There is no Moroccan city of which Peace Corps volunteers have a stronger opinion. Whether they love it or hate it, no one is indifferent. It’s also – despite a brief infatuation with Casablanca – the most famous of the kingdom’s cities, so much so that nearly every language other than Arabic uses a derivation of Marrakesh as their word for “Morocco.”
And why not? Marrakesh was the seat of power for several dynasties in a time before the creation of the nation-state. To say “The King of Marrakesh” was to say the king of basically everything over here, so it might as well come to mean “Morocco.” Aside from when talking with your Persian friends, however, whose vocabulary makes no distinction whatsoever between Marrakesh and Morocco, this is entirely academic. Let’s move to the much more exciting topic of The Peace Corps’s bipolar relationship with Marrakesh, shall we?
I’ve been told that Marrakesh – of all Moroccan cities – has the lowest rate of return visits, and, without performing any quantitative research of any kind, I’m entirely prepared to support that statement. The Red City (named such for the ubiquitous red brickwork, not its political leanings) is a pushy place. The market vendors, fake Tuaregs, desert expeditionists, back-alley drug dealers, taxi drivers, beggars, and wannabe hustlers are merciless, sometimes beyond the capacity to be dived into or shrugged off. Even before I’d ever arrived, I’d heard more horror stories of the hassles of Marrakesh than anywhere else, and it take more than about three minutes for them to be validated.
Having just arrived from Essaouira, we stepped off the bus and needed a taxi to get to the central square – the Djema’ al Fna’ – and I was struck by one of the best ideas I’ve had in the whole two years of my living in Morocco thus far: I should ask a local how much to expect for the taxi fare. After about five minutes of incredibly belabored explanations with the bus counter girl, we finally arrived at it costing somewhere around fifteen dirham to get downtown. Once outside, we were mobbed by would-be chauffeurs, each offering his services. We countered by asking how much? They responded with the reasonable sums of anywhere from sixty to a hundred. We suggested they might enjoy sodomizing themselves. They inquired as to what alternatives we had. We swore to walk, regardless of how long or how far. They laughed.
That’s the problem with Marrakesh. Unlike Fes, which is equally as pushy, the pushers don’t have to acquiesce in the end to your well-stuck to guns. All they have to do is wait a few more minutes an even bigger chump will go walking by with “sucker me” written on his back. I refused to play their game, and they couldn’t have cared less. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t realize just how wrathful a scorned PCV can be. I showed them.
In our case, the “next guy” came along about twenty seconds later – a family of French tourists on their way out of Morocco shortly and back in Marrakesh to see one last sight. I saw them walk up to the same taxi driver that had scoffed at our hard ball only moments earlier, ask the price to the center of town, and reply, “Sixty? Sounds good.” Not on my watch, bucko. In the best French I could muster I called over that he was being had, which he seemed none too pleased about. I offered to get him an honest cabbie who’d actually turn on his meter (a lot less common than you’d expect). I flagged down three or four, sent the majority packing, but finally landed a guy who said he’d take them wherever they wanted to go. We waved goodbye and hoped – for the sake of the Peace Corps – that this guy wasn’t going to turn on one of his expensive presets and take this hapless couple to the Bahia Palace by way of the cleaners. Of course, we still didn’t have a cab of our own, but the fuming indignation of the would-be highway robber was reward enough. I recompensed him with a smile and a quick wink; I’m sure he felt better.
It’s anecdotal, of course, but that pretty much sums up Marrakesh. It’s a concrete jungle. Sink or swim, kill or be killed, fish or cut bait. You have to constantly be on your guard, but, worse still, you’d do best not to expect even a moment’s respite. That’s the image the city’s trying to sell: a whirlwind of exotic flavors, a thousand Arabian nights compacted into one, and the tourists eat that up with a spoon. We, though, the poor Peace Corps volunteers, get tossed in with the rest. In my lifetime, I’ve learned three surefire ways to start a fight: call a Scotsman “English,” call a Persian “Arab,” and call a PCV “tourist.” There is nothing more painful to us than to be reduced to the level of the rest of you – and we’ve got good reason for that. You didn’t have to fight through three months of training, two months of homestay, and the remainder of two years of trying to explain what you’re even doing here in Morocco, so you’ll forgive us for getting on our high horses about Marrakesh.
But Marrakesh does have one redeeming quality: it actually has a lot of cool things to do. The center of it all is also the center of town, Djema’ al Fna’. This is the archetype of central squares, the Cadillac of grand places. By day it’s filled with water sellers, orange juice and date stands, snake charmers and monkey trainers, guys selling traditional medicines, and ladies selling henna. By night they’re still there, plus a small shanty town of quick restaurants, storytellers and their throngs, and this one carnival game that involves a bottle of soda and a fishing pole that I don’t think I’ll ever understand. A lot of detractors like to point out the campiness of it all, and it is touristy – those snake charmers wouldn’t be there if it didn’t fit with someone’s Orientalist vision of Alladin, and ladies certainly wouldn’t be pushing henna like heroin if it wasn’t for the crowds of Europeans who want to feel like they’ve “gone native” – but there’s another side, too. All those stories are in Darija, and even with my two years of language, I have yet to understand anything they’ve been talking about. I’m also pretty sure that those aren’t tourists crowding around the “traditional” dentists, either, to have their teeth pulled out sans insurance, sans board certification, and sans Novocain.
