Wednesday 14 January 2015

Had Dra Essaouira's most popular market

Lamb

Tea break

               A day in Had Dra market


Souk HadDraâ
(Had-Draâ market) is one of the biggest weekly souks in the province of Essaouira. On Sundays and for ages, this market has been the meeting place of buyers and sellers of a wide range of stuff: For example, camels, heifers, donkeys, goats and hens are sold at 5:00 am.
At six o'clock, people from all walks of life take the vast esplanades by storm: peasants, city-dwellers wearing fashionable clothes ray-ban sunglasses and mobile phones, few audacious and good- negotiating housewives, shy and absent-minded merchants hiding behind pyramids of sweet-smelling spices, butchers selling all kinds of meat and constantly chasing flies away
A thick smog of dust and smoke crosses the canvases of jute and laths of reeds… People barter, buy, negotiate second hand clothes, faucets, nails, tools, horse shoes, fruit, almond cakes, but they generally discuss a lot…
One meets everybody, his/her neighbour, his/her cousin, his/her friends. Hugs, tears, disputes and smiles. One experiences all kinds of smells here: Strong odours of cattle, meat and fresh blood, smells of spices, dust and dung. The whisper of the morning quickly turns into an uproar, nasal vociferations of megaphone-using vendors, screaming children, distraught bleating sheep, roaring chamels. Toward 11h00 am the market comes to a standstill. The constant word ' balek' "(watch out! in Arabic) of the imperious carriers bending under their loads died down in the lamentations of beggars. Well- to- do traders have haircuts at the itinerant barbers', and then leave home with basketfuls of fruit and vegetables. Some bring home even cattle and sheep in crammed vans and pick-ups… and loads of memories and meetings.

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