Hotel Es Saadi, Marrakech, 19th October 1998
Breakfast on the terrace down by the pool. The cheery woman behind the counter stopped making crepes and fried eggs for us in a pan over a burner, the gas bottles were polished and chased with intricate decorative bands.
We strolled to the Djemaa el-Fna, past a refuse tip, where men picked over the foetid rubbish, and crowds of students (too few women) going into a college. At traffic lights an over loaded donkey cart at the head of the queue inched forward as the lights changed setting off a cacophony of hooting from the vehicles behind – driver and donkey ignored it.
Mid-morning, the entertainers and stalls were set up in the Djemaa el-Fna, both snakes and business were sluggish. A magician did a cut rope trick for me and pulled out his empty pockets in a Chaplinesque gesture; I dropped five dirhams in his cap.
Back to the Es Saadi via the Mamounia Hotel – very plush in a dark Moroccan art deco way (a Churchill favourite). Coffee in the lush, colourful – bougainvillea, oleander – garden. Read by the pool; swim; lunch.
We strolled back to the Djemaa again in the cool of the early evening. Groups of men sat gathered round lamps deep in arcane conversation. Mounds of fruit and nuts glistened in the gas light and aromatic stream rose from cauldrons of cooking sheep’s heads, mutton, lights and cuscus. Wise men offered herbal cures for everything from fevers to infertility. The cut rope artist tried his trick again, but recognized me, gave a wide, broken-toothed grin, and focused on to another target. It was astonishing (and source of unjustified vanity) to be remembered.
We drank mint tea on the top terrace of the Argana Restaurant looking down on the pools and moving ribbons of light. Below was noise, bustle and dust; above the moonless sky was dark and quiet and a cool Moroccan breeze brought in faint hints of the desert from far beyond the city walls.