Wednesday 5 March 2014

26 voitures full of winter clothes

When I was in Marrakech in February it was unseasonably cold and I simply had not taken enough clothes. I could have bought a djellaba in the souk, but I've done that before and when you get back home you never wear it again (it's like a lovely embroidered felt dressing-gown with a big hood, but there's no zip opening - ie, you have to pull it on over your head and then you're sort of enveloped inside it - a bit like a onesie except it doesn't have any trousers).

So one morning I descended the stairs decidedly disgruntled, having frozen half to death in the night. Thami, the hotel manager, is concerned by my appearance. I explain I just don't have the clothes for the winter - I have left winter behind in England and expected warmer climes here.

He tells me he has the solution: there are 26 voitures in the 'garage' behind the hotel and they are all selling warm clothes.

Excitedly I walk behind the hotel, but I see a road and I don't see any garage (Thami's directions are often a bit mystifying). So I go back to him and say I can't find it. He checks around, then takes me by the hand and leads me through the hotel kitchens to a small door ... and opening this we enter into a vast sandy yard, which is simply full of small white vans - more than 26 I reckon. And out of the back of these vans are appearing mounds and mounds of tracksuits, long tops, fleecy dressing gowns and pyjamas ... and loads and loads of sports stuff. All in quite the most extraordinarily vivid colours ...

Just as soon as these mounds accumulate they disappear, as they are packed onto trailer-type things, which strong young men pull away, out of the yard - they are heading for the souks and the shops lining them, where they will set up instant stalls and try their luck.

None of these men speak any French - a rare thing in Marrakech. But these men have come from outside town, their imported Chinese goods from God knows where. And they will not have had much of an education, if any ... hence their language is confined to Arabic or Berber.

Moroccans who are fortunate enough to go to school have half their lessons in French - hence their immaculate control of both language and accent, something I envy them for sooo much (having studied French from the age of about 5 to A-level, I still sound like someone on a beginner's course ... with an Italian accent).

Unfortunately the colours of the clothes produced by the voitures are all just a bit too much for me in the first light of the morning, and I let the men go on their way, their first chance for a sale at the gates to the yard, where a gaggle of women have gathered - they are not going to walk all the way to the Jemaa to have their pick!

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