Meet me in the kasbah
PetroneIla Wyatt
I'm off on the road to Morocco. Fortunately, not by camel as Bing Crosby and Bob Hope did in the greatest of their Road films. Rather by Royal Air Maroc. This is not a plug, as that airline serves perhaps the worst food in the world. Last time I used it, my neighbour spat out his white wine on to my lap, making it appear as if I had had a very embarrassing accident.
But if the Moroccans have problems with their airline they would seem unusually happy with their royal family. The King is soon to be married, which has caused whispers of relief in the souks as it had been feared he was not so inclined, as are many members of his nation. On holiday in Tangier once. I found that town was the only one I have ever visited where the man I was with received more admiring glances from other men than I did. Once an open port and a mecca of decadence for such as Errol Flynn, Barbara Hutton, Paul Bowles and drugs dealers, it is now seedier than a cornfield in May. There was only one clean restaurant in the city — a sort of wooden hut where the proprietor served you with his fingers.
So it's Marrakesh I am heading for. This was where the old sultans used to spend the winter before moving to Fez for the summer months. This was before Morocco became a French protectorate, and Charles Boyer went around saying to dusky maidens, 'Meet me in the kasbah.' (Not a bar where you pay cash only, incidentally, but what they call an old fort.) The independent sultans were an eccentric lot who spent themselves into bankruptcy. They borrowed money from the other powers and then affected outrage when those powers had to occupy them in order to get their money back. It was not as if the cash was spent on irrigation or infrastructure or housing or the poor. It was all spent on the sultans' mad entertainments. So, what's new? Employed at the court in Marrakesh, amongst other useless persons, was a Spanish dentist who was asked to make a throne along the lines of a dentist's chair. The sultan then ordered a state coach to be sent out from London but, as the streets were unsuitable for coaches pulled by horses, two ostriches were attached to the thing instead.
According to the British Times correspondent who is buried in Tangier, the ladies of the court, meanwhile, spent most of their time half-drugged and being frightened of ghosts. I raised this matter of ghosts and drugs at the ballet the other night. A friend and I began to debate why it was that pop stars often end up as drug abusers, sometimes leading to their early deaths. while ballet dancers and opera singers never do.
We concluded it had to do with discipline. Dancers and opera singers don't have time to socialise very much, so the temptations are seldom there. Or, if they were, the effect would so detract from the necessary precision of their performance that they would be fired on the spot. No one minds when a pop star arrives on stage, waggles his head in a mad way, forgets his words, and falls about, but what if Darce).: Bussell did that, or what if Callas had forgotten her words? Finito la musica. There was only one drug-addict ballerina, Gelsey Kirkland, who wrote a book about it. But, as my friend observed, 'She was American, and it finished her off.'
She could have gone to dance at the sultan's court. They loved circuses and huge firework displays. But beneath this intemperance is an intrinsic goodwill. There is no religious fundamentalism, though Morocco is predominantly a Muslim country. In Marrakesh, Jews, Christians and Muslims live side by side in peace. Very few Moroccans have time for bin Laden. In any case, ray Moroccan friends are convinced that he is dead. Why have the Americans stopped mentioning his name, they ask? Why are his wives now speaking to the newspapers? It is rum. indeed. Or perhaps bin Laden is hiding somewhere in the Atlas mountains. If so, he may soon be dead of dysentery from the local food.
I wish that many real Moroccans did not cook and had discovered mass ready-made food instead. Perhaps a true entrepreneur could buy the franchise to open a chain of Marks & Sparks in Marrakesh. How easily so much beauty — the magic of the rosepink city — is spoiled by repeated trips to the ladies.
It is doubly tragic as Morocco has the most visually beautiful restaurant in the world, Yacout. Stepping into this house is like stepping into a tale from the Arabian Nights. An open courtyard is occupied by a pool covered with rose leaves, jasmine and gardenia blossom and by silken-topped tables and soft cushions. Heavenly shaped lamps set beams of loveliness through the night sky. Each floor of this house is more spectacular than the last, while the view from the top knocks any of those John Mortimer Tuscan views into a bowl of couscous. But here lies the trouble: the couscous. Why? Who invented this tasteless but indigestible grain? It is neither rice nor pasta. Neither one thing or another. And it comes course after coarse. If Morocco ever joined the EU they would have to make margarine out of the stuff to get rid of some of the surplus.
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