Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Away from home again

I am relaxing here in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the seething masses of Marrakech. It's quite cool, the weather l mean not me sat here with my feet up, in fact it's almost like an English summers day. Yesterday I wandered out with my wife into the world famous Marrakech Medina souk where even the lowliest berber put our top class closing salesmen to shame. The welcome, plus the my house is your house routine, is set to engender warmth and cosiness and its not until you are in that comfy mindset do you suddenly realise the danger you are in. You came wanting nothing but suddenly you can't leave without the presenter offering to put his eldest born to the sword if you would only dare to not to consider the quality and workmanship of the naturally dyed, hand stitched by virgins, made from the highest living, thus softest and rarest, goat hair in the Atlas Mountains Kilim. It would take a seriously hard hearted person just to turn and walk away having ascertained that for, what is to us westerners, a paltry sum we could be the owners of a material strong enough to pass on to the fruit of our loins for generations to come - or the congealing blood of his first born on our hands. You choose.