In the Moroccan Desert, An Oasis of Luxury That’s No Mirage

TAROUDANT, Morocco —  I suppose my first thought, once I’d had time to collect my thoughts after a not long but inevitably somewhat jarring journey here, to the Gazelle d’Or in Taroudant, was something like, “Where exactly am I?”

I had awakened in Paris about eight hours earlier, boarded a jet at Orly and flown roughly 1,550 miles to the south and west. I had disembarked at the sun-baked, no-frills airport in Agadir, fended off a dozen or so would-be guides and drivers, rented a rattletrap Renault station wagon whose interior reeked of stale tobacco smoke and sweat, and headed east.

I drove about 50 miles, past veiled women walking glumly by the roadside and old men in striped robes selling cactus fruit from the backs of donkey carts; past army bases as grim as prison farms, and automobile graveyards as ugly as hell; through unfinished concrete villages with a bombed-out look, and stretches of hilly, dusty desert, blurred with haze.

Finally, after about an hour on the road, I came upon a town surrounded by orange groves, obscured by extensive crenelated ramparts that were alternately ocher and earthy-pink, dating mostly from the 18th Century.

If I had squinted out the cars and motorbikes around me, in fact, and focused solely on the walls and trees instead, I might have thought I was in the 18th Century.

But now, half an hour later, I found myself ensconced at a handsomely set luncheon table on a beautiful red-tiled terrace, amply shaded against the early-afternoon heat by huge wanton clumps of fat bamboo, cooled by the faint and faintly fragrant breeze that rustled through the nearby stands of bougainvillea, olive trees and palms.

I found myself attended by a crew of amiable and efficient waiters in white robes and embroidered slippers, sipping very good and very cold rose and eating an assortment of bright vegetable salads--carrot, eggplant, zucchini and tomato with roasted green pepper--soon to be followed by a chicken tajine --chicken braised in a domed clay pot with marinated lemon peel and purple olives.

I found myself, in short, in another world, in the third of three wholly different worlds through which I had traveled in a third of a day. I had started in the sophisticated, cosmopolitan capital of Paris, passed through a land of donkey carts and veils and ended in a kind of displaced paradise, enjoying a degree of cosseted well-being that not even urban Paris can easily provide.

My sense of dislocation was immense. But then that’s one of the things I like about Morocco.

What always unsettles me about this country at first, that is, but what I always end up liking so very much about it, is the sheer ferocity of contrast it offers. This is not a land of delicate shadings, of subtle change and gentle counterpoint.

The late Malcolm Forbes threw parties here that cost more than whole towns earn in a good year. Yves Saint-Laurent and Yassar Arafat pass each other on the street, or might well do so. At night the video gunfire of “MacGyver” on TV in Arabic translation plays against the bray of asses in camps of tents.

Even nature jars: From one valley to another the earth turns suddenly from terra-cotta red to gypsum white. In the midst of the most barren deserts, oases--tropical in their lushness--seem to spring from dry rock.

So unmistakably Moroccan and at the same time so dramatically different from the Morocco that surrounds it, the Gazelle d’Or seems to exemplify this aspect of the country, seeming to encapsulate the contrast.

I had come here in the first place because a couple of Parisian friends had made fun of me. I had planned originally to spend a few days at another Moroccan landmark hostelry, the posh, recently renovated La Mamounia in Marrakech.

“Tourist trap,” my French friends jeered. “Miami Beach!”

Well, I answered, then where should I go?

“Why, the Gazelle d’Or, of course,” they replied. “It’s the real Mamounia.”

My friends’ assessment of La Mamounia was not entirely fair, I later learned. It is, in fact, a spectacular establishment, well worth visiting. But it is also, undeniably, overwrought--excessive--with its Alain Senderens restaurant, its ornately done-up attendants, its gaudy casino.

The Gazelle d’Or isn’t overwrought in the least. Its luxuries are comfortable, not self-conscious. It doesn’t try as hard, and thus succeeds more genuinely.

The original structure on the property was a hunting lodge built in the 1930s by French architect and artist Baron Jean Pellenc. (The region’s migratory turtledoves are particularly favored by local Nimrods.) Pellenc later added cottages, and the complex was converted into a hotel in 1961 and expanded in 1981.

The 18-hectare complex, surrounded by pink walls of its own, consists of a sprawling “clubhouse” or main building housing the reception area, dining rooms and salons; about 30 fieldstone cottages, vaguely Gaudiesque with their tile-edged swept roofs, containing various configurations of guest rooms and suites; two red clay tennis courts; a huge swimming pool with a beauty parlor; a hammam , or Arab-style steam bath, even a small riding stable stocked with Arabian horses.

The public rooms are elaborately done up with lovely decorative pottery, antique muskets, camel saddles, a wealth of Berber rugs and such, and with a selection of the baron’s rather good genre paintings of Moroccan subjects.

Filigree abounds. Two of the rooms have tent-like ceilings. Another has an unusual double-zodiac pattern inset into its marble floor, with representational and emblematic symbols paired.

The large and comfortable guest rooms, each decorated differently, are a bit simpler, but do boast complex bas-relief motifs etched into the plaster above the beds, this being a tradition of the Taroudant region. All the rooms have private terraces and corner-mounted gray brick fireplaces, and all give onto the often-snowcapped Atlas Mountains in the distance.

The rooms have mini-bars and private safes but no air conditioning. The combination of thick walls, thick curtains, windows with screens and efficient ceiling fans, however, helps keep the rooms cool even in the hottest weather.

The weather can indeed be hot here. It was about 104 degrees when I visited the Gazelle d’Or in mid-September. Two weeks earlier, I was told, it had been 104 degrees at night . (The most pleasant months here are reportedly November through May.)

