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BEING THERE: MY HOUSE IN MARRAKECH

Dylan Thomas

While visiting Marrakech, Richard Alleman succumbs to a case of mansion fever and makes a purchase. It's not all tinkling fountains, birdsong and Proust by the fire, but the greatest pleasure may be in becoming an insider in such an exotic place...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE MAGAZINE, Spring 2008

I spent a lot of time in Morocco in the 1970s, but hadn't been back for decades when I wound up in Marrakech in 2002 to research a story on the city's renaissance. While much has changed in the intervening years (the city has quadrupled in size for one thing), I still find myself taken by the throbbing Place Djema El Fna with its acrobats and storytellers, the souks with their exotic sights and smells, the snow-capped Atlas Mountains, the sunshine, and the charm of the Moroccans. At the same time, I am amazed by the transformation of the ancient medina, where once derelict mansions with courtyards (riads) are now chic hotels and sumptuous private residences, thanks to low prices as well as recent changes in Moroccan law that have made it easier for foreigners to buy property.

Indeed, during my recce, I succumb to a case of riad fever myself. So rather than chill out on my final day in Marrakech, as I'd planned, I spend it with an estate agent looking at properties. They are all enormous wrecks needing what to me looks like years of work; and by the end of the day, I have pretty much put my Lord of the Riad fantasy to rest. But before saying what I think will be a final goodbye to the agent, I ask him if by chance there are any small houses in the medina for sale. As it happens, he knows of one, but since it has only four rooms he figured it would be too puny for a European. I ask to see it anyway and despite its psychedelic blue and yellow interior, its cracked tile patio, and its crumbling staircase, this little pad "speaks" to me and when I find out the price, it virtually screams. When I head back to London the next morning, I have made an offer, signed papers, and left a deposit.

Between buying your house and moving into it takes a solid year, if you're lucky--I was, because of Catherine Neri-le Bourzec, a talented French decorator, who redid one of the riad hotels I particularly like. She loves my "micro-riad" and puts together an enthusiastic team that includes Nawal, a young Moroccan woman architect, and Mourad, a salt-of-the-earth, super-reliable Marrakshi contractor. You are soon consumed by the excitement of the project and you schedule your life around frequent hops to Marrakech for site inspections to watch it take shape. You also find yourself a member of an exclusive club of ex-pats who are doing the same. You meet at cafés and restaurants, bump into one another in the airport or on the plane, and trade stories of tadlakt (polished plaster) and bathroom fixtures, permit and title problems, baksheesh etiquette, delays and disasters.

Finally, you move in and for the first couple of weeks your house is like some wonderful new toy. You spend hours trying out every room at every time of day. You delight in the birdsong on your terrace in the morning, the distant drums and flutes from the Place Jemma El Fna in the evening, the wails of the muezzins. You imagine long winter evenings finally reading Proust by a fire in your shiny new tadlakt fireplace.

But there's little time for Proust because you quickly discover that you have to deal with the mundane demands of your new house--the leaking fountain, the dangerous stairs (on which your a slipped and nearly broke her neck), plus bills, banks, taxes, insurance--all of which are endlessly complicated in a country which seems to have inherited the worst of French and Arabic bureaucratic traditions.

Then there are all your friends whose visits require that you not only play the gracious host but also double as tour guide, translator, shopping and shipping consultant. At first you are happy to share your adopted country with them, but eventually you tire of the souk, the hot new restaurants (often mediocre and overpriced), the daytrips to Essaouira on the Atlantic, and the overnights to the desert on the other side of the Atlas Mountains. Ultimately, much as you love your friends, you arrange for them to stay when you are not there, leaving them detailed suggestions for their visit.

Finally, you must contend with the expatriate social whirl, with its constant round of parties and apéros, with everyone showing off their new houses while complaining about how Marrakech is being ruined by all the foreigners buying properties. There are two main ex-pat groups: the French and the British. Often, there is no love lost between the two, since the French still think of Morocco as their "protectorate" and resent the Anglo invasion, whereas the British feel morally superior to the French because for a change they aren't the Colonial baddies. As an American based in London and who speaks French, I'm not quite sure where I fit into this complicated hierarchy.

If there's any label I covet, it's that of insider. I love simply wandering around my neighbourhood, speaking a little Arabic here and there, as I get to know the hole-in-the-wall grocers, the produce stalls, the internet cafés, the scenic routes and the labyrinthine layout of the medina, where every journey from A to B is an adventure and where you are assaulted by more smiles and bonjours in half an hour than you get in a year on the streets of London.

And when the medina feels too claustrophobic and I tire of dodging the streams of tour groups and motorbikes, I branch out and discover another Marrakech that lies a few miles down the orange-tree-edged Boulevard Mohamed V in the quarter known as Guéliz. Built by the French in the 1920s, this ville nouvelle, with its leafy streets and rose-coloured art-deco villas and apartment buildings, is a breath of fresh air. It is also exotic, in its own quirky way: a faded outpost of French colonial style and culture, which has now been claimed and gentrified by modern young Moroccans and hip Europeans whom you'll see lunching at sleek minimalist cafés like Kechmara and Café 16 or on the great verandah of Café de la Poste, which looks like a throwback to French Indochine with its wicker furniture and ceiling fans.

One of my favourite spots in modern Marrakech is a place called Marjane, a vast American-style superstore on the outskirts of Guéliz with aisle after aisle of electronics, appliances, bedding, furniture, food, and off in a corner, a large selection of spirits, which must be paid for at a special cash register. You see an amazing mix of shoppers--from men in djellabas and women in hijabs to the usual jeans and T-shirt set, all looking for the same bargains.

Somehow, in Marrakech, even the most banal activities--like going to the supermarket--verge on the exotic. And that is the ultimate joy of living here--being part of this incredible rush of traditions, dress, nationalities, beliefs, eras that all coexist. In the space of a few hours you can travel from the Middle Ages to the 21st century with a stop in Colonial France en route. And afterwards you have the luxury of savouring them in the serenity of your own hideaway with its tinkling fountain and plant-filled terrace. And who knows, one evening you might even find time to light that fire, put on a classical CD, and give "Swann's Way" a whirl.

(Richard Alleman is an actor, author and contributing editor of American Vogue)

Photographs by Dylan Thomas