To the souq!

Jasmine and I have been talking about buying traditional Moroccan outfits from the souq for forever, so last night we finally set out to accomplish our mission. 

Every major Moroccan city has a souq. Things you can find in the souq: traditional clothes, modern clothes, jewelry, tile work, furniture, toys, sweets for Ramadan (and all other food), camel hair, and...well, anything. Our souq has indoor and outdoor sections. The indoor section is very crowded and narrow and the shops are like stalls on either side of a hallway (good luck getting out of the way when the corn guy tries to pass with a wheelbarrow full of husks or a kid decides to drive his motorcycle through the lane). The outside section is absolute and complete chaos. 

Since it's Ramadan and it's 103 degrees outside, we decided it would be best to go after Iftar. Everything opens up again at about 10:30pm. 

Since we're very obviously American, we took our host mom to avoid the "tourist tax." 

So, at 11pm last night we set out and got to shopping. And when I say that we got to shopping, I mean that Jasmine and I pointed at things and our host mom bargained with the shop owner until she was blue in the face. Now, Moroccan darija is a very quick and difficult dialect to understand, but from what I understood the exchanges included a lot of "Are you sleeping?" "God will bless you," "Why are you doing this to me?" Bargaining in Morocco is a very passionate art. Since everybody is typically very kind and polite (it is common to refer to strangers as sister/brother if they are your age or aunt/uncle if they are older) the art of arguing over prices is actually kind of pleasant, at least as an observer. Pleasant, but not easy. We spent an hour at each stall and afterward our host mom said, "I just want some juice," because her voice was so tired!

Finally, I succeeded in purchasing a dress for the holiday of Eid and souvenirs for my family. We only left after the shops started closing up and the workers were cleaning the plastic from the streets. We got home at 2:30am, but it was definitely worth the night out!