moroc-co

It was the sight of about a dozen yellow-eyed speckled snakes surrounded by turbanned men swaying to the sound of cacophonous pipes and drums that brought me to a standstill in the bustling expanse of Jemaa el Fna square. For a moment I felt as if I'd been transported to another age, to some exotic place of intrigue and adventure – and that I wasn't simply a 21st-century traveller who'd just arrived on EasyJet.
The snake-owners were nomads, desert dwellers who have learnt to live with snakes – and, in towns, to use them to extract money from fascinated onlookers. Around them, life went on as it has done for centuries. Groups of men squatted around storytellers. Traditional water-sellers in garish red outfits hung with brass mugs shouted into the smoky night air. Laden donkeys trotted through the crowds, their owners exhorting people to make way. The scent of the oranges on sale mingled with the pungent smell of animals and smoke.
Being there, right then, felt like being on the set of a movie. But then, that is what Marrakech has become: a destination reeling out real and manufactured fantasies; part-ancient, part-Disney, where Africa meets Arabia, where fortune-tellers and open-air dentists live cheek-by-jowl in a seething stew of humanity with American heiresses, Italian fashion editors and busloads of tourists led by flag-waving guides.
In the 1950s and 60s, when Churchill brought Roosevelt here to take in the desert scenery, when James Stewart and Doris Day hung out at La Mamounia with Alfred Hitchcock, and when the Rolling Stones were photographed here by Cecil Beaton, this square and the surrounding souks were where local people came to meet and shop. Today, while locals still throng the streets, many of the souk's stalls are clearly designed for foreigners.