# Turning rooftops into cafes

Abdallah Zouhairi, Sana Benbelli

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Abdallah Zouhairi, Sana Benbelli. Turning rooftops into cafes: Nocturnal appropriations of public and private spaces in Casablanca (Morocco° during the pandemic. CIES-IUL. Proceedings II International Conference on Night Studies, CIES-IUL, pp.1-17, 2021, 978-972-8048-68-6. halshs-03702248

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<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>
Proceedings

II International Conference on Night Studies

Manuel Garcia-Ruiz, Jordi Nofre (Editors)
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>
Manuel Garcia-Ruiz, Jordi Nofre (Editors)

Proceedings

II International Conference on Night Studies

Abdallah Zouhairi

Alicia Fournier

Dominique Crozat

Elvan Can

Emanuele Giordano

Florian Guerin

Kasia Ozga

Nancy Gonlin

Nick Dunn

Nicolas Houel

Salomé Vincent

Sana Benbelli

Sophia Abidi

Yael Kidron
First edition: December 2021

ISBN: 978-972-8048-68-6

Authors are the solely responsible for their own work, and they keep all their respective rights, being authorized to reproduce totally or partially their own work. Authors declared that they are in possession of all rights, including the use of all the images included in their works, being the solely responsible for their inclusion.

© Abdallah Zouhairi

© Alicia Fournier

© Dominique Crozat

© Elvan Can

© Emanuele Giordano

© Florian Guerin

© Kasia Ozga

© Nancy Gonlin

© Nick Dunn

© Nicolas Houel

© Salomé Vincent

© Sana Benbelli

© Sophia Abidi

© Yael Kidron

Contacts:

ISCTE, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Av. Das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa Tel.: +351 217903000 • Fax: +351 217964710 E-mail: geral@iscte-iul.pt

http://www.iscte-iul.pt/home.aspx
# Turning Rooftops into Cafés:
## Nocturnal Appropriations of Public and Private Spaces in Casablanca (Morocco) During the Pandemic

**Abdallah Zouhairi**

University Hassan II,
Lab for Socio-anthropological Differentiations and Social Identities (LADSIS)
a.zouhairi@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4455-3374

**Sana Benbelli**

University Hassan II,
Lab for Socio-anthropological Differentiations and Social Identities (LADSIS)
Sana.benbelli@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3511-1574

**Abstract**

This article researches the relationship between urban public and private nighttime space during the lockdown imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic in Casablanca (Morocco). Based on ethnographic research, this work shows how public and private spaces were disrupted and reinvested with various forms of presence and appropriation by the inhabitants, especially in the popular neighbourhoods of Casablanca. This appropriation occurs in an intersection of new forms of nocturnal occupation linked to these spaces' social and cultural gender roles. The material boundaries between private and public spaces are also subject to conflict and even masculine domination during the nights of confinement. The results show how women usually occupy appropriated spaces and are even occupied by men, transforming them into exclusively male spaces. During this health crisis, the nightly closure of cafés led to a redirection of men towards private spaces or borders such as the rooftops of buildings, stairwells, and patios. The appropriation of rooftops, which in regular times is an exclusively female space used for drying clothes, consists of a transformation of these spaces for nocturnal use during the lockdown. The men install tables, chairs, and ashtrays to mark and prohibit this space from using women at night. Collective recreational practices such as hookah smoking in these spaces are carried out in a kind of translation from the male public space of the café to the female private space of the building rooftops.

**Keywords:** Cafés, Rooftops, Gender, Public-Private
Casablanca before the pandemic: a secluded space
of time

The public space in Casablanca is highly gendered. Certainly, the separation of the sexes in public
places of sociability such as cafes, restaurants and cinemas is not as strict as in other Middle Eastern
cities (Paquot, 2015; Gillot, 2004). However, the enjoyment of these spaces remains limited for women
and is accompanied by several forms of intimidation; stares, flirting, verbal violence, which means that
the latter generally prefer to exclude themselves from these places (Davis-Taïeb, 1998). The mixed
presence between men and women, which is usual in work, study, and transit, suddenly becomes
disturbing in places of leisure and relaxation. The refusal to mix becomes more and more pressing as
one moves away from the city centre towards its working-class and peripheral districts<fnref n="1" />.

In these Peripheral working-class neighbourhoods, leisure and recreation areas remain strictly
gendered, even excluding women who often opt for private or at least indoor spaces to gather together.
If they do, they have to move to the city centre neighbourhoods to access cafés, restaurants, cinemas
and sports halls that accept mixed gender.

