But your duties as a traveler in Marrakech are still wonderfully light. You’ll see the Koutoubia Mosque—tiresomely referred to as Marrakech’s Eiffel Tower or Empire State Building—every day on your way into town. It’s beautifully lit but closed to non-Muslims. The only other things worth braving the heat of the day for are the aforementioned Saadien Tombs, the souks, and perhaps La Bahia Palace.
And so, instead of sightseeing, you slow down and start to notice things—the powdery scent of fig leaves bruised by the desert heat, the slick green olive-oil soap sold by the scoop from big vats all over town, the vivid pyramids of loose spices in the market, the melancholy call to prayer from a neighborhood mosque, and the undertone of lust in a country where virginity is prized and half the population is currently under 20. Like a photo slowly developing, it is the contrast and tension between the unseen and the observed that finally creates your personal picture of Marrakech.
To really savor Marrakech, you must stay somewhere that has a garden and is an easy walk into town. Behind closed doors, perhaps on a terrace of your own, you’ll listen to the doves cooing in the morning and the starlings chattering at sunset. You’ll spend unmeasured hours on a chaise reading and dozing. The rhythms of life follow the heat of the day, so you rise early to wander, retreat from the sun at noon, lunch, rest in the afternoon when shade and silence are the city’s priorities, and then join in its explosive nocturnal life after sundown.
It’s easy to find your way around and easy to get lost. The ramparts of orange-colored earth pierced by peacock-tail gates, each called a bab, are the skin of the Medina. If this city within a city seems a random labyrinth of alleys and lanes, it is on the most basic level a maze, which is to say that the only way to learn your way around is to make the same mistake so many times you couldn’t possibly make it again. Since few travelers to Marrakech are here long enough to attain this subconscious level of familiarity, the city will remain ever mystifying, a situation that is heightened by the lack of street signs.
The souks—the warren of alleys, lanes, shops, and ateliers that make up the market—lie buried in the middle of the Medina. The cleanest activities—selling books and gold or making silver jewelry—are at the center of the souks, while the dirtier jobs—tanning and trading leather—are on the edges. And everywhere food is being prepared. At the end of a lane near the Bab Agnaou, an old woman grates carrots in the early morning while two others sit at a table making olive-size meatballs from a bowl of kefta: ground mutton mixed with rice and seasoned with cumin, cinnamon, fresh mint leaves, parsley, onion, and coriander. Suddenly aware that they have an audience, the women grin; one of them quickly flicks a curtain so their work can again be anonymous.
The Moroccan kitchen, one of the most refined in the world, has traditionally been the preserve of women, and recipes are transmitted from generation to generation as a sort of culinary dowry. Although the mass-prepared couscous and tagines that have become the tourist idiom are often heavy, reflecting their origins as high-caloric meals once meant to sustain laborers in the fields, the food most Moroccans eat at home is remarkably delicate. One of the glories of the Moroccan table is the wonderful array of salads and appetizers that precede the main course, sometimes spinach cooked with paprika, cumin, preserved lemons, and pepper; or briouat, a fragile, flaky turnover filled with meat, cheese, fish, or sausage, sweet tomato relish, and grated carrots with sultanas, those yellow raisins I kept finding stuck to my heels.
These sorts of preparations are time-consuming, which is why they are seldom found in restaurants. But things are changing. A new generation of professional cooks, including a growing number of male chefs, are codifying the country’s culinary heritage at the same time that increased professional opportunities for women are freeing them from the kitchen. The assumption that most menus offer the same standard dishes is much less true these days.
What remains unchanged is Marrakech’s thriving café culture, one of the best legacies of the French. A terrace with ceiling fans in the arcades of the Gueliz district, the 1920s French-designed new town, is perfect for waiting out the heat of the day with a drink and a book.
“Voulez-vous goûter le rafraîchissement local?” asks the waiter when I settle in at the Café Les Négociants. I expect mint tea. But a minute later he returns with a bright orange bottle of Fanta and a big grin. A fine joke—who could resist needling a tourist now and then?—and a telling bit of irony. Everyone else on the shaded terrace is drinking Fanta, too.
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