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By Root 834 0

ones, has returned to dominate mealtime conversations, as it did in Dubai—as it does regularly on these trips, in fact. The needlessly roundabout journey back to L.A. in a few days’ time is an ordeal the crew members are bracing themselves for with bleak fortitude. Especially Jay, who can barely walk any more without clenching his teeth and clutching his lower back, the way pregnant women do. If he moves too quickly, sharp bolts of lightning crackle up and down his outer thigh, a condition that won't be helped by switching carriers repeatedly, hopping from airport to airport, gate to gate, plane to plane, and being jammed into a variety of cramped Coach seats for the best part of twenty-four hours with no room to stretch his legs.

“Things are going to be even worse in Alaska,” Mike says, causing everyone to freeze. “Oh shit!” Realizing what he's just blurted out, he rushes to cover his mouth. “Did you know, Cash?”

I didn't.

Future destinations are meant to be kept a secret from me. But hey, I know now.

“Sorry, buddy.” He laughs.

“It's okay.”

And we all pretend nothing just happened. We do that fairly often.

For dinner tonight, Willy has brought us to a place in the heart of the medina, the old town. He knows the restaurant owner, he says, and can get us a special deal, which, to be fair, he does, including a table on the second-floor balcony directly overlooking one of the greatest human spectacles on earth: the Djemaa el-Fna. Despite the millions of more easily pronounced alternatives, this is what Marrakech decided to call its central square.

Say the word “Morocco” to people and three main things usually come to mind. The Djemaa el-Fna is one of them.

Combining the mayhem and momentum of a medieval battlefield, everything below us, from here to the mud bricks of the city's twelfth-century fortress walls, is chaos; a frenetic thousand-decibel madhouse riot—flutes wailing, car horns blaring, mopeds buzzing, children crying, donkeys clip-clopping by, drums beating—that sets this place apart from all others, not only in Morocco, but anywhere, and which heats up still further by late afternoon, when thousands of people clock off work and stroll through Marrakech's narrow stone streets to join the thousands already here, mingling with tattoo artists, fortune-tellers turning cards, small banjo bands, chained monkeys performing tricks too cruel and gruesome for any human being with any conscience to watch, and therefore drawing massive crowds; and finally, large teams of trained acrobats, somersaulting, leaping onto seesaws, and assembling themselves into incredible human pyramids, a feat of balance that earns massive applause from the spectators but for which there is otherwise limited call these days, I should think, unless you're repairing gutters or need to deliver pizza to a third-floor apartment.

They also have real snake charmers! With real cobras—they're not sock puppets, like you might expect. To coax them out of their basket, a couple of grizzled old-timers squat on blankets on the ground, each blowing into a small metal trumpet-shaped flute-type thing, producing The Most Nerve-Jarring Sound in the World, a strangulated neeeyaaayeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaayeeeeeeeeeaaaaaeeeeeee eeeeeaaaaaaaayeeeeeeeyeeeeeeeeeyaaaayaaaaaaaayeeeeeeeeyaaaaaaa yeeeeeee-ing noise, not quite music, not quite a persistent strident racket, but certainly more than is required to pierce the average eardrum, I should think.

“Allahu akbar… ashnadu an la Ilah ila Allah …”

Once in a while, however, the snake charmers find themselves outwailed by: (a) the Muslim call to prayer crackling from loudspeakers high in the central Koutoubia Mosque, which most people seem to ignore; and just as often by: (b) vendors from the myriad stalls that extend west from the mosque almost to the other side of the concourse, who yell for your business as you saunter by.

“Try my oranges.”

“No thanks.”

“Fresh oranges?”

“No thanks.”

“Sir, sir, try my fresh oranges.”

“I said no thanks. Really.”

“ORANGES!!”

“NO!”

“Why you not try my oranges?? What is wrong with