The People Who Changed Us: Karim's Unexpected Lesson in Time
The Encounter That Changed His Perspective
It was during a seemingly routine transfer from Fes to Chefchaouen in early 2023 when Karim met Robert, a retired physics professor from Boston. While most travelers use the three-hour journey to nap or scroll through photos, Robert spent the first hour simply watching the landscape in silence.
“Usually I fill silence with information about the regions we pass through,” Karim recalls. “But something about Robert’s quality of attention made me pause. He wasn’t waiting for entertainment—he was deeply observing.”
When they passed a group of farmers manually harvesting wheat, Robert asked if they could pull over briefly. Karim, accustomed to facilitating quick photo opportunities, was surprised when Robert didn’t reach for his camera.
“He just watched them work for several minutes, then asked me about their timing methods,” Karim explains. “At first, I didn’t understand his question.”
What unfolded was a conversation about how different cultures perceive and structure time. Robert shared his lifelong fascination with temporal perception across cultures, explaining how industrial societies broke time into standardized units while agricultural communities often measure it through tasks and natural rhythms.
“I’ve been explaining Morocco to travelers for years, always rushing to fit everything into tight schedules,” Karim says. “But Robert asked questions no one had asked before—about how my grandparents measured their days before watches became common, about how our language expresses time concepts. He was genuinely curious about how we experience the hours of our lives, not just how we fill them with activities.”
The conversation continued throughout their journey, weaving through philosophical perspectives on time from Islamic traditions, Western physics, and Amazigh cultural practices. By the time they reached Chefchaouen’s blue streets, something had shifted for Karim.
The Lasting Impact
“That conversation with Robert fundamentally changed how I approach my work,” Karim reflects. “I realized I had unconsciously adopted a very Western, touristic relationship with time—always focused on efficiency, schedules, and fitting in as many experiences as possible.”
In the months following, Karim began incorporating different perspectives on time into his guiding approach. He now sometimes suggests that clients experience a place without their watches or phones. For interested travelers, he offers an optional discussion about how traditional Moroccan culture structures time around prayer calls, seasonal changes, and communal rhythms rather than clock hours.
“I’ve started building deliberate moments of unscheduled time into journeys—even just 30 minutes in a café without an agenda, or time to wander without a destination,” Karim explains. “Many clients later tell me these became their most memorable Morocco experiences.“
When a group recently expressed frustration about a weather delay, Karim shared some of Robert’s perspectives on time as a fluid rather than fixed resource. The shift in their attitude was remarkable as they embraced the unexpected pause as part of their journey rather than an interruption to it.
What We All Can Learn
