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But the real Casablanca, I'd heard, the place you have to fly into from New York before you take off for more truly mysterious parts of Morocco -- like Fez or Marrakech -- isn't so charming. It's a chaotic town, full of messy traffic and hastily constructed concrete buildings. Casablanca is the no-nonsense economic center of Morocco, where the only thing called "Rick's Cafe" is a drink at the Hyatt.

I didn't want to spend time alone in Casablanca, but a canceled flight left me with a couple of days there before I was supposed to meet up with a male friend. I was anxious about being alone in an Arab city. Years ago, the one time I spent a few hours walking alone in Egypt, I was nearly raped, saved by the fact that I hit my assailant surprisingly hard and fast and then, praying he couldn't swim, escaped into the ocean. That's another story, and while I rationally knew it could have as easily happened in Miami or St. Tropez, I was still scared to be alone in an Arab country. But there I was, and since I didn't want to simply hole up in a hotel while I waited for my friend, ordering room service, I decided to try to seek out the company of women in Casablanca.

In Morocco, as in many Arab countries, there is a strict division between the public and private -- male and female -- worlds. The private world, largely unseen and unavailable to travelers, is in the home and the inviolable space each woman carries around with her in the long, shapeless robe she wears, the djellaba. The public world is the world of men. They drive the cabs, greet you in hotels and run the souks, offering you the opportunity to just come in and look, lady, it's not expensive. As a woman traveler, visiting the public world, you interact only with men. That creates some tension, because while everyone in Morocco seems happy to see a free-spending American tourist, they don't seem to understand women who walk around, heads uncovered, without the company of their husband or a male relative. Nor do they comprehend women who would wear shorts on the streets in their country -- and neither do I.

That isn't to say that you feel threatened as a woman traveling in Morocco -- just a little exposed, no matter how much you cover up. Men will approach you to sell things, to guide you through the labyrinthine medinas, but they are usually put off by a good-humored refusal. Sometimes, on buses or in the street -- as happened to me a couple of times on my trip -- they will pull hairs out of your head. It wasn't until I read anthropologist Elizabeth Fernea's book "A Street in Marrakesh" that I understood that this was not an aggressive act. Blond hair, she explains, is so unusual in Northern Africa that Moroccans think it's full of "baraka," or good karma. Pulling a piece of baraka from a stranger's head is just a good-luck charm, like plucking a four-leaf clover. It isn't hostile, but it's a little hard to get used to.

I started planning my days in Casablanca on the flight over. I chatted with the Moroccan flight attendants, asking them where to eat and what to visit in the city, and by the time we were midway through the Atlantic and the movie, we were asking one another about our marriages. They were amazed, in my case, that a marriage of love could end in divorce. One of the women was in an arranged marriage, and quite openly said she hated her husband. Another had refused to comply with her family's wishes that she have an arranged marriage and, at 32, expected to remain single. A third was waiting, living at home under the protective eye of her father.

By the time we were over the Azores, I made the mistake of inviting these three friendly women to have dinner with me one night in Casa. They exchanged some rapid Arabic among themselves, and finally said that they must invite me. I hadn't realized that women in Morocco, even in their 30s, don't just pick up and go out to dinner unaccompanied by men, and that for a Westerner to ask Moroccans to dinner in their hometown is like inviting herself to their house for a meal.

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