Don’t get me wrong, Deutschland: you’re a pretty great place to live. But there comes a point during your winter when I just want to kick you in the nuts, escape from your icy grasp, and go hide somewhere warm.
That’s how I ended up on a plane flying away from the orderly, efficient rhythms of Munich life, soon to be submerged in the chaotic hubbub of the old Moroccan city of Marrakech.
I knew we’d picked a winner before we even landed. The plane descended slowly over central Morocco to reveal a green and brown patchwork of flat, sun-drenched fields, punctuated by mud brick villages and neat groves of olive trees. By the time we’d had our passports stamped, our jackets were off and our sunnies were on. It was time to soak up some Maghreb culture, with a side order of Vitamin D.
The united, autonomous and relatively peaceful kingdom of Morocco as we know it today has only really existed for the last 50 or 60 years. Before that, the land was colonised and re-colonised over the centuries in many waves of invasion. The original inhabitants of the land are Berbers, the indigenous tribal people of North Africa. Then came the Phoenicians, and later the Romans. In the middle ages arrived the Arabs from the Middle East, and finally came the Europeans, when Morocco was a French protectorate in the first half of the 20th century.
This patchwork of cultures is instantly noticeable when you travel in Morocco. The people we talked to in Marrakech and Essaouira all spoke French and Arabic fluently (few of them knew English). Many Moroccans can speak Berber too, although thanks to the musical chairs of colonising powers in the bigger towns and cities, the realm of the pure, unacculturated Berber speaker has been pushed out to the countryside.
The waves of colonisation are also evident in the layout of Marrakech. Like most big old towns in the Maghreb, the throbbing heart of Marrakech is the medina, the Arab quarter of the city. It’s a beguiling warren of worn, saffron-coloured stone buildings lining narrow streets, each splitting off into even narrower alleyways that a moped could barely pass through, let alone a car.
Many of the medinas in Morocco have in fact banned motorised traffic, but Marrakech’s medina hasn’t. So as you wander the maze of streets, trying not to make it too obvious that you’re actually a little lost, you must navigate the puddles, the mule carts, the wares of street vendors spread on the ground, the kids playing street basketball under a sagging hoop above their front door… and crazy moped drivers with a death wish.
It’s wonderful.
Five times a day, like clockwork, the call to prayer goes out from the dozens of minarets rising from the laneways of the medina. Standing in any one spot, you can hear the warble of at least three or four muezzins in dissonant keys. It’s quite a thing to hear. It was the first time in Africa for both of us, but in the medina we could hardly tell. With Arabic script predominant in street signage, and the majority of women walking with heads covered, Marrakech felt distinctly like the Middle East to us.
In this busy medina, the busiest part of all is the Place Jemaa el-Fna – the “Square of the Dead”. The name comes from the public executions that used to be carried out here. Nowadays, snake charmers, cross-dressing belly dancers, monkey trainers and traditional African musicians wander the square, emanating a cacophony of exotic sounds and extracting spare change from locals and tourists alike.
It sounded a little hokey reading about it before I came, but the majority of the audience for these buskers seemed to be comprised of Moroccans, which made it seem less put-on, somehow. But I dunno. Maybe those guys are part of the show too, and I’m just a gullible Western tourist. Or maybe the performers started out trying to make a buck from the tourists, and ended up attracting locals as well. All I know is those hip-shakin’ lady-men definitely have a sharp eye for curious foreigners hovering at the back of the crowd with cameras.
The Jemaa el-Fna is also a good place to be if you’re jonesin’ for a snack. Stalls selling fresh dates, roasted nuts, dried figs and apricots tempt you from all sides, threatening to spoil your dinner. Colourful juice carts squeeze the freshest, most delicious OJ I have ever, ever tasted. Arequipa, you have been bested.
As night falls, the southern half of the square is transformed into a giant outdoor food court. Stalls replete with picnic tables, white-uniformed chefs and towering piles of fresh ingredients appear out of nowhere and start pumping out the most tantalising smells. At smaller carts, cooks ladle snail soup out of steaming brass vats for diners sitting on bar stools.
