At the suggestion of the municipal officials we mounted the stairs and looked down on the packed square. There can be no more Oriental sight this side of the Atlas and the Sahara…In the middle of the square sit the story-tellers’ turbaned audiences. Beyond these are the humbler crowds about the wild-ringletted snake-charmers with their epileptic gestures and hissing incantations, and farther off, in the densest circle of all, we could just discern the shaved heads and waving surpliced arms of the dancing-boys.
-In Morocco, Edith Wharton, from her visit to Marrakesh in 1917
David and I were preparing for a long day and night in the Djemaa al-Fna, reconnoitering its four corners from the Cafe de France’s roof terrace. What the hell, we said, let’s just go down and jump right in. So we wandered through and around the circles that form and widen around the performers, then shrink and misshape until they are no more when they’ve cashed in and gone home, their audience lost to another’s circle. So many tourists wander by that David with a big camera on his neck fit right in. But my notebook seemed ridiculous.
We couldn’t decide which Oriental sight- amulet writers or boy boxers? snail soup sellers or acrobats? monkeys or pythons?- would beguile us first. That’s why each act had their own tout, to bark in four languages, to the French and Germans, the Americans and the Italians. That’s where she came in.
We should have pegged her as a ringer straight off. No woman wears both a niqab and a miniskirt in the square. Uncovered hair and designer eyeglasses were a dead give-away. Still, we bit. Hi guys, where are you from? she asked in a whiskey voice with a rasp somewhere between a pack-a-day habit of Camels and Salems. But catch that accent, we thought. Brooklyn or the Bronx?
So we had to ask her, Hi yourself, where are you from? All over, she said. Anyplace you want. Follow me if you want more. No thanks, we answered, we have to interview a snake-charmer. Oh, she said, I can help you do that too.