The rush of heat that fills our first breath of air Marrakech carries with it an enchanted essence that would radiate through everything here. It’s intensity fills our bodies and emblazons our souls in a way that makes all five senses fire at once.
We drive through the dusty narrow streets of the old medina no faster than the pace of the donkey carts in front of us. Young and often barefooted kids scurry through the street in and out of shaded doorways where old women sit. Right now, we’re still foreigners watching through a tinted window, but even so we know this place is going to be very, very different.
Our riad host, Medhi, greets us a few blocks away and we walk the last five minutes, all of a sudden very aware that we now are on the other side of the window; the watched and not the watchers. A minute later we can’t help but feel a pang of shame when the worst that happens are enthusiastic waves and attempts at hello in sprinkles of French, Arabic, and English. We come to a small door in a dark part of a covered ally, through which we must bow our heads to enter; an architecturally forced reminder of respect to God. In the small entry room where we remove our shoes we’re swirled into a perfumed cloud of rose water and orange blossom. A step further brings into an oasis miles away from the city right outside the door. Keyhole arches line hallways that surround a central courtyard, in the middle of which water shimmers in a blue pool that naturally air conditions the room. In one corner a palm tree rises up towards the baking sun. Intricately carved bronze chandeliers throw light patterns onto the daybed sized couches that cover the terraces above us. Small sparrow birds chirp, flit, and dart around the room.
The afternoon welcomes us with the slow applaud of a thunderstorm. We climb to the roof and take in our first view of the old city. A sprawl of red terra-cotta buildings is so thick we could walk from roof to roof across the whole of its expanse. The thousand year old walls are disfigured and crumbling. To our left a woman is hanging her laundry outside. Upon seeing us she abruptly apologizes and scurries back inside. To our right a boy on a roof swings a long wooden pole in the air. Behind its arc fly the gaggle of pigeons he’s training. In front of us the saffron orange African sun swells as sets over the medina. The sky above us blazes and a horn from a minaret blares. Through a battered loudspeaker a single imam chants the evening call to prayer. Another joins him; then another, then ten more. Together we stood there, slowly circling to take it all in. If we were watching this on television back home it could have easily been the start of a Jason Bourne movie, but here standing in the middle of the real thing is an experience parallel to hearing mass in a great Roman cathedral, or kneeling in a high Tibetan temple. Here we stand; as the thunder claps, the imams sing, and the horizon burns as our misguided expectations sink with the sun. Here we are in Northern Africa, and the world couldn’t be bigger.