In the study of the urban setting, the dimension of space cannot be considered without that of time
(Remy, 2015). Relationships of mobility (spatial, social, and economic) are often considered in relation
to movement in space and time. The "urban night" raises the issue of safety for both men and women.
However, beyond security issues, going out at night for a woman in Casablanca can be devaluing and
even stigmatising. Staying out at night can accentuate a man's virility and a woman's vulnerability.
Indeed, society considers a man who stays out at night in a valorising way. He is either responsible if
it is linked to a professional activity, ajob or a bon vivant to unwind. At the same time, any woman's
presence outside during the night is suspicious, and considered as khârja<fnref n="2" /> with all the negative
connotations that thisword has.

The transgressive framework of the action of "going out" emanates essentially from the factthat
it takes place outside, in space-time that, according to the social norm, is not adapted towomen and
especially outside the family framework, thus escaping surveillance and control. Moreover, the woman
who "goes out" acts outside a displacement thatinsinuates a character of idleness and an absence

<footnote n="1">¹ The centre of the city of Casablanca corresponds to the European districts built on the eve of the French colonisation, grouping together (Anfa- Anfa sup- Maarif- Sidi belyout- Bourgogne- Belvédère- Les Roches Noires), which house the main commercial and administrative centres of the city. While the famous districts were born later towards the 1950s following the decision of Marechal Lyautey to make Casablanca an industrial pole which favoured a great migration of the workforce. Lyautey called on Michel Ecochard to create several annexed neighbourhoods that could accommodate the large flows of migrants while respecting their way of life from a social and cultural point of view (Rachik, 1998: 253-255)</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² The term "kharja" in Moroccan Arabic language comes from the verb "to go out", which refers both to a presence in the public space and to the fact of going out of the right way, i.e. doing something that goes against social norms and especially concerning the trade of intimacy. See the work of Meriam Cheikh on the notion of "khrij" (2010)</footnote>
of responsibility strongly condemned for women. On the other hand, a woman who works (kheddama) is in apendular and punctuated movement, a shuttle movement in space and time between her home and her place of work, since her movement is strictly linked to defined spaces and times. Thus, outside of these workspaces/times and outside of the work situation itself, a woman must remain "fixed" (tabta) and "surrounded" (mhasna)<fnref n="3" /> by the presence and care of her male family members. As a result, sedentary life in space and time is socially perceived as a feminine ideal.

## The café, a public but gendered place

The café remains the public, commercial place that most reflects the character of urban life since it is a space that is rare or even absent in rural areas. It is a flourishing trade whose expansion is in geometric progression in the city of Casablanca. It is a fundamental element in the architectural structure of the metropolis, and its absence can change its morphology to the point where certain districts can become dull, austere, and less safe. A café in a neighbourhood can increase security among the people who live there and pass through it.

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.** Neighborhoud café in Casablanca. Casablanca during the month of Ramadan. May 2018 © Abdallah Zouhairi & Sana Benbelli</figcaption></figure>

For men, a café is an intermediary place that serves as a place to relax, meet people, sometimes as a place of work for people living off the grid, and more often as a place to meet friends. Young men cannot meet in the family setting since the increasingly cramped living conditions and lack of personal space make it impossible to receive male friends indoors, except for very short visits in the presence of other family members. The café thus takes on the role of a second home in which to entertain. Unlike

<footnote n="3">³ The adjective "surrounded (mhasna)" comes from the word "hisn" in Arabic, which means "tower", whose primary function is to protect and dominate what surrounds her. The "mohassana" in the Muslim religion is a married woman to a husband who plays such a "tower". The husband is supposed to dominate, separate, and protect her from all the outside people. In the Moroccan culture, the "mhasna" is a woman who remains home under the protection and domination of men in her family.</footnote>
men, most women's meetings take place indoors in the intimate and protected setting of the home. The reception of other women in the home can automatically lead to the expulsion of men to the outside to allow more freedom and privacy for women.

Legally, a café has fixed hours of operation. It starts at about six in the morning and stays open until ten in the evening. However, cafés adapt their opening hours to the presence of customers, which changes according to the seasons and events. A café may stay open until the last customers leave, and this may be at eleven PM in the winter.

The café follows the rhythm of its customers' lives, such as during the nights of the month of Ramadan, which is the fasting period in Muslim religion. Moreover, once in the café, time seems to stand still for the users who stop measuring it, especially with friends. They come for a quarter of an hour and stay for three hours. They do not come to the café only to drink or meet friends; they also come to pass the time. Moreover, coffee consumption is often accompanied by the discreet consumption of other stimulants rarely consumed at home or in public spaces, such as cannabis, Kif<fnref n="4" />, Maajoun<fnref n="5" /> and Hookah (Shisha)<fnref n="6" />. Tobacco is subject to less social and family control of consumption, but its consumption is more related to the outdoor space.

