Le Maroc

Not quite African, not entirely French or Middle Eastern. In this land of kohl-rimmed eyes, stray cats, ancient traditions, and donkey carts there lies a different Scheherazade's tale behind every carved wooden door.

A 'bonjour' opens uncertain faces into smiles in a place where goats can climb trees, hooves balancing on sketchy branches, where strangers watch over each others kids and the police let your traffic error off lightly with an 'a holiday should be a good experience, non'? 

A place where people build forts and ramparts into the wild sea and a rooftop terrace on each house to see it from, courtyards with fountains in the middle of houses that look like mini palaces inside the most unassuming doors and down the skinniest alleys of a medieval medina. Markets serving up stone oven baked bread, perfectly soft and perfectly crusty,  buttery couscous, snail soup, boiled sheep's heads and silky treats steaming away in tajines around every corner.

My Morocco was as much a dusty and pale sunbleached postcard left out in a desert oasis as a vibrant jade and ruby coloured mosaic, changing colours like a chameleon.