Marrakech, Part 2

 

The Mejorelle Gardens

I dragged myself out from under the warm double blankets on Saturday morning motivated by one goal: go to the Mejorelle Gardens, designed by Yves St. Laurent. I didn’t know much about Marrakech and most of the guidebooks that the hostel had to offer suggested endless hours in the souk and Jmaa al-Fna. Seeing as I was already weary of the loud and aggressive hawking in the commercial zones, I looked forward to the peace and quiet of a garden. One of my classmates agreed to join me and we set off after a hostel breakfast of ghaif and white muhammara, two distinct varieties of Moroccan pancake.

I had drawn a rudimentary map copied out of the Lonely Planet, and just when we thought we were lost we saw a sign for Jardin Mejorelle.

It offered all the serenity I desired after the hectic experience of the main square. Tall bamboo and misshapen cacti lined the paths, and each corner revealed a surprise: a bush abloom with delicate purple flowers, a peacefully gurgling fountain, the intricate plaster and wrought iron designs of a traditional Maghrebi window, a smooth pool running up to the edge of the bright blue art deco building standing in the center of the garden. After wandering the various paths, I pretended to be an artist and tried sketching a couple views on my low-quality, 6dh notepad with a 2dh pen. Morocco, and especially Marrakech, is a constant assault on every sense, so I valued the time of quiet, smelling only the freshness of the plants, hearing only the footsteps of other visitors, seeing only the stationary flora and the blue and white tiling.

Eventually we had to leave, and a modern, European-looking café across the street drew our attention. I ordered an orange, fig, and rosewater smoothie – phenomenally refreshing – and triangular spinach and cheese pastries. Everything in Marrakech was more expensive, since most tourists come loaded with euros, but our lunch was reasonable when compared to the swanky juice bars in the US.

Our friends were somewhere in the Kasbah, the neighborhood to the south of Jmaa al-Fna enclosed by walls and home to various palaces and the Sa’adi tombs. Since the Mejorelle Garden is a good half-hour walk to the north, we hopped in a taxi to head down to meet them – or we tried to. I knocked on the window of the first taxi, and told him where we wanted to go. He made the universal gesture for money – asking how much – and I pointed to the meter. We had been warned by our program to avoid negotiating fees and go by the meter instead, since the former method would almost always lead to us being ripped off. Discontent to play by the law, the taxi driver shook his head and drove away. Luckily the next one was more complacent.

After our reunion with the group, we wandered around the edges of the royal palace for a while, and I started to miss my homestay roommate, who was also in Marrakech but staying in a riad with her friends from the Barcelona program who had flown down to visit. We decided to meet up for coffee, and I was irrationally excited to see her since we had only been apart for not even 48 hours. I am so lucky to have become such good friends with my roommate here – it’s made the adjustment so much easier.

Although I almost got lost multiple times, I ended up back in Jmaa al-Fna and we went to Café Babchick, where I tried avocado juice (sweet and milky but also green-tasting in a very good way) and a cheese and tomato panini. As we ate the last bites of our sandwiches our waiter and another employee sat down in an alcove near us for their own meal, and asked us, in English, to come join them. We were wary: men had been cat-calling us since we’d arrived in Marrakech, and we were understandable hesitant to go sit with two. But the fact that they were polite, and that a woman was working the register just a few steps away, convinced us to go over and share their tagine. The conversation that followed is one of my favorite memories of Marrakech.

We began by discussing the city, and our new friends were quick to defend their aggressive commercial countrymen. “They have to feed their families,” they said. “The competition in the souk is difficult, and they have children to think about.” Before long a friend of theirs who was couch-surfing at one of their houses came by. As luck had it, he was from Madrid, so I cornered him for more Spanish practice and more talk of Iberian politics. Switching to English so everyone could understand, a conversation on immigration turned into a debate about racism and somehow I ended up sharing my love for Modern Standard Arabic with one of the Moroccans in our small group. His eyes lit up and he began speaking to me in fusha, encouraging me to continue learning since it is the most perfect language in the world. “You reach a point where you can taste the words,” he said. “It is so beautiful.” Finally able to speak my classroom Arabic, trying hard to remember the case markings and short vowels, we discussed the language a little more before joining the group talking about our lives and travels. Time flew by and it was time to leave for dinner and meet my roommate’s friends before we knew it, so we exchanged our favorite bands and I promised the Spaniard that I’d find him on Facebook.

We were lured into dinner at a restaurant with beautiful signage and mediocre food, so afterwards we dove into Jmaa al-Fna, captivated by the flickering lanterns for sale and the bright lightbulbs on the orange juice carts. We stopped by a dried fruit and nut vendor that my roommate had visited the night before, and the man behind the counter remember her and her friends. “Labbas?” he asked as he grabbed a handful of almonds and held them out for us to try. “Labbas!” we replied as he reached to pass around candied peanuts as well. After purchasing some apricots and salted almonds, we set out to find the spice cake someone had read about in some guidebook. On the outskirts of the fair-like food tents were a few smaller carts with sesame-covered mounds in the center and a sign listing the various spices in the cake: galangal, cinnamon, ginger, and more. A small plate was just 3dh, and the cake was more like fudge or cookie dough: decadently rich, almost too sweet, and marvelously spicy.

Lanterns, lit by tea lights, on display in the Jmaa al-Fna.

Full and happy, they walked me back to my hostel where I joined a couple of friends from our program and some new faces who were also staying the night. We drank mint tea and talked, I played the hostel manager in a game of chess and valiantly lost, someone pulled out a guitar for lovely background music and before I knew it, it was 2 a.m. I couldn’t quite drag myself away from the conversation and camaraderie for another half an hour, so by the time crawled under the thick wool blankets I was definitely ready for sleep. The first night had left me worried about how my trip to Marrakech would be, but by the time I turned out the light I was very glad I had come.