# Casablanca's cafés in the rhythm of the pandemic

## Total closure: day and night

During the first wave of Covid-19 in Casablanca, and due to the number of cases, the authorities decided to close down several public spaces and services such as sports halls, bathhouses (Hammams), hairdressing salons, party halls, and public spaces, gardens, restaurants and cafes. Shortly afterwards, general confinement was adopted, and outings in the public space had to be for specific reasons such as work or other urgent or indispensable needs. Such a decision has been taken in several countries worldwide to limit the spread of the coronavirus. The closure of public spaces disrupted the urban rhythm, both during the day and at night. The confinement raised hitherto invisible constraints concerning domestic space as nature of dwelling, its surface, the number of rooms and especially the importance of the spaces of contact with the outside such as windows, balconies and rooftops.

In the case of cafés, the closure of these spaces has disrupted the daily schedule of a large

<footnote n="4">⁴ Kif: refers to the leaves and stems of the Indian hemp plant, a hallucinatory plant that grows in North Africa, which are finely cut and smoked in traditional pipes. The word "kif" in Arabic refers to the pleasure obtained from its consumption.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ It is a paste of flour, almonds, sesame seeds, cannabis seeds, nutmeg that is mixed with dried figs and honey, formed into small balls and eaten with tea.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ A water pipe or Arabian pipe is used to smoke tobacco but also hash (cannabis).</footnote>
population of users of this space, especially men. The café plays a role in regulating the daily rhythm for men such as pensioners, unemployed young people, and intermediaries in certain activities who use the café as a meeting and negotiation place. The urban space in certain districts of Casablanca is problematic due to the absence of urban furniture capable of providing a place of fixation for long periods. Not many public gardens could play this role, and when they do exist, the conditions do not allow for shady, secure sitting positions. Café, on the other hand, allows for these physical and social arrangements. The café enables people to sit in a chair, in the shade or the sun, in a protected space and for extended periods that can go on for several hours. The cost of such a service is also relatively low compared to other more affluent leisure areas of Casablanca. A cup of coffee or tea often costs less than 1 euro in most popular cafés. The café also acts as a refuge from a situation where housing does not allow for a corner or a space for continuous presence, particularly in small-area housing. This constraint, which initially appears to be spatial, is also social and relational. In popular housing, in addition to the small surface area, there is the constraint of the number of habitable rooms where men and women carry out a more or less negotiated order of space occupation. In Moroccan culture, as in the traditional Arab-Muslim culture, the domestic interior is often associated with the feminine and women. This representation is operationalised in the form of a social norm reproduced by both men and women. Even within the same family, mixed-gender poses a spatial and moral problem in the sense that intimacy is jeopardised by the promiscuity caused by the continuous presence of men in the interior domestic space. Outside becomes space for men to resort to and be present during the daytime, apart from mealtimes and sleeping times. For young adult men who still live with their parents, mainly for economic reasons, the café space becomes a place to pass the time instead of remaining permanently in the domestic space. Many unemployed young men choose to sleep most of the day to wake up in the evening and stay up late at night. For others, mornings are spent in a local coffee shop or neighbourhood café until mealtime at the family home.

Thus, a social distribution in terms of masculine/feminine occurred without knowing the private/public spatial distribution. Each group occupied space as its own and took care to expel others even within the framework of family or couple. The domestic space in the working-class neighbourhoods of Casablanca is ideally that of women, organised by them and made primarily for their social use. At the same time, the space of the café is an ideally masculine space where the intrusion of women is rarely accepted.

## Night closure: a confiscated night

A metropolis like Casablanca is known for its intense nightlife and activity. Being the economic capital of Morocco, Casablanca is the place of a night economy that includes trade, services, industries and especially leisure. A sort of collective imagination Casablanca has also been associated with the film "Casablanca", which has amply articulated the adventures and encounters woven throughout the film. This imaginary Casablanca nightlife has been perpetuated in reality beyond the cinema screen. Moroccan filmography also gives a great deal of space to this nightlife in Morocco's largest city. Films
such as "Casablanca by Night" (2003), "A Casablanca, les anges ne volent pas" (2004), "Casanegra" (2008), conveya Casablanca nightlife image made of freedom, enjoyment but also insecurity and uncertaintywhile reserving for women the cliché of night women or "public" women (Bahmad, 2013).
This modern image of urban life in a city like Casablanca can be put into perspective to representations of the night in Arab literature in general. These nights are moments spent indoors and discreetly. The place of gender is also well-differentiated in this image since women are primarily captives, slaves or at most secret companions. Accounts of *Thousand and One Night* (Mahdi, 1995) have reinforced this theme, which has been relayed by other literary or artistic productions such as the paintings of Arab seraglio and harems at night. Researchers who have worked or tried to work on the Casablanca night have also been confronted with this image of the forbidden presence of women in cafés during the day as well as at night, as can be seen in the texts of Davis-Taïeb (1998), Arrif (2011) and Benbelli (2017; 2018).

