"Like Webster's dictionary, we're Morocco bound." - Road to Morocco

Yesterday I returned from Morocco to Pakistan, where soldiers guard the major intersections of Lahore to prevent further rioting. I don’t want to think about that, so I’ll relive my Moroccan travelogue instead.

Day 1:Marrakech is one city that lives up to the romantic and mysterious images its name conjures up. Marrakech glows with every shade of red – from rosy pinks to burnt oranges. It’s the color of the Atlas mountains, which provide Morocco’s red rocks as well as its fertile plains. Moroccans in long coats with peaked hats drift through shady crimson-tinted alleys like jedi knights. It’s said that George Lucas’s planet Tatooine, from the original Star Wars, was inspired by Moroccan architecture and dress, and once I have the Star Wars comparison in my head I can’t get it out. So I tell all my colleagues and they are similarly stuck with the same surreal images.

Its old city (the medina) is a labyrinth of twisting, narrow streets designed to foil invaders and now confounding countless tourists. Maps aren’t much help when there are few street signs, and those that do exist are primarily in Arabic. So our first day we did what we’d absolutely been warned not to do, and hired a guide, Moustafa, off the street. He was the only one who approached me in my entire visit to Marrakech, and he was wonderful – a museum guide at loose ends while the museum was closed for renovations. He charged our group of 6 about seven dollars, and we ended up giving him double.

We visited some of the major tourist sites, then ended up in the famous Djmaa el Fna (the square of the dead, so named for executions which once took place there) plaza for dinner. Edith Wharton’s description of the nightly festival there when she visited in 1918 is still accurate. Storytellers, snake charmers, dancers, musicians, and thieves still prowl the square, entertaining Moroccan and tourist alike. In fact, there were only two differences I noted from Wharton’s description: more tourists, and the constant roar of motorcycles. The streets of the medina are so narrow that motorbike is the preferred mode of transportation, and during my stay in Marrakech I saw several pedestrians get clipped or knocked down by them.