Hotel Al Hanna

by David Hapgood

The facade of the 'Hotel Al Hanna' in Oujda, Morocco: the entrance is beneath the red flags in the left/center of the photograph.

Eleven years ago I was traveling through Morocco with my friend Steve. En route to the town of Oujda I checked the guidebook to find lodgings for the night and couldn't believe my eyes -- there was a place called the 'Hotel Al Hanna.'

Al Hanna: the jet-car and nitro funny car legend, as well as an old friend of mine from the late 70s and early 80s. I never would have guessed that so many years later and in such a distant land that I'd run into a place named after him. Of course, I am stretching the truth here -- the place was actually called 'Hotel Al-Hanna,' with a dash in between the words, translated from Arabic as 'Hotel of the Happiness,' and without the slightest connection to drag racing.

Still, I have an active imagination.

There were other hotels in Oujda, places with names like 'Hotel el Menzeh, 'Hotel Riad' and 'Hotel Moussafir,' but it was settled: we were going to spend the night in the 'Hotel Al Hanna,' for all it was worth.

A closeup of the sign.

As it turned out, the 'Hotel Al-Hanna' was a five dollar a night cheapie, with shared bathrooms in the hall. It was so inexpensive that my pal and I could afford separate rooms, each with a large balcony. The place was spotless, and fully lived up to its Arabic name, 'Hotel of the Happiness'.

Morning view from my balcony at the 'Hotel Al-Hanna,' November 1996.

A month later when I returned home, I decided to contact Al Hanna and tell him about the place. We had fallen out of touch in the decade since I'd left the east coast, and I was actually a bit 'trigger shy' about how he might react to my whimsical discovery of his namesake hotel. After all, I remembered him as a 'no-nonsense' type of guy.

I had a phone number for him, but it was twelve years old. I was sure that the call wouldn't go through. This seemed to be confirmed when a man with a heavy New England accent answered the phone, a voice that I didn't recognize.

"Al?" I said, after a long pause.

"Yeah" he replied.

Apparently I'd been away from home for longer than I had realized -- it really was my old hero on the line. We talked for a half hour, catching up on a decade's worth of news. In the midst of it I told him about my discovery of the Al Hanna hotel in Morocco and asked if he was interested in seeing a photo of the place. Yes. A few weeks after I mailed it off to him I received a nice media packet for his latest jet car, with a personalized autograph (see image below). How cool!

It's probably a one in a billion chance that anyone else from the drag racing world might ever end up in Oujda, Morocco, but if so they could do a lot worse than the 'Hotel Al Hanna.' Oh yeah, and watch out for the pickpockets at the bus terminal (for the record, I got my wallet back -- as well as the money inside it -- on my own, without help of the police or anyone else. But that's another story).

An awesome souvenir from one of drag racing's jet car giants.

David Hapgood

hapgood_d@hotmail.com