Modern nightlife in Casablanca is differentiated according to neighbourhoods and social categories, creating multiple nightlife spaces ranging from the chicest and closed places to cafés in working-class neighbourhoods that are open to everyone at night. Each night user thus finds a space corresponding to his or her financial resources and a particular cultural and social capital that filters access to some of these nighttime spaces.

Nighttime cafés in working-class neighbourhoods are thus frequented by young and people who often come from the same neighbourhood and are linked by their spatial and social affiliation. These cafés play a central role as a space that allows for a nighttime existence without moving to other spaces in the city that require both physical movement and a set of arrangements necessary to access these spaces. Moving at night to places of recreation requires either taking a rather expensive taxi or having a means of transport, notably a car or motorcycle. In addition to this constraint, accessing leisure areas other than the popular ones often requires appropriate clothing and, most importantly, enough money for consumption and tips.

This spatial segmentation of leisure spaces in the Casablanca nightlife offers products and services to all social categories. The nighttime cafés are filled with users who frequent them for collective or individual nocturnal practices such as playing cards, checkers, drinking hookah and other stimulants, reading the next day's newspapers or connecting to the mobile phone through the WiFi<sup>7</sup> provided by the café.

The first period of general confinement, which imposed the day and night closure of cafés, caused an inevitable disruption in the daily practices of the various users of these spaces. Time schedules were turned upside in favour of renewed importance of the home as a space of confinement imposed

<footnote n="7"><sup>7</sup> The connection to the internet network via 3G or 4G remains expensive in Morocco, the connection via a WIFI network is not available in all homes, and if it exists, the speed remains average and does not allow a good connection without interruption, unlike the cafes that almost all use optical fiber with a reasonably connection speed.</footnote>
by the health situation. As the primary users of the cafés, it was mainly men who had to reorganise
their space-time by negotiating a place in the domestic interior. The constraints of the size of the
dwelling and the possibility of carrying out certain practices in the café emerged as a critical element
in this continuous return of men to the domestic space. In dwellings with one or two rooms, this
presence proved to be problematic. Thus, other strategies to circumvent this forced closure were
gradually developed to make the best use of this space. In addition, despite the prohibition of
unnecessary presence in the public space outside, practices of resistance have been observed,
especially in the working-class districts of Casablanca. In these neighbourhoods, where alleys and
dead-ends limit the rapid access of the containment authorities, many inhabitants went out alone or
in groups near the doors of their houses or buildings. The arrival of the authorities was known a little
in advance and allowed them to return to their homes to avoid trouble. If necessary, any open door
became a possible refuge while waiting for the authorities to leave, or in the worst case, one could
reach home by going through the rooftops of the neighbouring houses.

After Morocco experienced some improvement regarding the Covid-19 health situation, the authorities allowed cafés to reopen during the day but close between 9 pm and 5 am. This window corresponded to the curfew imposed on service, commercial and non-essential travel activity, but it also corresponded to the rush hours in the cafés, which started from 6 pm until closing time. The period of confinement saw a halt in the activity of several services considered non-essential, notably the cafés. The adverse social consequences on the employees of these services were vital. In café workers, waiters and bartenders, state support requires registration and declaration by the employer with the national social security fund. Despite the State's efforts to cushion this impact by providing compensation to workers affected by the lockdown, a large majority of these workers did not benefit from this financial support. Several café workers were deprived of this support and saw their financial and, therefore, social situation strongly affected by the confinement and closure of their place of employment.

After reopening during the day, the users happily returned to the cafés open during the day. The role of café as a multifunctional space in the city was thus strongly confirmed by an intensive return to daytime cafés.

The definition of day and night in Arab-Muslim societies follows the rhythm of the prayers, which have fixed times during the day. The day begins with the dawn prayer (Fajr) and ends with the evening prayer (Maghrib). This prayer corresponds to the sunset. Another prayer is performed in the core of the night (Isha) or at any time but not after dawn. The Muslim prayer can be practised at home, but the religious tradition strongly recommends doing the prayers in the mosque. The mosque thus plays a significant role in towns and villages in such a way that it organises the social and economic life of the surrounding communities. It is mainly men who are most involved in this spiritual and spatial-temporal relationship with mosques. The muezzin, who is always responsible for announcing the prayers by calling out in the mosques, plays a clock that regulates day and night time.
However, during the month of Ramadan, mosques are used even more as a space for prayer. The sacredness of the month of Ramadan in the Muslim world makes it a period during which religious practice is more intense than the other lunar months of the year. During this month, Muslims fast from sunrise (*Fajr*) to sunset (*Maghrib*). However, this daytime abstinence ends with the muezzin's call for the evening prayer (*Maghrib*). At this point, nightlife begins, where abstinence is paused until dawn with the *Fajr* prayer. This nighttime interval is very lively in most Muslim towns and cities, either through vigils or through the late presence of people in outdoor spaces, especially in cafes. As the dawn prayer is usually around 4 to 5 am, nightlife during Ramadan is spread throughout the night. For a good part of the male population, the Ramadan night is consumed alternately between the mosque and the café. In Cafés, Ramadan nights are famous with rounds of drinks (coffees and teas) which follow one another at the rhythm of the rounds of the board games, especially the card game as well as the joints smoked in the group, a practice which is done less and less since the appearance of Covid-19.

