Morocco

Although as many as 240,000 Jews lived in Morocco as recently as the 1940s, only around 3,000 remain in the country today. Youness and I had not come to look for the Jews; we had come to look for the traces they left behind.

Behold, a singular structure soars above the banks of the Oum er-Rbia, Mother of Spring River, within the ramparts of the 16thcentury medina of Azemmour — Dar Zitoun, erstwhile “House of the Pasha.” Into her late father’s painstakingly restored riad, Moorish mansion, the author of Mint Tea and Minarets, an expert on Moroccan cuisine and heir to the property, warmly coaxes you.

Aomar Boum, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona, did meet Jews growing up in Morocco—that is, once he moved from his small village in the Anti-Atlas mountains to the city of Marrakesh for school. 

Since its launch in 2004, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) has grown steadily and is now classified as a global contender, according to the March 2013 Global Financial Centres Index, alongside Beijing and Moscow. This success has not gone unnoticed in Casablanca, which seeks to emulate Dubai’s example in hopes of attracting foreign investment and bulge-bracket financial institutions.