توهان فالدرب وطلب مساعدة باش نلقاو الطريق

What does “hada d-derb kan mosalsal” mean in Moroccan Arabic?

هذا الدرب كان مسلسل (hada d-derb kan mosalsal), literally “this alley was a TV series,” is the Moroccan way of saying any drawn-out, twisty experience felt like a melodrama. Mosalsal (TV series) is universal Arabic, but using it as a metaphor for daily life is a specifically Moroccan habit.

Anything that takes too long, has too many plot twists, or feels overly dramatic gets called a mosalsal. Moroccan TV culture leans heavily on long-running Turkish and Egyptian dramas dubbed into Arabic, which is where the metaphor draws its power. The closest English equivalent is “it turned into a whole soap opera.”