MARRAKECH MEDINA AND MEDERSA
The medina in Marrakech is made up of snaking alleyways full
of clamoring locals mixed with tourist looking for a good deal. The medina is
divided into souks or tradesmen’s areas. As one wanders around it is best to
allow oneself to just get lost. Lost in the streets, but also in the smells,
the sights, the flow of the crowds and the draw of whatever seems most
fascinating at the time. Marrakech is a city of over a million people and I
swear they are all in the medina at the same time. At the South of the markets
is the Jemaa El-Fna Square which is watched-over by Marrakech’s tallest minaret
at the nearby Koutoubia Mosque.
Today we roamed through the inviting medina allowing
ourselves to be pulled into some of the shops along the way to view the
alluring merchandise. It is said that when a shopkeeper quotes a price to a
tourist it is a good idea to divide by four in order to assess an accurate
aiming point for the cost of the transaction. And yes, this is truly a long,
drawn out process that includes the seller smoothly transitioning between
bartering, becoming friends, taking delight in your very presence just prior to
affecting displeasure and being insulted, going through a making-up period and
then letting you know that you got a really good price at the end which will
inevitably make the buyer feel okay despite the fact that the next shop keeper
says that he would have sold you the same item for less.
We had a lunch at the picturesque Bougainvilliers Café where
we shared a delightful Orange Soup and vegetable tagine. We continued down to
the main square where we took a perch high up to drink mint tea and watch the
goings-on in the bustling square below.
The call to prayer in Marrakech at a little after eight pm
is an amazing conglomeration of sound emanating from many different mosques
around the city at the same time and interweaving to produce an amalgam of
buzzing, soaring, disharmonic waves of sound that both ground and inspire a
person.
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