Under the moon

You can tell a lot about a place by how it looks in the moonlight. Rabat, Morocco is no exception.

Rabat’s critics say it's a sleepy, somewhat boring capital city. In many ways, they’re right. While Morocco’s most famous city, Casablanca, glitters and shouts, Rabat is more subdued.

But Rabat isn’t silent. Stand on a tiled rooftop as you watch the sun dip into the Atlantic and listen.

The sunset call to prayer echoes from a hundred different minarets. You can hear the lilting and shifting of different callers’ voices as the breeze changes direction. Sometimes it blends with the waves crashing on the beach.

Couples stroll along the riverwalk as darkness falls. Fishing boats on the Bou-Regreg clink chains and drop anchor as the night turns the river glossy and black.

Floppy-haired jazz musicians tune guitars in Le Cotton Club in the new part of the city, Agdal. In a couple of hours it will be packed with Moroccan university students, young professionals and a scattering of ex-pats.

On the beach, the dreadlocked and suntanned 20-somethings who run the surf club light a bonfire. Youth unemployment is rampant in Morocco, but the king loves to surf. He funds surf and Jetski clubs up and down the coast.

The government buildings are silent at this time of night. They’re quiet most days too-- the bureaucracy swallows debate and silences criticism.

At 4 a.m. a man walks down the main street of Kasbah Oudayas and sweeps it clean with a palm frond. It makes an eerie swish that makes hair stand on end-- until the call to prayer drowns it out. The morning call has an extra line that says, "prayer is better than sleep." In the darkness just before the dawn breaks people are waking up, rubbing their eyes and rolling out their prayer rugs.

The navy-and-purple sky begins to turn blue at the edges. Soon the sun will rise and the moon will take a lap before bathes the city in its magic once more.