A day in the Djemaa el-fna market in Marrakesh

She wore a djellaba, a long flowing beige robe of silk that swished gently when she moved; it was daintily-embroidered with flowers at the high-necked collar, straight across the bodice, and even at the hem. She was Azizah, our Moroccan travel guide in Marrakesh, a young woman in her mid-thirties who was to be our companion around this oasis at the foot of the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Marrakesh used to be an imperial city founded in 1062; hence art and culture flourished in this desert outpost of Morocco. It was a cool morning when Azizah led us around the central area of Marrakesh. The first thing that one noticed was a tall minaret that lorded over the city – the Koutoubia, a green and light beige structure that shot up into the sky, topped by a lantern of three gold spheres representing earth, water, and sun. The inscribed filigrees on its sides were fine and intricate, and were said to come from the prophet Mohammad’s teachings. Koutoubia came from the Arabic word kutubiyyin (meaning “of the books") and stems from the 12th century when an Almohad chief brought several Koran books to Marrakesh, making the city an important center for religious study.

As we went around I observed gaily-dressed men in red and green shawls with fringes and bells attached to their feet, arms, and even shoulders. They had small tin cups strung across their necks and more bells on their hands which they rang from time to time. These were the aguadores (water sellers) of old who used to sell water (a precious commodity in an arid place like Marrakesh) to the locals. Now of course there are safe and abundant sources of water for drinking, but the colorful garb and curiosity value of the water sellers were good sources of dirham (the local currency) for them. Palace intrigues The long lines leading to the Saadien Tombs almost fazed us, but Azizah assured us it was worth the wait. And she wasn’t mistaken: the necropolis was the most lavish mausoleum in all Morocco. The fine filigreed artwork of Koranic inscriptions from ceiling to floor, and the beautiful luminescent mosaic tiles adorning almost all the walls around the tombs were stunning. It reminded one of the Alhambra in Granada, with its lavish curlicues and colored tile art works. Not a surprise of course, because the Moorish sway during that time included Spain, especially its southern Andalusian region which was geographically accessible to northern Africa, where Morocco is located. A most luxurious portion was the Hall of the Twelve Columns, where the family of Sultan Yacoub al-Mansur were buried; this included his four wives, 23 concubines, and the most favored of his hundreds of children. Mosaic tiles in different hues adorned the walls and floors, even as it competed with the wall-to-wall inscriptions. Azizah regaled us with a typical day in the Kasbah (literally “fort" or “citadel") where we were, emphasizing that then as (she said) now, women did not have any legitimate position in society. There were many intrigues in the sultan’s palace, sown not only by the wives and the concubines who wanted the attention (and wealth) of the sultan himself, but also by the eunuchs, some of whom were not only castrated but also blinded to render them helpless and unable to escape. This brought out an audible response from us, who were glad we didn’t have to witness such cruelty, no matter that one lived in such sumptuous palaces! When my husband Alex and I signed up for this tour in Madrid, the agent asked us, “Do you want to join the Spanish group or the French group?" It seemed there were no English tours available on the dates that we wanted. At the time, Alex had one semester of French at Alliance Française de Manille, and I had six semesters of Spanish with Instituto Cervantes. Spanish won out, although I had some misgivings about my spoken Spanish. I was only conversant with its present tense, and was still learning to conjugate in the preterito indefinido (simple past). Thankfully Azizah spoke very slowly in Spanish, and we didn’t have problems following her. I had to confess to my companions, though, especially to Dolores and Juana from Barcelona, two retired ladies who became our good friends, that my Spanish was really inadequate and that I was only good with the present indicative tenses of verbs. They were very kind, and even complimented me on my good accent. Juana spoke a little English, aside from Catalan and French, and she reassured me that, “Knowing only the present tense is a good thing! That way you need not hark back to the past, nor worry about the future!" That gave us a good laugh, and when things in life go wrong, I remember her wise comment and smile. Fabled square What Azizah didn’t prepare us for was the fabled square of Marrakesh, the Djemaa el-Fna. We arrived there early, but the open-air square with hundreds of stalls at the center was already a-buzz with activity: some stalls had smoke coming out of their tent roofs from grilled food, and people in all sorts of garb (turbaned, robed, some with baseball caps, and of course the tourists) were jostling each other for space. Children hurtled themselves hither and yon. The first register was the drum beats— syncopated and persistent coming from the musicians in one corner of the big square. The group looked African, brandishing their tomtoms and chanting in loud voices. After that the high-pitched wail of a flute, and