Ryad Mabrouka, Fez, 15th September 2006
Our second day and it’s time to head into the labyrinth, the medina. It’s claustrophobic and jumbled; dirt is swept into the street; goods are hauled by men and animals; nuts, grains and pulses are sold from open sacks; the meat, fruit and vegetables are flyblown; tradesmen carry out their clattering crafts in open booths. The stink of animal hides competes with the sweet aroma of spices and herbs; camel heads leer down from hooks outside butchers selling their meat, which is brought in from the desert for those traditionalists who favour it. Sunbeams from the woven roof filter down through smoke from hot cooking oil and grills; cries of “Balak, balak!” make way, make way, reverberate along the lanes as carts and donkeys push through the crowds. Moroccan dress for men and women, seemingly unchanged for centuries; people sitting waiting for business or just sitting; two men playing draughts with blue and yellow bottle tops on a homemade board. The call to prayer.
We follow hazy and tortuous routes trusting luck, a bit of judgement and some help from the crude hand-drawn signs and occasional wall mounted maps. Serendipity reveals: the Kairaouine Mosque; Place ss Sefourine, the metal workers square; Medersa Bau Inania, full of Japanese tourists; and Place an Nejjarine, the carpenters’ souq dominated by a restored funduq, now a museum of wood and woodwork. Along Al-Talaa al Kebir we see a sign for the Henna Souq, a charming tiny open space with a plane tree in the centre; a smiling stall holder explains the finer points of henna, cosmetics and Moroccan beauty products.
Is this time travel? Is this how the congested centres of medieval English cities might have looked, smelt and sounded?