The Marrakech Medina: where people willingly go to get groped, hounded and scammed and somehow still leave saying what an incredible experience they had.
Think about that for a second. When was the last time you went somewhere knowing just one of those things was going to happen, never mind all three?
Want to get groped? Get on the subway during commuting hours.
Hounded? Stop on any street corner in the any major city and get attacked by one of those weirdos in colorful vests who shout obscure statements or compliments all while trying to get you to give up your credit card info to a stranger on the street for some unknown cause.
Scammed? Go to any sports stadium in the U.S. where they charge $12 for a light beer.
You know you’re getting robbed, but you buy it anyways.
That’s the medina in Marrakech.
Medina at first glance
You walk into the main square and it’s a dark smoky cloud of chaos. Street vendors everywhere selling every kind of pulverized meat you can imagine. There are entertainers of the strangest variety suckering gullible tourists from around the globe to pay to have a monkey in a Messi jersey steal their sunglasses. Every third person you see is coming up and whispering sweet nothings in your ear. But not the like playful, loving “I want to rip your clothes off and tear you limb from limb” kind. Instead, it’s more of a “Hash? Coke? What you need?” “Sex? Sex? 100 Dirhams…?” “You like lady boys?” type of sweet nothings. To each their own, I guess.
Getting in the mix
I managed to make my way through the riff raff and find a nice little tent for dinner. They pack you in and pretty much sit you on top of the kitchen grill. If you’re lucky, you’ll catch a few bits of flying sausage or hot oil on the back of the neck. It’s authentic. Dinner didn’t cost much more than a couple dollars, and while that may have been the highlight of dinner for most, not me.
As a guy who has made a living using the top of his sock or the inside of his pocket as a napkin, the construction paper placemats that also doubled as a face wipe were my personal favorites.
Into the souks
After dinner, the real weirdness begins. Out of the hustle and bustle of the square and into the alternate universe of the souks.
The souks are an endless maze of shops. Thousands of them go on for miles deep into the heart of Marrakech. How they all make money, I’m not sure, because they all pretty much sell the same 4 things.
Nuts – stacked impossibly high and somehow never falling.
Shiny things – think Aladdin genie trinkets
Leather stuff – wallets, bags, slippers, human skin suits, etc…
Moroccan clothes – jalabas (man dresses) and head scarves
It was the man dress that I was in the market for. A trip to the desert awaited me and I need to look like a young Lawrence of Arabia.
What’s your price?
The thing about the souks, though, is that nothing has a price. The price is what you make it. And the guys selling are the best in the business at making one sale account for an entire week’s work. I could probably write a whole piece about how shitty I am at bargaining, but luckily we had the power of numbers that night. Standing up to bullying, Moneyball and bartering in the medina, the three things numbers are good for.
Once we settled on the man dressed we liked, it was time to enter the Terrordome and begin negotiations.
For about 35 minutes we argued. We were speaking English, we were speaking French, there was shouting in Arabic, hell, I’m pretty sure I started speaking parseltounge at one point.
It’s all in the game
Finally, we were down to 500 Dirhams for 4 items and they were at 550. Literally a $5 difference. Split between 4 it was $1.25 a pop, but you get into a situation like that and something takes over. It’s not about price, it’s principle and pride that drives you.
We came to a point, however, where there was this strange unspoken understanding between the two parties that we were eventually going to come to an agreement, which is when things became more of a game.
The one guy started spouting off about American wrestlers and kept hitting me on the chest. It’s still unclear whether he was saying I was strong and needed to buy the clothes so they could feed their skinny boxer friend in the back. Or whether he was calling me a skinny bitch who would get killed by his boxer friend in the back. Very thin ice.
Chaos and closing down the medina
Finally, the owners of the souk agreed to our price and bagged up the clothes. What happened next I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully explain. One second I was paying the man for some man dresses, the next I was on the ground in the middle of the medina in front of a growing crowd of Moroccans being challenged to do 50 pushups to make up for the disparity in price. Wild.
Like I said, the medina is pure chaos. You’ll get groped, you’ll get hounded, you’ll get scammed, you’ll end up on the dirty ground doing pushups for strangers to avoid getting beat up. And yet, despite all that, you’ll still leave saying what an incredible experience it was and wanting to go back.
Weird…