Marakesh Musings: Morocco’s Surprising and Intoxicating Atmosphere of Acceptance

On a train from Rabat to Marrakesh.

Didn’t sleep much. Rachid's flat was hot. I don't sleep well drunk. It was nearly 4 am when I passed out. A shaft of orange light through the open window kept me uneasy. Around 5:30, I tossed in bed to the sound of a woman arriving. By eight, Rachid's eyes were bloodshot. He said it was a toothache. He looked in pain.

Last night, I had seen lust in his eyes—pure, focused, unapologetic. He stared at a woman across the bar dancing, hips loose to live Arabic music. When she sat down, he kept staring.

“How hot is she to you?” I asked in jest.

“Right now? Eleven. I want to eat her,” he said.

The last two weeks in Morocco have been illuminating. The landscape is often so much like India, but the people make it feel entirely different. I met Rachid at the start of the trip at a concert in Essaouira, with his friends. We drank and danced like revellers at any music festival in the world.

Morocco’s tolerance strikes you. You can drink and party. Moroccan girls in short clothes served customers at cafés. Women ran businesses. Young couples showed affection in public. In cities, locals could be mistaken for Parisians or Milanese. Everything felt more influenced by the French—the language taught in schools and spoken everywhere—though the indigenous Tamazight is still a language spoken mostly at home.

As I travelled from Marrakech to the Atlas Mountains, the Sahara, Tangier and the Rif Mountains, one theme kept emerging—one that both fascinated and baffled me: the idea of family.

Minutes before Rachid had been lusting after the woman at the next table, we had been talking about this—family life. About how badly he wanted it. How badly most young Moroccan men seemed to want it. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this: “I can’t wait to make enough money so I can marry. Have a wife. A house. Kids. She obeys. She runs the home.”

Rachid wants five children. Minimum. His dream is to live on a farm, back in his mother’s hometown near Agadir.

In Chefchaouen, I met Adil and Badr. Early 20s. Same story. Adil, 25, said he wished he were already married, with at least one child by now. He said it without irony. Badr, still helping his sisters to get married, was hopeful he’d marry in three to five years. He said the rate at which he was saving—working two jobs—wasn’t fast enough.

I was in awe. I haven’t met a people so collectively determined to build a family. Not just companionship, but structure. Purpose. A home. “To provide.” That word kept coming up.

And yet, these weren’t men shaped primarily by piety. These were the same men I drank with in an Islamic country. Men who stared at women like meat. Adil had first been with a woman when he was 14. Others had European girlfriends. These were men who spoke openly about chasing, watching, f***king.

They were ordinary people—a schoolteacher, a municipal administrator, an electrician, a tour guide, hotel receptionists. And one guy—I forget what he did—who got beat up for trying to pick up the bouncer’s wife on the street outside a bar. The guy had said, “You look—I’ll take her.”

Last night at the bar with Rachid, the lights dimmed. The sheesha smoke thickened. Groups of men filled the tables. Below, there was a row of couches. On them, women. Only women. Drinking, smoking, scrolling.

Back home in India, I’d have judged them silently. I would’ve thought—these are sex workers.

Here, I asked.

Rachid said yes. “They’re invited. Given drinks. So men will come.”

It wasn’t shameful. Just... part of the room. It felt transactional, yes, but also oddly normalised—less taboo, more woven into the night’s fabric. And it turns out, this isn’t unusual. Most bars are like this.

If you’re Moroccan, you’re technically not allowed to drink. Bars were made for tourists. Then the law bent. Now Moroccans come quietly, drink, and meet women. It works.

“What if the police catch you drunk on the street?” I asked.

“If I’m lying on the pavement, too drunk to walk,” Rachid said, “they’ll put me in a taxi. They’ll protect us, of course.”

Later, I asked if he’d ever bring someone he was dating to a place like this.

He shook his head. “Not if I love her. Not if I want to marry her.”

I pointed at the only couple in the place.

“He doesn’t love her,” Rachid said. “He’s just f***king her.”

Rachid is 27. Grew up in the desert, south of Agadir. His parents were nomads—camel herders. He came from nothing. Studied hard. Became an engineer. Sends money for his sister’s private university. Paid for his brother to go to the US. Drives a German car. Works for a French IT company. Bribes when needed. Keeps things moving.

He’s a fixer. The kind of man friends lean on. Understated. Smart. Always smoothing over life for others. We all know someone like that. We all admire them.

He’s self-made. Taught himself how to speak, how to move, how to survive. When you grow up poor, you learn how to get what you want. And he has.

Morocco, like him, has figured out how to work around its own system.

I kept hearing it: “This is the biggest or the fastest or the best in Africa.”

And also: “We are not like Africans. We are more European. More French.”

This seemed like fractured pride.

A week earlier, in a shared taxi to Imlil, I met Riham. Twenty-two. From Fes. Backpacking solo. She had an iPhone dangling from one side, an SLR camera on the other. Knee-length pants, white T-shirt, a mess of jewelry.

She spoke fluent English—had picked it up waiting tables at a tourist restaurant. She’d just quit. Wanted to be a content creator. She had just moved out of her parents’ house in the same city. She was living alone. Travelling alone. She had saved for this.

She was sharp, confident, curious. She told me she likes taking paths she doesn’t know—getting lost, then finding her way out. We went on a hike the next day. I wanted to ask more personal questions, like I did with Rachid, but I was afraid to cross a line. I still don’t know when you become creepy, not curious.

Returning from the sheesha bar last night, drunk driving home at 3 am, we blasted French-Moroccan rap and Gnawa music. The air was thick with mist. The city lights glowed through it. Ancient walls and cypress trees shimmered between slick new buildings. I rolled down the window and felt a light, gentle rain.

“That’s what my name means. Riham.”

Riham had pointed it out when a similar light rain began as we were saying goodbye after the hike in Imlil.

And at that moment, it dawned on me: Rachid and Riham are from the same country. And they both coexist. And they are both outliers.

Earlier, I met a trekking guide who told me, “I’m Amazigh. ‘Berber’ is a colonial name.”

Another had said, “‘Morocco’ is for foreigners. We call it ‘Maghrib.’”

When the Gnawa sing, they sing for Africa.

When Rachid speaks, he speaks like France.

And when Riham moves, she moves for herself.

This was Morocco. Like the detailed, multi-coloured tilework of its medinas. Vibrant, beautiful, and made of tiny little rough pieces that came together with an image of true grandeur. You can focus on the rough-cut tiles, or the entire pattern—we see what we want to see.

Adil had said, “It’s like schizophrenia—I am two different people—but I am still just me.”

This wasn’t just Morocco’s schizophrenia. It was mine too. Like ours, at home in India.

Like me.

Like India.

Same same. But not.

Jiten Suchede wears many hats—carpenter, designer, entrepreneur. He is most often found in transit—between places and states of mind