Marrakech is close to the Sahara Desert but much greener than I expected.
I was really surprised by the vegetation.
Our riad had arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport and the 25-minute ride into the city was an eye-opener.
Orange trees growing right down both sides of the main road, narrow lanes on either side with donkey carts, many scooters, mopeds with seventeen stone men on them, mopeds with two young guys, and mopeds where a passenger was carrying a big, heavy engraved brass plate. No helmets.
The first day was a shock, admittedly.
Second day, I got used to it. After that, no problem. From the second day Marrakech felt like a home from home, which nowhere else ever has, except the Algarve. I liked to walk down our road towards the famous Jemaa El Fna square, past places where guys sit with sewing machines, making shop awnings and repairing them on the pavement.
On the first day mopeds came from behind and zipped past within an inch of my elbow and that was surprising. But, very quickly, the mopeds scooting past my elbow seemed normal and not dangerous.
Originally a tented encampment, an intersection of caravan routes, Marrakech is strategically positioned on a plain below the Atlas Mountains. The Berbers built ramparts round the city in 1062.
Jemaa El Fna is one of the continent’s oldest squares and starts to get busy at dawn with traders setting up stalls, and as the day goes on more stalls open, snake charmers appear, as do acrobats and other entertainers. When a guy with wriggly wooden reptiles offers you, “Snakes at Asda prices !” or talks to your wife and says, “Miss England, how are you?” you just smile and walk on.
At night the square is dark and thirty or forty people stand round each group of musicians. Small lamps on the ground provide some light, a percussionist held his tambourine over a lamp to warm the skin, and as a tall, veiled dancer sashayed towards us, Jan felt someone touch her small handbag.
She turned round, the guy put his hand up to his face and walked off. So she took off her jacket, put the bag over her shoulder, and put the jacket on over it.
We had been warned how to handle hustlers and “guides”. In general, I’d say : don’t buy anything except food and drink on your first day till you get the hang of the currency, and don’t follow anybody who claims to be working at your riad and has just popped out to buy some spices for the kitchen.
And don’t listen to anybody who calls over his mate and says, “He’s just going home for lunch, he’s going that way anyway, he’ll show you round the mellah, not for money.” The mellah is the old Jewish quarter. We fell for that one and saw the synagogue, which was quite interesting. Entrance was free but we had to pay to get out.
At night the square has avenues of food stalls selling similar fare and each stall has a number and the white-coated touts who offer the menus can spot an English face in a nanosecond.
At stall No.81 their front man is Otman, who showed us his laminated menu. On the back is a colour photograph of his cooks and waiters with TV chef Rick Stein and below that is a picture of their crew with Carluccio, the big Italian. The photos look 100% authentic but cannot be real.
“Rick Stein changes his wife every two months,” said Otman. “Carluccio’s a really nice guy.”
His English was so fluent, so colloquial, that it was like talking to a Londoner.
“Where did you learn to speak English so well?”
“Three years in school, five years in the school of life, around here. Watching EastEnders, me old china ! And Hollyoaks with the sound off.”
A gap appeared at his table and we sat down next to an American girl who was about 23 and very chatty.
“That guy’s good,” she said, pointing to Otman.
“He’s one of the greatest comedians in North Africa,” I said. “He’s wasted here.”
The tables are long and narrow with bench seating and the two cooks stand above stacks of chicken, lamb, beef, shrimp, calamari, and various vegetables. They work, chat, grin, pose for photos, make hand-signals, as if they are DJs. We had kebabs, tagine, cous cous, salads, various little dishes. It was street theatre and cheap fast food and good fun.
A grad student in Paris, the girl says that American tourists always run round doing the famous sights in Paris, ticking them off.
“They’d learn far more about the city if they just went out to dinner with someone,” she said.
“A lot of Americans are very boring,” I said.
The girl laughed.
“That’s true. But you’re the first person that’s ever said that to me.”
