Miranda in Italy
Posts Tagged metal
Souk. And ye shall find.
Posted by mirandainnes in Marrakech on January 29, 2011
The reason we all go, is because Morocco is sunny and exotic. If shopping at Waitrose tests the outer limits of your courage, Marrakech is not the place for you. But if you go for the rich tapestry, like a bit of challenge, can swagger with panache and negotiate with elan, you’ll have a wonderful time and make real friends, who will joyfully shout your name a decade down the line.
They don’t play by familiar rules: that’s why you’re here. I mean, not only is the sun shining, not only is everyone dressed like extras from Lawrence of Arabia, not only are you dipping a toe into the (actually shallow and safe) waters of extreme weirdness, but you are just THREE HOURS from Gatwick and have landed in 1432 — check out the calendar on the bank manager’s desk and you will find that during those three hours you have time-travelled 600 years or so.
Marrakech is one vast emporium, whose male population has a thousand years of selling expertise. Everyone will sell you anything — shirt off back, house, used chewing gum — you will find yourself being seduced into thinking ‘Yes! That’s it.’ They gaze at you beseechingly and call you ‘gazelle’, causing a momentary, thrilled tachyarrhythmic frisson, which the tirade of invective that follows if you don’t buy swiftly expunges. You are also accurately pinpointed nationally and socio-economically. Marakchi salesmen know where you come from, and precisely how much money you have in your bank balance. They can see into your heart and know that what you really want is a love potion, a glittering feline-green peridot ring the size of a Belgian endive, or a devore velvet kaftan patterned like a shower of autumn leaves. The object of your desires does not have a price — it is your price that the vendor is calculating.
The wise old men who have spent half a century watching the motley just sit in their tiny booths, and barely look up as you pause. They just get on with stitching orange leather onto another pair of babouches, and when you ask, do not harass you, empty the entire shop at your feet, offer you mint tea or otherwise bully you — they simply pick up a card upon which is written 800 dirhams, smile despite rheumy old eyes, and carry on stitching. In his youth, salesmen would grab your arm — which put off every right-thinking visitor from ever returning to the country. Now the vendors are not allowed to touch you, on pain of something, probably medieval.
You should be aware that there is a range of cajoling techniques known to the locals as ‘Djemaa el Fna tricks’, which have to do with unsettling you into unexpected expenditure. Brits are perfect prey for this because we are obsessed by our DEFENSIBLE SPACE, and panic when approached closely. One of the most successful ploys is the jostle and rescue — which is quite alarming until you are wise to the pathetic object of it — simply to get you into a shoe/rug/jewellery shop.
It goes like this. You are ambling mindlessly — sated by the rainbow overload — along Souk Smarine on your way to kebabs and salad at Chegrouni. Suddenly two youfs, hands in pockets, one with unfairly white teeth (given the quantities of Coke he drinks), the other a hoodie bearing the legend ‘Niker’ on his bobbly grey polyester zip-front, biff into you with their shoulders — not painfully, but annoyingly — come up too close, and baring every brilliant incisor, hiss ‘Inglees? Where you from? What you want?’ making you feel quite claustrophobic and surrounded, though there are but two of them. So there you are, clutching your possessions and whimpering. Being British, you are not making a fuss, screaming or calling the police (All perfectly legitimate tactics — there will be a plain clothes tourist policeman within five yards ready to spring to your assistance).
At this point the suave, urbane member of the trio shimmies up and ‘rescues’ you, keeping a respectful distance, asking politely whether you are all right, and sending off his brothers with a splatter of insults, involving many a glottal stop. He then shepherds you gently into his shop to recover, sits you down, and brings you mint tea to calm your nerves — you are puttified and do not leave until you have bought the garnets and the silver earrings, happily grateful to the gentlemanly shopkeeper whom you recommend to all your friends.
Theirs is a difficult job. There are maybe 500 shops, all selling EXACTLY the same wares. Somehow they have to get you into theirs, and blind you to all the others, blocking your exit and wooing you with the quality and variety of their merchandise. ‘Yes, 100 percent silk/cotton/linen’ they will swear, as the polyester in question spits with static. “how much you pay for three?’ they ask in desperate times, ‘What do you want to pay?’ Be prepared for theatre. You will name your price and the guy will look tragic. He will say quietly, ‘no, be serious. Serious price.’ He doesn’t have to sell, you don’t have to buy, just try to remember that when he’s blaming your tight-fistedness for the malnutrition of his entire family.
