As I arrived in Marrakech late past midnight, I walked straight to the Djama Al-Fna, said to be one of the greatest spectacles in the world. I had read that it is continuously open although the most exciting and spectacular time was a dusk. After walking through the fortress-like old city walls, and cautiously finding my way through the backstreets as the shops were closing and everyone was heading home, I arrived at the large square where the large openair market was located. The lights, and steam and smoke arising from the food seller stalls made it appear as if a great blaze had swept through and remaining now was just the smouldering embers.
Escargots
I had an orange juice, bought from one cart of a whole row of orange juice sellers. The concept of imperfect competition leading to higher prices was lost on these sellers, as Tu Sen correctly pointed out after his own visit. Walking through the foodstalls I skipped the goat's head and had some more conventional fried seafood.
A snake charmer places his snake on my shoulder while his friend takes a photo. I get shat on by the snake and they charge me some Dirhams for the privilege.
Inexpicably, one can get one's tooth extracted at the markets in Marrakech if one so required that service while one was at the markets in Marrakech.
The next morning, I wandered through the Markets, which sold all manner of handmade things from handbags to lounge slippers to leather belts to souvenirs to lamps to linen fabrics to local delicacies. I bought a genie lamp made with camel bone, Argan soap, a Morocco t-shirt just like the German dude in Mirleft, and a wooden puzzle of a desert scene.
Honey bees cluster around sweets being sold - the shopkeeper remains unperturbed.
Soundtrack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVWwadA2BkA
Curiously, I stepped into a store selling herbal remedies, reminding me of a Harry Potter potion store, with its wide array of mineral and plant-based natural ingredients, kept in jars and hung around the walls. The storekeeper was dressed appropriately, although incongruously for Morocco, in a white lab coat. The admirable thing was that I was not one minute in the store that he had noticed my Holland-springtime eczema and offered me an ancient traditional antidote. I thought this acute perceptiveness warranted me trying his product but decided against it, preferring to understand more about the chemicals before buying them. I did buy a simple clear crystal that eliminates odour, working miraculously on my armpit BO when wet and rubbed on the afflicted area. I still do not understand why the modern Western world must manufacture, research, produce, market and package complex deodorants when such a simple, basic natural crystal has existed for years.
I felt like a character in Tintin.
A one-eyed cat I found in a courtyard sitting on a disused water fountain.
I kept intending to return to my hotel to pack and head to the airport but the markets led deeper and deeper through the retail stalls, then the local manufacturers (like shoe and bag makers, and leather tanners), then back to retail, and eventually opened out on the other side to the picturesque old city of Marrakech - the Medina. These alleyways in turn led me through a labyrinth of old excavation sites, museums, galleries. The earthern colour, high building facades and labyrinthine alleyways came straight out of Disney's Aladdin.
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