There are a few places I’ve been that are engrained in my brain like true snapshots – and believe me, I am not one of those people with a photographic memory.

I mean, if I call these spots to mind – while standing in line at the bank, or waiting on hold on the phone back home in Orlando – it’s like a moving Polaroid complete with sound and smells comes rushing back.

That said, it takes a lot of sensory stimulation to burn a place into my brain.

A family vacation years ago to Mackinac Island, for example, didn’t have what it took – I can barely recall anything apart from the ferry ride over, and arguing with my siblings over cotton candy.

But there is a street in the chaotic winding medina in Fez, Morocco – the Talaa Kabira – that I think I will always be able to see, smell and hear, with only a thought. At the top of the street is the market. Flies are the only things that stir the still air in the heavy summer heat that hovers like a hair dryer’s heat blown from the Sahara.

At the butcher stalls, diamond shaped goats’ heads and camel heads with, heavy-lashed eyes announce the meat du jour. Where the signs read ‘dejaj’ in Arabic and cheery cartoon chickens are inked below, birds fuss about in cages until the butcher plucks one for the taking.

He pops it onto the scale, then turns the chicken’s neck toward Mecca for a swift slice of the knife and a kill as merciful as possible, and all in God’s name. ‘Bismillah,’ says the butcher, just as the blade slices the bumpy flesh that always feels like my own as I try not to cringe.

There are Berber women with tattoos on their foreheads and chins and watery eyes who tug at my sleeves as I shop and say ,”Un dirham, Madame.” They bless me in Allah’s name if I give.

There are men guiding donkeys loaded with crates of Coke bottles and canisters of gas. They shout ‘Balek’ – ‘look out!’ – but forge on through the crowds as their heavy loads pass.

There is rotten fruit and animal dung to avoid slipping on as I walk farther into the labyrinth.

And bundles of fresh mint for tea piled high like mini mountains that transport my nostrils from putrid to pleasant

And above it all, wailing in the wind, the sound of the mosque calling the faithful to pray.

Men in their long white djellabas file past into the mosques – the dark dents in their foreheads speak for themselves as to just how many times they have gone prostrate to pray.

- by Terry Ward