The place of plenty -- a night in Marrakesh

Marrakesh, 30 March 2011

Walking onto the Place Djemaa el Fna for the first time is probably one of the most exciting moments possible. A thousand people are milling about, moving from one spot to another, looking at the sights and sounds and drinking in the atmosphere. Smoke is billowing from various food stalls where food is cooked over open fires; any kind of food imaginable – tagines kept warm under their peaked caps and over glowing embers, pastillas, crisp puffed up pastry cases filled with pigeon or chicken and, for some weird reason, sprinkled with icing sugar, bassara – the nutritious and delicious chickpea thick soup that you scoop up with big chunks of fresh flat bread, snails – ornate and colourful in their curly black and yellow shells and served in beautiful small pottery bowls, complete with a pin stuck in a cork with which to dig out the meat. There are row upon row of sheeps' heads, their white eyes

casting a quizzical look over the diners, their yellowed teeth grinning at you from the netherworld, cooked to perfection, the meat falling off the bone, the aromas straight from your mother's kitchen where she is preparing the Sunday leg of lamb roast.

There are brochettes to choose from – long sticks filled with chicken or beef or prawns, chicken or fish, green peppers and red onions, apricots and figs, or you can sit down at an egg stall where huge pyramids of boiled eggs await your custom – peel the egg and stuff it into a flat bread, add a few grilled onions or spicy gravy and you have dinner for the night. Behind the fires men in white coats are moving back and forth between the customers, the food, the fires – a constant movement for the preparations and enjoyment of delicious food.

In the background is the sound of drums beating the pulse of the night on the square. Every here and there is a group of musicians with their traditional and modern guitars, their flat bodrum drums, their African skin drums, their fiddles and their Moroccan horns and flutes. Gnaoua or Sufi, Reggae or Rock – probably a jamming session that has been going on long before even Jimmi Hendrix or The Rolling Stones made this their favourite hangout when they came to look for drugs and rock'nroll in Marrakesh. The sound of the music and on particular the drums has a powerful effect. I remember reading about how certain rhythms and pace of music were never allowed in China during certain dynasties as these could incite and excite people. You can almost physically feel how your heart starts pumping faster to match the rhythm, how your blood starts flowing stronger through your veins and your breath shortens. It is exhilarating, hypnotising.

You move over to a group of people watching a snake charmer get his beautifully sleek black cobras to stay

upright in a defensive position, their little fork tongues licking the air to get a feel of what is around them. Suddenly, as you stand there mesmerised by the cobras, the snake man lifts a drum off the floor and a big fat puff-adder slithers out, only to be captured under the drum again. A gasp goes up from the audience – a glimpse of the adder just enough to remind them these are lethal creatures. As if wanting to benefit from the location of the snake charmer, the next entertainer is a smartly dressed man in suit and tie who has marked his territory with a glowing red Bedouin rug on which he has arranged books and magazines, all strategically opened at graphic illustrations of the human body and arranged around a plastic skeleton. I don't understand his emotional and spit-flying lecture on some aspect of the human physiology, but judging by the rapt expressions on the faces of the audience – all men of every age standing in the circle of light of the lecturer, the subject has to be important and informative.

Over there sits a very old man, cross-legged on a small carpet on the floor, dressed in colourful robes and flowing djellaba, with a microphone and speakers, reading from an old frayed book what sounds like poetry. Or perhaps he is a story teller. Whichever, his voice is captivating and the rhythm of his reading echoes that of the drums. I walk past a row of chairs where men are sitting having their shoes polished. A Berber woman in full veil calls out to me to
come over so she can paint my hands with henna and a few times I have to clutch my hands together around my bag and forcefully pull away to prevent one of these women to start painting regardless of protests and then demand money. Emy, with her gentle nature, was not so successful and now has henna on both hands – orange on the one and black on the other – not necessarily the best drawings or what she would have chosen had she been given a choice, but looking beautiful on her hands nevertheless and giving lovely Emy a certain allure that has everyone smiling and admiring... There are children shooting fluorescent whirlybirds into the black sky and tempting everyone to buy one of these off them to go try yourself, flamboyantly colourfully dressed men with their copper bowls and pom-pom hats and copper castanets

(I could not trace their origin)hoping to catch you take a photograph of them for which you then have to pay. There are old wrinkled toothless hags sitting in small bundles waiting for someone who wants their fortune told and you have to be careful not to stumble over them, as they seem to be there one moment and gone the next. There are carts laden high with oranges where you can stop for a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, so sweet it makes your gills contract.

And then, of course, there are the frequent nudges from behind and the whisper in the ear with offers aplenty of kif and hash and any drug you can name, or of sex – 'you can choose the man' or 'perhaps you want a group?' 'A threesome?' You cannot take offence, as none was intended, but you cannot help but wonder about the people who have come before you – at least over the last fifty years or so since Marrakesh became the centre of all that is decadent and out of bounds and daring and dangerous. There would be no supply if there were no demand. Anything goes here. Anything is available here. Everything is available here. And the price is cheap.

And in the background to this vast bustling scene on Place Djemaa el Fna the pulsing drums continue to beat the rhythm and set the pace, long into the velvety night, long after the last call to prayer somewhere in the distance.