Kit's quite a hard
bargainer. His initial offers were about a fourth of what the shop owners
offered. As they went down in price, he went up and down and up again. One shop
owner asked 500 dirhams for a small glass lamp. Kit offered 100, then 125, 150,
down to 75, then 100 again. They finally settled at 130. I think I'll send him
to negotiate the next time I make a purchase.
In the evening, we
wandered around Place Jemma al Fna. The plaza had come alive with henna
artists, snake charmers, amateur boxers, drummers, trumpeters, singers, and
plain old crazy screamers. Bicycles, mopeds, and a few cars battled for the
right of way with pedestrians in the square. Beat-up donkey carts loaded with
vegetables meandered behind elegant horse-drawn carriages with smooching
tourist couples.
Brion Gyson and
William S. Burroughs were living in Morocco when they developed their “cut up”
style of writing. They would type up three or four short stories, cut sentences
out of the typed sheets, and paste them out of order onto one page. In their
books, one might simultaneously read tales of giant centipedes taking over the
medina, a drug-filled trip to New Orleans, and the aftermath of a nuclear
explosion. The stories intertwine not just metaphorically but literally as one
paragraph contains sentences from all three stories. Buroughs' and Gyson's
cut-up style was mostly the result of addiction to hard drugs. But I think some
of their inspiration came from Moroccan medinas. To walk through the medina is
to experience a cut-up story.
At night the
Marrakech medina is lit by street lamps and strings of bare light bulbs. In
smaller shops, bright white kerosene lamps cast harsh shadows and make a
hissing sound as they burn. Six drummers scattered around the plaza bang out
six different rhythms, all as intoxicating as they are incompatible. A young
woman tugged on my sleeve and held out a box of sweet cookies. When I refused
to buy one, she motioned to her young daughter, who chased after me with another
box. A pair of teenagers shoved her away and held two fliers to my face. The
one on my left had an brochure written in Arabic. In English he told me where
to find a great hammam with a mud bath and massage. The one on my right had a
French restaurant menu and was saying something about brochettes and poisson. I
didn't acknowledge them but they walked beside me shaking the brochures. The
English speaker broke off when a motorbike zipped in between us. The French
speaker switched to Spanish, something about couscous con cordero. I heard the
rhythm of the drummers on the far side of the plaza and spotted a shop selling
Moroccan spices. I caught the smell of incense and heard the mosque giving the
last call to prayer. “Te gusta cordero? O caracol? Tenemos caracol rico.”
“Allahuakbar! Allahuuuakbar!” “You want Moroccan spices? Come see my spices.
Come take a look!” And still those ever-present drums pounding away. I listen
to those drums and hear the roots of Latin music. Flamenco and salsa are hidden
in those beats. If Africa begins at Lyonne, then Latin America begins at
Marakech. Did the djinn become orishas when they found their way to Cuba?
If you open all
your senses to it, it makes you a bit schizophrenic. You experience everyone's
story at all once. You forget which story is yours and which are someone
else's. If your name is Bill Burroughs and you're whacked out of your mind on
drugs, the result is Naked Lunch.
I think I've come
around in my opinion of the Moroccan medina. It's like those syncopated drum
beats. If you can't catch the rhythm the medina is chaotic and frustrating. But
once you catch it you become part of the song. I'd like to take a trip back to
Tangier and Fez; see if they look different this time. But I've already booked
my flight to Tunis. I have three days left in Morocco. I'm certain I'll be
back.
Kit and I wandered
around the side streets for a while and then returned to the medina for a meal.
He ate a bowl of roasted snails for 10 dirhams. He proudly pointed out that he
had the courage to eat Moroccan snails while I stuck to chicken. We both passed
on the boiled sheep's head. A handful of food stands sold whole sheep's heads,
sheered of skin and eyes but with all their muscles and teeth. They dipped the
heads into a big drum filled with boiling oil. After about 15 minutes, they
took the heads out and set them in a long row where tourists could pick which
head they wanted to eat. Kit said that we had to share a boiled sheep's head
while in Morocco. Somehow we never got around to it.
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