Marrakech: and a tale of the Marrakech Biennale

Dear friends,

The Fifth Edition of the Marrakech Biennale starts tomorrow! 

This is one of my very favorite events!  The mission of the Biennale is to build bridges between cultures through the arts. This is expressed through visual arts, cinema and video, literature, and performing arts.  I'm always eager to see what Vanessa Branson and her team have cooked up.  {This is the same Branson family genius that has brought so many amazing things to the world -- ie the bar is always set very high.}

Here I am with Vanessa in Marrakech.

This edition of the Biennale includes over 350 contributors spread over 8 venues, including the Badii Palace, the Royal Theater, and the Jemma el Fnaa square.  The Biennale runs through March 31.  So if you are planning to be in Marrakech any time in the next month, make sure to make it a part of your agenda. 

Find out more about the Biennale right here, including the theme, the venues, & the program schedule.  If you can't make it this year........start planning for 2016:-)

Love your friend in a Marrakech olive grove,

Maryam 

Mirleft Morocco: and a tale of New Years Eve

We left it all behind: Marrakesh and its hustle. The restaurants, the clubs, the bars. The fancy cocktails and sometimes fancy people. The beds with their down blankets and the trickling fountain with their roses.

We took only the necessary:  books, music, the odd change of clothes.

Hour after hour we drove until we arrived in Mirleft. One main street of bohemian cafes and lopsided hotels, and a beach vacant with the exception of surfers in wetsuits.

With our friends, we settled into a converted goat shed. {The goats were now next door.} Shade was provided by an argane tree.

On floors covered in reed mats, we slept on mattresses piled high with handmade woolen blankets.  No microwave and no oven, only a  circa 1975 stereo and refrigerator.  

With the husbands and children sleeping in their beds, every morning we climbed a rickety wood ladder to the roof.  There we meditated, said affirmations, journaled and read.  We spent afternoons on the beach bundled up in scarves, reading memoirs of religious leaders and Patty Smith (but not the two together).  

We dressed like gypsies. We drank bottles of good Moroccan red wine to keep warm.

And so it was that far from the Red City's lights that we celebrated New Year's Eve.

Fishermen in small blue boats caught our dinner.

We marinated tiny salmon filets as hor d'oevres.  We braised artchokes and fennel.

The children set  a long wooden table with vintage china.  They made a centerpiece of rocks and shells collected from the beach, lit by lanterns made from old jam jars and painted tomato cans.

We ate and ate and told bad French jokes.  Aftewards the boys smoked their Cuban cigars.

DJ Delphine was in rare form with an all 1970s playlist.  There was dancing, really for hours.  

At midnight we drank champagne and gave kisses .   

It was sort of perfect.

Here's hoping you had the happiest of New Years eves, whether spent in a goat shed, a yurt, a bar, or cozy in your own home.  Happy New Year, lovely people.

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PS Excited to be starting off the New Year featured in the National!  Many thanks to writer Sarah Gilbert! 

Marrakech: and a tale of its lanterns

In the Marrakesh souks...............Moroccan lanterns everywhere....

Here a few........just for you.......

PS Which is your favorite?

Morocco: and a tale of tribal jewelry

I have always admired those fine chains, those delicate bands, those feminine studs.  I have always thought pretty, pretty at the single diamond solitaire twinkling at the hollow of the neck.  I recognize the light-as-a-feather bangle paired with the watch, and understand the demure pearls clasped on the ears.  So discreet, so elegant, so mother-approved.  Evidence of sweet avowals of love on appropriate occasions.  Lovely, lovely. 

 Yes, I have always admired that approach.  Always.  

 But as for me…that is another matter altogether.  

The piles of bracelets, the multiple rings, the earrings that reach my shoulders.  The talismans, the amulets, the gris-gris purchased in Turkish boutiques or Yemeni outposts or in Lao online shops.  The chunky, the tribal, the mysterious.  That’s what I wear.  Yes, that’s what I wear every day.  

 

Some of my favorite ethnic chic jewellers: 

* Oriyjn

* Bouvier

* Jewels 

Check out more of my large stash of jewelry here.  And see how I store my jewelry here and here.  

PS Tell me the tales of your jewelry. I'd love to hear.