Our group went to Cetua this weekend, a Spanish enclave on the Northern Coast. We spent one night so that we could renew our visas the next morning. When Ryan and I woke up in our hotel room, things got confusing quickly. Both of our Moroccan throw-away phones told us that it was 6:15 in the morning, while my iPhone said it was 7:15. Finally, his iPad said the time was 8:15. We knew that Cetua was an hour ahead of the rest of Morocco for… reasons… but we didn’t understand how there could be three possibilities. All this was made worse by the fact that we knew we had to be in the hotel lobby by 11 to leave. Did we have 3 hours, or 5?
Our quick solution was to ask the front desk what time it was, and they told us the time on the iPad. Later, when were back in Morocco, we found out that Morocco’s daylight-savings had just kicked in. So, our phones were set to the time it was before we arrived in Cetua. When we got to the hotel, I linked my iPhone up to the hotel’s wifi, which made the time jump forward one hour, before daylight-savings. The wifi was slow, however, and I have a plug-in modem for my computer, so I didn’t bother to connect from then on. Ryan stayed connected to the wifi, so his iPad adjusted when the hour disappeared. Mystery solved.
The time change in Morocco has brought out something interesting, however. When I wake up in the mornings, I take a shower beside a small window that looks out onto the street below. Normally, it’s very busy, as the time when I’m getting up is right when all of the shops are opening. People are moving about, going to work or buying the necessities for the day. Today, however, the street was near empty, and none of the shops were open. Indeed, by the time I left an hour later, only a few of them had started to open, and I noticed the streets were much emptier than normal on my walk to INLAC.
I have an idea about why this is, though I want to be clear I don’t think this is the only reason for the change. It could just be a slow day. The other possibility, however, has to do with the call to prayer, which I’ve written about before on this blog. One of the important aspects about the calls is that they are based on the position of the sun in the sky, dependent on how a specific mosque views the sun. The first call doesn’t happen at a specific time– it happens when sunlight is first visible. This is why, sitting on the roof of INLAC, we can hear the sun move across the sky as the mosques begin their calls at different times, like a wave of sound across the city.
The effect of this is that because of daylight-savings, I perceive the call to prayers to be an hour later than before (it is important that this is my perception– to the muezzins, the call is happening at the same time). Many people live their schedules around the calls, such as Halima. She gets up at the first call, has lunch just around the midday call, has dinner in between the fourth and fifth calls, and goes to sleep after the last call. My idea is that the street is so empty because everyone is starting their day an hour later– or, I am starting my day an hour earlier, from their perspective.
Of course, most shops and businesses work on a specific 9-5 schedule. Modernization is a large presence in Morocco, and it would be inappropriate for me to paint a picture that things are drastically different because of something as simple as a changed clock. But it is noticeable in small ways; for instance, INLAC’s kitchen staff prays after they’ve served us lunch now, not before.
Moving past this observation, all here is well. There was a collective realization amongst all of the students that we only have three weeks left in Fez, and then the program ends. Until then, there are papers to write and books to read, and the sun is shining for the first time in a week. Marrakech feels like a lifetime ago, but we can’t go back to visit again because there are so many other things to do. Such is life.