Tangiers: Time Travel in the Medina

Walking through the narrow and winding streets of the Medina, the tour guide strictly calls out “No photos!” unless he grants permission, usually involving an opportunity for a sale, a tip or some gratuity. After all, the ancient part of Tangiers is the home of generations of Moroccans before it is a wondrous place of time travel for visitors.

Entering through the walls of the ancient city, you are assailed with sights, sounds and smells that acclimatise you to the experience ahead. You become an observer in time absorbing what makes up life to the people who inhabit the Medina.

You step through narrow alleyways, take in varied architecture with high walls, colourful houses, bright green shutters against white buildings and decorated gates. Your rub shoulders with the flow of people going about their daily activities. You pass through archways towards rows of shops and local men sitting in outdoor cafés. You marvel at the markets that serve the inhabitants of the Medina and their display of fresh produce, meat, shoes, eggs and clothes on the streets.

You move up and down several stairs, look high above into the windows of dwellers, take careful steps down steep inclines and sneak in a vantage view of the city ahead. You smile at the young children peering from behind their windows as they echo “hello hello” to the Indian file of tourists that pass by their homes. Without the opportunity for photography, stealth becomes your friend as you endeavour to capture a memory or two.

Your tour guide inevitably takes you to souvenir shops, with knickknacks mostly designed to make a quick Dirham. You feel compelled to buy something but you must haggle even if the savings are not worth the effort, as this is the way of the Medina. You watch a detailed presentation of Moroccan and Berber rugs for those wishing to take home an item in saffron coloured threads, royal colours, mosaic patterns or a piece of gypsy craft. You sit quietly through a serious lecture from a traditional pharmacist who explains in fluent English about his collection of ground powders and exotic roots in glass jars.

When you emerge from the Medina and into the streets of Tangiers, you sense a slight disorientation as sounds of modernity echo with cars horns. The sights of tour buses and the buzz of people remind you that your trip in time is over.

And when you take that last look at the city behind you, with its soaring minarets, dusty coloured buildings and stunning Islamic architecture, you can only bid it Shukran for the experience.

Inconspicuous camera footage of the walk through the Medina.

For as long as she could hold a pen, Ms Gourmantic has been an avid scribe feeding her passion for writing with an overactive imagination. Her repertoire includes works of fiction, short stories, travelogues as well as authoring blogs and photoblogs. She is currently writing a novel.

Gourmantic

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