Driving through the outskirts, with pink-stucco suburbs set amongst the soft green palms, the anticipation is strong, but the reality, when it hits, is stronger.
The medina's dusty, teeming streets are flooded with a tsunami of images and sound ... the amplified guttural calls to prayer, the crushing mass of people, the fetid nooks of rotting rubbish, the djellaba-hooded beggars squatting against stone walls, their dirty rags holding a few dirty coins ... scenes that could be from a thousand years ago, or a thousand and one nights.
This is the life of the people, the poor people, the haggling, hustling, hand to mouth existence that has not changed since the reign of sultans and the succession of post-colonial kings.
The veggie stalls, the butchers, the olive sellers, fruit carts, bread and pastry shops, the sellers of snails, the spice merchants, the purveyors of scented herbs, the hawkers of cheap women's clothes, the dimly lit restaurants and smoky kebab stalls, the cool Arabian riads off darkish alleyways, the hot tubs of hidden bathhouses. Movement, always movement, like blood through veins ... people, donkey carts, manic mopeds, horn-sounding cars creeping like lizards over the cobblestones through an unyielding crowd.
It is intoxicating without grog, stupefying without hash. It takes my breath away, just like it did 40 years ago.
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| cool riads off shadowy alleys |
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| secret places lie beyond ancient archways |
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| olive stall |
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| pink stucco and green palms |
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| street market in the medina |
Tony, there was a story this week on France 24 about the restoration work in the jewish quarter.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Tony, for this colorful journey through the streets of Marrakech!
ReplyDelete