sunday times

i am sitting in bed, having my latté, reading the paper with jane. saturday morning - i've usually been baking, exercising, surfing by this late hour - 8:14 - but today i'm taking a bit of a break.

so what's in the 'sunday' paper, delivered hot off the press on saturday morning? well, the travel section for certain - and there it is, at the very end, a buried nugget for me ... 36 hours in marrakech!
how lovely. how delightful. a small jewel of a gift to make me smile and recall our own exotic and opulent family journey to this fabled city in february. truth be told, having traveled to india a year earlier 'en famille', morocco came easy. it is a milder, much milder version of india. yes, of course, completely different cultures, language, food, history, organized religion; yet there is something about the stark geography of rajasthan that is parallel, in it's bold simplicity, to the snow-capped atlas mountains which ring this hip paradise. the colors too - both marrakesh and the indian desert state share this swirling, textured, and vibrant trait.

36 hours in marrakech. we were fortunate to have more than that. and, as noted in the new york times article, jad mahal. a fun bastion for jet-setting europeans who frequent this ville - loud music, lounge like seating, low lighting, updated takes on moroccan favorites - all come together for a memorable evening. and at 10:30, a special, if somewhat mysteriously rare treat ... belly dancers. the music pumps, and out from the shadows emerge a multitude of women, with large platters secured to their head, almost like giant heavy bonnets. the women, all dressed in white, are the 'mature' dancers - probably in their mid to late '40s - and they sway gently, but in unison, to the wave of music which rhythmically sweeps the place. they are covered in silken dresses, and atop their headpieces are a plethora of burning candles of various heights and sized. i suppose one of their main tasks, in addition to getting the crowd going, is to ensure that they don't give you an unwanted waxing!

when these gentle doyennes of dance complete their choreographed moves, the 'younger' and intentionally 'sexy' dancers come out, setting the place ablaze. their is, at jad mahal, an inner courtyard - a common place feature in many moroccan edifices - and in this particular instance the courtyard is encased in floor to ceiling glass. combined with the soaring space and dark ambience, it is difficult to tell what is real and what is reflected ... am i seeing 'into' that space, or am i looking at a reflection on the glass enclosing the space? i assume that beyond interesting design, there's a metaphor for something in that ...

the fresh dancers really go wild, taunting male and female clients with their wily ways, hips swaying, crowd jeering in their d&g outfits - quite an intoxicating sight! the kids were in awe, really just wanting to head back to the riad to watch 'the italian job' on their flatscreen by the fire - but they hung in there and in the end really enjoyed it, as did we.

thanks for the memories!

h