Marrakesh Diaries: Shock and awe

An abrupt arrival into the heart of Morocco

Is Morocco truly Africa? Is Marrakesh? Is the Jemaa el-Fnaa, the main square at the heart of Marrakesh and at the heart of Saharan Morocco, Africa? It depends on who you ask. Morocco is, on paper, Africa, though before you visit and while you are in Morocco itself people will often say North Africa, you are in North Africa. They will say that Morocco is not really Africa.

How do we make this distinction? What they mean of course is that it’s not the Africa they think of when they think of Africa. Does this Africa have safaris and bush and lions and poachers? Probably, if they’ve spent too much time watching Wild at Heart, and yet Morocco doesn’t. I mostly hear this from my fellow countrymen, but it’s not just a British attitude - a German I met on a tour bus said he had lived in Kenya for two months, in the “real Africa.”

Is Morocco the Middle East? It’s not very East, at least in comparison to those who normally call it so. My flight from London travels almost straight down, in the summer there isn’t even a time difference. I land at 8 Moroccan time which is also 8 British Summer Time.

Late, incidentally, and into the arms of a taxi driver who looks annoyed at my being so. Blame Ryanair, is what I want to say but don’t. Instead I follow him to his car and he drives me and a French couple to the Medina.

Waiting there is a man with a cart who takes our luggage and sets off, right into traffic. There is no crossing and no indication that any of the cars or jeeps or motorcycles or donkeys pulling carriages are slowing down but off he goes and we follow. We skip in amongst the blaring and beeping traffic and it’s then that I realise that wherever Morocco is, whether Africa, North Africa, the Middle East or nowhere at all, it is not like anywhere I’ve been before.

My bags and I make it to my riad unscathed and when I have no change to pay for my transfer in the lobby the receptionist sends to me to “the big square” to get some dinner and so I can break my 200-dirham notes.

Jemaa el-Fnaa has it all, but not at the same time. In the daytime there are fruit juice stalls, multiple fruit juice stalls, way too many fruit juice stalls. How could one city need so many fruit juice stalls? These stalls are like central London’s proliferating American candy stores. Every stall sells the same product which nobody seems to buy. And yet there they all are day after day, shouting at tourists and hawking their wares. They must make some sales, but when? And to whom?

Me, it turns out. One evening one particularly insistent vendor gets me over to his stall for a taste. It’s fantastic. The best fruit juice I’ve tasted in years. It’s 20 dirhams for a whole bottle, just over two pounds. Sold.

And then there are the snake charmers. Not real snake charmers, according to a guide walking me through the square. Descendants of the real snake charmers, sure, but these are just men with a basket of serpents and a flute. The snakes are beaten down and placid and compliant. As I watch a small black cobra slowly makes a break for it, slithering across the square. It gets about six feet away from one of the men before he clocks it making its great escape, walks over and slaps a tambourine over it. He kicks the tambourine back towards his umbrella and takes it off and out pops the snake again, though it doesn’t “pop” anywhere but just lays there defeated.

Snakes aren’t the worst treated animals in the square. These are the Barbary apes who are led around on chains. Native to the Atlas Mountains, they wouldn’t be found in Jemaa el-Fnaa had they not been captured, chained up and brought there by the men looking to make money by displaying them as in a show-and-tell.

This is the daytime. When night falls Jemaa el-Fnaa transforms and it’s at night that I first see it. There are no snakes and apes. The fruit juice stalls are here. Their product is still welcome after dark in a country where an alcoholic drink is the needle in the green tea and black coffee haystack. Joining the fruit juice stalls is the food market. Rows upon rows of stalls selling barbecue, kebab, snails - not served the French way - and suddenly the lot of the snakes and the apes doesn’t seem so bad.

They are alive and you cannot eat their heads as part of your evening meal. You can eat the heads of lamb, if you like. I walk along these stalls for a few minutes and revel in my popularity. It’s my first night in Morocco and everyone wants to get to know me. “Sir, sir” one man shouts, “very nice food here,” chimes in another. They want to get to know me, as long as I spend money at their stall.

How to choose a good stall to eat at? It’s the one you can get a seat at. Perhaps they have distinguishing qualities and perhaps some harbour chefs who in any other situation would be in contention for a Michelin, but I spend ten minutes walking around and decide that the stall over there with the kebabs and the free table? That’s the one for me.

I order the kebabs, the chicken specifically, though I haven’t yet learned the first rule of Moroccan hospitality: if you haven’t said you don’t want it, they will bring it to you. Before my kebabs arrive I receive a whole first course I didn’t know I’d ordered. Soup, hummus, dips, a round hunk of bread that like all bread in Morocco, even if it’s straight out of the oven, is somehow rock hard and chewy at the same time. I’m only halfway through this when the kebabs arrive, more than just chicken, really every kind of meat I can think of that is suited to be put on a stick.

The man on the next table eating with his family notices me noticing just how much food is in front of me and says, “enjoy your meal.” I make a joke about not expecting quite this much food and he simply repeats, “enjoy your meal.” So my connecting with the locals is off to a flying start.

There is another encounter. I’m full and the scraps and remains of my enormous meal lay around me when a beggar comes up to the table. I have no money for her and so she wants the food. I go to give her a skewer that I haven’t touched and she takes it, but then comes in for the others. Half-eaten or cold, it doesn’t matter, she takes each skewer one by one and peels off the meat into her hands. When her hands are full she walks away without a word.

Up close, sitting at the stalls like this, I can’t see what I can later, when I walk around the edge of the square and stare back into the market. The vendors are visible, busy pestering tourists and flitting around their stalls to clean tables or bring out food. And so is the cloud of smoke that rises as one big plume into the sky. Each individual stall contributes to this one smoky mass that emanates from the masses of grills and so it feels like the whole square is simmering, sizzling, that the heart of Marrakesh is right in the middle of the Jemaa el-Fnaa and it’s on fire.

The merciful tranquillity of my riad.

Then there is the noise. There’s the singe of the meat on the barbecue and the incessant pleas and beseeching from those trying to sell to those who aren’t usually buying. Then there’s the music. Jemaa el-Fnaa plays host to magicians, storytellers, and Berber bands who play until the early hours of the morning. They play to crowds who form and disperse, form and disperse, and again must make some money doing this though I never see any change hands.

Jemaa el-Fnaa is bordered on all sides by the Medina, by cafes and shops and market stalls and it is to the edge that I retreat, towards my riad. I look back into the square and see the smoke rising, the vendors buzzing like flies and the tourists making their stately rounds. I watch the Berber bands play and dance and hear the music rise into the air with the smoke and-oh shit here’s a motorcycle about to plough into the back of me and I leap out of the way. I scurry back to my riad while I’m still able to.

Morocco is different, wherever it is.

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A request.

You may have seen that since January I’ve been writing travel guides on topics of my choice. Well recently I did an interview post with Samantha Childress over on her publication Caravanserai with Samantha Childress - and answering her questions got me thinking. Instead of me picking the topics to write about in my guides - I’d like you to ask me your travel questions. In each post I’ll pick a few and answer them. So, what travel question would you like answering? It can be an ask for tips, advice or just my take on something. Leave a comment below with your question.

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