dance man
Looking back at our time in Marrakech, one image keeps springing to mind: the dance man.
Marrakech is an intense city by nature and we arrived in Morocco straight into the thick of it, staying at a riad in a busy corner or the medina.1
On our first night, after a tour of the beautifully intricate home, we were treated to a late feast of the kind of food we had been dreaming about: tomato and cucumber salad, spiced potatoes, and a rich chicken tajine. We fell asleep with full bellies, wondering what the souks would bring the next day.
Let me just step back a second to clarify some vocabulary. Riads are Moroccan homes set around an internal courtyard that have been converted into boutique hotels. The medina is the “old city”—usually a walled area at the heart of town where you’ll get lost in narrow winding streets and dead ends. The medina is filled with street-side sellers hawking everything from raw fish to silk scarves to pottery to wrought-iron lamps. These shops lie within a semi-covered section of the streets—the world’s original mall—or the souks.
Oh, and a tajine is one of these things:
When it comes to the souks and medina, it’s impossible to capture the energy, movement and chaos. A tip: walk steadily and in a predictable direction lest you want a leg taken off by a passing motorcycle/bicycle/donkey cart.
Bonjour! Hello! Guten Tag! Buenos dias! Come in! Come in, my friend! You don’t have to buy, just stay happy!
Smile, nod and try not to make eye contact, otherwise you might get roped into haggling over something you don’t really want.
Considering our limited suitcase space,2 we’re not really of the shopping persuasion these days and just enjoyed the colors, shadows and smells of the cobble-stoned streets. We ate street food of spiced lamb and watched as the locals bought meat from an old man across the alley who hacked off a half kilo at a time with a beef dagger.
Fat dripping onto bike chain = free lube?
But I can’t stop thinking about the dancing man.
Later that night Kelli and I strolled through the Djemaa el-Fna, Marrakech’s huge central square where tourists and locals alike circle street performers jamming out with drums, cymbals, and all shapes and sizes of percussion. With a fierce mustache and dressed in a faded three-piece suit—Windsor knot and all—our dancing man stomped and staggered and gyrated in a heartfelt dance. Sort of like Moroccan Kramer meets David Byrne with a little Zorba the Greek thrown in there for good measure.
We only watched for about ten minutes, threw in a few dirhams and let someone else take our place in the circle.
I wish we would have stuck around for another song. But considering that street performers have been doing their thing in that very spot for nearly a thousand years, I find comfort in knowing that our man is still out there dancing.
