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A storyteller, straw hat pulled over his djellaba hood, leans over his crooked cane towards the circle of Moroccans who labor to catch every word. Sometimes a story will go for weeks, each night’s ending a new beginning, like Scheherezade who transformed the sinister king in "One Thousand and One Nights." Faces, some veiled, bunch around magicians, healers and fortune tellers lit by hissing gas lamps. Robed women hunch over other women’s hands, embroidering intricate designs on them with henna pushed from a syringe. Marrakech’s nightly Djemaa el - Fna festival is in full swing.

Staying at Riad Laïla feels like being in the lovely old home of a Marrakechi acquaintance who was called out of town, but left their gracious staff to tend to my needs. In the quiet end of the medina, Riad Laïla is a marvelous introduction to Marrakech - sans the hustle and tussle of the central square, Djemaa El Fna. The small square nearby is full of friendly neighbors and fresh with the smell of the mint - seller’s bundles.

A scene worthy of Matisse lies below the carved cypress railing of Riad Habib’s second floor gallery. Golden-yellow tiled tables sit on the blue and white tiled floor. Terracotta brick borders the lush gardens. Wide green fronds of a banana tree arch over Mustafa, Riad Habib’s house steward, dressed entirely in red.

The terrace on the roof of Riad Cascades D’Ouzoud is the perfect retreat from chaotic Marrakesh. Swallows grab their dinners from the Ouzoud River as it sprays off auburn cliffs and falls into churning pools below. Flowing down from the High Atlas Mountains, it waters groves of almonds and olives and fields of new spring-green fuzz becoming barley and wheat. Cactus and shrubby cedars fan out over undulating hills of red-to-khaki-colored earth. Silvery cottonwoods flutter along the riverbanks in a landscape reminiscent of southwestern United States and northern Mexico.