Photo Essay: Lost in the Souks of Marrakech

It takes hours to drive to Marrakech, Morocco from Casablanca. The cosmopolitan stone and adobe buildings melt away quickly and you’re suddenly surrounded by endless vistas of salmon colored soil and scrub brush. Just about every piece of vegetation is dressed with tattered plastic bags. Litter is the Moroccan countryside’s cash crop. I’m initially grateful to King Muhammad VI for his adroit investment in the smooth, well-built highways on which trade prospers. But my guide Majit has a heavy foot and seems to be averse to using the brakes. We weave through a life-size arcade game of overloaded lorries, puttering mopeds and donkey wagons. Suddenly a smooth ride isn’t my top priority.

I’m greatly relieved when we stop at an ancient fortified medina about halfway there. A colorful tile path leads to a grove of palm and citrus trees and a courtyard with a shallow pool at its center. A dozen feral cats have the run of the place as they dart under stalls laden with heavy Berber carpets and stacks of tea sets and camel bone boxes. If it weren’t the middle of Ramadan I might be inclined to request something stronger than the sweetened mint tea I’m offered. As it is I’ll drink it respectfully on the sly as I know everyone else is fasting until sundown. Food, drink (even water) and cigarettes are all forbidden for Muslims during the daylight hours of Ramadan. But as soon as the sun goes down the cafes and restaurants explode with activity. Before we hit the road again I negotiate the purchase of a set of Muslim prayer beads from a vendor who explains to me in excellent English that the number of beads represents each of the names for Allah.

Back on the road the towering Atlas mountains creep ever closer. The land turns a bit more arid and the soil considerably more red. Every squat structure that pops up over the horizon seems to be painted a complementary color of deep salmon. In a place with so much sunshine this color is more practical than white because it does not reflect as much light. Outside these low stone houses women in riotously colored robes of indigo and crimson tend to small flocks of sheep.

We enter the suburbs of Marrakech and the buildings, people and traffic first grow denser and then suddenly turn chaotic. Traffic is everywhere. There are cars, trucks, mopeds, bicycles, and people on foot, horse-drawn carriages, and wagons pulled by mules. Besides a basic traffic flow, everyone is everywhere. It is loud, bright, and dangerous. The smell of diesel and sweat are everywhere. The terracotta colored ramparts of the old fort sit low in the distance like the squared off teeth of a Halloween pumpkin, cast into sharp relief against the cobalt sky. Down long avenues I catch a glimpse of the minaret of the Grand Mosque, deliberately the tallest most prominent structure on the horizon. Majit points it out to me proudly before he reminds me that, as a non-Muslim, I am not allowed to go there. Requiring real sustenance before venturing into the souks of the old walled medina, we stop in at the legendary La Mamounia Hotel and Majit sends me inside where he has made arrangements for my lunch.

For all the chaos of the streets outside, the 1920’s Art Deco La Mamounia Hotel is and always has been a calm oasis at the center of a storm. Surrounded by lush, perfectly manicured 300 year-old gardens, the hotel and casino is "the" resort destination for movers and shakers visiting Marrakech. Past the front desk, down slightly darkened hallways, tiled fountains trickle softly with flowers floating on their surfaces. A few luxury shops filled with European name brands are almost a surprise, out of place when you consider the number of horse-drawn carriages just outside of the hotel gardens.

I enter a traditional Moroccan dining room, intricately decorated with Moorish ornamented ceiling in vibrant colors and I am led to a low table with upholstered seats. I am directed to first cleanse my face and hands (three times) with orange flower water, which is dispensed from silver pots near the table. There are delicately embroidered linen towels for drying. A jellaba-wearing waiter in a fez hat takes my order and reappears almost instantly with an assortment of small bowls, perhaps ten of them, filled with prepared vegetables like cubed beets with oil and herbs. Served alongside these fragrant dishes are local olives and wheaty bread. Moroccans are bread eaters. The second course is the traditional bistilla, chicken with eggs, onions, cinnamon, saffron and other spices, baked into a flaky filo dough with powdered sugar sprinkled on top. Next is tender roasted mutton served over couscous with roasted cucumbers and eggplant. The meat is buttery and falling off the bone. Afterwards the waiter brings out beghrirs, a sort of honeycomb crepe served with butter and honey. Traditional mint tea with sugar is served at the end of the meal, always from a small silver pot and poured with excessive elevation above the glass so the result is bubbly.

My guide, Majit, rejoins me just as I finish. Not wanting to rub it in I deliberately avoid asking him what he was been up to. He greets me warmly and asks if I have enjoyed my lunch, though he can tell from my smile that I have. He then explains that he has made good progress in making the arrangements for the equipment I will need for my upcoming high-elevation climb in the Atlas mountains. But before I can grill him on the prospects for helicopter rescues to the nearest trauma center, he raises his hand, as if to indicate there will be plenty of time for discussing details, and leads me out of the hotel. We pass the hushed hallways of luxury goods and venture out into the bright sun and heat of the city. For the first time I notice how strange it is that Majit is wearing a dark olive Western-style suit and his customary bushy mustache that made him look uncannily like Saddam Hussein, or Borat. 


