The Rich Pattern of Life

This article was published in the London Evening Standard Homes and Property section on the 9^th of April 2003:

I did not mean to buy a palace. I was on a routine shopping trip in Marrakech's medina with writer Maggie Perry when we passed the estate agent from which she bought her town house, or riad. I suggested we might just have a look.

Once through those heavy wooden doors there was no going back and a serious shopping moment later, I was the stunned owner of a 19th century riad. Well, it was not quite so instantaneous, but it was a definite case of love at first sight. The timing was not auspicious: my partner Dan and I had gone to celebrate the opening of Maggie's hotel, which took place shortly after 11 September 2001, and it was with deep misgivings that I went to Morocco at all. Whatever difficulties or prejudice I feared, there was no sign of anything but openess, warmth and hospitality. The crowds in the narrow, shadowy maze of the medina the old quarter, a World Heritage site were daunting, but entirely benign. Cars, donkey carts, horse drawn carriages, motorbikes and pedal bikes churned through the throngs of pedestrians while staffliolders gazed beseechingly, hypnotising bewildered foreigners into parting with cash.

My money bought a four bedroom riad with no obvious amenities. The five light bulbs did not illuminate anything; the dark, dank hole that had served as loo was best ignored from a respectful distance; there was a Stygian room of impenetrable blackness, rubble floored, that must have served as a kitchen once; and there was a rickety twig ladder that led up to the roof terrace, upon which we were cautioned not to set foot. These minor points aside, the place had an inexplicable serenity and a seductive promise of beauty in its massive painted wooden doors, in the filigree metalwork on its windows, its painted ceilings and carved alcoves, the terrace with views of the Atlas mountains, and in the deep shady veranda on the first floor. Almost all the rooms looked onto the dusty and neglected courtyard and, once in the long abandoned house, it was curiously difficult to leave. Even Dan understood its magnetism, while paralysed by my profligate impetuosity. It was not entirely insane. In 1999 we sold our house in London and moved to Spain: there was precious little fun in Islington for the amount of work required to stay afloat, and writing is a portable profession. There was enough money to restore an old farmhouse in Andalucia and put £100,000 in a high interest account as a background income to subsidise our parlous careers. Unfortunately, we kept dipping into our capital, taking £1,000 here or £500 there and this, combined with rapidly shrinking interest, presented a grim picture of future penury. Encouraged by Maggie's move, I decided to invest our remaining money in a place to let, thereby making a rather more effective background income than the bank had provided. So, ignoring Dan's panic, I went and blew half our remaining money on the house in Marrakech. We bought it, painlessly, on 15 November, waltzing through the paperwork using my surprisingly well preserved A level French. When we returned to the riad the next day there were 10 workmen busy and eager for instruction. A week later there were 26.

By January our palace was a disaster it was raining and cold, daylight evaporated early and everything that had been beautiful was gone. We opened the front door to what looked like an asbestos mine in the darker days of Victorian forced labour. This visit was a bit of a nadir and we succumbed to depression, regretting the whole venture and admitting belatedly that it is crazy to undertake major building work when you have no architect and are not going to be around to oversee it. Dan had done some drawings of a spiral staircase to lead upstairs from the kitchen, then we had scarpered. Crazy.

However, our next visit was a revelation. Barely two months later the riad was as beautiful as a jewel: wherever the eye fell there was something gorgeous, lovingly hand crafted by workmen whom I can only call magicians. A list of their feats reads: zillij fessi (mosaic of tiny, hand cut, brilliantly glazed tiles on fountains and bathroom and kitchen walls); tazouakt (wood painted in patterns as intricate as the Book of Kells, by a youthful genius known as Nordin Stika); tadlekt (satin¬ smooth, resonantly coloured walls of polished marble like plaster); jibs frieze (bands of plaster deeply carved by the immaculately black clad Abdeltif Bekai, usually in a setting of complete chaos); mejmat (a geometric pattern of cut terracotta tiles as flooring); gejmat (the same but with the addition of coloured glazed tiles) and fine moushrabiya woodwork screening the windows. The workers threw in so much out of the goodness of their hearts, though cynics have suggested it was in response to our vague grasp of finance. I absolutely believe the former, I have never known a building that radiated, well, love, like this one, literally every inch transformed by proud and loving craft. It is rumoured that foreigners tend to pay twice as much for most things. That said, could you build anything like this house in the UK and it would set you back 10 times as much 20 times I don't know.

The reason that we had such a charmed experience can be summed up in two words: Iliass Tafroukht. Charisma on legs, with awesome managerial skills, he masterminded the entire operation, working mostly with his brother in law, Nordin. Iliass guided the project in our absence with cunning, judicious backhanders, generosity and dogged perseverance, When he said he'd do something, he did. For rather less than the price of a two¬bedroom flat in Brighton, we have a four-bedroom, three bathroom palace with a huge tented roof terrace twined with flowers, a sumptuous veranda with a painted ceiling, three fountains, two sitting rooms and a courtyard whose infant citrus trees will one day cast a dappled shade upon the bussed out figure pretending to check the manuscript of her latest book.