In my experience, you have to know your textiles (Moroccans are BESOTTED with polyester) and glued shoes are best avoided. Stitched soles may get you home, but glued soles part company from their uppers well before you’re out of the souk. And the ‘Converse’ that Dan bought for 500 dh had cardboard soles that did not cope well with rain.
It’s not all tat in the souks. Handbags, belts, backgammon sets made of delicious scented thuya (check that the hinges are up to the job), glazed ceramics, pierced tin lanterns — there are loads of good things. Decide what you want before you go into the melee, decide how much you think is fair, be ready for the calculation from dirhams to something manageable, name your price, stick to it, and walk away if the guy goes into the harangue-dance, knowing that the same object is replicated in its thousands up and down the souks. My otherwise wonderful friend Nan brought me to the brink of Nanocide by wanting to buy a particular scarf she had seen three days previously on the way to the square. Say, 50 scarf shops, each of which has probably 500 scarves. She couldn’t remember which shop but had total recall of the scarf. ‘No, it was like that one, but there was more blue.’ HOURS. If you love it, buy it. Right there and then.
Use a bit of common sense. If you send Nourredine out for a pot of honey and it costs you £20 consider that maybe a) you should do your own dirty work, and b) in this desert country where are the flowers? where are the bees? It’s just possible that that is what honey genuinely costs. Though unlikely, I admit.
Talking about foodstuffs, argan oil is quite delicious, fabulously beneficial, and does not, as I used to believe, come out of a goat’s bum. That was once the traditional way of gathering the argan nuts, using the goats that skitter up those twiggy trees as a mobile collection service, but these days the women simply put the normally (as in olives) harvested nuts out on a rooftop to dry and then crack them by hand. BUT according to G, our friend from Essouira where the things grow and the oil is made, the argan oil you might buy in Marrakech is not fresh or 100%. Best to take the trip to the wonderful wide-open beaches and buy from one of the women’s cooperatives en route. Familiarity is no safeguard — Dan’s really good (but quite often stoned) friend from the magic souk sold him a Fanta bottle of argan oil. It turned out to be eight drops of argan oil — enough to give the characteristic fragrance at first sniff — resting on a base of cooking oil.
You may well leave the Berber pharmacy or the spice souk, stunned that you have just parted with the equivalent of £30 for SPICES. You never use spices. You haven’t a clue how to use them. Two things here — learn how to use them, they’re good, fresh, delicious, and many have medicinal powers about which you may be ignorant. The other is you’ve got HALF A POUND of coriander — not some piddly little ten grammes in a supermarket bottle. Be profligate, throw them into everything and cure your inflamed hip joint (turmeric) or your husband’s lack of Whoopee (galangal) or share them with a friend.
Don’t whinge, observe.
Don’t bleat. Celebrate.
If you want to do serious shopping, to go beyond gewgaws and mixed kitsch into the realm of seriously desirable, I recommend that you allow ‘Shopping in Marrakech’, by Susan Simon and Nally Bellati to be your guide. Their shopping routes — in pursuit of tasteful merchandise — take you to the derbs less travelled where getting lost is part of the buzz, and the book illustrates what you will find.
Much of the wearable stuff comes from the French part of town, where more sophisticated cafes line the moped and caleche choked boulevards. You might stumble across the haven of calm and sanity that is the Literary Café where you could open your laptop and try being J K Rowling for an afternoon.
Professional mavericks can follow their hunches, and go way out of the main souks to try their luck — of course prices come down dramatically the further from Djemma el Fna you go. On the other hand, if bargaining brings you out in hives, you can just go straight to the government prix fixe place and pay somewhat over the odds.
Dan thinks the above is very negative and will put you off the whole place. I hope he’s wrong — if your dna has a shred of feistiness about it, you will have a great time. The kaleidoscope city of Marrakech is an invitation to adventure, and to explore it, and yourself a bit. I want you to go home happy — all I’m saying is that you have to be observant and critical, you have to know that the rules are different, understand that they’re just trying to sell some of their Al Addin’s Cave of STUFF, and don’t take it too seriously. You set the limits, only you know what that purple leather rhino is worth to you. This operatic mercenary dance is mind-expanding, and you might go home with a shimmering Chagall-blue bedspread that you gaze upon thereafter with a heartlift of pure exhilaration.
bag, herbs, jewellery, magic, market, metal, Morocco, shoes, silk, Souk, spices, sun
-
-
Blogroll
My Links
-
Archives
- April 2013 (1)
- January 2013 (2)
- April 2012 (2)
- March 2011 (2)
- January 2011 (9)
- December 2010 (6)
- September 2009 (1)
- August 2009 (2)
- April 2009 (1)
-
Meta