A Kaleidoscope of Eastern Fancy

Marrakesh: Through Writers' EyesMarrakesh: Through Writers’ Eyes by Barnaby Rogerson

A wide-ranging selection of viewpoints by writers to Morocco, from the romantic

The every-changing scene is a kaleidoscope of Eastern fancy: Ali Baba and the forty thieves, Blue-beard, Aladdin and the Grand Vizier — all in succession pass before us.–Budgett Meakin

to the brutally real

As the corpse went past the flies left the rstaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it, but they came back a few minutes later.–George Orwell

There is a mesmerizing as-told-to author Gavin Maxwell (Ring of Bright Water) eyewitness account of the brutal end of one regime

I was only a child when these things happened, but I remember them well, though I don’t like to remember them or to think that I laughed to see a man burnt alive.

And you won’t enjoy reading it, either, but you won’t be able to stop yourself. There are marvelous word pictures

On the fringes of the square, letter-writers and fortune-tellers sit cross-legged with their clients; a solitary greybeard listens intently to his supplicant before handing him a minute philtre and a folded charm.’A Taleb — student of the magic arts,’ Quentin explains. ‘The most experienced have the power to resolve unrequited passion by summon the object of your dreams, or to reunite you with a lost love.’

Moroccans seem very suggestible to occult practices, genies and the like.’

“The plural’s “jinn.”‘–Anthony Gladstone-Thompson

Lots of good history here, too. Worth reading.

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Author and founder of Storyknife.org.

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