Moroccan Tales/ Must Reads

Tomorrow Robert's art show opens in Chelsea, New York, which made me think back to his studio on Derb Djedid where these red people were painted -- all of them walking across Djemma Elfna.

The little house was a place where I did lots of writing --and reading too, so I'm really looking forward to reading The Last Storytellers: Tales from the Heart of Morocco,  a collection of traditional tales collected by Richard Hamilton which has just been published in England and will appear in the US in July. Update: A really terrific book. Reads just like Grimm's Fairy Tales. Wonderful stuff!

Must reads about Marrakesh include Peter Mayne's 1956 A Year in Marrakesh (Eland Press) and Leonora Peet's almost-impossible-to-track -down Women of Marrakesh which contains one of the most chilling stories I've ever read called "Couscous of the Dead".

Anyone setting out on the great adventure of owning a house in Morocco should read Tahir Shah's The Caliph's House --or read it anyway; it's stunningly good.
And if you haven't yet read The Arabian Nights, well, a treat in store.

Brideshead Revisited

Last night I went to see the new film version of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited at the arts cinema in Huntington on Long Island.
I first read the book more than 30 years ago and was amazingly impressed by it.
I had quite forgotton the bit set in Marrakech.



Lo and behold, the whole sequence where Charles goes down to Morocco to find Sebastian is set in the Bahia Palace, one of my favorite places and one that loyal readers of this blog will be aware I have photographed every square inch of. It was within walking distance of the little house on derb Djedid.


So I sat there going "Ooh......Ooh...... look at that!" and so on in an irritating manner.
But it was wonderful to look at it again.



Anyway back to Brideshead. I do recommend you to see it - though this version seems rather sadder than I recall it.
Here Sebastian is presented as less charming and more doomed from the word go.
Of course, most of us will go just to drool at Oxford, Venice and Marrakech which dazzle us much as they dazzled Charles Ryder.



The choice of the Bahia Palace was a stroke of genius; it is so very dilapidated and decaying and so enchantingly beautiful -I think we are heading to heavy metaphor territory here.



Thinking decadence and decay, you might read or see Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.
La Grand Meaulness by Alain Fournier is wonderful on theme of ordinary people being seduced by beautiful places.

Book Shop

DSCN1775, originally uploaded by schmidwix2.

Floor to ceiling books - rather slim on the whole with very brightly colored bindings - in a very small shop near the Mousassine mosque which is a cave of knowledge.
Ali Baba's treasures......
Depressing to to realise that I wouldn't be able to read one of them.
They also sell pens and note books.
The ladder reminds me of old private libraries in England - but lots of shops here have ladders because they store things very high up.