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the habits of urban dwellers during the nighttime confinement of the month of Ramadan. The usual nightlife during this month has been cancelled. The closure of mosques during Covid-19 has also meant that prayers are held at home, including those in the evening. During the lockdown, regulars of the evenings in the cafes were deprived of a space for meetings and social conviviality that could not offer a home.

# Rooftops transformed into cafés

## A female space in regular daytime

The rooftops of houses and buildings are reserved for women as an ample space of the interior domestic space. A rooftop is an elevated place concerning the street, an external and public space. It, therefore, allows women to make rooftops a kind of space open to the ambient air, but which inside being attached to the dwelling still preserves from the outside look. If the initial architecture of the dwelling foresees a balcony, it is transformed into interior space by works of aluminium or tinted glass. On the contrary, windows and balconies expose them to a rejected and sometimes forbidden vis-à-vis; blinds and curtains of the windows are generally doubled.

A rooftop is where women carry out tasks that they cannot perform in the indoor accommodation. Laundry is one of the main tasks that has permanently been assigned to women. The methods of washing clothes are still primarily traditional. The laundry is often washed by hand. Washing machines that allow complete spinning are pretty expensive for a majority of households in working-class areas. In addition, the interior space of the dwellings does not allow for the installation of a washing machine with a spin cycle, which takes up space. However, there are washing machines with reduced costs and small sizes that do not spin. In this case, the spinning is done manually. Drying clothes in a sunny place is the safest and most efficient way to dry them. The houses in the working-
class areas do not have balconies but only windows, which are often not sunny. Therefore, the use of the rooftop as a drying space is the best way to complete the cycle of washing clothes and even sheets and blankets. The daytime functionality of the rooftop is linked to the sun as a source of heat for drying clothes and hygiene and a relationship to the female body. Rooftops are spaces where women can apply traditional beauty products and recipes such as Henna for the hair and body and other recipes whose preparation and application are made in the traditional way<fnref n="8" />. Rooftops are also adequate for drying seeds necessary for the preparation of bread and specific culinary recipes that are always done at home and for the dehydration of certain fruits, meats, and aromatic herbs.

In Maghrebian and Arab-Muslim literature, rooftops are often described as women's meeting places par excellence. When men enter, it is often in a forbidden and sensual context. Moroccan cinema has also recounted this image of female eroticisation of the rooftops. These images show the rooftops as places for lovers to meet that the shared space of the street would not allow. Conventionally forbidden to men, the rooftops are spaces for meetings, gossip and confidences between neighbours during the day, at the time of hanging a cloth or collecting it, and less and less frequently for the collective preparation of specific recipes linked to festive events<fnref n="9" />.

The architecture of large numbers habitations was adopted by French urbanists since the protectorate and continued with the economic or low-cost housing has meant that the rooftops of the houses are adjoining, leaning against each other. Despite specific separations put in place by the inhabitants to separate the rooftops, such as fences or walls strewn with barbed wire or broken glass, access between rooftops is still possible. This access becomes synonymous with insecurity, especially at night. Hearing noises on the rooftop during the night is a cause for fear and is equivalent to an illegal or even dangerous presence. At night, the rooftops become empty and forbidden spaces. Locking the access doors to the rooftop is the safest way to prevent intrusion from other rooftops that are connected.

The housing crisis in Casablanca has led to owners modifying rooftops to make them independent dwellings. Some rooftops are even used as rental accommodation or by the owner himself or a member of his family as an extension of the main house. In the case of several shared dwellings, such as multi-occupancy houses or apartment buildings, the ownership of the rooftop is common. Any attempt to make the shared rooftop a permanent living space is opposed by the other inhabitants. The use of the shared rooftop follows a diurnal rhythm that empties them at night. Exceptionally, during festive events such as the feast of the sacrifice, the rooftop plays another role, allowing to lodge the animal of the sacrifice(ram) several days and to carry out the operation of the sacrifice the day of the feast. The

<footnote n="8">⁸ See Fatima Mernissi's account in Rêves de femmes (1996) of women's daily life and experiences in the patios and rooftops of the houses in Fes city (Morocco).</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ It was customary in Morocco to prepare recipes that are mostly related to festive events such as Ramadan, religious holidays and wedding celebrations. These recipes require mutual help and a chain of work between women who often choose the rooftop as a shared space for this activity.</footnote>
women then use the sunshine of the rooftops for the traditional drying of meat during the day, and at night the meat shreds are brought in to prevent them from being eaten by cats or even stolen.

