Running in Morocco

In my last post, I waxed poetically about running through the streets of Dubai and feeling alive and free.  Just days later, we were running through the streets of Marrakech, Morocco, feeling alive and...scared and disgusted.

Foreign girls get a lot of attention in Morocco.  We had spent a day in Casablanca getting hollered at and men would blow us kisses and tell us we were beautiful.  We even had 2 guys walk with us for 2 blocks saying they wanted to buy us dinner.  It was annoying, but nothing compared to what happened in Marrakech.

We were walking along a busy street in the Old Medina.  A guy in a cast bumped into me a few times.  I thought nothing of it because it was extremely crowded and you couldn't really walk without bumping people. Then my friend said "this guy keeps bumping into me".  We started getting a funny feeling, so we sped up.  When we looked behind us, the creeper was picking up his pace as well, and bumped into my friend again.  He started talking to us about some restaurant and we replied that we weren't interested as we already ate.  He kept walking close, so we crossed the street and started heading back the opposite direction.

We looked across the street and saw Creeper had stopped and was now crossing the street as well.  We also noticed his good hand was in his pants pocket and he might have been...well you can imagine what he might have been doing :x

He pushed his way through the crowd and caught up to us and he touched my friend again.  She told him to leave us alone and stop following us.  He didn't listen.

"Take my hand," I said.  My friend and I held hands and as soon as there was a break in the crowd we took off running.  He was still following us.  We ran for all we were worth, finally getting to the corner back to the main square.  We took a hard left, then another immediate left and ended up on another side street, where we ducked into an alley.  We finally lost him.  

We spent the rest of the day looking at burqas to purchase.