In Essaouira the light comes off the Atlantic
soft and gold, and the cats own all of it. They drape over sun-warm doorsteps, fold
into piles of carpet, and keep watch from blue windowsills.
Mchach (مشاش, Darija for cats) is a love letter to
them: a hand-painted medina you wander with your fingertips. Ease open the blue
door, stir the drying laundry, look twice at the beached boat,
and a cat unfolds from its hiding place,
painted in the coat and pose of a real Essaouira stray. Find one and it gives you
its photograph, its name, and what it was doing when it thought no one was
looking.
Eighty-nine cats hidden in the walls. No grid, no hurry, just
the oldest pleasure there is: looking slowly at an ordinary street until it
blooms with life.