The Marrakech souks

The Marrakech souks. Where they sell lamps and carpets, hashish and sex.

Yesterday walking through the souks with my friend we took a wrong turn, and immediately there was a kid, maybe fourteen, asking where we were going, telling us how to get to the square. Asking what we wanted.

“Square? Restaurant? Tannery? Carpet?”

And, as we walked off, ignoring him…

“Sex?”

I threw the British two-finger salute over my shoulder, and we walked on. But his litany of questions stayed with me. Square, restaurant, tannery, carpet, sex. The things that they think that a tourist might be seeking. The impression that we’re all both shopaholics and whores. And there are tourist women who come here, spend a fortune, meet a boytoy for a few days, and leave. It does happen. So they’re not entirely wrong. How do they differentiate between those of us who are here to explore the culture and those of us who are here to exploit and be exploited by the men? They really can’t. They could look at how much we’re covered, but it’s not a hard and fast rule that more covered means more conservative, even among the women here. They could assume that we’re all virtuous until proven otherwise, but that goes completely against the culture here and so would never actually happen.

Some of my expat friends have begun referring to Western women as belonging to a “third sex.” We don’t follow the traditional rules for women here, but we’re also clearly not men. So people don’t really know what to do with us. They (and by “they” I mean men in general who work with tourists) try to laugh and joke and have camaraderie as they would with other men, but there’s almost always something greedy under the surface, whether for money or for sex, and often for both. There’s almost an assumption in some places that a financial transaction might lead to a sexual one. The other day I bought a small painting for an inflated price, and the shopkeeper offered to give me a massage and wanted to give me a kiss. And while I told him that that was Not Okay, I got the impression that there had been other women in the same situation who had said that it was okay. And with such precedents, it’s almost understandable that there would be assumptions. But it’s still an irritating situation. And I have yet to find a solution that actually works.