More Morocco: Marrakech

Here are some photos that convey, I hope, a bit of what caught my eye in walking around Marrakech.  The majority of women wore coverings of some type, either a scarf with western clothing or progressively more, culminating in a full burqa-like covering with eyes barely showing.  Since most people actively avoided having their pictures taken, I can't show you most of these.

The tile around the door in the photo above is typical in the medina, something often seen on houses and storefronts.

Before King Mohammed VI dissolved his legislature recently there were 34 registered political parties.  Since a sizable proportion of Moroccans are illiterate, these painted panels serve as reminders, linking the party's number to its symbol, making it easier to recall.

There are lots of jobs in the souk, including cart drivers, either donkey- or human-propelled, sellers of wooden objects, sellers of clothing, sellers of pottery, sellers of olives and other prepared and preserved foods, sellers of preserved fruits like dates and figs and nuts, sellers of pastries, sellers of meat, and, in the huge Place J'maa el-Fna, sellers of orange juice by day and snails by night.  Yes, those are huge pots of escargot cooking.

The sellers of rugs were ubiquitous.  Like sellers of other products, they clustered together, shoulder to shoulder with the competition.

 

These boys were moving these oranges from place to place near the Koutoubia Mosque. 

Some people weren't working or didn't have work we could see, although a lot of living goes on on the sidewalks, so maybe this is a meeting of some sort.  When we came back to our riad at the end of the day, a group of women were invariable sitting there at the end of the alleyway, often preparing food, often just talking. 

 

There were few places without people, and that may be why those rooftop terraces are so appealing.  Looking up is your only out.

Unmoored

Hundreds of photos later, I think I can only give you a very limited dose of what we're seeing here.  On our first day we walked through the souk and searched for the Medersa Ben Youssef, an ancient abandoned Koranic school that has been opened to tourism, unlike mosques and other religious buildings, which are barred to non-Muslims.

The medersa's ground floor level is covered with brightly colored tiles called zellij and with gorgeous carved plaster designs setting off graceful arches and ceiling vaults.  The cool central courtyard with its tiled pool is deserted where once it was home to students living in the cell-like rooms on the upper level.  One could spend hours sitting quietly here, sheltered from the overwhelming bustle and noisy demands of the souk just steps away.