when I looked around I discovered that I was in the path of the snake charmer who had a woven basket in front of him, the head of a cobra slowly coming out of it. My gaze wandered to where he was sitting, and found another cobra already slithering slowly on its belly in the ground. From time to time, when the cobra reared its head, the snake charmer would put down his flute, play tag with it and try to “kiss" the snake. Turning to one side I noticed three fire-eaters, and in another, acrobats. Berber dancers with castanets attracted attention because they were obviously males but were dressed in women’s flowing gauzy dresses. Fortune-tellers sat in front of tables wearing patch-work colorful robes, keeping up a constant patter. And what enticing barbecue smell wafted from some of the stalls! I went near one where smoke was a thick screen, and my eyes widened. It was grilling portions of an entire goat’s head over coals, and slices of sheep’s liver and brain were ready for the customer. This stall had all sorts of innards, and I didn’t dare tarry, as the seller looked very eager to sell me something, holding out what looked like the large intestine of a cow and pointing to it eagerly and saying something fast in Arabic. Walking away from the exotic meat vendor, I espied a robed man in a corner who was holding forth in a loud voice. He had a French sign on a cardboard in front of him that said, “Pour la maladie de coeur…" (for heart illnesses), and was pointing to what looked like an Anatomy class mannequin. It was a life-sized human torso made of clear plastic, and an anatomically-correct heart, lungs, liver, spleen, pancreas and stomach in different colors inside. He was pointing to the heart with its big vessels, tracing them with his fingers, then he picked up one of the vials by his side. I could only intuit that he was selling some heart medicine as one of the listeners, also an Arab, took out some money and bought the vial. A woman in a dark blue djellabah suddenly asked him something, and again he used the mannequin to point out the stomach (specifically the greater curvature, I recall) and said something, obviously explaining her malady. Another vial was brought out, and she willingly paid for it. Oh, were Medicine this easy and fast! Going around I discovered there were stalls for fresh and preserved fruits, their wares stacked in such a precise manner that the colors and symmetry made for a delightful display. There were spices’ stalls as well, the herbs and plants dried and powdered, and the latter arranged in mounds looking like multi-colored small hills in their own square cases. A thick crowd surrounded a man sitting cross-legged on a rug, who seemed to be reciting something, and I realized he was the story-teller. He was enthusiastically saying something aloud, gesticulating with both arms, pausing dramatically every so often, modulating his voice to a whisper at times, not unlike raconteurs of old. Everyone crowding around him was rapt. I looked at each of the faces in the audience — they registered awe, surprise, and absolute delight. It seemed as if I was caught in a time warp, where I was suddenly flung into the Middle Ages and had become part of the crowd in a market place, listening to this story-telling. This art is as old as the history of man, for weren’t the epics originally told and sung by minstrels, wandering bards that roamed the world to tell their stories? And always, they added to the original story here and there, perhaps to enhance, to enrich. After the story was told, the audience, almost to a man (and woman) gave the story-teller monetary gifts and everyone went away satisfied. Thank God for travel journals, I was able to record at least the immediate impressions of that afternoon. Part of what I wrote included: “…And crossing the square in two large and long rows were the food hawkers. Sheep’s head boiling in vats, their brains hung up in a row, looking pink; bread stuffed with boiled eggs, sprinkled with salt, then drizzled with olive oil; chicken, vegetables, and dried fruits and nuts merchants, their wares laid out neatly in rows; the orange merchants (oranges also laid out neatly in uniform lines and stacks) offering freshly-squeezed orange juice; monkeys, snake-charmers…" Even reading the entries now leaves me a little breathless. After some time most of us repaired to the third-story balcony of a café overlooking this Arabian Nights scene, and we could see smoke coming out of the cooking and grilling stalls. We could hear the loud laughter and human voices speaking in tongues of Babel, the music and noise mingling with the smell, until the sun dropped into the desert floor and the lights came out. When night fell, more people arrived, and at around 8 PM all we could see were the tops of people’s heads, so jam-packed was the marketplace. The comings and goings continued, and as we sipped our coffee and tea we exchanged stories about our own experiences in this huge public market. Azizah added that the vendors and buyers came from neighboring towns like Fez, Agadir and Casablanca, as this was the most important market around the area. We went back to the hotel that night tired but happy, and still talking about this “absolute sensory overload" (as some travel narratives call Djemma el-Fna). That night, I dreamt of the clear plastic human torso— it was moving, speaking in sing-song Arabic, and dancing in time with flashing lights and disco music! – YA, GMA News