Intertwining Memories: A Journey Through Marrakech
Upon receiving a dedicated copy of the poetry collection "Voices of the City" by Italian poet and visual artist Anna Maria Gallo, I found myself confronted with a reading dilemma before even embarking on the task of introduction. What more could I add to a text that appears to have reached a level of self-sufficiency to the point where any external approach risks becoming mere linguistic overflow, overshadowing the essence of poetry expressed through silence, rhythm, and imagery? From the very first threshold, the collection opened itself to a profound understanding of the world, engaging with its subjects from their inherent fragility, allowing the poem to carve its own path devoid of critical imposition or hurried interpretations of its meaning. I sought an entrance that would neither encroach upon the text nor impose ready-made interpretative burdens, but rather enable me to approach it from a space where literature serves not merely as an explanation of literature, but as a memory invoking memory, and a spirit recognizing another spirit across distances and time.
While wandering through my modest library, a chaotic collection that seldom adheres to strict classification but rather reflects the memory of acquisition and chance encounters, my eyes landed on a shelf scattered with books about Marrakech: its history, historians, travelers, and observers, including those who wrote about it from both within and outside its borders, attempting to grasp the city’s elusive essence. It was here that I stumbled upon an old copy of "Voices of Marrakech" by the German traveler and researcher Elias Canetti, a book I had purchased long ago from one of the used book stalls in Jemaa el-Fnaa during the 1990s. This copy was from the golden era of Toubkal Publishing, translated by the late Tunisian writer Hassouna Mosbahi.
I paused for a long moment at this coincidence. How could a book that had remained silent on my shelves for decades, quietly nestled among its companions, regain its voice at the very moment I was searching for an entry into another book bearing a similar name and spirit? The matter for me was no longer just a case of a title's similarity. It felt as though the city itself was rearranging its memories, calling forth an old text to illuminate a new one. Canetti had come to Marrakech from the outside, listening to its voices—its markets, inhabitants, and spiritual atmosphere—while Anna Maria Gallo approached the city through a different gateway, that of poetry and visual arts, attuning herself to the echoes left by places in the soul. Between the two texts lies a temporal, aesthetic, and cultural distance; yet this distance does not negate the delicate thread that allows the city to unite disparate strangers around a singular sensitivity to place.
Literature as a Bridge Between Cultures
Thus, I began to see that coincidence is not external to the text and that memory is not merely a repository of the past. There exists a memory that stores things until a particular moment arrives, endowing them with new significance. Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of the book that had lingered in my hands all these years is that I had no idea, when I acquired it, that it would one day become part of the answer to a question that had not yet been born. From this threshold, I entered both texts, "Voices of Marrakech" by Canetti and "Voices of the City" by Anna Maria Gallo. I did not seek a match between them, nor an interpretation that would dissolve one into the other, but rather a space where two different experiences of the city coexist: the city as a visible place and the city as a lived experience; the city that inhabits geography and the city transformed into an internal being through memory.
Great places cease to be mere locations when they enter into writing. They transform into symbolic selves and an emotional archive for the individuals who passed through and left traces of their spirits. Hence, the Marrakech we read about in Canetti's work is not necessarily the Marrakech that Gallo depicts, nor is it the Marrakech known by its own children and residents. It is a Marrakech multifaceted by the diverse eyes that loved it, the spirits that listened to it, and the memories that carried it. Perhaps here lies the true value of literature; it not only preserves a place from being forgotten but also grants it new potentials for existence. The city written about by a poet is not the same city inhabited by a historian, and the city captured by an artist is not the city traversed by a passerby. Each one extracts from the place a layer unseen by the others, and the texts that follow then weave these disparate layers into a unified human memory.
Therefore, it seemed to me that there exists a kind of emotional reincarnation between the two books; not a reincarnation of ideas or images, but a reincarnation of that profound feeling that draws different souls, across different times, to the same city and enables them to rediscover it from varied sensory and spiritual vantage points. It is as though Marrakech is not read just once, but continues to produce its readers, calling forth from each of them their unique voice and then gathering all voices into an endless memory. Thus, the comparison between "Voices of Marrakech" and "Voices of the City" is no longer merely a search for fleeting similarity; it has become an exploration of the very ontology of memory: how can a place transcend its geography to become a human relationship? How does the city transform from a subject of writing into a medium for the connection of souls? How can a text written by a German author about Marrakech and a text penned by an Italian poet and visual artist about the city converge at a point that recognizes neither national boundaries nor language nor time?
Perhaps it is because cities that enter history are not measured solely by what is built within them but also by what they manage to leave in the imagination of others. Thus, literature becomes more than mere writing about places; it is one of the forms of human transit between them. Each time a stranger writes about a city they love, each time a native recalls its features in their memory, and each time an artist captures a voice that no one else has heard, humanity adds a new layer to its common record. In Marrakech, where times coexist in alleys, squares, and faces, the very voice becomes a memory for the other. This may explain why, after decades, I returned to Canetti's book to read Gallo: not because one explains the other, but because both demonstrate, in their unique ways, that a city can serve as a common language between people who have never met.
Thus, I found myself faced with a beautiful paradox: I was seeking a way to avoid repeating the usual discourse about Marrakech, yet the city itself led me to an old text to unveil a new one. I was searching for distance between myself and the collection, only to discover that the true distance lies not between the texts but between the times that the city can bridge. Perhaps the greatest gift of literature is its ability to make us realize that cities do not belong solely to us; we also belong to what cities write in our souls. In the end, Marrakech is not just the city we see as we walk its streets but also the one that continues to exist within us after we leave, finding new voices each time another heart, another eye, and another language arrive to say: I was here, and I loved this city.
As reported by alquds.co.uk.
