At some point after hearing the fifth K3G remix at the Net cafe in Fez and watching a Moroccan boy who knew and sang all the words to ‘Shava Shava’ doing chair-bhangra (it’s just like car-bhangra, only the entire cafe doesn’t tilt), I became obsessed with the idea of watching Bollywood in Morocco.

I had already selected my target, the Empire Ciné, plastered with posters for Oceans Twelve, Crazy Kung-Fu (which you may know as Kung-Fu Hustle) and several Bollyflicks all starring Priyanka Chopra. Waqt looked like the highest Priyanka I.N.Q. (item number quotient), and so with high standards of scientific precision it was duly chosen.

I had stared so long at the Bollyposters, the only ones not translated in French, and taken so many photos that the local lafange (layabouts) out front craned their heads and stared anew at the posters they ignored every day.

My atrocious and limited French interposed itself between me and my Priyanka fixation like an ill-tempered gendarme with little bits of toilet paper stanching a bad shave. ‘Waqt.’ I said, pointing at the movie poster and tapping my wrist. ‘Quoi heure?’ The man behind the grill patiently wrote ‘8.30’ for me and repeated it in French. ‘Waqt, oui?’ Same answer.

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Weighty decision made, and suitably reassured, I walked across to the Café Parc, had my mystery drink of the day (today’s drink turned out to be mint tea with sugar– I just nod and say ‘oui’ as enthusiastically as is possible when one’s not sure whether one ordered a tea or fried bull penis. Don’t get me started.)

I hung out with the couples, who were all beardless, and that was just the women. Among the men, nary a beard to be seen. Come 8.30, I walked back to the cinema, ignoring the usher’s demand for a tip– she spitefully left me in the loge level in the dark. I listened to the chaiwalle ting-tinging their advertisements in the dark and settled in to watch the movie…

… but the damn movie turned out to be Oceans Twelve. Which I’d already seen. A year ago. In a fancy-schmancy multiplex in Bangalore.

Then it dawned on me. ‘Waqt’ in Hindi/Urdu is a word borrowed from Arabic. Which Moroccans speak. Besides being a movie title, it also means ‘time.’ As in ‘what time?’

And there’s only so much ‘waqt’ you can watch Catherine Zeta-Jones overdubbed in a language which ‘je ne comprends pas.’

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Neoconservatism: Early yesterday I overheard a British Muslim placing an order for custom ceramic with Arabic script for his new mosque in Cheshire. He was insistent on Koranic verse hand-painted by his friend, a Koranic calligrapher.

He had a Brit accent; the Moroccans lived by the largest continuously functional medieval city in the world, the Medina in Fez, pop. 350K.

He was piously bearded, the Moroccans were not.