Djemâa el Fna

Djemâa el Fna Review

The carnivalesque open square right at the center of the medina is Marrakesh's heartbeat. This centuries-old square was once a meeting point for regional farmers and tradesmen; today it's surrounded by bazaars, mosques, and terraced cafés with perfect balcony views over the action. Transvestite dancers bat their eyelashes; cobras sway to the tones of snake charmers; henna women make their swirling marks on your hands; fortune-tellers reveal mottled futures; apothecaries offer bright powder potions and spices; bush dentists with Berber molars piled high on tables extract teeth; and, best of all, men tell stories to each other the old way, on a magic carpet around a gas lamp.

All day (and night) long you can get fresh orange or grapefruit juice from the green gypsy carts that line up round the square, for about 4 DH a glass. You can also buy a shot of cool water from one of the roving water sellers, whose eye-popping costumes carry leather water pouches and polished-brass drinking bowls. Or snack on sweet dates, apricots, bananas, almonds, sugar-coated peanuts, and walnuts from the dried fruit-and-nut stalls in the northwest corner. Meat and vegetable grills cook into the night, when Marrakshis come out to eat, meet, and be entertained. It might be a fun bazaar today, but once upon a time the Djemâa's purpose was more gruesome; it accommodated public viewings of the severed heads of sinners, criminals, and Christians. Djemâa actually means "meeting place" and el Fna means "the end" or "death," so as a whole it means something along the lines of "assembly of death" or "meeting place at the end of the world."