a birth­day night to remember

Well, many have asked and so here it is: Vin­cen­t’s birth­day din­ner, at last. I would not have said that our stay in Mar­rakech could get any bet­ter, right up to Sat­ur­day evening, but then… it did.

And let me tell you, I have tried in vain to find a decent blog post about the restau­rant he found for us, the famous Dar Yacout, but aside from the most basic entries with address and phone num­ber, and yawn-mak­ing descrip­tions like “it was just as won­der­ful as we expect­ed,” there is noth­ing help­ful about the place online. I’m not one to com­plain about my fel­low blog­gers, but I do think the restau­rant, and the sort of evening you will have there, deserves a real­ly good go as a writer. So here it is: I’ll do my best.

There is, first of all, some­thing about men in black tie, or DJs (din­ner jack­ets!) as both Mike and Boyd opt­ed for, that brings out the olde-world gal­lantry so sad­ly lack­ing in our dai­ly lives. For some rea­son, don­ning the old James Bond look makes gen­tle­men out of guys who nor­mal­ly would think noth­ing of shut­ting a taxi door right in their wives’ faces or tak­ing the best piece of ten­der­loin at din­ner. So when we all appeared in the can­dlelit cen­tral court­yard of the riad, the ladies in flow­ing dress­es, the sight of, let’s see, six men in full regalia was most stim­u­lat­ing and sexy! They were divid­ed, how­ev­er, by their rel­a­tive com­fort lev­el with ties: John caves to fear and wears one that’s already tied, but hooks in the back, where Vin­cent and Peter appeared ful­ly tied from the ground up, and Boyd sat look­ing dis­con­so­late with his tie untied. Although he even­tu­al­ly got it all set, we agreed lat­er in the evening that actu­al­ly the coolest look of all is… untied. Look­ing like you don’t care. But you’re in a din­ner jack­et, so clear­ly you do. “I have had this din­ner jack­et since the 1970s,” he said proud­ly (I think in part because most men are proud of nev­er spend­ing any mon­ey on clothes, and mak­ing things last for­ev­er, but he was thwart­ed in this because he looked incred­i­bly dash­ing, with the per­fect debonair physique to car­ry it off).

A strong wind had risen, blow­ing the flower petals all around the pool and mak­ing the can­dles flick­er, and unbe­liev­ably we were only half an hour late get­ting start­ed, with many flash­bulbs and lots of laugh­ter. Vin­cent had hired three horse-drawn calech­es to car­ry us through the streets, and there were sleigh­bells! Aston­ish­ing­ly, our ele­gant pro­ces­sion got very lit­tle atten­tion, prob­a­bly because in gen­er­al the activ­i­ty on a typ­i­cal Mar­rakech street is so var­ied, bizarre, colour­ful and exot­ic that the sight of a bunch of white peo­ple in tuxe­dos and a lot of jew­el­ry isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing. We seemed to pass through the entire city, arriv­ing final­ly at a com­plete­ly non­de­script alley­way, step­ping down from our car­riages and being led by a charm­ing­ly court­ly man down a long pas­sage until we reached the door of the ornate riad hous­ing the restau­rant, Dar Yacout. It’s the most out­ra­geous­ly lux­u­ri­ous build­ing you can imag­ine, ful­ly tiled in the bright­est blues, yel­lows and reds, mir­rors every­where, all the wait­ers wear­ing what I sup­pose to be tra­di­tion­al garb of long flow­ing red robes and match­ing hats, appro­pri­ate­ly fes­tive­ly tas­seled. We were led straight up to the rooftop ter­race, com­mand­ing an unbe­liev­able view of all Mar­rakech, lights glit­ter­ing glam­orous­ly in the dis­tance. Alas, it was too chilly and windy to stay very long (since stu­pid­ly I had not bought one of the mil­lions of pash­mi­nas on offer at the souk! Pamela looked gor­geous in her bright orange shawl), so we descend­ed again into a vel­vety lounge and sipped champagne.

I have to say, I know she’s my child, but I was so proud of Avery for being, although the only child, able to fit in with adults she had just met a few days before, with lit­tle shared inside jokes with every­one and a total enjoy­ment of every­one’s per­son­al­i­ty. Every­one made a huge effort to include her (I hold in my mem­o­ry par­tic­u­lar­ly the sight of Pam and Avery sit­ting by the flower-filled pool while Pam quite seri­ous­ly lis­tened intent­ly to what­ev­er sto­ry Avery was telling, secure in the knowl­edge that she was with some­one who respect­ed her). And Avery looked so pret­ty, too. All around us was the sound of tra­di­tion­al Moroc­can music played live by a pair of musi­cians on the oth­er side of a tiled wall. It seemed impos­si­ble that some­where, peo­ple were mow­ing the lawn in Iowa, doing home­work in Lon­don, answer­ing the phones at invest­ment banks in New York. Real­i­ty seemed to be entire­ly an evening of total­ly exot­ic lux­u­ry, bol­stered up by the effort­less gen­eros­i­ty of our host. Vin­cent has a gift of being able to draw peo­ple togeth­er with­out being bossy, to organ­ise activ­i­ties with­out being over­bear­ing, and to teach you things you did­n’t know with­out mak­ing you feel dumb. So I, con­trol freak that I nor­mal­ly am, was per­fect­ly con­tent to sit back and bask in NOT being in charge, and know that deli­cious things were about to come my way.