Of course, the northern side of the square is the entrance to the souks, which is not the sort of place that is for locals and tourists alike. This one is an endless labyrinth of carpets, t shirts, and souvenir tagines, and is kryptonite for PCVs for the simple fact that no matter how good our language is, we can’t pretend to be locals – no local would be here who wasn’t just passing through to somewhere else (which is to say, Marrakeshis; there are plenty of Moroccan tourists to be found). If you’re willing to get over yourself for just long enough, though, it can actually be a lot of fun, and haggling with the shopkeepers – even if you don’t actually want to buy anything – is a great way to pass the time and practice for your next language proficiency indicator exam. It was here that I found out for the first time that I’ve got a country boy accent, like someone who, living amongst Imazighen who speak Tamazight first and Darija second, has picked up a Tamazight-accented Arabic with rustic overtones. On that particular occasion it resulted in more discrimination than discount, but I’ve learned to work it since then.
On the other side of the square is the majority of the history, beginning with the iconic minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque that towers over the Djema’ al Fna’. It and the Kasbah Mosque are pretty much the only way that I know of navigating my way around the old city of Marrakesh. And I usually come down this way on the first full of day in the city; there’s a lot to see, mostly palaces, and all pretty much exclusively the domain of tourist herds. I started with the Sa’adian Tombs, which makes sense, considering as how they’re the first thing you’re going to come to (if you come the way I did). It’s not a really big place, but it’s jam-packed with color, intricacy, and the tombs of princes and sultans of the Sa’adian Dynasty (and others). Along with a small garden, it’s a good place to be dead.
It’s around this time that I’ll pass through the Tin-Worker’s Square and go to a real palace, the Badi. It’s actually not a real palace – not anymore, anyway – but it’s big, it’s ancient, and it’s rarely crowded with tourists. The Badi Palace is, as guidebooks describe, more evocative than anything else, mostly because it’s empty. Not only does it command great open spaces and courts, but all but the tiniest stitches of tilework was stripped out of the palace by the Sultan Moulay Smail for his building of Meknes. You can still see the shape of everything, though. Including the pools and sunken gardens, the rooms for courtiers and visiting diplomats, and the dungeonous storage areas. Interestingly, the Sa’adian Tombs were one of the few beauties left unransacked by Smail because he was afraid he’d be cursed if he ripped out the tiles there, though he did seal off all but the tiniest of entrances.
Around this time you’ll probably be getting hungry, so you should stop in the Tin-Worker’s Square again for a reasonably cheap meal. It’ll be even cheaper if you, like me, make friends with some of the merchants there while your visiting friends are shopping who will tell you what to tell the restaurants to give you for a price. Afterwards, finish out the morning in the south district with a stop at the Bahia Palace. It’s a good deal smaller than the Badi, though it’s really more of a mansion than a palace, anyway. It’s by far the most beautiful of all of them, though, so size doesn’t really matter. Full of unmolested tiling, fantastically carved wood, and lush – almost jungle-like – courtyard gardens. It’s a photographer’s paradise as long as the throngs of tourists will get out of your way long enough to take the shot.
There are plenty of other touristy things to do in Marrakesh, but that’s where I usually stop. I will make special note of the Majorelle Gardens. I don’t actually think that they’re overly exceptional; they are gorgeous, of course, but too crowded to be the oasis of peace you’d want them to be. For the most part, other than being the place where I let myself buy my souvenirs and tourguiding folks around the historical sights, I take advantage of Marrakesh as the major city where I can do so many of the things I can’t back in Freedonia. For example, there’s a fantastic vegetarian restaurant near Djema’ al Fna’ and a coffee-shop style café (the only one I’ve seen in Morocco) in the Gueliz neighborhood that reminds me of the sort of places I can find around College Hill in Providence, and that you could find in whatever the bougie area of your home city is called. Both are absurdly overpriced, but you don’t go there for the discount. You go there because it’s like home and you can get away from the madhouse scene of Marrakesh.
I’m probably one of the rare volunteers who likes Marrakesh, then again, I don’t really go there very often. I’ll grant you that it’s exhausting, and I don’t think I could stay more than about three days without getting pretty sick of it, but it’s also taught me more about living in Morocco as a PCV than about anywhere else, too. The number one lesson: don’t act like you don’t know what you’re doing. If you want to be treated like a tourist, by all means, act like one. But if you want people to treat you like the local you deserve to be treated like, don’t ask how much the fare is when you get in the taxi and don’t ask if he’ll turn on the meter. Just get in, tell him where you want to go, and give him ten dirham when you get there. A local wouldn’t ask how much, either.
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