Description
Founded around 1070 by the Almoravids, Marrakech has kept from the medieval city the order of its souks: north of Jemaa el-Fna square, each trade had its street, and each souk still bears the name of its trade — dyers, slipper-makers, blacksmiths. It is this city of craftsmen that UNESCO inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1985, expressly citing its souks, its fondouks and its craft activities. In the ironworkers’ alleys, metal is still worked in full view of passers-by: lanterns, grilles and wrought-iron seats leave the workshops and wait for a buyer on the cobbles.
The photograph stands in one of these covered alleys, under a roof that filters the daylight. The blackened iron doors bear numbers chalked on them; on one, an Arabic inscription simply reads “for sale”. In the centre, in the only patch of clear light, a crouching man bends over his moped. The gesture is ordinary, absorbed, and it suddenly gives the whole forge-like setting its scale: these objects are made, sold and mended here, by hand. The light falls obliquely, as in a workshop, leaving the rest in a half-darkness where the eye gradually finds the details: a football team poster, a second moped in the shadow, the lacework of an iron chair.
Elias Canetti, who came to Marrakech in 1954, brought back The Voices of Marrakesh. This image might be its silent reverse: the souk as it belongs to itself, when no one is looking.
