A GREAT ARCHED GATE LED into the labyrinth. Inside, the light was dim, filtered by crude bamboo lattices, the early evening air scented with fresh tanned leather, herbs and an ocean of spices. This, the medina of Marrakesh, is a desert emporium like none other, packed with life and wares. There were caged birds and dried chameleons for use in spells, ostrich eggs and incense, slim yellow leather slippers arranged in rows.
I knocked at an ancient wooden door and was waved inside by a figure in cream-coloured robes. We climbed until we were at a covered terrace where, sitting on cushions and Berber carpets, was a group of people, many of them English. A young woman stood up and began to talk of her magical childhood memories of Marrakesh. She was the novelist Esther Freud, and was speaking of her book Hideous Kinky.
As Morocco becomes ever more accessible (at least one cut-price airline is about to start flying there, another is planning to follow) a new generation is discovering it as a place to meet English-language authors, to hear them read, and talk about their latest work. Marrakesh has become the heart of Morocco’s thriving literary scene. A number of impressive literary salons have come to life there, courting some of the biggest names in English literature.
Freud was talking in the sublime Kssour Agafay, a 500-year-old five riad and private club dedicated to the arts. Its salon hosts regular literary and cultural evenings, drawing members of the British community living in Marrakesh as well as visitors.
Just beyond the old city walls, in a palm grove, is the Jnane Tamsna literary salon. Several times a year, over long weekends, authors discuss their work there, chat informally with readers and hold workshops, all against a serene backdrop of camels grazing and date palms rustling in the breeze. Next week is the turn of the writer and broadcaster Aminatta Forna, who will be presenting her first novel Ancestor Stones. Profits from the salons support local charities focused on literacy and education.
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Marrakesh is also home to the Café du Livre, a relaxed blend of bookshop and restaurant patronised by the city’s resident authors, who flock there to read, rest and write. The shop hosts its own book launches, readings and other literary functions throughout the year.
It always seems to be painters who are talking about Morocco. They go on about the rich textures, the colours and the light. But for centuries writers have flocked there, drawn by the intoxicating blend of cultural colour. Morocco has had a long and curious relationship with the English language and the British literary scene. It all started with Samuel Pepys, who was sent to Tangier in 1683 to assist Lord Dartmouth evacuate the English garrison there. As always, he kept a diary about it. Not long afterwards came the narratives of brave young Englishmen sent out in tweeds, heading south in search of mysterious Timbuctoo. Those who did not perish along the way wrote of Morocco, the land of the Moors.
In the past century the country turned from a distant outpost to a place of inspiration, perched between Europe, black Africa and the Arab world. In 1938 George Orwell spent six months in Marrakesh on doctor’s orders, the desert climate prescribed for his tuberculosis. Although attracted by the heat, it was the state of the poor and disaffected that commanded his attention. His treatise on the city, entitled simply Marrakech, has been described as the perfect essay.
Other English authors have been on very different quests. Wyndham Lewis left England in 1931 in search of “Barbary”, the Berber homeland; it led to a sojourn that was eventually published under the title Journey Into Barbary. Almost two decades later Peter Mayne (A Year in Marrakesh) lived in the backstreets and wrote on the gentle pace of ordinary life there.
At about the same time Nina Epton arrived, intrigued to find the spiritual heart of Morocco. Her classic Saints and Sorcerers taps into the mysterious underbelly of the Kingdom. A few years later Gavin Maxwell published his masterpiece Lords of the Atlas, which traces his research into the rise and fall of the once-mighty El Glaoui dynasty.
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The British are not the only Anglophones to write on Morocco. Tangier is synonymous with the American author Paul Bowles, who moved there in 1947, and stayed until his death in 1999. Bowles’s salon was a meeting place for many American writers, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams.
Jnane Tamsna Literary Salon: www.jnanetamsna.com/jtlitsal.htm; 00212 4329423. Kssour Agafay: www.kssouragafay.com; 00212 2442 7000. Café du Livre: 00212 24432149