Exploring the Essence of Marrakech Through Literature
Upon receiving a dedicated copy of the poetry collection "Voices of the City" by Italian poet and artist Anna Maria Gallo, I found myself at a crossroads, grappling with the challenge of reading before even attempting to present the work. What could I possibly add to a text that seems to have reached a level of self-sufficiency, one that renders any external approach a potential overflow of language beyond what poetry conveys in its silence, rhythm, and imagery? From the very first threshold of the book, it opened up to the world's insight, delving into objects from within their fragility, allowing the poem to carve its path without the need for critical oversight or rushed explanations attempting to grasp its meaning. I sought an entry point that would not overshadow the text or burden it with pre-packaged interpretations, but rather enable me to engage with it in a way where literature is not merely an explanation of literature, but a memory that evokes other memories, a spirit that recognizes another spirit through distance and time.
During my wanderings through my small library, a chaotic collection that adheres more to the memory of acquisition and serendipity than to any logical classification, my eyes fell upon a shelf scattered with books about Marrakech: its history, its historians, its travelers, and those who have written about it from both inside and outside. I stumbled upon an old copy of "Voices of Marrakech" by the German traveler and researcher Elias Canetti, a book I had acquired long ago from a second-hand book stall in Jemaa el-Fnaa during the 1990s. This particular edition was published by the esteemed Toubkal Publishing House during its golden era, translated by the late Tunisian writer Hassouna Mosbahi.
I paused for quite a while in contemplation of this coincidence. How could a book that had remained silent in my library for decades reclaim its voice at the moment I was searching for an entry into another book bearing a similar title, and resonating with a spirit that traveled in a parallel direction: "Voices of the City"? The matter for me evolved beyond mere similarity in titles. It felt as if the city itself was rearranging its memory, calling upon an old text to illuminate a new one. Canetti had arrived in Marrakech from the outside, listening to its voices, its markets, its people, and its spiritual and sensory space, while Anna Maria Gallo approaches the city from another gateway—through poetry, visual art, and an attentive ear to what places leave behind in the soul. Between the two texts lies a temporal, aesthetic, and cultural distance, yet this distance does not erase the delicate thread that allows the city to unite diverse strangers around a shared sensitivity toward place.
The Interplay of Memories and Literary Voices
It became apparent to me that coincidence is not external to the text, and that memory is not merely a repository of the past. There exists a memory that harbors things until a certain moment arrives to bestow upon them new meaning. Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of the book that has remained in my hands all these years is that I did not know, when I acquired it, that it would one day become part of the answer to a question that had yet to be born. Through this threshold, I entered into the realms of both texts, "Voices of Marrakech" by Canetti and "Voices of the City" by Anna Maria Gallo. I did not seek to find a match between them, nor an interpretation that would dissolve one into the other, but rather to explore that area where two different experiences of the city coexist—the city as a place to be seen, and the city as a place to be lived; the city that inhabits geography, and the city that transforms, through memory, into an internal entity.
Great places cease to be mere locations once they transition into writing. They transform into symbolic selves, and into an emotional archive for the people who have passed through them, leaving behind something of their spirits. Thus, the Marrakech we read in Canetti's work is not necessarily the Marrakech that we find in Gallo's, nor is it the Marrakech known by its residents. It is a Marrakech that is multifaceted, reflecting the diverse eyes that have loved it, the souls that have listened to it, and the memories that have carried something of it with them. This perhaps encapsulates the value of literature—not only does it preserve the place from oblivion, but it also grants it new possibilities for existence. The city penned by a poet is not the same city inhabited by a historian, and the city captured by an artist is not the same city traversed by a passerby. Each of them extracts from the place a layer unseen by the other, and then the texts come forth to weave these disparate layers into a singular 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 connects different souls in different times to the same city, rediscovering it from varied sensory and spiritual perspectives. It is as if Marrakech is not read just once; rather, it continually produces its readers and calls upon each of them to bring forth their unique voice, collecting all these voices into an endless memory. Thus, my comparison between "Voices of Marrakech" and "Voices of the City" evolved from a pursuit of superficial resemblance to an exploration of the very ontology of memory: how can a place transcend its geography to become a human relationship? How does a city transition from a subject of writing to a medium for the recognition of souls? And how can a text written by a German author about Marrakech converge with a text penned by an Italian poet and artist about the city, meeting at a point that defies national boundaries, language, or time?
Perhaps it is because cities that enter history are measured not only by what has been built within them but also by what they manage to leave in the imaginations of others. Thus, literature becomes more than mere writing about places; it becomes one of the forms of human crossing between them. Every time a stranger writes about a city they love, and every time a native retrieves its features in their memory, and every time an artist captures a sound unheard by others, humanity adds a new layer to its shared record. In Marrakech, where times coexist in streets, squares, and faces, the very sound becomes a memory for the other. Perhaps that is what led me to revisit Canetti's book after decades, 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 among people who have never met. Thus, I found myself confronted with a beautiful paradox: I was seeking a way to avoid repeating the usual discourse about Marrakech, yet the city itself guided me to an old text to unveil a new one. I was searching for a distance between myself and the collection, only to discover that the true distance is not between the texts but between the times that the city can connect.
Perhaps the greatest thing literature can do is make us realize that cities do not belong to us alone; we also belong to what cities write in our souls. And Marrakech, in the end, is not merely the city we see when we walk its streets, but rather the city that continues within us after we leave it, finding new voices each time another heart, another eye, and another language arrives to say: I was here, and I loved this city.
As reported by alquds.co.uk.
