Green grocer

Ksibtnhas, Casbah, Marrakech-Medina

A green grocer is a man who sells vegetables. This green grocer, Sidi Mohammed, has his small shop in the market of Ksibtnhas, a neighborhood in the Kasbah of Marrakech. Here we are deep in the medina, or old city, of Marrakech. Sidi Mohammed has one of the permanent shops in Ksibtnhas; there are many merchants who come to the marketplace with their pushcarts and donkeys. The two--permanent shopkeepers and ambulant merchants--do not get along well. The permanent shopkeepers point to their overhead costs and say they can't compete with the ambulant merchants who have no shop, no electricity, and pay only a daily entrance fee as taxes.

-Can you make an analogy between the tension inherent in the relationship between the permanent shopkeepers and ambulant merchants of Ksibtnhas and tensions between two competing groups of merchants elsewhere?Sidi Mohammed has selected a nice head of butter lettuce for us. In the background you can see a little of what else he has to offer today: a big pile of lettuce on your right, and a heap of mint (for mint tea) on your left.