Cocktail Chaos

Last night we hosted our first cocktail party for our new expat acquaintances – the ones who haven’t fled Morocco in the August holiday exodus. We’re a survival group, too busy with work or projects to get out of dodge. With many of our favorite haunts like Café du Livre closed, we’ve promised to keep our social lives alive with the occasional soiree.

Early in the day, we make a quick run to Acima for supplies: rum for mojitos, beer, wine, whiskey, vodka, chorizo, olives, avocados for guacamole and such. As usual, the market give us black plastic bags so that we can return home with our liquor bottles discreetly cached, but they don’t have anything big enough for the case of Heineken, which Sam hoists to his shoulder to trek through the medina. I always feel self-conscious with booze so blatantly displayed; it seems an affront like wearing a navel-baring shirt or a mini skirt. Just as I’m complaining that Sam should tuck the box under his arm as we wind towards the house, a neighbor walks past, notes the case of beer and says, jokingly, “Save one for me!”

Despite the precarious climb to the terrace up a very steep stairway with a rickety railing and plants taking up half the space of each stair, we decide this is the best place for our gathering. The terrace is breezy and cool with a stunning view of the Koutoubia Mosque and comfy, pillow-littered banquette seating. We fill lanterns with pillar candles and scatter them about the terrace and pull together a playlist for the iPod. Everything seems pretty under control.

I decide to get cleaned up and Samuel steps out to get ice for the mojitos since the machine at Acima was broken. He asks the fellow at our corner store and is pointed to a vast Moroccan market just off the Place, which until now we’d not known existed. The market has loads of vegetables and in the back, a big, old-fashioned meat locker-type freezer. When Sam asks for ice cubes, a man opens the locker and hoists an enormous 3-foot block of ice onto a wooden counter. With a serious-looking sledgehammer and chisel, he lops off a thick 15-inch slab from the block. He then wacks away at the slab with the chisel, carving off 4-inch chunks and slivers, which he shovels into a plastic bag for Sam. Given that the market’s clientele is exclusively Moroccan, we’re pretty certain the ice has been made from good ol’ Marrakech tap water, but we decide to keep this from our guests. In two months, we’ve consumed enough tap-water ice to have overcome the microbe issue and hope that our friends, all of whom have lived here longer than us, have done the same.

Just as I’m stepping out of the shower, I hear the scrabble of Daisy’s paws, the chow we’re looking after, on the tile floor outside the bathroom. This is her preferred spot for “accidents” and despite our strict 4-walks-a-day regimen, she’s decided to let loose all over the floor. “Daisy, bad girl,” I chide running from the bathroom only to slip in a puddle of urine, scaring the dog so that she runs down the length of the balcony, peeing as she goes. Like most balconies in traditional riads, this one has drains for rainwater and runoff from plant waterings, so I take a bucket of fresh water and quickly douse the pee and then run to get the squeegie to direct the yellow water down the drains. As I’m furiously squeegie-ing, Sam runs to the corner store to buy bleach as the whole place reeks of pee. As I’m midway through a second dousing with water, the rusted squeegie breaks and I’m forced to finish the job on all fours. At this point, it’s fifteen minutes before party time and the cell phone rings; one of our guests is in need of directions, but just minutes away.

As I pull on a pair of jeans, the phone rings again. It’s another friend, arriving by car, and unsure about where to park and how to reach us once she’s found a spot. It dawns on us that hosting a cocktail party for ten people, none of whom have ever been to the house, and whose address we don’t even really know (the street sign is in Arabic and we’ve not even noted the number on the house), is going to lend another level of challenge to the evening. In our divide-and-conquer plan, I’m assigned fetch guests duty, while Sam fixes a drink for our early arrival and makes the dangerous ascent to the terrace with trays of food and glassware.

I quickly alert the men at the souk stalls around the house and the greeters at nearby restaurants that we’re having a small party and to direct anyone asking for Caitlin and Samuel to our propped-open door. Then, I set off to find Martina, a French artist who has an installation in the hammam at the Musee de Marrakech, and the friend who’s arriving by car. I have both of our cell phones in my jeans’ pockets and suddenly both are vibrating with the “I’m lost, come find me,” pleas of other guests. Since the house we’re renting is on a street bookended by the Place and Riad Zitoun, an easy taxi drop-off, not to mention another side street that leads to Rue des Princes (home of the infamous Patisserie), guests are arriving from all sides. At this point, I’m flustered and turned around myself and so when I get two calls from friends who speak only French, all I can manage is Reste la, je vais te trouver! or Sit tight, I’m on my way!”

Back at the house, Sam’s been getting what amounts to a stadium workout (running up and down the tiered stairs of each section of a football stadium) as from his crew days. He’s climbed the two precipitous flights to the terrace about 20 times. “We are definitely going to have a refrigerator and barware on our terrace,” he says with I’ve-learned-my-lesson gusto, “or maybe even a dumbwaiter.”

As we nestle into the banquettes and a pitcher of mojitos make a quenching first and then second round, the group settles into jolly conversation and the evening finally takes the happy turn we’d been anticipating. Our only lingering fear, as wine and whiskey bottles follow the mojito pitcher, is how the hell are our guests going to navigate those terrifying stairs on the way out?!