The Morocco Trip that Wasn't

As many of you know, S and I were scheduled to go to Morocco over the holiday.  Due to COVID, the country closed its borders to travelers nine days before we were supposed to leave for Casablanca.  We had of course bought, borrowed, and read many travel guides, examined maps down to the minutest detail, and arranged our itinerary and excursions.  That was a disappointment.

We had also begun our cultural exploration by watching a few movies set in Morocco.  There is of course Casablanca, which we had both already seen so did not re-watch, but it never gets old.  Such a classic.

We also watched: 

Finding Agnes -- upon the death of his mother, a businessman travels to Morocco to fulfill her last wishes.  The movie was just "eh," and I really wished there had been more scenes from Morocco.  There were a few shots of towns and markets, but I wanted more.

Sand Storm -- two women in a Bedouin village in Israel explore society's limits for them.  Though this movie is set in Israel, there are lots of Bedouin groups living in Morocco, mostly in the mountains.  Obviously there are cultural differences, but we thought it would be illuminating nonetheless.  It had a very SLIFF-style ending, which is to say that it doesn't really conclude.  Sad, but not hopeless.

Hideous Kinky -- I don't know what I thought this movie was about, but it certainly wasn't was it was actually about.  Based on the semi-autobiographical book by Esther Freud, Kate Winslet plays a young mom of two girls who has left her cheating husband in England and moved with her daughters to Morocco.  The kids were pretty cute, but the movie struck me as a bit pointless.  Later reading indicates that perhaps that was the point, following one particular 1970s wandering soul as she wandered the globe.  More than either of the prior two, there were street scenes and a much better sense of place.  And it had a good soundtrack.

Atlas -- see the upcoming post for this one.

I also found several books, at least some of which I intended to take with me to read on our trip.  The list was long -- some of the leading contenders were:
The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca, by Tahir Shah (plus some of his other books, including In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams and Casablanca Blues)
The Moroccan Girl, by Charles Cumming
Tangerine, by Christine Mangan -- I found this one in a library book sale when S and I were in Maine, so it's the only one I own, but the library has lots of the others
The Lioness of Morocco, by Julia Drosten
The Spider's House, by Paul Bowles (as well as his Collected Stories)
Larabi's Ox: Stories of Morocco, by Tony Ardizzone
The Storyteller of Marrakesh, by Joydeep Roy-Battacharya
A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco, by Suzanna Clarke

Any thoughts on any of these?  I may still want to read a few and would be happy to have suggestions and recommendations on these or others I missed!