Rooftops can also be used as living spaces for domestic animals such as chickens, rabbits or pigeons. However, individual rooftops often allow such animals because of the possible conflicts between inhabitants about this cohabitation. These animals can be pets such as dogs or used for egg and meat products such as chickens and rabbits. Young people usually raise pigeons for resale. The rooftops can also house plants and flowerpots used to decorate but sometimes are used to grow aromatic plants such as mint or basil.

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2.** Rooftop transformed. Summer 2020. © Abdallah Zouhairi & Sana Benbelli</figcaption></figure>

# A space transformed into a café during a pandemic: Circumvention practices

The occurrence of the Covid-19 health crisis caused a rupture in urban lifestyles in general. The assignment to stay at home has strongly questioned this "home" as a complex and even conflicting space. As authorities defined a home as an interior beyond the doorstep of the dwellings, people tried to adapt to a forced presence in these houses.

Interior spaces that were previously of no value in the dwellings have taken on great importance. The rooftops and especially the balconies and interior gardens were used to settle in during confinement. Therefore, it was necessary to negotiate a place or a corner in this home and review the present times in this interior, particularly for men who spent a large part of their time outside.
Gender relations were put to the test in a spatio-temporal encounter forced and provoked by the law. These invested spaces had to be redesigned to make them functional and serve well as a replacement for outdoor spaces. The interior spaces have suddenly become spaces of conflict, contested by members of the same family who should in principle live together. For example, the living room in Moroccan homes is a dual-use space. It is used at night as a dormitory for children in families that do not have enough individual rooms, but it is organised and reserved for receiving guests during the day. No activity is allowed in this space, which is maintained by the women and costs money to set up. The men locked in their homes following the confinement squatted in this space to work, study, entertain themselves or languish throughout the day, which imposed an additional workload on the women to tidy up afterwards and exposed the furniture to accelerated decay.

The rooftops, in particular, have seen a sudden male investment. Whether the private rooftops of individual houses or the communal rooftops of apartment buildings, this elevated space in contact with the open air has seen its female use in regular times transformed into a natural place for bypassing the confinement, which was based on the principle of staying athome. Moreover, rooftops have become a meeting place for young and men of the buildings. The mass architecture adopted in these buildings allows shared access to all the inhabitants of the apartments constituting a building. Moreover, other people who do not live in the building could go up to the rooftop when they know someone or have obtained permission to access it. A Stranger's presence on the rooftop would be considered as an intrusion during standard times.

Nevertheless, in times of confinement, it is a kind of invitation offered even to the non-inhabitants of these buildings. This flexibility consists of reconstructing patterns of presence in outside space in regular times and translating these modes of presence in the rooftops. Networks of friends who used to meet on street corners or in café have been taken over in the rooftops.

Both men and women, in a way, legitimise this appropriation of the rooftops by men by an opportunity to extend the private interior space upwards on the rooftops. In this way, women confirm their domination over the interior space of the dwellings by systematically expelling men from the living rooms, which must remain clean and tidy. Otherwise, the prolonged presence of men in the living rooms and sometimes their intrusion into the kitchens can cause severe problems in the couple.

Smoking is still a predominantly male practice outside Casablanca in particular. Smoking practices have changed over the past twenty years, and smoking at home is increasingly rare, no more ashtrays placed on dining tables or in living rooms. The medical and media discourse has contributed to this decrease. However, smoking has mainly remained a male practice cannot be explained by these media campaigns alone. In Moroccan society, smoking for a woman has remained a practice that is frowned upon and labelled as deviant behaviour in the public space. Cafés, however, offer a unique space where this social norm is not strongly operational. Therefore, home confinement was a problem for smokers who needed access to the open air not to disturb other family members. The rooftops proved
ideal, especially for male smokers, who could also meet other people and friends. Such possibility was not possible for women smokers, who usually shunned the cafes far from the neighbourhood and where they are known to do so. During the lockdown, women were deprived of public spaces and rooftops as an alternative space to smoke, and they could not do so in their own homes either.

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3. café space on rooftop. Summer 2020. © Abdallah Zouhairi & Sana Benbelli</figcaption></figure>

The rooftops were thus a privileged space to serve as a replacement for a closed and forbidden outdoor space that was first continuously open during the day but remained inaccessible at night. The development of the rooftops began with the installation of seating devices that resembled cafés. In addition to the chairs brought from home, the inhabitants installed wooden or plastic crates used for transporting fruit and vegetables as chairs. The tables were either cobbled together from wooden supports, including these crates or assembled using bricks found somewhere in these rooftops. In a symbolic gesture of this maleappropriation of this typically feminine space, the clothes drying lines were moved so as not to hurt or impede the men's movement on the rooftop.

