My mother was born in a taxicab in Casablanca. She has always had a flair for making an entrance, and that was her first. It was 1941, the year before the classic film Casablanca was filmed, and to me, my mom's life always seemed like a movie: glamorous in its tumult.
My mother's Morocco – the one I grew up hearing about, the only one I knew – was a tumble of clamour and colour. I heard about places she lived, like Rabat's Jewish ghetto, inside the city's ochre-coloured ramparts. There, in twisty streets cramped with fruit and spice stalls, men sat cross-legged next to baskets heaped with dates, white-fleshed bergamot, glossy quinces and big-bellied lemons. There were rainbow pyramids of cumin, cayenne and coriander, and doughnut vendors where spheres of dough were tossed in bubbling oil to balloon, emerging plump and chewy and huffing clouds of sweet heat. Men in djellabas pushed heavy carts piled high with cactus fruit and figs, their babouche slippers whispering across cobbled ruelles .
But mingled with the perfume of fruit were the smells and sights of poverty. Streets were well-populated with small flying cockroaches and barefoot children while donkeys carried fetid hides fresh from the abattoir.
Tales of my mom's childhood – in a country she left 40 years ago and, in many ways, has longed for ever since – lent mine vibrancy, but also made it seem unbearably bland in contrast. If my mom had a legitimate nostalgia for a culture she was forced to leave (for religious and political reasons), I felt a second-hand nostalgia for a place I had not even seen.
Morocco, a liberal and liberalizing Islamic state, has long seduced Westerners – not only with its hashish-addled mythology, fire-licked food and colours and medieval architecture, but also with its relative stability. In efforts to boost tourism even more, King Mohamed VI announced an ambitious program to boost tourism. The plan is working: Hotel and resort openings have been swiftly on the rise, with many more slated for opening in the next couple of years.
But the King's strategy didn't help in luring my mother and me to visit. Conversations with my mom about the homeland were usually paired with plans to one day visit Morocco together so that she might introduce me to her haunts, her sunshine, her colours. I probably didn't press her to take the trip because I was comfortable with leaving Morocco where it couldn't disappoint – in the haze of fantasy.
But when I was recently invited on a trip to Marrakesh, it turned out to be just like going anywhere else: You get on a plane and it lands there. And when I did land in Casablanca, what first struck me (literally) was the sharpness and clarity of the light: sunshine bright to the point of pain. I put on my sunglasses and some lipstick, as if trying to look vaguely presentable for our first meeting.
My time in Morocco was spent at La Mamounia, a palatial hotel at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, where my mom once came for mint tea in 1950 when she was 9. (When I asked had she ever heard of it, she responded like a Parisian would if asked if they had heard of the Eiffel Tower.)
Originally opened in 1923, La Mamounia epitomizes the fantasy of a magic, snake-charming Morocco. Winston Churchill, who used the property as his winter quarters, declared it “the most lovely spot in the whole world.” He would spend his time balcony-hopping with his paints and canvas in efforts to render the mountains in shifting light. This past September, the 86-year-old property emerged from a three-year reno by superstar French interior designer Jacques Garcia: It's now a dreamscape of zillij mosaics, tiled pillars, traditional Moroccan marquetry, orange-blossom scented pathways, and spouting fountains. There's also a lake-sized ozone swimming pool where deeply tanned Europeans leaf through yachting magazines and nibble on dates, and 200-year-old orange and lemon groves. (In fact, La Mamounia is named after its gardens; King Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah offered them as a wedding gift to his son, Prince Moulay Mamoun.)
Wander around the grounds, where walkways trimmed with silvery-green 700-year-old olive trees as tall as royal palms lead to a pink-walled patisserie, and all you hear is the fluttering of leaves and birds, the occasional muffled thump of an orange dropping to the grasses, and the disarmingly loud sound of chirping birds. Birds here sing like they are rehearsing for Broadway.
