Wonders of an ancient world in Marrakech
Nov 26 2010 By Ross McCarthy
Ross McCarthy gets swept up in the madness of the labyrinthine markets of Marrakech.
I have enjoyed the high octane thrills of zip wiring above a gorge with a raging torrent below and tackled a slippery black run in the Alps.
But I didn’t expect to have an equally nerve-jangling experience wandering around Marrakech’s great sprawling souks in its old fortified city.
However, I had only gone a few steps down one of the narrow passageways when suddenly I heard a loud buzzing sound.
There were people on each side but the driver of the approaching moped made no effort to slow down and whizzed by, almost giving me a nasty swipe.
Well he was probably inches away really and as I continued my tour more and more went by, along with cyclists, passing equally close, sometimes coming round blind corners, desperate to go to wherever they wanted to go as quickly as possible.
And I even witnessed a bit of silent road-rage as a moped rider and cyclist jockeyed for position, the cyclist who lost out glaring at his rivals’ back.
This was the crazy world of the Marrakech souks which boast 14,000 shops and where I was grateful for the services of our guide, Abdul, who knew the place like the back of his hand.
And it was plain to see what he meant when he said “We are in the 21st century but here you can go back to the Middle Ages.”
Because traditions that go back centuries are still going strong in this amazing labyrinth, where, if you look into one of the little rooms open to the street, you can see people hard at work in the most basic of conditions doing blacksmithing and woodwork, making leather goods, shoes and jewellery.
In another there’s a man pulling flat breads out of an oven, or enter a courtyard and there is a carpet shop, Chez Les Nomades, where the owners will tell you they have carpets for sale at “very reasonable prices,” and are only too happy to perform a sales demonstration where a whole series of carpets are rolled out in a flourish.
