Friday 5 November 2010

Round and round



I feel my feet moving very rapidly, while marching slowly amongst the feet of others, of donkeys and mules, of bike and cart wheels, running away from exhaust pipes that blow warm air against my shins warming up further an already heated atmosphere. While I wander around random streets which way I ignore, I deviate from people who approach me, many sellers, friendly strangers who insist I come from Spain, France, even Argentina, ignoring my Lusitanian soul which I rarely disclose. “Closed!” More out of necessity than out of taste, I learn to ignore the overflow of useless information with which I am confronted, after someone tries to convince me for the fourteenth time the street I’m walking down has no exit, this one out of them all, one of the few I already know. I stop, resting my eyes for a jiffy in a bit of sky, returning rapidly to the narrow ground which I’m covering and that out of a sudden widens up in an immense opening, an enormous uncovered square, which unfortunately is covered today by a grayness which steals away the colors from moments I want orange, like the endless juices engorged by my faithful squire, or maybe of the intense blue wore by the Berber snake oil sellers, bearers of potions probably made from the enchanted snakes I find further down, or maybe from the monkeys who enchant the staring passerby. I stop again, staring myself at this claustrophobic expanse which engulfs and chokes me. And I run away fast, very fast, in a flash that takes me out of the immense mess into an oasis of tranquility, a small den among plants of a garden where my poorly slept mind finally manages to think for a bit, mostly about nothing, and where out of the blue I find the colors which I was missing, all gathered in this small nook someone planted someday. Enough. Invigorated once more I run back to the mess, now made of lights and smoke and more people and strange tastes and beheaded goats who, boiled, smile at me and more juices and new friends who continue insisting in mistaking my origin. I stop once more in the middle of the square, but now invaded by a sense of freedom while the whole world around me goes round and round, sensing my clothes absorb rare tastes and feeling my skin wrapped in travelling and in this Marrakesh that surrounds me and spins around like a crazy merry-go-round entrenched in the memories of old days but soaked in a mist of eternity. And yet again I run, just because, taken away by the sole yearn to run around endlessly.


Marrakesh, Morocco, October 2010



















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