Shabbat in an Emperial City

The next three days were spent in Marrakesh, one of the imperial cities in Morocco. This was Thursday (night), Friday, Saturday and then we left Sunday morning. Because most of the time in Marrakesh was on Shabbat and we are a Jewish program, we didn't do all that much.
Thursday night we arrived in time for dinner, and time to explore the square. The square is this huge, and I mean huge square bustling and hustling even late at night (I think we walked around in at 11 or so). There are hundreds of people and even more vendors who all want you to buy stuff from them, and will shout somewhat random things in English just to try and catch your attention. I think I was called the names of several pop princesses (Miley Cyrus among others) and was asked if I would be willing to marry one of the vendors. On top of the vendors there were small children who would follow you trying to sell you whichever item they were peddling. When we refused to buy tissues, etc. off of the children they would become violent and begin to kick or attempt to throw punches. We had a native Moroccan as a security guard. He would mutter a couple words to the children in either Arabic or French and they would run off.
On Friday we visited the Mellah (the Jewish ghetto) of Marrakesh. All but four families have moved out and now live in other places around Marrakesh (there used to be thousands of Jews there, and now there are only a couple thousand, of which not that many are religious). We went to a 600 year old cemetery, the most recent grave is from this millennium. Then we returned to the square we had visited last night and went to a pharmacy. Rafi (our guide) knew this pharmacy that sold everything from fish spices to oil that after rubbing it on your temples would relieve stress and a headache. After this we roamed the square and went shopping! During daylight it was not nearly as overwhelming and packed as it was the night before which was a major plus. Then we had to make it back to the hotel in time to prepare for Shabbat. As a surprise when we left the hotel to take the bus to Shul, instead of a bus there were six our so horse drawn carriages that had been ordered to take us to the synagogue. So that was fun.
Saturday was a very low key day with services in the morning, lunch and down time until later than evening when we went to our local Marrakesh guide's house (Jamal was his name for dinner). Jamal is a religious Muslim but he allowed us to have Havdalah there and then we were all served dinner. Their house was incredible, huge rooms, with lots of pillows and space. We fit (all 46 of us) quite comfortably in several of their rooms. Here we had another traditional meal, that was absolutely delicious. Soup, this flaky bread type thing that was filled with vegetables and home made wonderful couscous.
Unfortunately my camera was not with me for any of Marrakesh so I do not have pictures to share.
So instead I will share a brief history lesson. There used to be tens of thousands of Jews in Morocco and all but about 3000 have moved out of Morocco, most of them to Israel. The Jewish community is dwindling still. It is customary that when kids become of age they leave Morocco for higher education and it is rare that they come back. This trend is even more prevalent among Jewish teens because their parents are able to send them abroad. As an additional note those Moroccans who emigrated to Israel were not treated very well. Because of how close the Jewish culture is with the Muslim culture within Morocco, the Moroccan Jews brought many Arab customs and in some cases even the language with them to Israel. Here they were regarded as lower class citizens and it was often the Moroccan Jews who got involved in crime and prostitution. This didn't help their social standing either. In recent years they have been more accepted, and they are not still on the bottom of the food chain, but during the waves of emigration post independence it was not that great to be a Moroccan Jew in Israel.