On foot now, we pass through the wide arch and into the medina, lucky to survive the constant stream of people and vehicles coming from every direction around us. Once inside we quickly enter the winding alleys and passageways filled with vendors of all kinds. It is darker and cooler; the air is filled with spices. We pass densely packed stalls of clothing and food. There are bright piles of curry and turmeric, freshly killed chickens hanging near a pen filled with live chickens foraging for grain, bins of freshly caught fish. There are camel leather belts and slippers, pottery and metal ware. In shallow souks individual craftsmen, covered with grease, toil away on machinery as they fabricate metal components for mysterious machinery. My clothing gives me away as a foreigner and peddlers descend on us, thrusting handfuls of Berber silver and Arabian jeweled daggers towards me for my approval. Before I can even acknowledge them they are halfway through the negotiation and make it clear from their persistence that they will not take “no” for an answer.

Moroccan products do not have printed prices. Their tradition consists of a game of haggling for absolutely everything. The seller starts high, the buyer low, and after endless wrangling they meet somewhere in the middle, with the potential buyer all the while walking a tightrope of feigned indifference without insulting the craftsmanship of the product. On this trip I purchased two small camel bone boxes, a silver teapot for mint tea with matching glasses and a jellaba, a white silk gown that is worn by most Moroccan men . My only victory was declining to purchase a red fez hat with a black tassel. Otherwise, I generally overpaid for everything I bought.

But the commerce was not to end there. Majit insisted on showing me what he maintained was the best rug vendor in all of Marrakech. We entered a store packed with handicrafts and knick-knacks and Majit swiftly led me up a rickety stairway to a private upstairs viewing area. We were greeted warmly with more mint tea. Stunning Moroccan rugs of all types lined the walls and piles of rugs lay in rows along the walls. We were seated in plush chairs with red velvet cushions while young Moroccan men began to roll out before us rug after rug. They retrieved them with impressive speed. The choices were immediately overwhelming and I wasn’t even there to buy a rug, though in that environment it is very easy to get swept up in it. One of the salesmen who spoke English well, and who seemed to know Majit, began to discuss the intricate process by which the rugs were made by hand by Berber women using local wool. As I warmed to the idea of shipping a rug back to the States with my mountaineering gear, he asked me to indicate which rugs could be removed so we could begin to narrow the choices before me. Under his direction, rugs were just as quickly whisked away and returned to their piles, replaced by fresh choices.

Berber women worked on enormous looms nearby. The salesmen explained that after the wool was harvested from local sheep, processed, dyed and spooled, the women spent up to two months weaving the weft of the rug onto which the design would be woven later. An individual weaver would render the design carefully over a span of three years. Majit assisted the men in demonstrating the durability of the wool (which was combined with vegetable silk derived from the kapok tree for strength) by dragging a pair of scissors aggressively over the various rugs. When that had failed to do any damage they held a Zippo lighter against it and proved it would neither ignite nor even scorch. They did this until I begged them to stop.

It was a challenging task but I managed to settle on three rugs. The negotiations then shifted into high gear as we had a lively discussion of prices. When it seemed as though we could not agree, Majit stepped in and spoke to the owner directly. They bargained in Arabic for a while and he finally scrawled a price on his tablet that I could live with. We shook hands, the English-speaking salesman wished me a "long life and happiness", and as was customary, just after we shook hands his arm continued up in an arc and he touched his heart. I had seen many Moroccan men do this, as they would greet each other, sometimes also kissing each other on the shoulder or the head as a sign of respect. As we walked to the office to take care of the money, Majit pulled me aside and whispered that he had lied and told them that I was a student so they would give me a good price. "Was that a good sale for them?" I asked him, unsure of what had been said in Arabic and not even sure of how well he knew these guys and what his kickback might be. He answered, "We are outside of the tourist season so things have been slow for them. You would have never gotten prices like that if the timing had not been right." He also told me to be sure to tip the young guys who had worked so hard to pull all of the rugs. "Three hundred dirham each should be enough."

With the price set it was time to do the paperwork. The process was complicated and overly officious, with enough over-sized, crest-laden paper forms to rival any London merchant. I entered my shipping information in an enormous leather ledger. They had me sign the rugs on the reverse so I would be sure that what was delivered was what I had paid for. They ran my American Express card for just over 23,650 dirham. There were stamps and seals and handshakes all round. The rug men got their gratuities.

Majit looked at his watch and realized that we were running late for our meeting with the climbing outfitter. He yelled in Arabic to someone in a nearby room. An answer shot back. He told me that there was a car waiting to take us to our meeting. We hurried down the steps of the rug vendor and our driver was waiting. Majit got in front and I clambered in back. We tore off in a blur and were instantly immersed in the organized chaos that is Marrakech. I'm not sure I had ever experienced a driving experience in which the cutting edge transportation of the last three centuries was all on the road at the same time. What had been mildly scary as a pedestrian on the edge of the road was absolutely horrifying as a passenger in the backseat. As Majit and the driver chatted gregariously in Arabic in the front while death came within inches every few seconds. At one point Majit seemed to stop in mid-sentence in his animated Arabic conversation to turn and tell me in English, "After our meeting with the climbing outfitters, you MUST see the snake charmers in the grand market. They are not to be missed." All I could manage was quiet laughter at the madness and absurdity of the moment. Morocco had grabbed me by the lapels and I was going for a ride. I just had to let it take me. I laughed and replied, “Great!”