“Americans get things done,” I said. “They have a can-do mentality. When I first came to London, it was usually an American who was telling people what to do, like Jim Haynes at the Arts Lab, and later on John Morris, the voice of Woodstock, at the Rainbow.”
“I’ve been to Jim Haynes’s house in Paris. He had open house every Sunday for 25 years, so expats and people could meet each other – it was a word-of-mouth thing. But then, with the net, and Facebook, it got a bit crazy. I think there’s a waiting list now.”
On my right were three men and a girl. Two brothers, one is 26, an Air Morocco steward who had married the girl, 21, two weeks ago. Friendly young people, here for a conference. The oldest one said, “We’re tourists too. We’re from Casablanca.”
What we mostly did was have breakfast in the riad, where our daughter Caroline had stayed in 2009, got a taxi to a museum, palace or garden, pottered around for three hours, had lunch there, walked back to the riad after buying some dates, figs or apricots at a stall, and read our William Boyd novels on the roof if it was sunny.
The view from our roof was spectacular and when I was watching a stork fly higher and higher over the mosque without flapping his wings, riding the thermals, I seemed to be a very long way from Willesden High Street.
“How many other places have palm trees and snow-covered mountains?” I asked.
“It’s a bit like Tehran,” said Jan.
She went everywhere when she worked for BA.
If it was too windy on the roof we just chatted to other English couples in the courtyard, which has a garden and four tortoises, then had a shower, went out to dinner, came back, watched the TV news on Al Jazeera and crashed out.
The Jardin Majorelle is a beautiful haven of tranquillity with a pond and a nicely shaded courtyard cafe for lunch.
Created by a French landscape painter, Jacques Majorelle, who died in 1962, this remarkable botanical property was then bought by the Algerian-born fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergere.
There are wide walkways made from big red tiles, palm trees eighty feet high, tall bamboos scarred by people scratching names and valentines, strange-looking succulents whose plump leaves retain water, and a startling selection of big cactus plants.
One day we walked to the Menara Gardens and back, a distance of five kilometres.
On the way there we popped in to see La Mamounia, Africa’s most legendary hotel, which is in a big compound just inside the old city wall.
The receptionist corrected some of the misconceptions which have grown up around Winston Churchill’s visits to the hotel between 1935 and 1953. The great man stayed in various rooms and loved to paint the landscape. The Churchill Suite is one of their seven signature suites and while it contains a painting of Churchill, and some memorabilia, it has no painting by him.
Walking on supersoft carpets which cover acres of marble, we went past a grand piano and a drum kit, through to a patio area where people were having drinks in armchairs. On the right is a posh palm-shielded pool where guests are served by immaculately uniformed waiters. We strolled round the vast gardens, which predate the hotel by a hundred years, and had afternoon tea in the pavilion.
A chic waitress brought us two silver trays with bone china teapots, cups and saucers, damask napkins, and little pastries. It was such a beautiful setting that we luxuriated there for quite a while. As doves coo and a lawn mower purrs, the human hive of the souk seems a thousand miles away. When I had drunk all my Earl Grey tea I looked at the bottom of the cup to see where it had been made : J.L.Coquet, Limoges. I thought : Never heard of him !
By that stage I was asking everyone their names, so that’s what I did when I paid the bill.
“What’s your name?”
“Waffa,” she said. “It means faithful.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
Her English is impeccable.
Then we went out of La Mamounia and walked on down the very long Avenue de Menara, past football pitches set well back from the road, where dozens of young men were arriving on mopeds, scooters and bikes, past a park area where families with toddlers were having picnics, and up to the gate of Menara, where the Sultan kept his favourite concubine. If the concubine didn’t please, the Sultan drowned her in the artificial lake, according to local legend. The present lake is large, rectangular and protected by high walls, with some tiered modern seating at the far end. Menara is where local people gather in the early evening, a rendezvous, a place of trysts and assignations.
As we sat on the wall at the far end, looking back at the Menara Pavilion, we heard loud giggling from the high seats behind us.Then a sixteen year old schoolgirl came down.
