I studied Muslim society without really experiencing it first hand. I expected Morocco to be exotic. I expected to be blown away by stunning scenery and unknown features of the society. I visited in peak season and I was worried I’d be bothered by millions of other tourist around.

I was prey of my own prejudices. I felt Moroccans close and similar to me, my family and my home region in Italy, Abruzzo. Life there seemed to me no different from those of my parents.

Matvejevic wrote in “Mediterranean Breviary”: "The Mediterranean is not only geography. Its boundaries are drawn in neither space nor time. […] They are not ethnic nor historical, state or national; they are like a chalk circle that is constantly traced and erased, that the winds and waves, that obligations and inspirations, expand or reduce. […] Europe was conceived on the Mediterranean”.

Morocco applied for the EU membership in 1987. It was turned down. What would be of Europe and Morocco today if Matvejevic was calling the shots in 1987?

Would I still see my grandma in the old Moroccan woman walking alone in the dry highlands?