Midnight at the oasis
A hot wind arrives from the south and whistles softly across the balcony of Maison des Arganiers. It induces a kind of trance that goes unnoticed until broken by the sound of chickens pecking noisily at a pile of argan nuts drying on the flat roof of the house across the street. The small hard nuts of the thorny argan tree, which grows wild only in this arid southern part of Morocco, yield a thick amber oil that’s prized in the kitchen for its musky taste and in skincare labs for its antioxidants.
The plains below us, strangely tufted with even regularity by the villa’s namesake argan groves, turn an ever deeper camel colour as the day’s heat fades. Lights begin to flicker in distant villages. Two housemen in long white djellabas arrive with candles lit inside brass lanterns, a bucket rattling with ice and a bottle of Volubilia gris, a rosé made near Meknes, and a plate of toasted semolina-bread canapés topped with smoky vegetable compote. “Votre apéritif, pour bien profiter du coucher du soleil,” one of the staff explains – drinks and a snack to enjoy with the sunset. They continue to line the wall of the escarpment with more lanterns, which turn the night into a party just for us.
Over dinner on a rainy night in Paris a few months before, we’d hatched a plan to embark on La Route du Sud, a bespoke journey to a constellation of five exquisitely appointed houses in Morocco’s lesser-known southern regions. I’ve travelled often in Morocco, but never in the far south, and friends who’d done the journey talked dreamily about its small footprint and “indigenous luxury” that, rather than distancing travellers from a
