Asalamu alaikum from the Rif

I’m checking out Melilla, an autonomous Spanish city on the African continent, while staying in lodging right across the border in Morocco.

This is part of the large wetland area near the city of Nador, which is on Morocco's Mediterranean coast. In the distance, you can see the mountains of the eastern Rif, the range that runs across the north of Morocco all the way over to Tetouan and Chefchaouan in the northwest.

I wanted to see if Melilla, whose Muslim community is large enough for the city to have a big public Eid al-Fitr, felt like a place I could live. Yesterday I hopped the border (on foot!) and the answer, so far, is yes. Several mosques, including a big central mosque with a nice big sisters’ prayer space, halal butchers in most neighborhoods, wide sunny streets, buildings at human scale, and a lovely boardwalk with the Mediterranean to the east. Rents are reasonable, a price check at the butcher shop told me I'd be paying less for many items than I do now, and the city's dog:human ratio is blessedly low. Alhamdulillah.

So the reconnoitering has been fruitful. But the baraka of spending most of my trip in Dar al-Islam? Off the charts.

There was the mubarak 9-hour slow train ride from Kenitra to Beni Nsar the other day. Silence in the early morning despite a full train car, quiet conversations, occasionally fussy little ones who calmed down when they got a look at the multicolored fields of flowers outside the train window, the gentleman in Western dress in front of me who had his tasbih in hand, making the most of several hours in the train seat.

Then there are the mosques. Above is some maghribi script ornamentation on the wall at a masjid in Qariat Arkman, south of Nador. The central mosque in Melilla takes much of its design inspiration from the great mosque of Córdoba. I'll likely visit another masjid for ‘asr prayer in an hour, Insha Allah.

And finally there are the people. Yesterday, while we were waiting in line to cross the border back to Morocco, some brothers and sisters were discussing Shi'ism and Sayyidina Ali, may Allah SWT be pleased with him. Most of the conversation was in Darija, the Moroccan flavor of Arabic, but I could pick up some important words. I ask you: when was the last time you overheard lively deen conversation as you waited in a passport control line? Many Moroccans live and breathe their deen whether or not an outsider would consider them “pious.”

I'm hoping to relocate to Melilla this fall before the winter holidays in Spain make that difficult. Insha Allah. I'm looking forward to that, because I think it will simply be easier for me to live there as a Muslim. And if I spend 2025 and 2026 in Spain, I'll be eligible for permanent residency, Insha Allah.

But what I'm really looking forward to is proximity to Morocco.

Below: two bonus pics, both taken in the mind-blowingly mubarak city of Salé, which is just north of Rabat on the Atlantic coast.