The winding alleys surrounding the main square form the covered market area – the souk. Like the square, the souk caters to tourists (souvenirs, spices) and locals (clothes, vegetables, mass-manufactured toys) alike. Morocco is a land of craftsmen, and the beautiful, exotic items sold in the souk tempted even me and Sean – neither of us frequently frequents souvenir shops.
As a tea lover, I went gaga over the intricately-inlaid silver teapots hanging from hooks beside the doorways of the souvenir stalls. It took a bunch of willpower on my part not to buy one. (And admittedly, I still kind of regret that I didn’t.) Sean was debating whether he could justify buying a colourfully painted clay tagine when his kitchen in Seattle is already overflowing into his coat closet. (If you know Sean at all, you’ll know that the answer was a no. But an unusually regretful one.)
I did end up picking up a couple of souvenirs from the souk. The first was a hand-painted Marrakshi bowl for my mum. Buying this was my first-ever experience with bargaining, which deserves its own separate post! We also bought some saffron and mint tea from a spice stall, whose wares were piled up in neat pyramids at optimal sniffing/oohing/aahing height. When I went back and made mint tea in Munich, it made my whole apartment smell minty fresh. Mmmmm.
While in Marrakech, we stayed in a riad, one of the hundreds of old Moroccan villas tucked away in tiny alleyways across the medina. The Moroccan government is investing big in growing the tourism industry these days, and this has brought many winter-weary Europeans across the Mediterranean seeking the ultimate sea-change: to buy and refurbish an old, rundown riad, fit it out with traditional Moroccan furniture, and hire local staff to run it as a B&B.
Staying in a riad in Morocco is an experience in itself. It’s tempting to just spend all day gawping at the beautiful furnishings, talking to the friendly staff and appreciating the cool, quiet sanctuary within its walls. Reading a book over breakfast on the terrace, accompanied by the crowing of roosters and the sun rising over the Atlas Mountains, is a nice way to start the day.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of colourful, geometric stuff. Stripy rainbow toe socks, Escher etchings, the Brandhorst Museum in Munich, these are all things that instinctively please me. So I loved visiting the old palaces and schools of the medina, which were all built in typically dazzling Islamic style. The Bahia Palace and the Medersa Ben Youssef in particular were amazing. My photos or descriptions can’t do their beauty justice.
What happens when you wander outside the medina walls, you may wonder? If you head west, you reach the area of Marrakech known as the “Ville Nouvelle” (new city). The walls of the buildings here are still painted an invigorating shade of pink, but the broad, café-lined boulevards and grand roundabouts are an instantly recognisable sign that this is the French quarter of the city.
When the French came to Marrakech, the high-octane clamour and confusing alleyways of the Arab quarter were not their cup of tea, so they expanded the city outside the medina walls in their own preferred style. Apparently they taxed the locals to fund the construction of their ‘oigh-brow new neighbourhood, which was kind of a douche move if you ask me.
But the Ville Nouvelle is an nice place to spend a sunny afternoon, even just to contrast with the atmosphere inside the medina. It feels like a completely different world. There’s more car traffic, but it keeps to some kind of discernible order. There is a smaller number of tourists. and a proportionately smaller number of touts. Our French riad hosts come here when they’re feeling homesick for Europe, or just get a hankering for some McDonald’s. (That was the first time I’ve ever heard a French person admit they like – or eat at – McDonald’s.)
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Marrakech, or at least its medina, reminded me more of India than any other place ever has. When I visited my family in Mumbai every few years as a young ‘un, I never really got to know the city in a practical sense, but what has stayed with me are the visceral things – the smells, the tastes, the unfamiliar sounds, the sense of unpredictability, the strange inherent cosiness of looking like everyone else. I couldn’t tell you what Mumbai smells and tastes of to me, but whenever I encounter those unnamed sensations elsewhere, I am instantly transported to the back of my uncle’s motorbike near Juhu Beach, or the vegetable market where I used to pick up coriander and brinjal with my grandfather, or the stretch of seawall along the Arabian Sea where lovers sit to watch the sun set. Everywhere I wandered in Marrakech, I encountered these familiar feelings. It’s no wonder that it only took a couple of days for me to love this city.
