In fez country
Petronella Wyatt
Iwas off on the road to Morocco once more. (The warm climate and the soft landscape draw me back again and again. I must be getting old.) Those camels are hard on the spine so I decided to take a more comfortable riad. Excuse the wordplay, but in Marrakesh the fashionable world has gone mad for the riad. The Downing Street adviser Howell James has bought one, Yves Saint Laurent owns one, dispossessed European royals spend their winter holidays in one, as did Sir Mark Thatcher. New riad hotels, the Arab equivalent of the boutique hostelry, now open every year. There is plush Maison Arabe, lush Riad Villa des Oranges and now Riad Farnatchi, the newest and most madly vogueish.
Warning: riad life is not for those who like the impersonal, all mod-cons, multiplerestaurant nature of the large hotel. Riad hotels are converted houses in the Medina, the picturesque mediaeval quarter of town. When a guide book or a brochure says ‘picturesque’, it is like a book reviewer saying ‘well-researched’. What the reviewer really means is very boring. Often what picturesque really means is highly uncomfortable.
Riads lie in narrow, winding, stray-catstrewn streets, which cars are unable to traverse. Instead the driver dumps you in the ‘nearest’ (I laughed till I cried) square and a man in a burnous and baggy trousers hurls your suitcases into a filthy donkey-drawn cart. Louis Vuitton luggage is not advisable. You follow behind apprehensively wondering if you will reach your destination by the end of the week. High heels are also a nono. Eventually your luggage reaches a carved wooden door in a high mud wall. This does not look prepossessing. What, you wonder, is on the other side? More cats? Chickens? Avian flu?
Riad Farnatchi, thank goodness, confounds your worst expectations. The man with the fez leads you into a cool hallway opening on to a quiet courtyard full of orange trees bearing bona fide oranges. Around the courtyard is the riad itself, with rooms opening up to the sky. The decor is authentic but not tiresomely ethnic. Moroccan lanterns dance prettily over more minimalist designs. The ante-rooms cross centuries as well as cultures. A cosy reading area contains Moorish antiques, a carved fireplace and a modern glass table that would look well in a swish London Docklands apartment.
The main joy of Riad Farnatchi is that you don’t notice the other guests. (Call me antisocial. I am.) The riad has five suites each as large as a studio flat. Mine was as carelessly romantic as the sets in Algiers with Charles (‘Let Me Take You to the Kasbah’) Boyer — a carved, handmade bedhead, latticed windows overlooking a pool full of rose petals, curvaceous sofas with silken cushions and the satellite TV and CD player discreetly hidden in a cedar cabinet. The bathrooms are enviably spacious, having that essential of civilised living — two sinks. Each suite has a terrace for breakfast or intimate suppers under the sound of the muezzin’s wails. My companion and I received complimentary cocktails and canapés on arrival, which I, for one, needed, having ruined my samplesale Chanel shoes. Every guest is also provided with a silk djellaba (a Moorish dressing-gown with a hood) and babouches, softas-magnolia calf-skin slippers. Moroccan pastries, also gratis, are delivered to your suite every evening at 6.30.
The ‘Berber breakfast’, which also comes free, is apparently what the fearsome Berber tribespeople consume at sun-up. In which case it is no wonder there has been a ceasefire. This feast begins with a gargantuan omelette with spicy tomato sauce which tastes rather like ketchup with Tabasco. The omelette is followed by thick, hot pancakes, breads, jams, honey, toast, eggs and bacon, fruit, coffee and orange juice. After breakfast, if one is still capable of movement, there are a number of attractive alternatives, including a small swimming pool and a roof terrace for sunbathing.
The Moroccans adore something called a ‘hamman’. This involves sweating in a small marble room and being covered in a mudlike gunge which is then scraped off by a pulchritudinous female. This put me in mind of scenes in I, Claudius, where Tiberius and his brother Germanicus are scraped with instruments resembling knives. Alas, the lady merely tickled me with what felt like a feather duster before performing a massage that consisted of gentle patting. Is this what the warriors of old really went for? The other disadvantage of riad living is its claustrophobia. Walking through the streets to the souks is a stressful and hazardous business — they teem with Moroccans intent on pushing, shoving and generally irritating the visitor. Women are ill-advised to go out alone — not for fear of being raped but for fear of something far worse: the locals delight in giving you wrong directions and, when you collapse in a tearful, exhausted heap, in showing you the right way before demanding a large sum of money. At this point you are simply too weak to resist. My determination to do without an official guide cost me £50. Then there is the dust. Marrakesh does dust like no other city. It insinuates itself into your mouth, eyes, ears and under your fingernails. After two days I was taking Night Nurse believing I was in the grip of a cold.
I would not recommend staying in a riad hotel for more than four days. The ideal complement is a couple of nights at the Mammounia Hotel. ‘The Old Liner’, as regulars call it, may lack the ultimate ‘personal touch’ but it gives you breathing space. For a start, three riads would fit into the lobby and its ante-rooms, which include a lounge bar with wall paintings of scantily dressed slave girls. The gardens are the largest private gardens in Marrakesh and their beauty, with their pathways and pagodas, evokes the poetry of Omar Khayyam. No wonder Churchill liked to come here and paint.
While devoid of the ‘real’ Moroccan touches of the riads — the bedrooms are uniworld; comfortable, if unimaginatively decorated — the Mammounia is far from soulless. It is here that I heard the greatest jazz orchestra of them all: the Claude Bolling. This huge ensemble, complete with two excellent singers, played for dancing on New Year’s Eve and during the splendiferous poolside buffet lunch on New Year’s Day, with Mark Thatcher and a pretty blonde tapping along to Cole Porter and Jerome Kern standards.
After a few glasses of complimentary champagne (please do not form the idea that everything is complimentary: the lunch cost £90 per person), I asked to sing myself. Extraordinarily, I was rebuffed, even after informing the band leader that I had recently sung in Rick’s Café in Casablanca (all true). Mr Bolling, however, promised me the next gig, though he was strangely vague about the timing.
The most perfect hour of the day is from five till six, sipping mint tea on the grass while reading that most entertaining of travel books, Morocco That Was by Walter Harris. According to Harris, who was the Times correspondent here in the early 20th century (he is buried in Tangier), the Mammounia was originally a palace built for one of the sultan’s sons. The rose-pink walls of that palace still remain, cushioning the idler from the noise of the traffic outside. Oh bliss it is in that moment to be alive.
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