Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Morning: Meet Driss
Six days a week, Driss wakes at 6am to ride his scooter from his family's apartment in a
Marrakesh suburb to the riad (courtyard house, converted into a guesthouse) where he
works. He knows enough English to explain the riad's breakfast menu to guests and speaks
fluent Moroccan Arabic, French and classical Arabic (mostly from watching the news on
Al-Jazeera) - plus his native Berber language, Tashelhit. Driss takes computer courses on
his weekly morning off. His father approves: he owns a small
hanout
(corner grocery) and
doesn't read or write that well himself, but insisted that Driss and his four siblings attend
school.
Driss knows his parents will start pressuring him to get married now that he's pushing
30, but he's in no rush and not especially interested in the village girls they have in mind.
He'd rather have a girlfriend in the city first, and take things from there.
More than 10% of the winners in Morocco's second parliamentary elections in 2007 were wo-
men, and women have been elected to municipal oices across the country: including lawyer
Fatima Zahra Mansouri, elected mayor of Marrakesh in 2009 at age 33.
