"There they are," another of our companions added, pointing to a dense ring of spectators on one side of the immense dusty square at the entrance of the souks—the "Square of the Dead" as it is called, in memory of the executions that used to take place under one of its grim red gates.
It is the square of the living now, the centre of all the life, amusement and gossip of Marrakech, and the spectators are so thickly packed about the story-tellers, snake-charmers and dancers who frequent it that one can guess what is going on within each circle only by the wailing monologue or the persistent drum-beat that proceeds from it.
Ah, yes—we should indeed like to see the Chleuh boys dance, we who, since we had been in Morocco, had seen no dancing, heard no singing, caught no single glimpse of merry-making! But how were we to get within sight of them?
On one side of the "Square of the Dead" stands a large house, of European build, but modelled on Oriental lines: the office of the French municipal administration. The French Government no longer allows its offices to be built within the walls of Moroccan towns, and this house goes back to the epic days of the Caïd Sir Harry Maclean, to whom it was presented by the fantastic Abd-el-Aziz when the Caïd was his favourite companion as well as his military adviser.
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. The square is surrounded by low mud-houses, fondaks, cafés, and the like. In one corner, near the archway leading into the souks, is the fruit-market, where the red-gold branches of unripe dates[A] for animal fodder are piled up in great stacks, and dozens of donkeys are coming and going, their panniers laden with fruits and vegetables which are being heaped on the ground in gorgeous pyramids: purple egg-plants, melons, cucumbers, bright orange pumpkins, mauve and pink and violet onions, rusty crimson pomegranates and the gold grapes of Sefrou and Salé, all mingled with fresh green sheaves of mint and wormwood.
[Footnote A: Dates do not ripen in Morocco.]
[Illustration: From a photograph from "France-Maroc"
Marrakech—a fondak]
In the middle of the square sit the story-tellers' turbaned audiences. Beyond these are the humbler crowds about the wild-ringleted 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. Under an archway near by an important personage in white muslin, mounted on a handsome mule and surrounded by his attendants, sat with motionless face and narrowed eyes gravely following the movements of the dancers.
Suddenly, as we stood watching the extraordinary animation of the scene, a reddish light overspread it, and one of our companions exclaimed: "Ah—a dust-storm!"