# The night as a border

## Regulating access to the rooftops turned in cafés

In his book “*La Nuit, dernière frontière de la Ville*” (Night, the last frontier of the city), Gwiazdzinski (2005) shows how the night continuously shifts urban borders, whether they arespatial or social borders. In the case of these rooftops, the night during this health crisis disrupts the city’s external borders and the domestic and private borders between men and women. This disruption is, in fact,
regulation of the gender relations within the "home". The sudden onset of Covid-19 left little time or space for actual negotiation of domestic space between men and women. Solutions had to be found to allow for "social" survival during the health crisis. Installation in rooftops as a space taken by the men in exchange for the interior dwelling space proved to be a deal between men and women during this crisis. Women who have seen their living and circulation space shrink are clinging to what remains of the private space inside the home. For women, the kitchen or the living room are territories to be defended, if only to minimise the chore of tidying and cleaning. As for the men, by occupying the rooftop, they have automatically expelled the women, firstly by their massive presence. By certain types of consumption, mainly smoking, and for the women who still resist it is vulgar language and coarse language. Three elements usually exclude women from cafés or contribute to their self-exclusion.

The furniture and objects placed on the rooftops act as signifiers and markers of a male territorialisation of the rooftops. Laundry is no longer dried rooftops, and any presence of women on these rooftops, even during the day, has become a sort of transgression of an implicitly established pact. The lighting of these rooftops in the night also played a role in this male appropriation. This lighting is brought to a minimum. Some rooftops were connected to bulbs powered by a wire from a house or an apartment of some inhabitants. Often, the lighting is connected to the ordinary lighting system for the shared spaces in the building. In other cases, this lighting is limited to the lamp of a mobile phone or even more to the light coming from the big street lamps.

It is during the night that the border described by Gwiazdzinski (2005) is all the more reinforced. In addition to the border objects installed, the night brings another dimension to the ban on access to women. At nightfall, the meeting between men is increasingly experienced in an emotion conveyed by the same air that gives Casablanca its nocturnal myth carried in the imaginary. This night air of Casablanca moistened in rooftops gives a feeling of freedom from the curfew in the streets and avenues below.

The forced transformation of rooftops into cafés is not only related to furniture or lighting. A particular noisy atmosphere usually accompanies this collective male presence on the rooftops. Loud discussions, laughter, music, or the loud sound of a football match commentator accompanying an Italian Calcio, the Spanish Liga, or the local derby match followed by shouts of victory or insults expressed without the players' knowledge are all sound elements on the rooftop. However, neighbours tolerated such noise for different reasons. The most important is that each family in the building has at least one member of the family on the rooftop-café with the others so that the inhabitants cannot express their discontent when the father or one of the children is the source of the noise. In addition, the frustration of confinement, and the security approach adopted by the authorities to dissuade residents from being on the streets, which often turns into confrontations that can end in arrests, means that families willingly put up with nighttime disturbances on the rooftop cafés.
# Objects of nocturnal territorialisation: transforming a rooftop into a café

It is, therefore, during the night that these become active and become perched cafés. The practices and rituals of street cafés are reproduced with varying degrees of perfection. Coffee as a drink is raised as much as possible to the standard of quality, taste and consistency to resemble the street. To achieve this, users of the rooftops had to act on coffee as raw material and on the coffee machines. Given that tea<fnref n="10" /> is the main drink of families in Morocco, coffee occupies a secondary place in consumption both as a product and as a material. It is often the easy-to-prepare soluble coffee. In the best case, it is the Italian aluminium pot used to prepare cups of flavoured coffee, consumed most often by women for therapeutic purposes. Suppose the new Nespresso machines have burst onto the scene and taken their place in the middle of the beautiful and prestigious Moroccan living rooms of the upper social class. In that case, they remain an expensive object with no return on investment for the working and middle classes. Consuming one's favourite drink in a café is not only cheaper for a working-class man but also allows him to maintain his daily practices away from the family living space. The confinement has created a kind of nostalgia among the users of the café, young and old alike evoke this absence and nostalgia in daily discussions and also on online discussion groups.

In social networks, with the gradual deconfinement, the hashtag \#ouvrez_nousLes_cafés" appeared and spread very quickly. However, as long as the closure of cafes continues, such exploitation of the rooftops increases<fnref n="11" />.