And they did. We sat down to din­ner, at an amaz­ing table cov­ered with pat­terns of mosa­ic tile and moth­er-of-pearl, all of us absolute­ly starved (aside from the hasty pur­chase by Mike of a hand­ful of pas­tries and a bot­tle of water for us to share, we had gone all day with­out food!). And it was not for noth­ing. The wait­ers sim­ply con­tin­ued to bring dish­es. We began with the array of veg­eta­bles that we had seen at lunch the day before, but much more elab­o­rate­ly pre­sent­ed. And with the expect­ed car­rots, aubergines, cour­gettes, picked cucum­bers, and I can’t even remem­ber what else, there was a sweet rel­ish of toma­toes with hon­ey that I would love to be able to repli­cate. Then came enor­mous, and I mean enor­mous pot­tery plat­ters piled high with fra­grant djez makalli, the tra­di­tion­al slow-cooked chick­en dish with pre­served lemons and olives that I love so much. Right now I have an entire­ly invent­ed ver­sion sit­ting on my stove­top (in the beau­ti­ful bean­pot Vin­cent gave me for Christ­mas!), so if it turns out well I’ll let you know.

I was lucky enough to be seat­ed between Boyd and Pete, and across from my hand­some hus­band who was seat­ed next to Avery. Pete and I looked over, and he said some­thing incred­i­bly kind and mov­ing about their rela­tion­ship, how lucky they were to have each oth­er, how hav­ing John in her life will make her a hap­py per­son. Most­ly we sat qui­et­ly and dis­cussed hap­pi­ness. What does it require, how do you get it, how do you make rela­tion­ships work with all the quirky per­son­al­i­ties we all have, how the chil­dren we were became the adults we are. Pete is such a steady, trust­wor­thy, yet glee­ful­ly irrev­er­ent per­son; he makes it per­fect­ly pos­si­ble to have a very deep and impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion and yet at that same time be com­plete­ly relaxed and hap­py. At some point some­one clinked a wine­glass and we sang “Hap­py Birth­day” to Vin­cent, who tried to look annoyed and said, “You are all very, very bad.” But he could­n’t hide his smiles.

Final­ly, how­ev­er, Avery began to flag (grant­ed it was near­ly mid­night at the time, poor child), so she came and sat on my lap, try­ing to be com­fort­able. It did­n’t work. “Do you mind my being on your lap, Mum­my?” “If you wig­gle the whole time, yes!” I had to admit. John came over and said he would take her back and we’d meet up at the riad when din­ner was fin­ished (dessert had not even come! it was a tru­ly gar­gan­tu­an feast). So they head­ed out, and huge plat­ters of… hmmm, what to call it? I must do some research. Basi­cal­ly it was giant, light, del­i­cate, crunchy pas­try cov­ered with liq­uidy crys­talline sug­ar. Like the pas­try con­tain­ing the chick­en pie at lunch the day before, but just pas­try. It crack­led into tri­an­gu­lar por­tions and I’m ashamed to say we all dug in, although we can’t have been hun­gry by then. But it was sub­lime. Then cof­fees, and teas, and final­ly we all piled out of the restau­rant and into sev­er­al taxis and were sped home (much faster and less glam­orous than horse-drawn carriages!).

Did I men­tion the riad door­bell? Would you believe me if I told you that when you press it, the sound of birds chirp­ing rings inside? How does Brigitte tell the dif­fer­ence between the bell and the hun­dreds of real birds chirp­ing in the bougainvil­lea in the court­yard? To amuse me Mike pressed it twice, and she came run­ning, “on arrive, on arrive,” and we all crowd­ed into the dark vestibule. In the dis­tance I could see… John, in Avery’s light­ed bed­room. At one a.m.? I con­fess that for a moment I had some “only a father would let the child get away with stay­ing up any lat­er!”, when Avery came rush­ing out of her room. “We got lost! Near­ly kid­napped! The taxi dri­ver took us to El Dora­do, and then when we final­ly got back, a drunk man tried to take us down a dark alley­way…” Poor John! And I could only imag­ine the state I would have been in if we got back and they weren’t there. Oh dear. A fit­ting and dra­mat­ic end to quite the most sub­lime­ly deca­dent evening. Every­one called “good nights” and dis­ap­peared into the dark cor­ners of the riad, John and I sang to Avery, and final­ly I curled up with a sin­gle-malt scotch and tried to read, but the dopey mys­tery I had cho­sen was total­ly eclipsed by all the images of the evening, images and flavours and songs and sleigh­bells. And friend­ship, old and new. Quite perfect.