Right at the approach of Casablanca's latest derby, both clubs posted artworks in the classic clash spirit that defines this rivalry. One post in particular stopped me. It said: "wlad lmdina" vs "wlad l3roubia". The usual loud layers of classism weren't what made me pause though, a deeper, more unsettling question struck me, for I am a person who always considered herself a bent Casa.
The term wlad expresses belonging. Whether 3roubia or mdina, we all belong to Casablanca. Or at least that's what I thought.
Artwork by IG:rayanaarabb ↪ & IG:theartistecollectif ↪
I don't know how belonging to Casa looks for each of you, I don't know which part of it brings you joy. For the 5 year-old me, it looks like Eid day, the Ain Chok photographer dressing me in his best Ntaa caftan, mama tracing the most dramatic eyeliner for the Eid picture. It looks like autumn and spring days in Ain Sbaa garden and zoo. Summer days, Sundays to be precise, in Ain Diab, door 11, a soggy tuna sandwich, a body drained from playing in the waves, followed by a tour in Sindibad, when it used to be accessible and full of life.
Casa has the taste of that butter cookie baba used to buy on Saturdays from the bakery on Mohamed V avenue, filled with pink marmalade, tasting of sugar in different textures, too sweet, too sticky, but girl does it fill my stomach and hug my heart.
Casa smells like Ain Diab, like the ocean: fresh, salty, wild, and from time to time unexpectedly delicious, like the street food sellers on la corniche. Casa sounds like a busy traffic jam near l kora l ardia, like Stade Donor on a derby day, loud, deafening even, but with a steady rhythm underneath. It calms for a while, like at a red light, the background noise always there, and when you grow accustomed to it, you stop hearing it. It becomes your equivalent of silence. The light turns green, the sound grows, reaches its peak at the orange. A never-ending cycle.
Casa feels like that random bonding moment with a stranger in a market or a café, a small kind gesture from someone you'll never see again. It feels like the afternoon you skip class to eat with your friends in the medina. Forbidden, yet immensely joyous.
Then I grew up, left, came back. And found myself a stranger.
I passed by the photographer in Ain Chok, the shop is still there, but the pictures he takes no longer appeal to anyone. They lack that aesthetic je ne sais quoi that attracts likes and reach; the home salon portrait simply doesn't perform enough. The dramatic eyeliner disappeared from my eyes on Eid day too. Even I participate in this, I guess. It's too intense for a world centered around clean aesthetics. We should all look just alike enough to soothe everyone's eye.
The Ain Sbaa garden and zoo, after years of neglect, reopened at a price the average working-class household can't afford. Sindibad was closed for renovations for years, then reopened only for those who can get there by car and credit card. A place designed for joy became a consumerism case study: restaurants at every corner, no outside food allowed, shops strategically placed so that kids get lost and parents feel obliged to buy.
My favorite bakery is no longer there. The reasons are unknown, and somehow, that's the most Casa thing about it. Mohamed V avenue has grown sadder than ever. Its walls are grey, the people quiet, ghostly.
Happiness in Casa is now a service. An expensive one, for many casawis.
The traffic still has the same sound, the same rhythm, but where do I go from there. Lb7ira, where I used to find my books, became rubble. Prince Moulay Abdellah avenue lost its spark. We kept Yasmina park, and we have new green spaces, peaceful at first glance, until you notice how they're designed to displace the homeless, and you start building a case. The aesthetic is pleasing. It just doesn't match our reality. Let me correct that: we don't match its reality. So it stays. We fade.
Casa had that mentality of glowing up, restarting anew, but we, wlad Casa, got canceled in the process. Ghosted. We stopped being "wlad Casa." Our relationship with the city became transactional: from citizens and communities to customers. And that initial artwork we talked about, skipped this detail entirely. That this classist combat is outdated. That neither wlad l3roubia nor wlad lmdina fit anymore. We're both left behind and instead of uniting around that, they're beating a cremated horse. When we say football is political, we mean it in an activism-oriented way, not as a tool of oppression. Wlad lmdina and wlad l3roubia both deserve a dignified life in Casa, in their streets and within their homes.
My experience is not singular. We have all lost parts of our childhoods to gentrification, to excessive consumerism, to new social codes built around aesthetics, performance, and money.
Our cities stopped serving communities. They stopped grouping people around a sense of belonging. Instead, they adapted, not to their populations, but to economic systems and global politics, all converging on the same logic: aesthetics and consumption.
Let me unpack that. Cities like Casablanca were built to gather the working class, concentrating large numbers of workers in limited spaces to optimize production. But people's lives are not limited to production, so, on their own or through collective effort, they built third places: gardens, cafés, cinemas (RIP, dear Lutetia). Spaces outside work and home where communities formed and held together. In time, a digital space emerged to extend those physical anchors.
But lately, in Morocco and worldwide, these places are being destroyed or gentrified. Razed to build towers or concepts designed for wealthier residents and tourists. Privatized. Priced out of reach.
Which pushes us toward a quiet, dangerous conclusion: that we no longer care to belong. That the need to feel alive and connected has been replaced by something else, the need for validation through aesthetics, and the comfort of isolation within a social class.
And to sustain that, no complex system is required. You simply displace what doesn't fit the performance. You build third places based on revenue potential, with the social fabric they once held treated as an afterthought, or not a thought at all.
Perhaps the local clubs, their ultras and their communities could keep this in mind. Perhaps it's their obligation to stand for the people and speak for them, not against them. No sense of rivalry should feed this self-destruction. The clash stops being funny when it loses both its morals and its self-respect.
As for me, I'll ease my pain with the idea that Casa is not a place, it's a spirit that follows its people wherever they go. But I'm still wishing for the masquerade to stop, for our memories to be honored, and for our belonging to reclaim its place as a right, not merely an economic transaction.