Between the bustling souqs, horse drawn carriages, massive marble monuments, and heat that makes your skin thirsty, Marrakech is both and dazzling and dizzying. Still, it’s easy to forget that you are positioned between the foothills of the High Atlas and gateway to the Sahara. In 1062 AD, the imagination of Almoravid Berber leader Youssef ben Tachfine and his wife Zeinab transformed this encampment into a seriously strategic city. What did it mean for travelers, merchants, and warriors to see this powder-pink city emerge from the windswept reaches of the horizon? What does it mean now? I don’t know that we’ve traveled to a city in Morocco that has felt so equally situated between history and modernity. It’s truly an intersection of time and people.

Seen from the early morning, the djemaa el fna is an empty courtyard and by night, a carnival. But in the afternoon sun is the best time to see the square for what it was and continues to be: an organism unto itself. To pause, even for a moment, is impossible. Even if you pop into a stall to look at poufs or spices or fake Gucci sunglasses, you are still in perpetual motion. Mind your head, mind your feet, mind your wallet. “S7hal hadda?” is a question never answered on the first try but only after a full explanation of the quality of the good the variety of the good, and, of course, much negotiation. I found the bag I wanted. We shook hands on a final price--wa7a, wa7a, mbrook. We were both a little disappointed--an indication I hope, of a fair deal. Again, I joined the swell onto the cobblestone and into the air honeyed with sweets and thick with smoke. Snake charmers, street performers, and henna artists beckon. They make pitches and jokes in French and in English and I wonder where they call home, what their favorite stories are, what dreams they have for themselves and their children. Like those who have preceded them for centuries, these Marrakechis know how to hustle.

The Kasbah is different. The pace is slower and the alleys wider. Two nights I went to the Cafe Clock at sunset, once to hear storytelling and once to hear Gnawa. The space is modest and clean and lovingly adorned with Amazigh rugs and modern art. The sous chef, Sidi Emmauichi Mohammad, is also a performer and is generous with his time when I ask questions. I made a plan to return and interview his storytelling master but it conflicted with the schedule and was impossible to do both. There is confusion in our exchange. His instagram message reads: “We are ready to receive you with pleasure.” When I explain it is simply impossible I feel a weight in my chest. It’s his mission and the mission of cafe clock to preserve the heritage by reimagining age old traditions in modern spaces. They work hard to find young people passionate about keeping the traditions alive in Moroccos ever shifting landscape. The last story he told me before I left was the story of the original Cafe clock in Fes. Deep in the Fes medina there is a massive clock. According to the lore, there was a wealthy Jewish merchant who built that clock operated by a system of water and weighted balls. Legend has it that the sound of the clock could be heard up to 45 kilometers away. One day, his pregnant wife was so disturbed by the clanging of the clock that she miscarried and the baby was lost. Since that day, the clock never resumed. Mohammad says that over the centuries, clockmakers from around the world have come to examine this clock and no one to date has been able to fix it. “You won’t find that in the books about the water clock of Fes, only in family stories.” It’s fitting of course. Time here in a way stands still but the people don’t. And really we are always in the present as much as we are in the past.