what are we looking at?

In November of 2011 I found myself sleeping on the sidewalk of a village in Northern Morocco.  The group I was traveling with had not found a sheltered place to spend the night, and Sebastian and I volunteered to stay up all night, watching over the sleeping bodies and back-packs all heaped up together in a corner of the winding stone streets.  Around five am, an old man came out from behind one of the crooked wooden doors near us.  He stood for a while in the lightening dark, surveying the pile-up of people and belongings behind us and looking Sebastian and me up and down for a long moment.  He then turned and motioned for us to come into the building behind him.  He sat and gave us tea.  Another, younger man came in a bit later with a giant sack behind his back.  They poured it out onto the floor and out tumbled scraps of wood, bits and pieces in funny little shapes.  The old man reached to a metal square fastened to the wall next to us and swung it open.  Inside was a large, cavernous space.  He shoveled these bits of pieces of wood into the furnace and lit in on fire.  We followed him up an uneven, narrow, and spiraling cement stairwell up to a small room stacked high with wooden crates, worn smooth with use, lined with patterned fabrics.  The walls were partially tiled in the same bright blue-and white patterns.
We began to understand what the man was doing.
In a giant tub, he heaved and shoved at a giant mass of dough.
He ripped out parts of it, patted them quickly into perfect little circles, and set them in rows on the crates.
I pulled out my phone and took a short video of the man working, muttering something about my phone being not as professional as the recording equipment we had outside, where our groupmates were fast asleep.
The man paused between throwing down discs of dough to stand hoveringly over the squishy balls, muttering something under his breath.  It was rhythmic and urgent, and completely unintelligible to Sebastian and me.  Neither of us spoke Arabic or French, let alone the unique dialect of the region we were in.  We leaned in and tried to decipher what we were hearing.
What are we looking at?  What are we hearing?
Prayer?  At first we thought it must be some prayer.  Or other religious chant.
Was he merely speaking to himself about this and that?  Was he talking to himself about the strangers at his side?
Finally, we realized he was (probably) counting the balls of dough.
Suddenly, the day broke.  The neighborhood cats came out to wind their bony, sparse backs against our ankles.  Plump women in colorful clothing came out with baskets to buy the bread the man had baked.  Our teammates woke up.  We had a breakfast of the bread we had watched the man bake, cheese, and sweet tea with mint leaves.  And we were on our way.