Riad Jaaneman

It’s late September – baking hot, blanket sun – and Riad Jaaneman is impeccably dressed for the weather in crisp white, with a bright azure plunge pool and airy archways the height of two men. I look up, through banana leaves as wide as roofs, at tiers of shaded balconies, then I look back down and catch Mrs Smith’s eye. Happiness.

Mrs Smith, I should say – spoiler alert! – is a woman. I, too, am a woman. This is a situation that typically delights me, but the week before our trip, a friend called to remind me that homosexuality isn’t just frowned upon in Morocco, it’s illegal. 'Have fun!' he’d said. I’d nodded to myself, a little afraid. But if anything were to characterise our time in Marrakech, it would be surprises – and great ones. Like right now. Seconds earlier, we’d been standing in a dark alley frequented by kittens curled up on scooter seats. And now, we were in this dazzling, ice-bright courtyard, a parallel universe of palms, pillars and homemade biscuits.

Riad Jaaneman has five individually decked-out suites, and Anouar, the incredibly kind day manager, takes us to Partenope, which has a bathroom so beautiful it could charm a snake: all South American marble, kryptonite green, set against smoke-and-mirror walls, crowned with a temple of towels. Our suite is wrapped around a courtyard, which means the only windows we can look into are our own. I love this. I also love that there’s a corridor between the bedroom and bathroom, because it allows you to do tourism within your own space – and the more passport stamps, the better.

Before any such fun can be had, Mrs Smith has to take a work call. An international Skype affair – the only type of affair she’s allowed. When everyone on the call starts shouting, I slip downstairs with a pile of New Yorkers to the plush burgundy sofa in the reading room. This is one of the joys of Jaaneman: the shared spaces are genuinely appealing. It feels like a friend with exceptionally good taste and real estate has said: 'Come and stay at my house! I won’t be there, but please feel perfectly at home.' And somehow, you do. It’s familiar, yet precise and clever in the way it’s put together. Neutral Moroccan tadelakt (plaster, but it’s polished like concrete) and tile-work is brought together with Castiglioni design lamps and wünderkammer pieces from all over the world.

Finally, we force ourselves out before the last of the light. Jaaneman is in one of the sleeker, sleepier areas of the Medina, the perfect introduction to the city. Policemen in decadent uniforms lean on their guns like genteel canes. The occasional mule dips its neck to eat from a pile of neon-orange carrots. This is my third time in Marrakech, and the last 10 years have been kind to it, at least from this visitor’s perspective. My first time, I was 16 and DETERMINED to show my midriff; the second, I was accompanied by a sizeable male, but still remember each outing feeling like a shakedown. No longer true. We feel perfectly left alone to wander through the pink-blue haze of the souks, past powder-mountains of spices, and boucherouite carpets hung like abstract paintings.

Full marks to us: we even manage to keep our PDAs under wraps. Numerous people ask us if we’re sisters. (That said, they also ask if we’re Shakira and/or Lady Gaga – so accuracy is not a determining factor). Anyway, everyone has their quirks, but I’m not that into calling my lover my sister, so in the end, we go for cousins. This would be fine, but I keep on getting the French wrong. 'Nous sommes coussins,' I say, again and again, with a benign smile. Which means ‘cushions’. Don’t mind us, everybody, we’re just cushions.

We arrive at Jemaa el-Fnaa square – thrumming drums, cobras poised in front of tambourines – just as it’s dark enough to see the smoke rising from all the barbecues. I’d forgotten how amazing it is. Within 30 seconds, a monkey is touching my bottom. Then, as soon as I turn around, the monkey – who has long fingers and is wearing a diaper – is standing on Mrs Smith’s head. Words will never be enough to do justice to her face. My heart pangs.

We dip out onto Jaaneman’s roof terrace that night, but it’s even better over breakfast in the morning, with clementine juice, honey cake and coffee, surrounded by strange and dreamy succulents. Jaaneman’s terrace is slightly higher than those around it, so the view is a sea of terracotta and green enamel roof tiles, TV dishes that all face in one direction as if in prayer, and light-as-paper birds that flit from one roof to the next.

Meals are one of the things Jaaneman does best. Of all our mouthfuls in Morocco, dinner at Jaaneman outstripped the rest. The ceremonial flash of steam as Simou unsheathed our tagines, sauces bubbling like a kind of dance. Lamb surrounded by prunes so hot they’d melted; preserved lemon, sweet and tart, with buttery green olives and chicken that fell apart against the back of a spoon. Mrs Smith and I looked at each other a lot with our mouths vaguely ajar. I’m not sure if that’s attractive as a general rule, but it was the kind of meal where you want to keep reaching for each other’s arms to make sure it – and you, and everything – is still real.

The same must be said for the whole stay at Jaaneman. To the extent where – always the sign of a good holiday –we probably left each other with thumb marks. It couldn’t be helped. Scenes played out as if in a film: ice-fogged Casablanca beers lit by a comically perfect half moon; fennel-seed-spiced French toast on our last morning; the width and whiteness of our bed; all these secret spaces. Jaaneman is a place that makes you reach for each other, again and again.