For the rooftops to play the role of lost cafés, they had to be dressed in the skin of these cafés and mark their territory with the appropriate furniture and the appropriate practices. In this Spatio-temporal territory of the street café, chairs, tables and ashtrays are indispensable elements for recreating the atmosphere of the café, but not the most important. The hero of these male nocturnal encounters remains the coffee itself. The nicotine-caffeine encounter on the rooftops of the buildings could not be achieved by the soluble coffee or the flavoured coffee in the homes. In this context, strong demand for coffee machines was registered during the period of confinement, followed by an adaptation of the market. Indeed, several household appliance companies started to offer promotions

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ Moroccan tea is the most consumed drink by the Moroccan population. It is a mixture of green tea, aromatic plants chosen according to the season (mint, pennyroyal, verbena, wormwood), and sugar prepared in appropriate utensils available in every home.</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ We have collected several texts in these groups and forums with a sometimes-ironic tone that shows this nostalgia for the cafes. e.g. the distortion of the line of poetry by the Arab poet Mahmoud Darwich "If they give us back the old cafes, who will bring us back the comrades?" it was changed to "Just bring us back the cafes, we don't care about comrades!". Another text was circulated in the form of a declaration of honour signed by café users and posted on their Facebook wall: "I, the undersigned, undertake to drink tea even if the waiter has forgotten to put sugar in it, to drink coffee even without foam, to drink juice even if mixed with water, to sit on the coffee table even if not cleared, to accept to share my table with other customers even if I do not know them, not to ask the waiter to put on the Calcio game even if the game shown on the TV is one of the neighbourhood kids, to increase the tip, to share with the waiter my sandwich and the cakes! #OpenCafes".</footnote>
and sites, such as Jumia company that offered a wide choice and delivery service. The price of machines ranges from 160 to 700 euros depending on the brand and features, which is too expensive for the budgets of families already affected by a work stoppage and sometimes job loss. Two methods of adaptation were observed. First, neighbours contribute to purchasing a machine and the purchase of coffee and sugar. The whole thing remains a shared property that the neighbours could and can still use as long as the cafés are closed at night and whose management is organised by consensus. The second case, which is less frequent but more interesting, is when one of the inhabitants without a stable job invests in the coffee machine and turns it into a business on the rooftop. Given the transportable size of the machine, this person can use it to sell coffee during the day on the street corner. Themarket for second-hand professional pressure coffee machines has also grown with theemergence of car cafes set up on the avenues and roadsides to sell coffee to take away. During the day and night, when the coffee shops were closed, young entrepreneurs who owned vehicles took the opportunity to turn their vehicles into mobile coffee shops.

Since the pace has changed during the total confinement, long evenings with men in rooftops have become the only escape. We linger there as long as we can. Wego from rooftop to rooftop and from rooftop to rooftop to meet a friend or to get a cup of coffee. The sociability of the cafés in regular times is territorialised in Rooftop in time of covid-19. The elements of this territorialisation have graduallycome together to draw the boundaries that now include men and exclude women through purely masculine practices linked to the masculine and public space of the café; the football matches watched in groups on mobile phones or computers, the card games that are played.

While touring the café, the consumption of cigarettes and other stimulants, the smoking, the masculine and sometimes vulgar language that men exchanges while watching the matches or playing the game. All these elements and others have contributed to excluding women at night and during the day from a traditionally feminine spacebecause it is in the private sphere and from there to lock them up doubly inside the apartments and rooms.

Men chasing women from the rooftops have recycled these private spaces into spaces for sociability and male meetings of a public nature. On the other hand, women have not been able to invent collective meeting spaces. Apart fromdiscussions in pairs or threes from apartment landings or windows, collective sharing or exchange meetings had no physical place for women. They had to be deterritorialised in moreclosed virtual spaces. WhatsApp groups between neighbours, group video calls, and lives became the only alternative to exchange, talk and share information and recipes. Home visits are less and less frequent due to the risk of contamination. Women have taken on the responsibility of looking after the home by disinfecting, cleaning, and sterilising everything that comes into the house, especially the men after they return from parties on the rooftop- cafes where these measures are rarely respected.

The rooftops during the Covid-19 pandemic were transformed into spaces of utopia or even
heterotopia (Foucault, 2008) capable of containing the emotions that the confinement generated. The feeling of a confiscation of a right to the city (Lefebvre, 1967) that was appropriated for health and general interest reasons pushed these usersto create a "space of hope" (Harvey & Harvey, 2000) as part of a reaction to a spatiotemporal "geography of domination" of urban within the framework of legitimate institutional power. However, in the wake of this resistance through the appropriation of a frontier space, men are at the same time reproducing male domination (Bourdieu, 1990) in the sense that their reappropriation of the rooftops is done at the expense of spatial and chronological segregation towards women. Although this segregation is made in a kind of barter of private spaces, the transaction does not seem explicit or implicit. It was done in a hurry and in the constraint of doing with freedom suddenly confined for everyone.

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