On the Town

To say that we are not night people is, well, to indulge in gross understatement. While Marrakech may be likened to Ibiza in terms of its burgeoning all-night club scene, we’d be hard pressed to tell you the names of three, okay maybe two, venues for music and dancing. Our idea of a nice night out is a movie and dinner at CdL, or maybe a small dinner party. Even the vernissages, or art openings, end by 9 p.m., promising that we’re home in bed with a book or movie by 10 p.m.

Last week, though, with our new acquaintance Andy as our chaperone, we dispensed with bedtime and tasted the Marrakech scene. Andy’s nocturnal escapades in Marrakech had preceded our introduction to him by several months. This is a guy who splits his time between New York and sub-Saharan Africa, but Marrakech is where he comes to “go out.” Andy’s command of its sleazy bar scene seemed near-epic as too his stamina and penchant for female company. Needless to say, we found ourselves both in awe and in slight fear of this mythic being. The real thing, let me tell you, did not disappoint.

Our first introduction to Andy was at a quiet dinner party, but even then, the gauntlet had been thrown. A night out on the town was inevitable. We steeled ourselves and called Andy a few days after Christmas, inviting him to meet up with us at a rather forlorn English-style pub called The Chesterfield, located on the second floor of a hotel on Avenue Mohammed V. The Chesterfield serves beer on tap, which is a treat, and its horrible wood paneling and claustrophobically low, smoke-stained ceilings, we hoped, would give us some seedy cred with Andy.

After a few rounds, we moved on to a club called the Montecristo, where, sure enough, Samuel was able to order a fat cigar that he puffed on the rest of the night. Here we listened to a few loud bands, crooning away in Arabic, and were pleased to have Andy confirm our suspicion that Lulu and I were the only women in the house not charging for their company. We’ve seen countless kaftan and djellabah shops, but where, I wondered, does one buy a rubber dress in Marrakech? The Marrakech dress code we witnessed here, after dark, is certainly a far cry from the traditional look in the Medina. And Lulu was the first to notice that Paris Hilton videos were playing on a large screen behind the band; the tabloid tart’s reaches have extended, it seems, if not to the world, than at least to the great metropolises of North Africa.

Next up was a disco called Teatro, attached to a hotel and casino in the Hivernage neighborhood. As Samuel and I waited for Lulu and Andy to arrive in their cab, we observed legions of emaciated, scantily clad French girls, as well as slick, jet-set Moroccans, waiting in line for the club. As our experience at the film festival taught us, if you look determined enough, you can breeze through any line. And so we did. When Lulu and Andy arrived, we muscled our way through the crowd and two bouncers as if Amy Sacco were a personal friend and we’d just arrived at the door to Bungalow 8. The disco’s cover charge was 150 dirhams, which is 50% more than it costs to go to see the National Symphony; imagine what the cost ratio would be in London or New York. For the average Moroccan, whose salary is about 2000 dirhams per month, this is a lot of cash. So who are these kids? Do they spend a night on the town, stumbling into their local mosques for the 6 a.m. prayer? With Eid around the corner, we wondered if these kids are as excited about the ram sacrifice as the Moroccans we see in our neighborhood during the day.

The expected techno music inside was absolutely deafening – no exaggeration as Samuel spent the next 24 hours yelling “What?” every time someone spoke to him. Despite the chill outside, we were immediately sweating as bodies crushed around us. Okay, our wool sweaters and jackets (attire more appropriate for a dog-sledding adventure than a night of clubbing) didn’t help. Several hours and innumerable embarrassing dance moves later, Samuel and I finally had to call it quits. My watch showed an impressive 3:15 a.m. as we stumbled into a cab.

The next morning, we learned that Andy and Lulu had gone on to one or two additional spots and hadn’t cried “uncle” until a rather impressive 7 a.m. Each of them was full and pulsing with 20-something Moroccans. Damn the stamina of youth! Though later, Andy did concede that he’d spent the entire day in bed recovering. Even the immortals need a day of rest now and again.