Who has right of way in a medina alley?

A motorcycle is coming toward you in a passage barely wide enough for two people. Behind you, a man pushes a handcart loaded with propane canisters. Ahead, a donkey has stopped. Nobody is angry. Everybody adjusts. Everyone else seems to know exactly where to go.

There are no traffic signs in the derb. No lane markings, no signals, no formal right of way. The medina predates traffic law by about nine centuries. What governs circulation is an unwritten hierarchy that every local learns by walking these streets from childhood — and that no guidebook explains.

The hierarchy, roughly: laden donkey or mule first, then handcart, then motorcycle, then bicycle, then pedestrian. Weight and momentum win. A donkey carrying two hundred kilos of building materials cannot stop or reverse easily. You can. A motorcycle moving at speed through a narrow passage has less ability to brake than you press yourself against the wall. The logic is physics, not courtesy — the thing that's hardest to stop gets priority.

But the hierarchy inverts on crowded streets. On a main souk artery packed with pedestrians, the motorcycle slows to walking pace and threads through. The horn — a short beep, not aggressive — means "I'm behind you, move slightly left or right." It does not mean get out of my way. The instinct is a half-step to either side without turning around. Nobody stops. Nobody jumps. Nobody spins to look. A half-step, a slight lean, and the motorcycle passes with centimeters to spare. The motorcycle will pass with centimeters to spare. This is normal.

The signals are physical. A handcart operator shouts "balak!" — watch out, move aside. A donkey handler clicks or hisses. A motorcycle beeps. A cyclist says nothing and expects you to hear the wheels. Your job as a pedestrian is to stay predictable — walk at a steady pace, keep roughly to the right, and don't make sudden lateral moves. The system fails when tourists freeze, stop in the middle of the passage to photograph something, or leap sideways in panic at a horn beep.

Intersections have no rules except eye contact. At a junction where two derbs meet, whoever arrives first goes first. If two motorcycles arrive simultaneously, a glance decides it. If a donkey is involved, the donkey goes. If you're on foot and a motorcycle is turning the corner, you wait. The motorcycle cannot see around the blind corner any better than you can, but it has less ability to stop.

None of this is written anywhere. There is no traffic code for the medina interior. The police do not patrol the derbs for circulation violations — there are no violations to enforce. The system is social, inherited, and remarkably effective. Collisions between locals are rare. Collisions involving tourists are slightly less rare, usually because the tourist did something unpredictable. Walk steadily, stay right, listen for beeps, and press flat when something bigger comes through. You'll have it in a day.