Considering the temperature and relative dryness of the region, though, both the variety and vigorousness of the flora on the hotel grounds is remarkable.

I might have expected the Dusty Miller, Wandering Jew, bougainvillea, oleanders, olive trees, palms and tamarisks. But then there were geraniums, rose bushes, hibiscus, daisies, eucalyptus, fig trees, orange and lemon trees, plus cork oaks, wisteria, willows, an occasional avocado or banana tree, whole fields of mint and rosemary, cypress trees--even a kitchen garden full of lettuces, tomatoes, zucchini and more.

Much of the produce served in the hotel dining room is, in fact, grown on the property, and the food in general is delightful. The menus are small, but they change daily and offer a reasonable range of both French and Moroccan dishes.

On my first night here, for instance, dinner--a five-course affair included in the price of the room--consisted of a classic French-style beef consomme, offered hot or cold; a choice of baby shrimp salad with chopped tomatoes in a lemony dressing or eggs scrambled with smoked fish; a main course of either grilled entrecote with assorted vegetables, breaded and fried whiting, or chicken tajine ; a simple green salad, and a choice of ice cream or apple fritters.

I overheard an American couple at a nearby table congratulating themselves on being smart enough to refuse the salad, raw greens being something that it is generally a good idea to avoid in underdeveloped countries. In this case, though, it was their loss.

Home-grown vegetables are properly handled and perfectly safe, and the peppery hearts-of-romaine lettuce that were this salad’s main ingredient were as crisp and flavorful as any I’ve ever had.

Breakfast the next morning on the pretty little terrace outside my room, while the dew was still glistening on the grass and the heat was still gathering, was a further delight: first-rate coffee, a generous glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, some excellent croissants and, best of all, a small clay dish filled with Moroccan-style pancakes, soaked in honey and butter.

Considering the predicted temperature for the day, neither a horseback ride nor a steam bath sounded particularly appealing as after-breakfast activity. The pool was tempting, but it would wait. Instead, I decided to explore Taroudant.

It was Sunday, the principal market day, and the town was jampacked, not just with locals and tourists like me but with desert tribespeople from the countryside, Berbers swathed in black, Tuaregs in indigo blue, and so on.

I quickly acquired a guide (hard to avoid in Morocco) who turned out to be a pleasant young college student named Brahim. At his side, as he led me slowly and graciously but inevitably toward his very good friend who had a small selection of very fine rugs to sell, I spent a good two hours in a veritable fantasy of a North African souk.

We visited spice sellers who rubbed waxy amber on my arm to let me smell its thick perfume, and showed me how local women draw a kind of lip rouge from what looks like a pottery top.

We squatted on the ground to talk to olive-oil sellers, who decant their heavy, dark-green oil from plastic gas cans into liter-size Coca-Cola bottles. We let chameleons crawl across our palms, scoffed at shops chockablock with phony Nike running shoes and Pierre Cardin shirts, and examined rolls of exquisitely woven, snow-white cotton.

Then we got to the rug seller. For half an hour, as Brahim lingered at a respectful distance by the entrance to the shop, I sipped mint tea with his friend. We talked about Morocco, California, movie stars, food, sports and, oh yes, the remarkable workmanship on these wonderful handmade rugs, not at all like the imitations they sell in the unfortunate shops of Marrakech or Casablanca.

I could not resist, of course, and after enjoying about an hour of the man’s impeccably polite and circuitous salesmanship, and about 10 minutes of circumspect bargaining, I bought a large and beautiful multicolored kilim for a sum that was roughly a third of the original asking price and probably not much more than twice what I should have paid.

Then, bidding Brahim goodby, I treated myself to lunch at the Hotel Palais Salaam. Set right into the city ramparts, the Palais Salaam was built in the 19th Century as an adjunct to the palace of the Pasha of Taroudant. It is a lovely, seductive place, full of greenery and little tiled courtyards and fountains, and was a welcome refuge after the hurly-burly of the souk.

The restaurant there is very agreeable, and I ate another selection of Moroccan salads, this time including beets, carrots with cumin, and tomatoes, and then kefta --tiny meatballs in a deliciously spiced sauce with (regrettably) mushy canned peas. With mineral water and half a bottle of rose, it came to about $18.

Back at the Gazelle d’Or I swam, sunbathed, took a brief nap in my room, then strolled around the grounds for half an hour or so in the waning light. By then it was time for dinner.

Chef Hassan will prepare virtually any classical Moroccan dish with 24 hours’ notice, and for my second and last night I had asked him to make me a couscous, at once one of the simplest and most difficult of local specialties to prepare correctly.

I began my dinner back on the patio in the clean night air, by then cooled to just the right degree, with a small plate of deep-fried fish from Agadir, mostly whiting, very fresh and not the least bit greasy.

Then came the plat de resistance , which was superb. It was a terra-cotta dish heaped with couscous (which itself is grains of semolina rolled into tiny crumbs), luxuriating in a delicious lamb broth with zucchini, carrots, turnips, garbanzo beans, potatoes and big hunks of lamb on the bone.

Alongside were little gravy boats filled with more broth and with a thin, mildly spicy pepper sauce. (Liking things spicier still, I must admit, I asked for and received a plastic squeeze-bottle of delicious brown Tunisian hot sauce.) I finished with a homemade muscat grape sorbet so sweet and so vivid in flavor that I expected to find grape pips in every mouthful.

There I sat, savoring my after-dinner cognac in the flickering candlelight before getting up, regretfully, to head off to bed and all too soon thereafter to arise and begin the arduous daylong drive I had assigned myself on the morrow.

I suppose my last thought was that, after all, I knew exactly where I was: I was in a wonderful oasis in the middle of a sometimes harsh but always fascinating country. I was in the heart of Morocco, and in the very lap of luxury.