T A B L E_T A L K Beautiful Chiapas. Mysterious Coba. Where are the best places to visit in Mexico? Share your memories and make plans in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk   Find a world of travel books -- new, rare and out-of-print -- at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author     R E C E N T L Y This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe (02/05/99) Dead ends in London By Laura Billings Jack the Ripper returns to life on a grisly but gripping tour (02/04/99) Korea's no-man's-land By Rolf Potts The DMZ is one of the planet's oddest tourist attractions, where visitors can pick up everything from propaganda to perfume (02/03/99) Suite liberties By Chris Haines A travel magazine employee gets free luxury hotel rooms and four-course feasts -- but there's always a price to pay (02/02/99) The new great place By Jeff Greenwald Luang Prabang has been discovered -- and once laid-back Laos will never be the same (01/31/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		---------------Looking for Abdelati ---------------AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY INTO THE| -------------------------------HEART OF A FAMILY IN CASABLANCA BY TANYA SHAFFER | Here's what I love about travel: Strangers get a chance to amaze you. Sometimes a single day can bring a blooming surprise, a simple kindness that opens a chink in the brittle shell of your heart and makes you a different person when you go to sleep -- more tender, less jaded -- than you were when you woke up. This particular day began when Miguel and I descended from a cramped, cold bus at 7 a.m. and walked the stinking gray streets of Casablanca with our backpacks, looking for food. Six days earlier I had finished a stint on a volunteer project, creating a public park in Kenitra, an ugly industrial city on the Moroccan coast. This was my final day of travel before hopping a plane to sub-Saharan Africa and more volunteer work. Miguel was one of five non-Moroccans on the work project, a 21-year-old vision of flowing brown curls and buffed golden physique. Although having him as a traveling companion took care of any problems I might have encountered with Moroccan men, he was inordinately devoted to his girlfriend, Eva, a wonderfully brassy, wiry, chain-smoking Older Woman of 25 with a husky Scotch-drinker's voice, whom he couldn't go more than half an hour without mentioning. Unfortunately, Eva had had to head back to Barcelona immediately after the three-week work camp ended, and Miguel wanted to explore Morocco. Since I was the only other person on the project who spoke Spanish, and Miguel spoke no French or Arabic, his tight orbit shifted onto me, and we became traveling companions. This involved posing as a married couple at hotels, which made Miguel so uncomfortable that the frequency of his references to Eva went from half-hour to 15-minute intervals, and then five as we got closer to bedtime. Finally one night, as we set up in our room in Fes, I took him by the shoulders and said, "Miguel, it's OK. You're a handsome man, but I'm over 21. I can handle myself, I swear." This morning we were going to visit Abdelati, a sweet, gentle young man we'd worked with on the project in Kenitra. He'd been expecting us to arrive in Casablanca for a few days, and since he had no telephone, he'd written down his address and told us to just show up -- his mother and sisters were always at home. Since my plane was leaving from Casablanca the following morning, we wanted to get an early start, so we could spend the whole day with him. Eventually we scored some croissants and overly sugared panaches (a mix of banana, apple and orange juice) at a roadside cafe, where the friendly proprietor advised us to take a taxi rather than a bus out to Abdelati's neighborhood. He said the taxi should cost 20-25 dirham -- under $3 -- and the buses would take all day. We hopped into a taxi, which took off with a screech of rubber before we'd agreed on a price. "Forty or 45 dirham!" the driver shouted over the roar of his engine. He was already careening around corners at top speed. "Why isn't the counter on?" I asked. "Broken!" he said. Miguel rolled his eyes. "Eva would hate this," he whispered. "If I had the counter, it would cost you 50," the driver said. Since the man in the cafe had told us 25 or 30, I asked the driver to pull over and let us out. At first I put it politely: "We'd like to look at other options," but he simply said, "OK," and kept driving. After four such attempts, I said sharply, "Nous voulons descendre" -- we want to get out. Reluctantly he pulled over, saying we owed him 10 dirham. "Fine," I said. "Let me just get our bags down first -- the money's in there." We yanked our backpacks off the overhead rack and took off, while the taxi driver shouted after us. Miguel shook his head. "Eva would've killed that guy," he said. It was an hour before we caught another taxi. Finally one pulled over, and a poker-faced man quoted us an estimate of 18-20 dirham. "Tres bien," I said with relief, and we jumped in. N E X T+P A G E | Waiting for Abdelati   PHOTOGRAPH: TANYA SHAFFER _________________________________ For more information: _________________________________ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.