The Mellah

THE MELLAH

Back on our very first day in Morocco we wandered around the city under the guiding principal of “don’t slow down and people will think you know where you’re going.” Of course, fifteen minutes in we had men offering to guide us. Utterly lost, we told them we knew where we were going and instead did circles through the Mellah, or Jewish quarter of Marrakech.

Four months later, we’ve found ourselves back in the Mellah, and while we’re no longer quite as lost, we still find it interesting. Morocco seems to have an uneasy relationship with its Jewish population. While there was a thriving Jewish community for centuries, it vanished rapidly in the 1950s as Jews emigrated to Israel. One acquaintance feels that Jews have never been treated well in Morocco, and calls the Mellah a ghetto. It seems that by forcing Jews to live in the Mellah, Sultans were better able to collect taxes from a highly productive segment of the population. Our acquaintance argues that in the Berber south, Jews were welcomed more fully into Moroccan communities – something that will take us a little longer to investigate.

The architecture of Marrakech’s Mellah is distinctive. Traditional Moroccan architecture puts a premium on privacy with walled houses looking inward to private courtyards. In the Mellah, buildings feature outward-facing windows and even balconies. The Mellah has also proven a culinary bounty. We’ve found an incredible market with fish – what a relief! – and butchers who’ll skin and clean a rabbit for you, so that even the squeamish can eat well. Beyond the meat stalls, cut flowers and a remarkably wide array of vegetables – 15 varieties of lettuce! – are on offer. We’ve found that a lot of the supplies we needed for our house are best found in the Mellah, and we’ve made trips for paint and hardware, glass and mirrors, among other things.

We have to keep ourselves from chuckling as a yarmulke-wearing shopkeeper in the Mellah promises that the mirror we’ve ordered “will be ready next Tuesday, Inshallah.” While he might pray at a synagogue, it’s clear that he is fully Moroccan in his invocation of the Allah excuse.

The King is making efforts to get Moroccan Jews to return to the Kingdom, and Hamoud tells us there’s a royal offer of financial incentives to lure them. For now it’s a distinctive and vibrant community that has become a crucial resource for us.

NEW AND IMPROVED?


Marrakech is illuminated at night by fairly industrial streetlamps common the world over. Within the past two months, we’ve seen a new set of street lights going in. Are the new lights really an improvement? A well-intentioned change to be sure, but with their gold paint they look like something built for a high school play. And more often than not, the old light remains in place even after the colonial-style new one is operational. And sadly, the new lights are being installed in a few places that were clearly better off before.