Snapshots and graven images

Snapshots and graven images
by David Benjamin

“… In the souks, however, the price that is named first is an unfathomable riddle. No one knows in advance what it will be, not even the merchant, because in any case there are many prices. Each one relates to a different situation, a different customer, a different time of day, a different day of the week. “There are prices for single objects and prices for two or more together. There are prices for foreigners visiting the city for a day and prices for foreigners who have been here for three weeks. There are prices for the poor and prices for the rich, those for the poor being of course the highest…”
— Elias Canetti, The Voices of Marrakesh

MARRAKESH — Our second day here, Hotlips and I were navigating the labyrinth of alleyways in the ancient Medina — we were lost, actually — when we turned a corner and spotted a pushcart piled with oranges and pomegranates, haloed evocatively by a slanting ray of sunshine. I raised my camera momentarily to take the photo.

But I decided not. I’d already shot too many oranges and pomegranates.

As I fumbled with my Pentax, though, an aged vendor in a hooded kaftan spotted me. He rose from his stool faster than you’d expect from someone so rickety, and commenced to shout and wave at me with a certain air of benign threat. Since he was hollering in either Arabic or Berber, I understand nary a word. But I understand his objection.

It had to do with graven images.

Going back to Moses’ day, it has been forbidden in Judaism to create or depict a “graven image” that represents a person or an animal, mainly because (like the Golden Calf) it could evolve into an object of worship that challenges the one true God. This taboo is one of many beliefs shared by Jews and Muslims. It’s the reason why neither Jesus or any of the thousands of “characters” in the Christian Bible are described physically in any way. It’s why there are no images of Jesus from his own time. It’s why devout Muslims grow murderously violent over cartoons that mock the Prophet. It is literally a sin for an orthodox Muslim to behold a mere pencil sketch of the Prophet, and it is the ultimate blasphemy to limn a portrait of the blessed Mohammed, even without malice or mockery.

It’s why the vendor came charging into the square. I understood the graven image business and I made no move to violate it.

Besides, the old guy wasn’t that photogenic.

Despite our language gap, I articulated my acquiescence, sort of — first by holstering my SLR. Then, as I kept cool and moseyed past the apoplectic geezer, I offered a little linguistic first-aid, for him to use on his next shutterbug. With a smile and a gesture that suggested Peace on Earth, I said to him, “No photo!”

I said it over, with a little gratuitous French, “Oui? No! Photo! Pas de photo!”

He was a smart old fart. Without stinting his rage or gentling his roar, he straightened to his full height and replied, “NO PHOTO!”

I shouted back, “No photo!”

He shouted back, “No photo!” We went on this way for a while, until another street hawker intervened. This one was dressed in the standard uniform of the young male in Marrakesh — blue jeans, knockoff Nikes, a second-hand hoodie and a Goodwill-surplus baseball cap. His bore the strange device, “Footgolf.”

The younger guy got a grip on Mr. No Photo, spoke calmly in his ear and steered him back to his sad little tableful of dog-eared dry goods. The younger guy and I, for barely a second, shared a shrug and an eye-roll.

That subtle moment of bonding embodies the paradox of Marrakesh, and Morocco and all of Muslim North Africa, where modernism is gradually subsuming the medieval shibboleths to which cling a shrinking number of aging diehards like Mr. No Photo.

As Hotlips and I roamed the Medina, ventured into Marrakesh’s (not so) New Town and wandered the vast gardens of Menara — among a thousand snapshot-shooting, iPhone-addicted Muslims young and old, some in kaftans and veils, some in skinny jeans and tank tops (with a hijab from Hermes) — we experienced the irreversible diversity of this once-ancient, now transitional culture.

Like Protestantism, there are today a hundred gradations of Muslim devotion. The Moroccans of Marrakesh, Tangiers, Fez and Casablanca have been mingling with — and humoring — Westerners, like me, for centuries. They accommodate us, stuff us with couscous, harira and lamb kebabs, pose for pictures and take pictures of us, and swindle us cordially over the price of a soapstone camel.

I wasn’t surprised by the few Moroccans who scowled or gestured angrily at my camera. Nor was I surprised at the vast majority in this Muslim nation who are Koranically casual, and adapted to the ways of the infidel West. Hotlips and I have long observed this Muslim catholicity in Paris, where France’s colonial diaspora has transplanted great neighborhoods full of North Africans. In the city’s northern arrondissements, Muslim garb ranges from the occasional burqa, to the more popular bold-print hijab, to the no-veil teenager in miniskirt and heels (but still speaking a French-intoned urban version of Arabic).

One evening in Marrakesh, we encountered a disturbing scene. An older woman in full Islamic battle dress, had scolded a boy and girl for publicly displaying their mutual affection. The boy, obviously, had heard all this before from the old scold, and he was prepared to retaliate. He had brought to the tryst a bottle of caustic fluid — my guess was ammonia — with which, when she began her harangue, he doused the woman’s face. He then took off. We came upon the woman shrieking in pain and horror, while a group of male loiterers (Marrakesh has thousands) formed an uh-oh squad. A single resourceful bystander awoke and took action, bursting into the nearest house for a bowl of water, which he flung into the wailing woman’s face. This second attack, of course, intensified her screams.

After several bowls of water, however, the treatment seemed to work and the woman’s shrieking diminished from falsetto to alto. Hotlips and I, the aliens on the scene, beat a prudent retreat, while pondering the unresolved — perhaps irresolvable — tension in a society whose dominant dogma is a both a paragon of diversity and tolerance, and an atavist army determined to restore the brutish ignorance and tribal hatreds of the Dark Ages. We had stumbled into a microcosm.

Marrakesh is a joy to visit, but still cruelly poor and stubbornly ambivalent. My heart went out to my camera-shy vendor crying out “No photo!” His faith, as he lives it in peace and virtue, has become quaint and unfashionable. Sectarian purity is bad business. Overwhelmed by modernism and McDonald’s, it’s dying here.

It will perish elsewhere, eventually everywhere. But there remains a fierce and absolute Islam, both here and beyond this cosmopolitan city, else I would be less discreet wth my camera. His outdated faith will succor Mr. No Photo as long as lives, and it will outlive him, sustained by defenders younger, healthier and much deadlier than he.

There will still be, unexpectedly, just around the corner, screaming.