Jemaa el Fna, Marrakech

There is something about the Jemaa el Fna that exerts an almost gravitational pull on the visitor to Marrakech.

This isn't just because everyone knows the Jemaa is the central square and hub of the Medina, Marrakech's old town. It isn't just that the labyrinthine lanes and souks all seem to wind their eventual way to it if you follow them far enough, having retraced your steps systematically whenever - which will be often - you find ...
...time.

The Jemaa el Fna is ancient, so presumably it served some significant purpose even before the tourists came along. The name translates literally as "Assembly (or mosque) of the Dead (or departed)". This is customarily construed to mean that it was a place of execution, with the heads of the decapitated being displayed on spikes around the perimeter as a warning to others, though it could simply mean that it was once ... more

There is something about the Jemaa el Fna that exerts an almost gravitational pull on the visitor to Marrakech.

This isn't just because everyone knows the Jemaa is the central square and hub of the Medina, Marrakech's old town. It isn't just that the labyrinthine lanes and souks all seem to wind their eventual way to it if you follow them far enough, having retraced your steps systematically whenever - which will be often - you find yourself in a dead end. Nor is it the blandishments of the many self-appointed guides who want to show you the way there, and expect a tip for doing so even if you already know the way. It's not even the lure of the musical cacophony of pipes, tambours and drums that act as an audible lodestar to the correct bearing. Over and above all these, it's an interesting place in itself and a good starting-point for wherever you want to go in the old city, so you're not truly disappointed when you find yourself back there for the umpteenth time.

The Jemaa el Fna is ancient, so presumably it served some significant purpose even before the tourists came along. The name translates literally as "Assembly (or mosque) of the Dead (or departed)". This is customarily construed to mean that it was a place of execution, with the heads of the decapitated being displayed on spikes around the perimeter as a warning to others, though it could simply mean that it was once the site of a now vanished mosque. Being relatively boring, the latter interpretation tends to be ignored by the guidebooks.

The Jemaa el Fna does seem rather large to have been just a place of execution, unless executions in old Marrakech were carried out on an industrial scale, or unless it also doubled up for other purposes - just as the Communist Chinese and the Taliban used to perform their public executions in football stadia. You could easily fit half a dozen football pitches into the Jemaa, though arranging them to make best use of the available space might pose a problem. The Jemaa is not a compact or neatly-proportioned square. It sprawls and is messily irregular around its edges, an octopus with tentacles coiling off into the souks to the north, the alleys to the east, the quasi-modernised commercial streets to the south and through gardens towards the Koutoubia mosque in the west.

The Jemaa is messy in most other respects as well, chaotic even. Perhaps less so than it once was, since traffic through the square is now limited. Permitted are only taxis, the horse-drawn "calèche" open carriages that offer a more colourful and expensive alternative to the taxis, and the vans and donkeys that drag the stalls into position and keep them supplied with merchandise. But there are many of all of these, and buzzing mopeds too. For a supposedly pedestrianised open space, the Jemaa seems to have more than its fair share of vehicles.

When it comes to noise and all-round obtrusiveness, though, the vehicles can't compete with the vendors and would-be entertainers in the square. They are busy and bustling from dawn to long after dusk, though I am told that in the hottest months of summer a truce-like lull descends for a siesta in the afternoon. While we were there in February, the hubbub was nonstop.

Rather than plunge straight into the pandemonium, visitors are well-advised to find ring-side seats in one of the many cafés that surround the Jemaa, ideally on a rooftop terrace. Here they can find their bearings and attune to the atmosphere. On a clear day, the Argana café on the north-west corner has the advantage of offering a view not only of the square itself, but also a distant glimpse of the snow-capped peaks of the High Atlas mountains beyond the city to the south. Against this, one is facing into the sun at its zenith, so suitable hats or sunglasses are advisable. Alternatively, there are numerous options on the south-east corner; the balcony of the Café Glacier being well-known among them (and slightly cheaper than the Argana for refreshments).

Below, the stalls and barrows are shaded beneath white awnings, like desert tents, while the entertainers ply their trades under wide circular umbrellas. Curiously, as if seeking safety in numbers, merchants selling similar fare tend to gang together, so that here you see a cluster of spice stalls with pinnacled, pigmented pyramids, there overflowing hessian sacks of desiccated herbs and homeopathic remedies. Many a line of stalls is laden with oranges and grapefruit from which fresh juice is squeezed, or heaped high with dried dates, figs, apricots and almonds. During the day there is little in the way of cooked meals or even solid snacks; that is for the evening. Although there are trinkets, ornaments, souvenirs and some clothing on offer, these are relatively sparsely represented. Serious shopping for such items mostly takes place in the covered souks beyond the square.

"Entertainers" is perhaps a euphemism when applied to some of those who earn their living in the Jemaa. Snake-charmers - the source of much of the pipe and tambour music - conspicuously lacked both charm and entertainment value as far as my wife and I were concerned. Their defanged cobras, much like the Barbary apes that others carry round chained to their arms, are primarily props that they will try to persuade you to handle or to photograph, for a fee in either case. "Tattoo artists" will vie to paint expensive henna patterns on your arms or feet. Water-sellers in their gaudy red and gold costumes, festooned with brass cups and goat-skin waterbags, rank somewhere between vendors and entertainers. Ringing their bells to attract attention, they will thrust cups of water towards you as you pass - the least appealing refreshment on offer, and the probably the poorest value too.

