Marrakesh fascinates me. For as much of a water baby as I am, I find this mystic city totally alluring.
Last weekend was my second trip. My first visit to Marrakesh was embarked upon with not a small amount of reservation. I was scooped in with a pile of colleagues who were awarded a trip to the city having won some sort of sales incentive. I had no idea who most of these people were, and had even less of an idea as to what they had done to win what they won. The only thing I knew was that I did nothing to earn this trip, but my manager said the flights were already booked and to go on and enjoy myself.
Enjoy myself in the ancient dust of northwest Africa. Should my nostrils not have anticipated the psychosomatic suffocation of third world desolation, they would have detected the strong scent of contradiction.
Our group was guided through our weekend like pack mules in heaven. We arrived at our enormous riad outside the city center. We lounged by the pool. We lingered over olives and alcohol. We were escorted into the high desert mountains on four-wheelers and bikes. We went to night clubs. I ate street food and bought a flowing floor-length skirt in the souk to cover the pink Cavalli mini skirt I'd stupidly worn for our night out in a Muslim nation. I might as well have glued pasties to my knees for the looks I deservedly received.
At dusk, we meandered around the Jemaa El Fna square which is the center of the chaotic web of souks. A soft, warm orange glow seemed to radiate from the ground. The food merchants fogged the air with heavy smoke from open grilled meats. The crowds paced around and through each other in a loose and synchronized choreography. It was completely enchanting and I remained enchanted with Marrakesh ever since.
Our guide gathered us and led us down a typical narrow and harrowing ally. I'll admit how apprehensive I was that our Belgian guide had been paid off to lead us down this dark and windowless concrete channel to our impending deaths or kidnappings. He instructed us all to walk through a curved, low door that anyone of average height needed to duck under to get through. The door opened up to our restaurant, Foundouk, which was a wonder of open space, relaxed cushioned seating, black glass chandeliers. This is the Marrakesh that Winston Churchill, Yves Saint Laurent, Keith Richards had fallen in love with.
I returned to Marrakesh last week to meet up with a group of magical people who gather annually to celebrate the birthday of a magnanimous character I am humbled to call a friend. This time, we stayed in the center of the souk area.
The streets within the center of Marrakesh are too narrow and crowded to drive through. So you take a taxi from the airport and get as close as you can to the center, then someone meets you and walks you in to your residence. If you have too much luggage it might be carried in on a cart pulled by a little donkey. Once again I found myself feeling apprehensive as this boy who was waiting for us carried our luggage through a maze of tiny streets, into a tunnel that could have led to a cave and finally to a small, unmarked door at the end of an ally that showed no way out other than to turn around. He knocked on the door and we were led into our riad. The door was shut and SHWOOMP! All the noise and chaos of the souk was shut out. We were vacuum-packed in a world of sumptuous, minimalist Moroccan decor, comfort, and silence.
Inside the riad, called Tchaikana, we were led to our suite which invited us with space: huge ceilings, a four-poster king sized bed draped in mosquito netting, and a bathroom that felt like a grotto. Our Belgian host gave us some ground rules on how to navigate the souks, both geographically and socially. We listened as if our lives depended on it, because they might very well have been. Marrakesh is safe, but it doesn't feel like it. One of the joys of visiting there is occasionally feeling the exhilaration of having survived. My four-wheeler didn't turn over. We found our way back to our riad. We don't have food poisoning. We live!
We join the other guests in the central courtyard for cocktail hour. There are so many riads to choose from, I got the feeling that with a small one like ours, the other guests would somehow naturally have something in common with you simply by the fact that they chose the same riad as you did. Whether or not that was the case, we had no trouble making conversation with the others.
The next morning, our host took us through the path from our riad to the main square. He instructed us to remember when to turn left or right or go straight by memorizing various landmarks ( go right at the blue door, right again at the brass lions, straight through at the vegetable stand, right toilets outside the mosque, go left and make an S around the mosque and when the souk dead ends into a covered passage way, go right). He was a master at giving us just enough information to help us, but not too much to overwhelm us. Immediately we were able to find our way back through many twists and turns and we felt souk savvy. At night, when the souks are closed, the landmarks become more austere and at the last turn we lost our confidence and were convinced we had overshot our mark. Three times we had to walk by a grisly group of Moroccan men insisting in broken English that they could help us find our way. It's common for locals to panhandle tourists in exchange for directional guidance. We tried to politely brush them off assuring them that we knew our way--we did this the three times we walked by them, totally lost. Our rebuke was met with some hostility and with their insisting that they were not Egyptian and what were we afraid of? They should have paid us for the entertainment our cluelessness surely provided them.
Our first night with our group we drove out together in a common passenger van to the desert to have dinner under a tent. During the last leg of our drive, the driver turned off the road and starts driving through the desert. His ability to determine his course was miraculous, especially so because it was night. Go left at the big rock, go right at the slightly smaller rock, take the left fork in the road where there's that dead blade of grass.
We hiked up a hill where our evening under the clouds (the only unfortunate part of the night) was awaiting. We sat on pillows and rugs and ate tagine. We drank wine and the volume of our voices increased with our pleasure.
The next night we met for cocktails hand crafted from oranges purchased from the Jamaa square and rum hand packed by our group. We returned to Foundouk for dinner. This time, we did enlist the guidance of a local to escort us there.
Marrakesh is one of those cities where order is not evident, but it exists unquestionably. The owner of our riad explained how corruption works, how, for example, taxi drivers are always handing over their fares to the police with little complaint. Corruption in its most innocuous forms is a system in itself--a self-regulating unauthorized order that actually brings efficiency and even fairness where it would otherwise not exist.
The cobblestone streets of the souks are covered in wares and vegetables, trodden by donkeys, stray cats, carts, and people. It's exactly the same scene day in and day out. At night, workers brush all the rubbish away with the same witches' broomsticks the street cleaners in Amsterdam use. There is no lack of wretchedness. The donkeys are muddy and long suffering, there are beggars huddled in the streets with their hands out beckoning to be filled with change. The stray cats are dirty from the dust and polluted air, but there's a bounty of fish and poultry scraps to feast on at night. What's different is that these unfortunate creatures, human and animal, are so much more integrated into the chaos of life in Marrakesh. One might unwittingly step over a withered, toothless old woman crouched on the ground as easily as one might step over an overturned bucket of discarded orange peels.
It made me even more acutely aware of the homelessness and desperation that exists in wealthy countries. I wonder how the complexities, corruption, and indifference all sterilized on the tableaux of wealthy cities fails us in the exact same way in areas of the world where it seems so much more infinitely possible and affordable to prevent. I'll take a souk to a back ally in Seattle any day.
I won't apologize for the socio-political interlude, but I will get back to the point. I was ready to leave Marrakesh by the end of our long weekend. The sumptuousness of its interiors is barricaded from the unavoidable and horrific air pollution caused by scooters running off the worst fuel possible. The locals don't like their children and animals breathing this stuff and it made me think how a bit of money and organization could quickly improve the air quality simply by swapping out gas scooters for electric or just by making better fuel more easily available. That's for another entry. I was getting a little tired of the myopia caused by having to look down constantly as I walked one foot in front of the other edging the walls of the souks (the center is reserved for scooters and donkeys). I’ve been back home for a few days with a cold and irritated lungs and I'm already ready to go back.
