The intensified border control measures and the building of fences and walls have significantly curtailed cross-border exchanges, profoundly impacting the once-vibrant economic and social dynamism of borderlands. This paper examines the intricate processes through which border closures are negotiated between states and their citizens in the Moroccan-Algerian borderlands. Drawing on findings from ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with regional policymakers, cooperative owners, and borderland communities, it delves into the ramification of border closures, asking what happens when the border closes? While state authorities have launched development initiatives and alternatives to deal with the pitfalls of closure, testimonies from the borderlands, however, evoke a different relationship to it marked by immobility, waiting and the passing of time. In the Eastern region, cafés are particularly burgeoning spaces for men to come together, to speak amongst one another, and in other words to pass time. This paper departs from the border and seeks to unpack the apparent stagnation in border towns and cities, how it manifests in spaces and how it is experienced. It deploys the concept of ‘waithood’ to explore the implications of closure (Hage 2009). The paper argues that waiting is not merely about the passage of time or boredom, but it is rather a manifestation of material and discursive power dynamics that reify borderlands as marginalised peripheries, thus shaping conditions of inclusion and exclusion in the post-closure environment. By exploring these moments of apparent stagnation, this paper contextualises bordering processes in both their spatial and temporal dimensions. The latter in particular seeks to undo the linear understanding of change, and to show how closure is mediated not only by present strategies and alternatives but also by projected and imagined futures of development.