DVDs in La Ville Nouvelle

So, I was in La Ville the other day, on a search for some good DVDs and Holy Jihad! I never knew DVD piracy had reached such a broad infiltration in the Maghreb. I’m from L.A. and I know all that goes on there on the streets and in the little alleys of Downtown, Los Callejones as we call them in Spanish. And on a recent trip to Canal Street in Manhattan’s lower east side, I saw all sorts of pirating going on right there on the sidewalks, in broad daylight! Heck, I even bought myself this PHAT Rolex watch for $37! I thought DVD piracy was only bad in the states, but no way José! I was way wrong! Just go to La Ville Nouvelle and you’ll see 9 year-old little boys and 12, 13 year-old young men just sitting around waiting for a sale from their vast (and thriving) DVD stash. And they’re all very nice people, I mean, they want you to buy DVDs, because in the end, they make some money and you end up with an amazingly cheap and good quality DVD! (Well . . . sometimes)

Here’s my usual routine on an average day like today. I start studying at around 10, when I get up (because I go to sleep around 2 in the a.m. and sometimes later) and I study till about 2 when lunch time rolls around. I have a nice little lunch and start studying some more and then 5 o’clock rolls around and I say to myself, “Carlos, it’s time to go have some fun! You need a small, but much needed break!” So off we go to La Ville Nouvelle. You have three options: You can either catch a Taxi Sagher (which runs about 12 dirhams or about $1.50), ride the Bus (which costs 2.90 dirhams), or your could walk a little bit (shee shweeya) to 3ouwint Al-Hijjaaj (the slums, which we call ‘Houma al-Couma,’ which, as Nephi says, is being interpreted as: ‘The Neighborhood of the Coma.’ Interesting name, right? C’mon man, it’s the slums, the Ghetto, and you WILL get beat up if you’re there at the wrong place and at the wrong time, most of the time, during the wee hours of the mow-nin’!) and catch a Taxi there which will take you to Atlas for 3 dirhams! Cheapest Taxi service I’ve ever seen (hats off) and not much different than the rides in the states! Except in the states, a right like that, from my neighborhood to La Ville will probably run you about $10 American. If you’re wise, you’ll kill two birds with one stone and walk to 3ouwint Al-Hijjaaj, thus getting exercise and only paying 3 dirhams for the ride (that way you have more money to spend on DVDs!)

If you end up taking the 3 dirham Taxi, you’ll have to walk just a little bit to get to Centre Ville, since the taxi drops you off at Atlas square; but, if you end up taking the bus, it’ll drop you off right at La Ville. So, once you’re there, the world has become a different place. La Ville Nouvelle is French for ‘The New City,’ and every major city has one: Casablanca, Fès, Marrakesh, Rabat, Tangier. You see, Morocco was under French control for about 50 some odd years and French is still highly spoken and frequently mixed in along with their Arabic. So when I mention ‘La Ville’ I’m referring to the new cities the French built when they got any one of the cities I just mentioned. In La Ville, the architecture is early twentieth century French (so it’s has a more modern look), the streets are wider, there are more parks, there’s more fashion, and it’s very well maintained. It’s La Ville man! You walk around and you find cafés, restaurants, outdoor grills, little shops, newspaper stands, telephone boutiques, all the major banks, business office, doctors offices . . . EVERYTHING you would find in a modern city like Salt Lake or Santa Monica. And now that they’ve completed their renovation of the grand Hassan II Avenue (which is REALLY nice) it’s even a more attractive zone for tourists and Pop Culture. It’s hip, it’s trendy, it’s more expensive, it’s got luxury, it’s got style . . . it’s French!

