Last day in Taroudant and woke feeling a little sad.
We have loved our time in this town, me, my blisters and our new travelling companions, two juicy mosquito bites; my fault, the moon was so beautiful, I just had to leave the balcony door open.
I have loved meeting Veronika and David and Jonathan and sharing a little time with them.
I have revelled in my walks through the souk, my time in the square, my near death crossing the road experiences, the wannabe James Deans on their motorbikes, the proud Arab horses pulling their carriages, the faces – most of all – the faces.
I have loved it all, the nothingness of it, the selfishness…the lazyness.
My evening with Lily in her palatial riad….ah yes, Lily… I promised to tell more.
We met in the hotel lobby, both of us on the internet. She told me she had a house in the Kasbah and two days later invited me to tea, which turned into several glasses of wine and her life story.
Lily grew up in Sudan, Khartoum no less. Her grandfather supplied Kitchener during the war and the family settled there.
“Not the British army, Kim”. I understood.
She was the middle child and the family did well. Lily and her sister were never allowed out unless chaperoned and led a sheltered, privileged, almost Victorian childhood.
By the time the family were forced to leave the Sudan for England in the 60’s she was fluent in French, English and Arabic.
A good English education afforded Lily entrance to both Oxford and Cambridge to read law, but her protective parents insisted she stay close to them and she studied in London instead, still leading a sheltered and privileged life.
She met a fine English gentleman who she loved dearly but whose mother had greater ambition for her son and did all she could to wreck the romance.
She succeeded.
Lily (now a barrister) went to New York to get over her broken heart.
New York in the late seventies.
Lily arrived in New York, petite, multi lingual, intelligent, beautiful and VERY naive.
She fell in love with an American, an artist of some renown, and they painted the Big Apple so red that Lily blushes at the recollections; Studio 54 being their favourite haunt.
“He was so wild, Kim. I was wild. Imagine being let loose in new York after my childhood? But he was too wild, even for me.”
She came back to London and opened an art gallery on Bond Street, living at various times in Mayfair, Hampstead and Primrose Hill and being courted by Austrian Counts and English Lords, but by now her heart was set on travel and freedom.
She travelled round the world, played the tables in Monte Carlo, trekked in Nepal and India, flew to Mexico for weddings, sailed in the South Pacific and rested in Africa (her heart always belonging to Africa).
The gallery, her baby (Lily is more than contented with her role as an aunt) was a great success and then, quite by chance, some 20 years ago she met her ‘little’ Italian and she has been with him ever since. He lives in France, she in London, they share all the good bits without ever having to give up being free spirits.
Now they have pooled their resources and renovated the riad in Taroudant.
It is their bolt hole and pension investment. It is also a monument to good taste. Designed by a well known architect, using all local material and filled minimally with tasteful pieces of pure art (the cluster of highly collectable 60’s plastic chairs in the courtyard by the plunge pool and on the roof terrace were £200 each), all carefully sourced and lovingly placed; I could but gasp in admiration.
And so tomorrow I move on to Marrakech and all its hustle and bustle but I will miss this quiet walled city and hope to return.