Smoking, drinking and a monkey on his shoulder… Despite that I still see Marrakech’s Djema El-Fnaa as one one of the world’s most fascinating spots in the world, for that same atmosphere that put it in the Immaterial Heritage list of UNESCO, I wasn’t too interested in photographing its street performers on my last time there. I tend to avoid them almost everywhere, and in the Djema El-Fnaa square the only ones I would really like to take a picture are the storytellers, the sub-saharan Africans that sit in the ground while the Moroccans around follow their story and pay to see its end. Sit in the ground, with no light whatsoever, making photos impossible… I wandered the square, delighted but not taking photos, when I found this guy: full of “swag” , sitting on his scooter, smoking, drinking while the obvious monkey lies on his shoulder. This one I had to shoot, and as I stared at him he noticed that and was about to start his routine, I raised my hand in time: Don’t move! And he did not move, and I gladly gave him a few dirhams. You simply do not take a photo of a street performer without paying him, specially in Marrakech.
