It has often been said that opposites attract, and this holds particularly true in this timely tale of love and woe. Nadia Abdelhamid is a native of metropolitan Casablanca, the most storied city in the Kingdom of Morocco, who finds herself in a torrid romance with her student, Joshua Antoine, a handsome and cocky newcomer to the beautiful City of Casablanca by way of Cap-Haitien, Republic of Haiti.
The recipient of a bursary from Bourse Internationale De La Francophonie, Joshua Antoine is studying Finance at the University of Casablanca, where Nadia Abdelhamid is Professor of Humanities. Since he first set foot in Morocco, Joshua found himself absolutely mystified by the local ladies, who are reserved and nothing like the outgoing, fearless Afro-Caribbean and Latin American beauties he was used to seeing in the Caribbean.
With veiled, seemingly unattainable Moroccan Muslim beauties left and right, Joshua Antoine knew that he had his work cut out for him. The young Haitian knew that he had to be careful, since he noticed that in Morocco, the attitudes toward sex and relationships differed from the norms of the Caribbean. The local men were fiercely jealous and controlling, and the women were watched like hawks, and heaven help the foreign man who gets involved with one of those unreachable ladies.
Joshua Antoine, tall and handsome, intellectually gifted and athletic, had never been the type to back down from a challenge. He walked around the City of Casablanca, checking out the local restaurants, museums, mosques and art centers. The town was absolutely amazing. Joshua also noticed that in the Kingdom of Morocco, darker-skinned Moroccans weren't treated the same way as the more Arab-looking ones. Racism rears its ugly head everywhere, Joshua thought to himself.
Joshua brought up the not-so-hidden racial divide in Moroccan society in his Humanities class, which pissed off a lot of the other students, Arab-looking North Africans one and all, and caught the eye of Professor Nadia Abdelhamid. The professor, a lovely, bronze-skinned and dark-haired woman in her forties who dressed in the western-style, with long-sleeved shirts and stylish dress pants, intrigued Joshua. That's why, when Professor Abdelhamid asked Joshua to meet her at her office after class, he accepted...
"Madame, sorry for the outburst in class, but I know of what I speak, there's a lot of racism and dare I say sexism up here in Casablanca," Joshua said, as he sat in a chair in Professor Abdelhamid's office. The professor leaned back in her chair and looked at him, an odd little smile on her beautiful face. Joshua blinked as the Prof licked her full lips, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Stay focused, Joshua silently reminded himself.
"Why is that surprising, Joshua? I studied in France, and I was taunted for my skin color and my Islamic religion, and the white male academics at the University of Paris Sorbonne campus didn't think much of Middle-Eastern female grad students," Professor Abdelhamid said, shrugging. Nadia looked right into Joshua's eyes, and he blinked nervously, positively cowed.