“Do you speak English?”
“We’re from London,” I said.
“Nice to meet you.”
The girl shook hands with us.
She wore a dusty pink jumper and her hand was as soft as a kitten’s paw.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Rashida. What’s yours?”
“Myles.”
“And?”
“Jan,” said Mrs Palmer.
Reluctant to interrupt us further, Rashida went back up to rejoin her seven giggly friends, who included two boys.
“It was a dare,” said Jan. “They said :You speak English, go and talk to them. We dare you.”
On Friday night we were in our room and Jan opened the wardrobe and looked at my top shelf.
“You’ve only got three pairs of clean boxers left.”
We were leaving on Tuesday morning
“Saturday, Sunday, Monday,” I said, counting on my fingers.
“You’ll have to go commando.”
Next day it was warm and we went out without coats and the rain started and we only had Jan’s little blue umbrella. As we skipped through puddles in the square, hawkers selling umbrellas shouted, “Too small!” But the umbrellas they were selling were rubbish and would not have lasted the rest of the day.
We dived down two alleys into the heart of the souk and then stopped to shelter under the awning of a shop that sold mobile phones. Opposite was a shop that sold slippers and scarves and the proprietor was a genial bald gent with a grey moustache and he suggested that we stand under his awning, so we did. Then he produced a chair for Jan. The rain was sluicing down and men were using brooms to push the water out of their premises and I noted that we were now protected by corrugated iron, rather than the patchy old bamboo over the phone shop door.
Our host asked to see Jan’s umbrella and then he opened it.
“Too small,” he said.
He went into the back and returned with his own umbrella and offered it to me. I shook my head. Then he opened it so that I could see what a substantial umbrella it was. Fuchsia-pink with blue checks, it was solid and very well-made and I was impressed.
“A hundred,” he said.
I smiled.
“We’re going home tomorrow,” I said, which was a lie.
“Too small,” he said, pointing to Jan’s.
“Fifty,” I said.
“Seventy,” he said.
He wanted to meet me halfway.
“It’s stopped raining,” said Jan.
The rain was less heavy now.
“Seventy,” he said again.
“Fifty.”
“Sixty and I keep your umbrella.”
He was worried about getting wet on his way home.
“We need two!” I said in an exasperated tone that suggested our host had gone mad.
“Alright, sixty.”
“Fifty !”
“Fifty and I keep.”
I shook my head again and he smiled. He was a really sweet guy and this was an amicable negotiation to pass some time during a heavy shower.
“OK, fifty,” he said.
He told us that the best way to the museum was down his alley, so the two-umbrella Palmers toddled off, swerving past puddles, dodging cyclists and carts, going past jewellery, ceramics, leather bags, lanterns, curved daggers, antiques made round the corner last week, counters crammed with fresh fish. My new £4 brolly was superb, a proper gentleman’s umbrella which worked beautifully.
I found the Marrakech Museum far more colourful and involving than the Morocco Museum. We really liked Centre Artisanal, which sells stuff made by women’s co-operatives, and has fixed prices, so you don’t have to haggle.
I didn’t find the fabled Saadien Tombs especially interesting, so after a while I sat down.
“That’s a tomb, Myles. Don’t sit on a tomb, it’s disrespectful. Sit on the steps,” said Jan, not officiously. It was just a mild reprimand for this old beatnik.
We had dinner once and lunch twice at the Argana, whose terrace overlooks the square. Our waiter wore a red bow-tie and skipped so nimbly from tier to tier, and from table to table, that I thought he might be a midfield player, an amateur Arteta. But I forgot to ask if he played. When we left I asked the wrong question.
“What’s your name?”
“Rachid of Kansas City,” he said, laughing.
Nadia, the lovely manageress of the Riad Catalina, had been able to book me into the popular Les Bains de Marrakech, a spa recommended by a friend in London. Jan didn’t fancy unknown hands exploring her, thank you very much. We found the building easily, just before noon on our last full day. Les Bains is near the city wall, close to the Bab Agnaou, a monumental gate with a stork’s nest on top.
