For some reason – I can’t imagine why – shortly after awakening this morning I found myself remembering another morning, well over twenty years ago, when I awoke in a “hotel tent” on a plain in the High Atlas Mountains…

I was an adventure seeking young artist who, accompanied by an exciting and worldly explorer friend, had gone to Imilchil (the home of the nomadic Ait Hadidou tribe) to experience an amazing and famous wedding fair, of three days duration, that is held every September. What makes it so unusual is the fact that the women choose their bridegrooms!  Of course, I intended to paint a new series of paintings depicting all aspects of the wedding fair and the beautiful brides in their striking headdresses and jewellry.

Upon our arrival, following a long, arduous and treacherous drive up narrow mountain roads of rock and dust (and no barriers to prevent you falling thousands of feet to your death), we were greeted by officials (or perhaps they were elders) who led us to the “hotel tent”. The hotel for intrepid visitors was a huge tent, white on the outside and lined with sumptuous red and green cloth panels patterned with gold; down the middle was an aisle, on either side of which were rows of beds, or, more precisely, mattresses. Each mattress, laid directly on the sand, had two sheets and a rough brown blanket on top; the sides of one mattress were so close to the next that, in effect, the sixty beds looked like two long mattresses separated by an aisle up the centre – the pillows were on the outer sides, by the tent walls. Unfortunately for us that year, the day before there had been a flash-flood and half of the mattresses were still soaking wet. We were lucky to find a couple of dry ones about half-way into the tent.

At the end of the day and some of the night, when tired and sated by exotic food and the entertainments of ritual singing and dancing displays on red carpets in the firelight, we returned to the hotel. The plain was cold at night. We put on every item of clothing we had brought with us, including our coats, and still we froze. I was grateful that both my friend and the stranger close beside me on the other side were big men and produced a good amount of heat, though not enough to induce sleep. I was happier when the stranger rose early, whilst it was still dark, and I commandeered his blanket, feeling as I did so, a vain tug from another hand – I wouldn’t let go! Warm at last I managed to sleep.

I awoke to the sound of a farmyard. For some time I lay awake with my eyes closed, allowing myself to come to my senses gradually; I was aware of the sunlight filtering through the roof and walls of the tent, and it was no longer cold; I listened to a donkey honking, deep and sonorous, and rather near; and a little farther away a large male pig snorted and puffed.

Suddenly I was wide awake and I sat bolt upright. In the same instant a French lady, on the mattress directly opposite me across the sandy aisle, also sat bolt upright. We looked at each other; then we each looked down to the side – I at the large donkey next to me and she at the snorting pig next to her – and back to each other again; and we burst out laughing. Roars of laughter came from the end of the tent where a group of Arab lads, sitting on a hillock of mattresses and cushions, had been watching all from their vantage point. The great hilarity roused the snorers, and other sleepers, from their slumbers and soon everyone was laughing.

Now what made me think of that? Oh yes, now I remember.