Rain and Sex Workers.

McDonald's Latte.
The Paris Sisters. 🎶

In the middle of all the panic, curfews, headlines, and people treating supermarket shelves like archaeological sites, rain felt oddly civilised. I've never hidden the fact that I prefer grey skies. Sunshine is overrated. Give me clouds, damp pavements, and the smell of wet dust, and I'll happily postpone summer for another month.

I'm not particularly fond of McDonald's, but somehow that mediocre latte tasted considerably better that evening. Perhaps rain improves coffee. Or perhaps it simply lowers your standards. Either way, I still owe them three dirhams. Worth it. Walking through the city during curfew was surreal. The streets had finally stopped trying so hard. No unnecessary honking. No crowds. Just wet pavements reflecting streetlights as though the whole city had quietly switched itself into Blu-ray. 

If Edward Hopper had painted Casablanca during lockdown, it probably would've looked something like that.

Then I noticed them. A girl standing in the rain, and a man sitting comfortably inside a Mercedes, talking to her through a half-open window. I don't know who they were. Perhaps they were lovers. Perhaps they were saying goodbye. Perhaps I'd misunderstood the entire scene. All I know is that he eventually drove away while she remained there, drenched, watching the taillights disappear. There was something profoundly discourteous about leaving someone in the rain without ever bothering to step outside the car. Doors, I've realised, are sometimes much heavier than they look.

Houda noticed her before I did. She walked over and offered to help her with taxi money, or anything she might need. The girl smiled politely, thanked her, and declined. She stood there for another minute before quietly walking away. We never learned her name. We never found out what had happened. Some stories remain footnotes in other people's evenings, and perhaps that's exactly where they belong.

What lingered with me wasn't the argument. It was how effortlessly people invent biographies for strangers. A woman. At night. Wearing make-up. Standing alone. Apparently that's enough for some people to write an entire novel. One glance and we become novelists, assigning occupations, morals, intentions, and histories to someone whose voice we've never even heard. Literature deserves better than that.

Respect has always seemed wonderfully uncomplicated. You don't need to know someone's story to treat them with decency. You don't need to approve of every choice they make, or imagine what brought them there. You simply need to remember that every passer-by is living a life that refuses to fit inside your assumptions. Empathy isn't clairvoyance. It's restraint.

Maybe that's why I've always loved the rain. It doesn't discriminate. It falls on cafés and cemeteries, expensive cars and worn-out shoes, people going home and people with nowhere in particular to go. For a brief moment, everyone belongs to the same weather.

The smell of rain on dust. A McDonald's latte pretending to be coffee. The Paris Sisters humming in the background. Some evenings don't change your life.

They merely remind you what kind of person you'd like to remain.