Five Days in Marrakech

I am in Marrakech.




My job holding a sign with the cart-pushers in Essaouira was evolving into a career I did not want, so I left.



There is an easy atmosphere here that I have not felt in Agadir, Taghazout, or Essaouira. It is the feeling of leaving the countryside and entering the city.



I have found this place conducive for connecting with Moroccan Arabic.



The first night into the city, the shoes fell from my bag and were lost.



I witnessed a matron’s brawl. The participants were thick women with babies strapped loosely to their backs.



A child hung limply in the colored-cloth strap while the mother yelled and struck out at the other mothers. Everyone in the fight had a baby attached.



Throughout the night, a constant stream of mothers with their babies ran towards the alley to join the battle.



The souks are a winding maze of shops. The people smile when I speak Arabic words.

I know enough Arabic words now to politely tell them to fuck off. There is a phrase, “may God make it easy on you.” It is a phrase to use with beggars. I use it often. The people go away with a smile.



I know enough Arabic words to make friends. I sit with a carpet vendor who shows me a rap video on his iPhone. I tell the people that I enjoy their country and that it is an honor to meet them. They smile as if I am the first American to speak with them. I am ambivalent about being the first American to speak Moroccan Arabic with these people.



In the souk, a man dyes sheets of cloth Berber blue, using a big black vat of indigo liquid. He offers to dye my hair. I agree, and he is surprisingly delicate as he rubs the blue water in my hair. Maybe he offers this to every passing tourist, but I am the first to accept his offer.



I learn that Berbers refer to themselves as, “Tamazight.” Who decided they are Berbers?



The brain of the goat tastes much like a gelatinous and/ or gritty roast-beef. It sounds more dramatic/exotic than it is.



Similar to goat brain, the romantic sounding snake charmers and monkey handlers are an ancillary unpleasantness to the overall charm of the place.

The snakes have had their fangs removed. They are in a constant state of anxiety from the sound of the wind instrument/flute/ whatever the little man is blowing into. They are dim specimens, standing up listlessly, involuntarily.



A man whips at a patchy-furred donkey. The donkey is pulling a load of propane tanks.



A surplus of horses are strapped to green, Victorian-style carts. They wait in the street with their heads lowered.



The monkeys are pulled around by the chains on their necks. They pull at their collars.



I offer to buy a monkey.

Three-thousand Dirhams, or three hundred euros is the starting offer by the handler. While we talk, a monkey jumps softly onto my shoulder. The monkeys, they say, come from the Atlas mountains.



I concoct a plan to buy a baby monkey and travel with it, swaddled in baby clothes. Who will approach me and say that my child is a monkey and not a baby?



Uh, sir, your baby is too hairy too be human.

That’s no baby, that there’s a monkey.

I ain’t never seen no baby that ugly.



  I sit on the terrace and the moon is big and there is no ring around it, but Mars is small and red below it.

In the morning I will be in Madrid to see Goya's pictures.