In a locker room I changed into a white bathrobe and sandals, keeping my boxers on, as a borrowed guidebook suggested. Expecting to be massaged by a bloke, I had no idea what was about to happen. I was led along a corridor to a small room where a young woman with strong arms motioned me to lie on a waterproof bed and then chucked a small bucket of warm liquid on me, followed by a second bucket, and a third. Then she scrubbed me with black soap and a kessa glove, taking off untold layers of skin.
After a shower I found myself sitting on a bed in a holding room next to a tall British lad and his girlfriend, who had been up in the mountains. Mysterious music played softly from high speakers, bamboo flutes conjured Japanese lakes and misty forests, slow Middle Eastern pieces twirled and twanged and tinkled.
Then I was led upstairs into a purple room with six small candles and a treatment bed with a face-hole. A uniformed masseuse took my robe and hung it up and I lay down with my face in the hole while she massaged oil into my feet, my calves, my thighs, my back, my arms, my shoulders, my neck and part of my scalp. Then she turned me over and slowly did all of me again. Mostly, I kept my eyes shut and she didn’t say anything except, “Please relax.” When she was standing behind my head, I opened my eyes and saw her caramel face upside down in the gloom: chin, nostrils, dark eyes, coal-black curved eyebrows. As she was massaging my face I was thinking : If there is a heaven, I hope it’s gonna be like this !
Soon after that I was in a spacious chill-out room where half a dozen people sat on ten beds. A uniformed woman brought us little pastries, a sparrow flew down onto a dry fountain filled with rose petals, the woman reappeared to pour glasses of mint tea, the sparrow flew up and disappeared. There were no clocks and time was standing still and the atmospheric music still played softly and I just sat back and looked at the architecture, the horseshoe arches that are everywhere in Morocco. Taking my time, I rolled back to the locker room, where the tall lad was wearing boxers that were 80% dry, like mine. He put his trousers on over his boxers and I took mine off and put them into the pocket of my black fleece.
Jan had been reading her Boyd novel on a sofa in the interior reception area for two hours, quite happy. Staff had brought her pastries and mint tea without charge. Some punters had wandered in off the street to request appointments but there were none available today or tomorrow. You have to book. Jan said everyone who came out had blissed-out expressions on their faces, including me. She said I looked dreamy.
As I paid the bill I reckoned it was the best £40 I’ve ever spent.
Then we floated out and rambled north through the kasbah on a sunny afternoon and when a belt caught my eye in a shop across the street I went over and I tried it on.
“How much?”
The shopkeeper was thirty with a curly black beard and circular glasses. He didn’t seem to speak any English, so he typed a number on his phone and showed me the screen : 150.
” A hundred,” I said.
“You’re arguing about three quid,” said Jan.
I’d just had the massage and still loved everybody, so I gave him 150.
I had paid £12 for what I thought was a nice £8 belt .
“Merci,” he said, smiling warmly.
“Merci,” I replied.
“A bientot,” he said.
As we ambled on, I told Jan that my damp boxers were in my pocket and said, “I could do a John Major. Put them on over my trousers – they’d be dry by the time we get back to the riad.”
We didn’t go on any bus tours or excursions, and didn’t see the waterfall, so it was a light schedule, a leisurely week. I just wanted to escape, to relax, to enjoy seven days without phone calls, seven days without email, without Sky Sports News and grey London skies, to take some time to figure out exactly what I want to do with 2010.
Marrakech is intriguing and exotic but also relaxing.
We had lots of laughs, more laughs than any other city break. I certainly don’t feel that I’ve “done it”, since we spent all our time in the medina, the old city, but I love the ambience and the friendliness of the people. The ATMs all worked and taxis are 25 or 35 dirham and 50dh is only £4. It’s a fabulous place for a break and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s actually heartbreaking to think that I might never go to Marrakech again.
The umbrella wouldn’t fit in our suitcase, so we left it with Nadia.