The un-Googleable Essaouira suq
As soon as we arrive in the Sunday suq, Amina pauses, picks up a semi dried fig. The young man in his 30s behind his wooden cart of dried fruit stands up, smiles at us, picks up another fig and holds it out.
Amina squeezes the fig she is holding. I do the same, and feel somewhat silly. I look to Kenza, Amina’s daughter, for some verification of what ritual I’m unknowingly undertaking. “What’s your Mum looking for?” I ask.
“Ones that are not too dried. They should be like miel…honey.”
Amina, me and Kenza walking into the Sunday suq
I take a nibble, as if I have any honey-like fig judging comparison to go on. It’s soft, slightly crunchy with fig seeds. Sweet. Honey? Undoubtedly.
Amina buys a garland that reminds me of the dried fruit decorations my mum makes for Christmas. A brief sense of pride passes through me that something I considered delicious passed the taste test of our market host.
Before this sweet interlude I was in the middle of feeling a little overwhelmed. I hardly noticed Amina stopped in the first place. An early morning writing in the relative sensory-dimness of our flat makes me a little slow to calibrate, re-acclimatising to the Moroccan autumnal sun, anticipation of suq closeness, reading of market etiquette.
Amina wears a cap on top of her hijab, her handbag sits across her shoulder, Carrefour bag-for-life waiting limp in hand.
This Sunday suq is hidden from the internet, but in plain sight outside the medina walls. The main road of the industrial area of Essaouira hosts this weekly happening. Tarpaulins balanced on wooden carts or over unstitched sacks laid on the ground. Some kind of human-and-produce-wilt-prevention-system.
Herbs on sale
Amina and Kenza are the hosts of our Airbnb in Essaouira. When booking, I mentioned The Flavour Narratives, hoping for some recommendations.
“My Mum would be happy to cook with you” Kenza told us on our first night. My inner pseudo-anthropologist did a little dance.
10 o’clock, Sunday morning, we head to the suq together. “Just do what you would usually, and we’ll tag along,” I say. Does ‘tagging along’ make sense when working between three languages (Arabic, French, English)? Who knows.
Back in the suq, Amina pauses again. Spots someone I had hardly noticed. With just a bucket, a metal bowl, and a stool he’s selling cooked mussels by the kilo. Amina takes a few steps forward, talks to the woman already buying her seafood haul, and tastes one.
I can’t tell from her body language what the verdict is.
As he starts to shovel some from the bucket into a clear plastic bag and Amina reaches for her dirhams I guess it’s a positive review. With the words of a Palestinian Mum ringing in my ears from a suq in Bethlehem, “stay far otherwise they make high price,” I hang back until it seems the transaction has taken place.
In broken French I ask if I can take a photo of his mussels. As he arranges a mound on the top of his bucket, I’m relieved that I’ve not made a mussels/muscles mistake. He looks pleased nonetheless and I thank him.
Mussels by the kilo
We move on.
Back towards the medina, the stalls change. Long tables deep with clothes. Women pick through them, pick up, put down, pick up, put down, careful to not drop anything. It’s the same muscle memory that picks through avocados, satsumas, courgettes.
Biscuit time. There are thousands. Amina finds sesame covered rings. She places them into a plastic bag and holds them towards the stallholder to be weighed. Next to her, a suq shopping compatriot fills a bucket.
Amina choosing her biscuits
Amina turns, passes us a sesame ring. These are one of my favourites. The juggle between phone, camera, biscuit, conversation is tricky.
Thinking these are related to endlessly disappointing sesame snaps? Think again. The seeds are through the dough, and then cling to the outside, toasted from the heat of the oven. When you serve your tea sweet, there’s no need for too much sugar in your biscuit.
Being ‘helpful’ I put the biscuit haul in my cotton Lidl tote bag. Amina winces. Both her and Kenza tell me to be careful, they are fragile.
Another thing to juggle.
We re-trace our steps. Alex and I try not to get run over, trodden on, or tread on anything. A motorised cart tries to reverse over us. Amina shouts, the saviour of our feet, then wriggles ahead through the crowd. Alex gets stuck behind the cart as it turns.
Amina spots someone selling more cherry tomatoes than I have ever seen in one place. An Aunt stops for a gossip. Then Kenza’s 8 year old son appears out of nowhere.
Alex catches up.
Tomatoes
There are mounds of produce, much more than I can imagine the whole of Essaouira eating. But the market stays open until late, 4 in the afternoon. It's different to what I am used to in the UK where past 10am you might be lucky to find a half way decent tomato.
And there’s a word that I recognise being repeated, brayed by stall holders in person, or announced over pre-recorded cantering calls - “beldi, beldi!’
“Beldi - like organic, from the land?” I ask Kenza, scraping the memory of my Arabic.
“Yes,” she says, “The sellers here come from the Essaouira region, a fertile and large one.” Many of the stalls sell only one type of produce, like our cherry tomato friend here.
“Some of the sellers are Berber,” says Kenza. “Mum is Berber, so I’m half Berber - Dad is Arab.” I make a note to ask more about this. Do I remember to though? No, of course not. A lesson for another day.
Cherry tomatoes procured, mint is next. Amina picks up a bouquet thicker than what I think I’ll manage on my wedding day, and smells.
Not strong enough. She puts it down. Walks on.
For some reason I feel bad for the mint.
We head back to the car. The delicate sesame biscuits are safely stashed in the front, under Amina’s feet. 2 minutes drive, and we’re in another pop-up suq.
Rather than being down one main street, side hustlers crouch between blocks of flats. 10 eggs picked from a box of straw. The hens shackled to one another look on. I wonder if they know whose is whose. Amina replaces two of the eggs I choose.
Artichoke stalks, for soup. Peas for tagine. Courgette for cous cous. An extra bag has to be bought.
Choosing artichoke stalks
Knowing that the vast majority of this produce has been grown locally, I’m intrigued. Moroccan cuisine, from the outside looking in, is filled with all the veg that I can see in one glance from where we stand.
“This is one of the best times of year here. The best for the Moroccan food,” says Kenza when I ask. “Food, good food, is important to Moroccans.”
This I don’t doubt at all. Amina works in the week and we’re almost two hours into our suq-ing. Whilst still I’m on a bit of a high (my face was hurting from smiling), this is normal life. It’s a big commitment for the weekend. I ask a question, guilty of closed questioning, presuming, “is it always the women who shop?”
My favourite green peppers, lemons, cucumber, aubergines for sale
“My Mum comes to the suq, and my father, he can shop, he is learning. He is good with meat and fish.”
Alex wonders about the cost of produce across the year. “It’s the rain,” we nod, as if we’ve ever really endured drought, “the farmers need the rain. When there is rain, the price is lower. We pay what they say.”
The suq may feel abundant, but it’s a reminder of the precarious nature of the land.
We circle back through the buildings, towards the car.
It’s time to make lunch.
Location: if you’re tempted to spend some time in Essaouira, I cannot more highly recommend to stay at Kenza’s AirBnb - https://www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/50520678?guests=1&adults=1&s=67&unique_share_id=55c2ff2f-bd1a-4eca-8ddf-5652ac50a602