Marrakech Time.

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

MOROCCO | Monday, 23 August 2010 | Views [460]

In the butcher’s souk you can find anything you can imagine, from plucked chickens to camel liver, goat heads, camel heads and sheep brain, all ‘tastefully’ displayed on the counter or hanging over it. Amidst live chickens squawking in cages, waiting to be weighed, and scrawny cats prowling underneath the counters bedecked with tongues and lungs, this old man, focused on his work, seems to exist only in the moment even though he must have performed exactly the same movements hundreds of times, on days exactly like this one.

Tags: the man and the meat.

Another day at the butcher’s shop. While the young apprentice cuts the meat (lamb, cow or camel) the old man stares vacantly in front of him, waiting for a customer or perhaps vaguely recalling every day of his life that began exactly like this. The monotonousness of life in the souk can be oppressing and yet strangely liberating as you become acutely aware of the ephemeral, transitory nature of this one moment in the timeless life of the souk.

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As you walk past the clothing souk you barely notice the seller: he seems to merge with the caftans and the Arab and Berber djellabas hanging around him. After spending a few days wandering in the souk you begin to recognize this look on every face you see: it’s the look of a man for whom time has no longer any meaning. The souk seller measures time in customers. Once in a while a customer wakes him up from his daze. Once the customer is gone, the seller slides back into his narcotic-like state, locked up behind his vacant stare, until another customer breaks the spell.

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Marrakech Time.

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

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