D-Dog’s Blog

My enjoyment of Marrakesh has been severely dampened by the two or thee illnesses nature has sought to launch upon me since leaving Tangier Again. Yesterdays efforts to walk myself better resulted in stumbling, bleary eyed into the souks, my wits lost somewhere between my pressured, scratchy nasal passages and the bleary headache pounding against the inner walls of my skull. There are many reasons why one must maintain a nimble mind when confronted with the souks, they represent what can be compared to a slightly sinister Charlie’s chocolate factory, selling a vast multiplicity of objects that you neither need nor want. You find yourself at every turn being tempted, or thrust into the endless shops, all so similar that any but the most comprehensive navigator becomes immediately adrift upon a tide of startling noise, colour and movement. Comprehensive, I was not. It took me some time to realise first where I was, then that I had no idea where that was, all the time battling through the even present sensation that I did not like it. Shopkeepers here sense fallibility in a westerner, and as soon as they saw me, realising that I could barely see them, latched onto me asking if I was ok. Then offering to take me back to wherever I was staying, undoubtedly for a vast fee. I grunted and rudely swept by until one of them put his hand upon my back, and combining my flaccid momentum with a swing of his hand, flung me into his shop. As i turned around having nearly hit the back of the place, three men appeared at the front, two sat on chairs smoking, blocking the way out, and the third, the keeper himself, turned upon me. The ambush was complete. “Welcome to my shop, please look and maybe buy,” he said in a manner reminiscent of the Arabic villain “Jafar” of Disney’s Aladdin. It took me a while to sum up the situation, as I did, I gave off a mental shriek which, in my incapacitated state, may or may not have materialised. Then darted for the for the blocked exit, squeezing awkwardly through the smoking men, tripping up and falling into a puddle of what smelt like and almost certainly was donkey urine. Proving once and for all that every cloud does have a silver lining, this helped me become unapproachable, thus aiding my return to the hotel, which was, given the clarity adrenaline had brought to my thought, rather simple. Merely a matter of a few tuns constantly heading towards the minaret towering above and ignoring the strange looks that my bedraggled state was drawing.

This tale it in no way a condemnation of this city, indeed, since my recovery I have been enjoying it to its fullest, recovering my ice cream addiction and eating a lot of fantastic macaroons. I have also visited the Kasbah which seems to be mainly populated by hundreds of Storks who nest in vast, bushy sponges of recovered vegetation and refuse high atop the walls and roofs. All in all, with two days left here, the outlook it rosy and the bringer of my illnes, Pascoe, apears to have had his vile craft turned upon him and is coughing and siffing his way to bed. The only lesson must be that certain things cannot be achieved while you are desperately ill, a rather obvious end to a rather aimless post.

Francis