and girls. according to Lotfi 90 percent of marriages are not for love. If you have money there is no problem getting girls or a wife but if not its impossible. He is right of course. One thing apparent everywhere is the number of young men who have no prospects of getting married because they don't have the money. A huge percent I'm sure are virgins well into their 20s and 30s. The amount of underground homosexual activity must be enormous.

Related is that especially among the poorest, the young are segregated by gender in a way westerners, even devoutly religious, must find quaint. Nonetheless, they spend hours on-line chatting. The closest one finds gender equality are in cyber-cafés. Boys and girls both spend hours on msn chat, doubtless flirting with their crushes hidden from the eyes of their family and neighbors.

Later, Atfi and esp Assan wanted to drink wine. As little money as I had, I couldn't refuse the 35 Dh to get a liter of rouge. We went into an unlit park to drink it and ended up settling for a rather too well lit tree stump, every bench taken by young couples.

Just as we finished the bottle, two plainclothes police came up and demanded IDs. While producing my passport, I was told me drinking alcohol is prohibited to Muslims. I explained the situation and that having been all over in Morocco and that I find wonderful people everywhere these two were perhaps the best I've met. That the wine was mine and I'd invited them. The wine turned out not to be a problem as much as that I had not registered where I was staying. For our security, they emphasized, all foreigners must register where the are staying each night. Every hotel fills out a form with name, passport info etc. Evidently the same is required if your staying with someone.

Lotfi had pointed out the Central commissariat earlier in the day. Now we got to visit it. I won't go into the details but after being politely shuffled around the station several times, the story retold over and over they had Anass' address and that I was staying there for one night. All that was left was to look up my passport on the computer for some reason. This became a problem. First because the entry number on my visa was faint and difficult to read. After trying all possibilities they tried looking me up by name. Not there either. After spending a good hour trying to find me by nationality, passport number etc. the officer resorted to scrolling through the ship manifests of the days I arrived (literally thousands of names). I laid my head on the table, I fell asleep and some time later was woken up and told that I didn't exist but was free to go with my friends. I've taken a few trips to police stations and they are always boring but as far as trips to police stations go it wasn't bad.

Had I not been there; had Lotfi and Anass been drinking alone in the same park, they'd have been taken to jail for 48 hours until seeing a judge and likely being released without further charges. But that is still 48 hours in a literal dungeon without food bed or blankets.

The next night after talking to my Dad, who instructed me to get a beer on him, I went to the Montana Bar near the gare and there talked to the interesting and informed proprietor of a Camping a few kms north of Meknes named Abdul who explained that yes, technically its illegal but the law typically is only enforced in more "populaire" areas; the poor would become uncontrollable if not kept a little bit fearful.