La Mamounia
She was missing La Mamounia,
Not in a way one misses a destination.
More in the way one misses
a habit,
or an old friend.
A door one used to pass through.
A place where time seemed to move differently.
These spontaneous visits.
A coffee in the shade.
A glass of wine at golden hour.
Or simply,
the luxury of having nowhere else to be while waiting for a meeting.
There was always something to observe.
The gardeners tending impossible perfection.
The quiet elegance of guests arriving from elsewhere.
The soft rustle of palm leaves above the pink walls.
And somewhere,
lingering between the corridors and courtyards,
the roaming spirit of Sir Winston Churchill.
She noticed a vague scent of a cigar
and wondered
if he would have had breakfast in the room.
She didn’t think so,
he might have enjoyed an early morning conversation …
They say he came here to paint.
One could understand why.
There is that rare quality of making you stop looking at your watch
and
start looking at the light.
And perhaps that is what painting is too.
An attempt to catch a moment before it disappears.
A way of giving shape to a feeling that has already entered the heart.
So she sat.
She watched.
She waited.
For the golden hour when the sun slowly abandoned the city walls.
When the lanterns began to glow.
When the day quietly handed itself over to the evening.
And another kind of magic took over.
The ancient kind.
The one that fills the Moroccan sky with a million stars.
La FlâneuZe