Adventures in Marrakech

Marrakech is very different from Casablanca. The heart of Marrakech is this giant square where there are vendors, traffic, street performers, hustlers, and tourists all trying to survive.

On Thursday, after finally locating our hotel, we made our way to the main square for some lunch. We made our way to a restaurant, Aqua, which overlooked the bustling square below. It didn’t take long to understand where the name of the restaurant came from. Every five seconds or so, we were gently graced with a cool, aqua mist for our duration at this restaurant. It was my first experience dining while being misted, and it is rather enjoyable, especially when it’s freaking hot out!

After lunch, we wandered about the square, looking here and there at a few shops, and finally settled on the best one – an ice cream shop. It’s odd how much we all enjoyed the normalcy of being able to eat and drink in public during the day – we were out to enjoy all we had been missing in the past month. After ice cream and coffee at a street level table, we moved inside as the heavens began to pour! We ran into our good friends, whom I’ve decided to adopt at my parents for this Moroccan adventure (not their really quite old enough, but they’re just so amazingly kind and wonderful), and we exchanged stories.

The rain let up after a bit, and we headed back to our hotel to rest before making an adventure for dinner. As it turned out dinner was not much of an adventure, but what happened after words, sent Julie and I quickly back to our hotel room.

To walk off dinner, we walked through the square which had done quite the transformation. Every evening, 365 nights per year, over 100 restaurants set up. Each place offers about the same things and the prices are always the same – what gets you in is how good they are at charming you to choose their place. By the time we realized what all of this was, we had already eaten, but we enjoyed being told the food at one booth was, “Bloody Amazing!” Another charmer told us we were all too skinny and needed to eat again. We smiled, but kept walking.

In the square, crowds would gather around those playing games, telling stories or selling goods. Men with monkeys would come up to us and try to offer us a picture with the monkey, for money of course, there were snake charmers, women offering henna tattoos, and then there were the hat guys.

Red hat guy came up to Julie, and began to clap on his hand-held clappers, swing the tassel around on his hat and sing. I stayed with Julie as she appeared to be mildly entertained by the attention. The other two in our party drifted to the edge of the crowd and began a pleasant conversation with a couple of guys – still keeping an eye on the two of us. Red hat guy continued his literal song and dance, and then placed his hat on Julie’s head and called for a picture to be taken. She laughed pleasantly, and tried to give the hat back, but red hat guy was persistent. She smiled politely, dug out her camera and gave it to me. At this point, blue hat came on to the scene – trying to get in on the action. I suddenly didn’t care for our odds. Julie handed me her camera, and I quickly snapped a picture, but was told by red hat guy to take one more. I did.

Then, blue hat guy put his hat on me and I quickly removed it and gave it back to him. Just as quickly, he put it back on my head and called for another picture. I protested, but clearly failed. A picture exists of my failure. Then, money was asked for. Blue hat guy asked me for 20 Dirham (Dh). There was no way in the world I was dumb enough to hand over 20 dh for a picture I didn’t want taken. I pulled out all the coins I could collect as I felt his eyes trying to pry into my purse. I stretched out my hand to give him the coins and he insisted I give him 20 dh. I told him no, this was all I had. He then lifted his gown and wanted to make change for me. He kept saying “paper. Paper money.” I again insisted this was all I had. He then began mocking me and imitating my voice, but in a whiny third-grade style, “This is all I have! This is all I have!” As he angrily parroted my words back to me, I was able to shove the coins into his hands and realized Julie was at my side suffering a similar harassment from red hat guy, but not quite as severe. As soon as I have gotten the coins into his hands, he angrily threw them on the ground. He was able to take one step toward me before Julie and I bolted out of the crowd and hurriedly found our way through the maze to get back to our hotel. Once in the safety of our room, I texted our counterparts who were still in the square to let them know where we were. They said we moved so quickly. For them, we were there one second, and when they turned in the next second, we were nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, we just stayed in our rooms for the rest of the night, and slept very well.