At night, acrobats and dancing-boys, in the transvestite costumes required by Chleuh tradition, come into their own. If you pause to watch, however momentarily, you will be asked - though "ask" is perhaps insufficiently forceful a description - to pay. The fortune-tellers and story-tellers are similarly assertive in pursuit of custom, though the latter, narrating as they do in Arabic or Berber dialects, presumably derive most of their serious custom from locals.

Indeed, it would be a mistake to assume that all this show is put on solely for the tourists that the city attracts in such abundance today. On the contrary, these are ancient traditions that have made the Jemaa an entertainment centre, like a continuous fair, from time immemorial. It is one of the official reasons that Marrakech's Medina is listed among UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. The international tourists are just a late-coming bonus to be exploited by the performers much as local audiences have always been, if perhaps more lucratively.

One outcome of all this hassling and harassing is that when my wife and I walked through the Jemaa itself, we did so briskly without stopping much, barely dallying long enough to absorb the atmosphere and sneak the odd surreptitious photograph. For eating and drinking we stuck to the surrounding cafés and restaurants, enjoyably and inexpensively enough, though we may have missed something, including the lowest prices, by not sampling any of the fare from the stalls.

By dusk, you want to be on a rooftop terrace on the east side of the Jemaa, so as to see the sun set beyond the gardens surrounding the minaret of the Koutoubia mosque. The Chegrouni is an excellent option, serving the best tagine (meal baked in a traditional earthernware vessel) I ate during my stay in Marrakech and good value for money too. Here, you scribble your order on a piece of paper and it comes back to you later marked up as your bill. Tagines for two, big bread rolls and a two-litre bottle of mineral water came to a shade over 100 dirhams, a shade under £10. Regular readers of my reviews will, I know, be surprised to hear of me drinking mineral water, but booze, alas, is virtually unobtainable in the Medina except at exorbitant cost at tourist hotels

On another evening we ate a slightly inferior and slightly more expensive tagine at Les Prémices, in the south-eastern corner of the square. Its terrace is another excellent vantage point from which to observe the goings-on in the Jemaa, especially at night. Beneath the black sky the salient feature is not so much the brilliant bare-bulbed lamps that illuminate the stalls. Rather, the eye is drawn to the billowing smoke and steam that rises from their myriad charcoal grills and bubbling tureens to form a foggy cloud above the canopy of awnings.

If you're feeling brave, you can choose to dine in the square itself, where as darkness descend dozens of open-air eateries are set up with trestle tables and long benches. Proprietors and chefs in flowing white robes keep up a constant patter as they try to cajole you - or even pull you bodily - into sampling their offerings. Pungent odours assault you from every side. As well as the inevitable cous cous and tagines, there are kebabs on long skewers and coiled sausages of nameless meats. Mint and cinnamon teas are poured in thin cascades with a rising gesture of the arm to land unerringly in the waiting glasses. Cauldrons of steaming snails are stirred with ladles, their shells giving off a sound like pebbles shifting in a tide. Ready-cooked sheep's heads and goats' heads are proudly displayed, priced as "grande tête" or "demi-tête", though to my mind you would have to be inordinately hungry to eat a demi-tête, let alone a grande one. Or indeed any part of them at all.

Certainly if you take the plunge you will eat very economically, and also have the reassurance of finding many locals eating alongside you, the djellabas as commonplace as the chinos, whereas the surrounding restaurants are predominantly patronised by tourists. There is some debate as to how hygienic is the fare in the square. Most of it is cooked on the spot from fresh ingredients, which makes it seems safe enough provided you avoid uncooked side-dishes like salads. But the arrangements for washing up can be less reliable, with utensils, crockery and cutlery often slopped out in the same lukewarm water throughout the evening. Standard advice to avoid upset stomachs is to seek out stalls that will serve on disposable cardboard plates or paper.

You need your wits about you in the Jemaa el Fna, if only to fend off the hucksters and hustlers. There is also, of course, some crime - pick-pocketing and bag-snatching - though the incidence is said to be relatively low for such an obvious tourist trap, and violence very rare. Coming away from the Jemaa late at night my wife and I would walk back to our hotel down an unlit alley without feeling much at risk. Perhaps those decapitated heads did serve a deterrent purpose after all.

Behind us we left the lights, the clamour, the discordant clash of sounds and the overhanging pall of smoke, redolent of fat and spice. All these things will, I suspect, stay etched in the mind for a long time to come. The Jemaa el Fna is place of distinctive character and vibrant energy, and therefore a deeply memorable experience, and for that one can forgive its aggressive approach to visitors. It is not to be missed if you visit Marrakech. Not that you stand any chance of missing it, given its magnetic quality.

© torr 2009

A review of the other sights of Marrakech can be found at:
http://travel.ciao.co.uk/Marrakech_Morocco__Review_5822252
 

...less