Half way to my next adventure, I’m both writing about the model year 2016 Yamahas as well as reading guidebooks for my next destination. Traveling this time to Morocco, a throwback in time, if not at a minimum, an entirely new world of religion and understanding for me. Not only will this be my first visit to the African continent, but also my first true endeavor with a muslim land. Calls to prayer were first introduced to my consciousness while on a film-scouting mission through the slowly rebuilding, worn-torn landscapes of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. First experience that comes to mind the woman standing outside a shop in Mostar. After snapping a photo of the alleyway in which she was standing, highlighting some graffiti on the wall, she began to panic. Fearing that I was scouting her outfit so that I can have her family killed, she approached my friend and guide, begging that I delete the photograph. Ignorant of why a photo would matter, and what she was saying I merely complied for the sake of my translating friend. Do I really looked like any sort of rebel? Wandering about town with my much-larger buddy, yammering on in English about craft beers and barbed wire fences… I think not.
I cleared the photo for her, then spent a few bucks shopping in her back-alley storefront so as to make her feel like I was contributing to her family. I wonder now if maybe it wasn’t all fake, so as to bring us in as customers. We we’re 1/4 block away from her when I took the photo… lessons learned perhaps.
In Morocco, from what I have been reading, and with such high concentration of muslim population and yet their tolerance and history of welcoming travelers, I hope it’s much better for me in regards to comfort and photography. We shall see. Can anyone explain to me the muslim aversion to being photographed?