Casablanca

Track Two
Casablanca

There's a new gin joint in town and now everybody comes to Rick's. In hommage to the 1942 movie, Casablanca, a former U.S. Diplomat has spent two years and invested one million dollars to bring Rick's Cafe to Moracco's largest city.

The elegant nightclub where Humphrey Bogart pined for Ingrid Bergman was just a set on a Warner Brother's sound stage in California. The film crew never got anywhere near North Africa.

The new Rick's has the same warm atmosphere as the Hollywood original. It's in a white villa, near the port with palm trees flanking the door. Inside, there are arched passageways and hanging lamps of colored glass.

The elegant restaurant debuted in March and is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week. On Sunday nights, founder, [Kathy Kreuger], serves popcorn and chili con carne to accompany screenings of Casablanca.

Kreuger says she watched the classic film hundreds of times to study the atmosphere, lighting and lines. Having become too attached to her new home, Kreuger left her job as a commercial attache at the U.S. Consolate in Casablanca, when she was supposed to transfer to Toyko in 2002.

She scouted for locations and decided to open in Casablanca's Medina, a bustling labrynth of narrow streets and shops. It took months to get the various authorizations, including a liquor license, no small task in this mostly Muslim nation.

Kreuger hoped to bring the American dream to the North African Kingdom. And she hoped to be a voice of American-Moraccan dialogue. "After September 11th, I realized that certain American values were no longer understood in the Muslim world," Kreuger said. "I wanted to show how Americans can be: open, determined and perservering."

Many Moraccans have become resentful of U.S. policies, especially after the Iraq War. The Moraccan government, however, is one of the United States closest allies in the Muslim world, and the U.S. has routinely praised Moracco for its democratic changes under King Mohammed the sixth.

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Education

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