A mellah is the Jewish section of a town, usually with a gate that would be closed by the gatekeeper at sunset and during the Sabbath. The wonderful aspect of a mellah is that if becomes a walled enclave preserving a Jewish way of life, especially on the Sabbath. The negative aspect is that in bad times, the mellah boundaries were used as a physical restriction, turning the mellah into a kind of ghetto. This picture is on one level a metaphor for what a mellah is, in both its positive and negative aspects.