The magic of Marrakesh

We've been back for around two weeks now, and Morocco is still as fresh in my mind as the smell of just-squeezed orange juice served in the sprawling main square of Marrakesh.

I can't get the country - that city, specifically - out of my head.

I was sitting at work last Friday, about 4 o'clock Portland time, watching the rims fill up and knowing a long night was ahead of me. My mind drifted back to Jemaa el Fna, where it was 11 o'clock.

I imagined Amy and I, sitting at the cafe we'd visited days ago, perched on a raised patio overlooking that giant square, sharing a bottle of wine we'd managed to scare up from a friend with connections. Ordering on paper because the waiter speaks French and we know nothing beyond "Oui." Watching the blur of humanity drift back and forth in every direction at once. Listening to the buzz of thousands of voices, picking up bits of conversations left and right in the late-night, fast-breaking revelry of Ramadan. Arabic here. Berber and French there. Some Spanish and German in that direction. Tidbits of Dutch behind us. And, at our little table for two, laughing as we realize we are inadvertently bouncing from English to Spanish to the little bit of Arabic we know.


Then later, warmed by each other and the wine as the desert air cools, we stroll through the square itself, people-watching up close. So close you brush shoulders, smell new aftershaves and catch flashes of eye color deep in the throng. Surrounded by people in every direction, alive and full of life, as midnight nears. The snake charmers and fortune tellers, just waiting to spin their magic, it seems, directly into your soul. The restaurant barkers, the call of their voices no match for the aroma of their food, but both working to lure you to their table for another in an endless menu of dishes whose spices are sure to dance on your unfamiliar tongue. The musicians, their rhythms rolling out of the drums and pinging off the banjo strings, washing across the onlookers and working into our ears, flipping some switch in our brains and involuntarily setting some part, any part, of our bodies into motion -- hips swinging here, a head nodding there, maybe just a toe tap, tap, tapping halfway around the world from all you knew before.


Now, back here, I find myself reading all sorts of pieces about the place I just visited. Stuff I'm sure must have run all the time before, but stuff I never noticed.

Maybe it's my little attempt to keep a piece of the Moroccan spirit present in me today rather than tucked away as a memory to be recalled in some distant tomorrow.

Here's a great quote from one such piece, a profile of Spanish expatriate novelist Juan Goytisolo, from The New York Times Magazine:

"People ask, 'Why do you live in Marrakesh?'" Goytisolo told me with a chuckle. "I ask them, 'Have you seen it?'" In Jemaa el Fna, Goytisolo explained, he finds all the heterogeneity that is in danger of disappearing from Western cities. "In the '70s, when I was very poor, I was offered a permanent teaching post in Edmonton. I realized I would rather starve in Marrakesh than be a millionaire in Alberta."

So as all the pressures, the demands of work, the stresses of life try to creep back into my brain, here's hoping that Moroccan mojo helps fend them off and keeps me balanced in ways I wasn't before the trip.

Perspective, I suppose, is everything. And my view from Marrakesh is mesmerizing.