So, I moved to Marrakesh.
I know my posts lately have been sparse at best, but I suppose life got a little out of control. For one, I didn’t realize that moving myself, my motor, and my cat to basically the other side of the country would be as big of an ordeal as it turned out to be. I know, I know. Foresight is a bitch.
Either way, I am in Marrakesh.
I have been for a week now. It’s funny because life in Fez had gotten to be equally overwhelming and equally rewarding. I had become a Fessi. I know the streets of the Medina like a Fessi, and I knew exactly where to shop, for everything.
Now, I must learn about Marrakesh.
A friend of mine came to visit for the weekend, and of course, we toured the Marrakchi Medina. I had to use a map. I had to wonder into shops where I didn’t know the owner and gasp at items that were more expensive and lesser quality than those at my tried-and-tested Fessi places. I had to deal with the ‘welcome to Morocco’s and the ‘where are from’s more than I have to in months.
I guess, I am a tourist in Marrakech.
In the medina, there is a main square called Djemma El Fna, which is ‘the Morocco that people come to Morocco for’ as one friend put it. There are snake charmers, fortune tellers, woman that do henna, and the best fresh squeezed orange juice you can find for less than a euro. It crawls with this orientalist lure that captivates most travelers and leaves them wondering if it in fact it was all a dream. A dream perfumed with incense and faded with time. It is the world of the ‘Moroccan’ where modernism only comes in the form of a credit card machine at the local tourist shop.
Really, I am a Fessi in Marrakesh.
My cynicism comes from my longing for Fez. I realized that I am looking for my spiritual haven within the snake charmer’s lute. I am looking for the beautiful mosques and religious schools that have been built on centuries of religious learning and spiritualism. I am looking for that Fessi hospitality where you can’t walk through the Medina without being offered tea at least 10 times by various friends.
The people of Marrakesh are different.
They are a fun loving people, where tourism is a livelihood that doesn’t damper their joyous spirits. In fact, it almost invigorates them. They seem to enjoy their own orientalism, and to them, Marrakesh is their dream where the foreigners are the spectacle and even awake, life is a party.
Either way, welcome to Marrakech.
2 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
Womp womp.
At least you can ride your bike without getting stares?
XOXO,
Liz
Very very very nice! You know, all these pieces are so endowed with essential flash fiction qualities that they say exactly the amount needed to hook the reader and make her/him long for the orange juice and the dust and smoke – though these are hardly exotic in India – and therein I think lies the stupendous achievement of your writing! You have successfully peddled a ‘romantic’ vision of dirt, pollution, tourist heckling and a hundred other familiar icons to an Indian who looks at them as a matter of daily habit, and with disgust and frustration. Your writing gives all these abominations a very desirable quality, which is a brilliant accomplishment in my humble opinion. I am very happy I found your blog and lo! you have been added to my blogroll! Thanks for the superb posts.