So it’s in La Ville where you find the kids selling DVDs and you usually pull them off to the side and you sit down with them as you begin to look at the ENORMOUS quantity of DVDs they carry around in little black plastic bags, in their backpack, and other non-see through bags. After all, they have to watch their backs from the Po-lice! I remember one time, not too long ago, my friend Barakat and I were walking down Muhammad VI (another major street in La Ville) and we stopped at a corner to look at the DVDs the guys were selling. It was late in the afternoon/early evening and I distinctly remember seeing a black van driving really fast and stopping right there next to the sidewalk and immediately, two Policemen jumped out and started heading towards us. Okay . . . sometimes the guys who sell DVDs are just sitting around waiting for the customers to come to them and sometimes they set up little blankets and place the DVDs on the blankets and if they see the Po-lice coming, one guy grabs these two corners and the other guy grabs those two corners and they pick up their small business and move along to the next corner. I saw the same thing being done by Nigerian immigrants in Southern Spain; it’s the way things roll in this part of the world! Anyways, so the cops jump out of the van, and the guys selling the DVDs see them and Barakat and I were caught right in the middle of this confrontation and the one guy picks of his two corners and the other guy his two corners and they make a run for it. We tried to get out of their way, but it all happened sooo fast and we were standing right on the middle of the blanket and between the two guys, that I barely had time to move, so just stood there cold and lifeless, like when you're crossing the street and some guy on his motorcycle goes speeding in front of you at 200 m.p.h. Anyways, so the guy on my left, because the police were coming from my left and he and his buddy wanted to get the heck outta there, they started running in the opposite direction. But because he was exactly on my left, in trying to escape, he actually crashed into me and was stopped right there in his tracks, giving the police sufficient time to grab him and to literally shove him around, finally throwing him into the back of their van like an old discarded shirt. The other guy luckily managed to escape the brutality of the Moroccan police. I felt sooooooooo bad, I mean, here were these guys that were selling DVDs because it’s probably the only thing they could do to earn money, since the government is so corrupt and steals from its people and there’s no jobs available for its rapidly growing population and you have guys who earned their Ph.D.’s in English literature and who end up working as janitors who clean the floors at the local cafés or as busboys at the local restaurant earning miserable wages, which if they’re good, run about 1000 dirhams a month ($125 American) and it’s sad to see them get nabbed like that! I felt even worse because I was there, in the middle of the whole thing and actually helped the guy get caught! But what could I do? Nothing! Just keep walking like Johnny Walker.

Anyways, so you usually want to go off to the side when you buy your “illegal” DVDs. I say “Illegal” only because there’s no real legit place to buy DVDs in Morocco. In the states, the situation is completely different, I mean there are legit places to buy your DVDs (Best Buy, Circuit City, Wal-Mart, Old Joe with the gimpy leg) but here, there’s nothing (Walou as we say in Moroccan Arabic) like that, so what’s a brotha to do? Buy good DVDs for $1.25 and then enjoy them at home, that’s what. It’s funny, because you always want to bring your laptop with you (which, believe it or not, draws more people’s attention and curiosity than a jar of honey does flies) when you buy the DVDs, just because you’ll be looking through the hundreds of DVDs that this guy or that guy will have with him, and you’ll say “I want this one . . . and this one . . . and this . . . and that one!” But when you actually see if they work on your computer, you’re left with only a very few that actually work: some of them are medium quality, some of them are excellent quality (but they’re only in French), some of them are the wrong DVD (Like the cover says Shrek 3 and it turns out to actually be Casino with Robert DeNiro), some of them are HORRIBLE quality (I mean, someone went into the movie theatre and took his camera and you can hear people laughing in the background and peoples’ heads moving across the bottom of the screen as they go to the bathroom or something), and finally you find one that is excellent quality and it’s in English! (Out of 30 DVDs that wanted to buy, only 3 were actually good, or I should say, what I wanted, so Caveat Emptor and bring your laptop to try them out) I must say however, my respects to the quality of both picture and sound and especially to the price. I remember being a Missionary in New York City and our Mission President, el Presidente Spackman telling us not to buy illegal DVDs because it was just that: Illegal! And I distinctly remember one cold December evening out in Sunnyside (Woodside Zone), a Friday to be exact, and it was the day that the second Lord of the Rings (The Twin Towers) was coming out in theatres and as I walked on the sidewalk, past the shops and the little carts of roasted almonds and peanuts that were being sold there on 46^th street, I saw an older woman standing by what appeared to be a blue plastic tarp and on top of that tarp, a hoard of illegal DVDs, among which I noticed “The Two Towers.” “What!” I remember saying to myself, “it barely came out today!” I walked up to the older woman and asked her “Cuánto Señora?” and she said “Diez (10) dolares.” Ten bucks and you could own the movie, right then and there on the VERY day the movie premiered! It was just lying there, calling my name and begging to be bought. “No!” I firmly said, “President said not to!” and then I walked away. But that was then and that was there, in the states. What can you do when you want to be legal about buying movies and you can’t find ANY legit place to do so? You wake up, study, have some lunch, study some more and then take a much needed break to La Ville, where you find the boys selling the DVDs that you want. Hey, you’re happy, they’re happy, everyone’s happy! Well . . . except the people who actually made the movie.

Coming Soon: Tales from the Qarawiyyiin – Part I: The Awakening