One Hundred Summers

by Vanessa Branson

  One year later, in early 2004, after hearing George W. Bush saying, ‘You’re either with us or against us’ on Radio 4’s Today programme, I became agitated and took myself off for a walk around Hyde Park to work through my thoughts. How dare that man invite me to take sides in such a nuanced situation?

  While we were rebuilding El Fenn, we’d experienced a country where Muslim spirituality shone through in all aspects of life: charity, acceptance, respect and love. For the American President to insinuate that Islam was the root of all evil was disingenuous, to put it mildly. The US, along with the UK, Poland and Australia, had invaded Iraq in 2003, despite millions of people taking to the streets to protest. Prior to the invasion, Colin Powell had created a plan to rebuild Iraq after the removal of the staunchly secular Saddam Hussein, but the rest of the world watched in disbelief as Donald Rumsfeld instead chose to expunge all Ba’th party officials. Rather than the country transitioning into a civil society, the Americans found themselves presiding over a rapidly disintegrating situation. More horrific images appeared on the news: Daniel Pearl beheaded in his imitation Guantanamo orange jumpsuit, Al-Qaeda filling the power vacuum and years later, the rise of a far more sinister group, ISIS.

  Howell had been approached by Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s communications chief, about joining a group called the Phillis Review that had been formed to review government communications in the wake of the scandal when Jo Moore, a Labour Party special adviser, was caught emailing her department, on the day of the 9/11 attacks, that it was ‘a very good day to bury bad news’. The review recommended greater separation between the roles of politically appointed special advisers and civil servants, and Howell was appointed the permanent secretary of government communications. My friend and business partner being at the centre of the governmental decision-making process during such a turbulent period of history was fascinating, if not a little alarming.

  Now back to the park. I was stomping along, terrified by the injustices being perpetrated in our name and almost pinging off the tree trunks in my agitation. There must be something I could do to instil confidence in the people I had grown to admire so much. Then it dawned on me: someone should start an arts festival. A

  festival of quality that would serve a number of purposes, but would primarily provide a platform for debate. The arts have always been a safe place in which to discuss contentious ideas. A contemporary arts festival would also stimulate curiosity by introducing a Moroccan audience to international artists. I began racking my brains as to who should get the festival off the ground – someone with experience, an international voice and a vested interest in the country. Then it struck me – oh lord, that was me! I called my old friend Abel right away. He embraced the idea of a festival immediately and agreed to be my partner. Arts in Marrakech, or AIM, was born.

  In November 2005, with the help of Abel’s flamboyant assistant Pablo Ganguli and Frederic, we held the first festival. Literary events were held at El Fenn, with writers including Esther Freud, Hanif Kureishi, Hari Kunzru, Mahi Binebine, Rabi Mubarak and Ahmed al-Madini. Anatol Orient did a stunning job of installing the Wonderful Fund Collection in the Musée du Marrakech and the eminent painter from the Casablanca Art School, Mohamed Melehi curated an exhibition of Moroccan art in the Bahia Palace. We held panel discussions, film screenings and candlelit poetry readings in Agafay, Abel’s jewel-like riad. I’ll never forget the joy of walking through the Jemaa el-Fna alongside Dad who was sitting in the back of a builder’s donkey cart lined with Moroccan rugs and cushions, grinning with pride. The rest of the family joined us, as well as friends and artists, including Annie Lennox, Antony Gormley and Vicken Parsons, all full of good ideas of how we should develop the festival further.

  And of course, we partied as if tomorrow would never come. The joyous fact about the art world is that socialising is thought to be part of the creative process. Well, over the years we’ve done a very good job of convincing ourselves that this is the case!

  ***

  Back in London, we were only just managing to hold our family together. Robert, rather like a schoolboy trying to stop his neighbour copying his homework, seemed to be hiding chunks of his life from me, developing a business in Africa and spending an increasing amount of time away from home. Every time he boarded a plane I harboured the same sense of abandonment I’d felt when he left me five years earlier.

  After a particularly hurtful verbal assault from Robert one Sunday morning, I stopped kidding myself that I could tough it out and gave in to a really good weep. A couple of days later I began to feel excessively tired, and by Wednesday I was so exhausted I wasn’t able to walk up Portobello Road to Notting Hill. I sat on a doorstep and called my doctor.

  ‘I have no symptoms, no fever and no headache – I can’t explain it. I’m knackered to my core,’ I said. ‘I actually think I’m going to die.’

  ‘Come and see me right away,’ he said.

  The doctor took one look at me and realised that I wasn’t exaggerating. ‘Don’t you have any pain at all?’ he said.

  ‘Well, I do have a stabbing pain under my left clavicle.’ Even before I had the X-ray, he told me I had a pneumothorax. My left lung had collapsed.

  The lung specialist told me the collapse had probably been precipitated by my heavy weeping, causing a scar from a historic injury to burst the pleural membrane – the memory of the kick from Snowy when I was a teenager came to mind. The operation to fix it, a pleurodesis, was excruciating, and afterward the surgeon said that my lungs were riddled with pleural plaques, ‘as if your lungs have been opened up and had candle wax dripped through them’. There was concern that I’d developed mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer caused by inhaling asbestos fibres; again, memories of sawing asbestos to hide the boiler in the Tanyards cellar came flooding back. Between bouts of terror while I waited for the test results, I had some surprisingly sanguine moments. Exhaustion after the operation meant that dying didn’t seem like such a bad option; it simply meant no more pain. I also remembered Shelagh and rather than thinking ‘why me?’ thought ‘why not me?’

  After learning that I didn’t have cancer after all, we planned a family expedition to climb Mont Blanc, which in retrospect was insane. Just seven months later, I found myself bent double trying to climb back up to the Aiguille du Midi, after turning back a few hours earlier without getting to the summit. Robert and I, plus the children, had set off from the Cosmique Hut at 3 a.m., inching our way up the mountain in a trail of head torch beams bouncing off the snow. I was the weak link and was in no way fit enough to make it. After turning back at noon, I was keen to enjoy the day and couldn’t understand why our mountain guides kept hurrying us along. The sun was very hot and the snow was slushy underfoot, the hush of the thin mountain air disturbed by nothing more than the occasional electrical cry of a hooded crow.

  The following dawn, tucked up under my duvet after the rigors of the previous forty-eight hours, I was woken by the clatter of rescue helicopters delivering stretcher after stretcher to Chamonix Hospital. A sheet of ice had sheered off the mountain and slithered silently down the slope. Twenty-eight climbers were caught on the same torchlit path we’d taken the morning before, killing nine of them.

  ***

  Nothing was standing still in Marrakech and El Fenn threw up new challenges every day. One week I received a call from a friendly-sounding Englishman. ‘Is that Vanessa?’ he asked. ‘I had the pleasure of meeting you a few years ago when I was doing a deal with Virgin Books.’ He seemed to be attempting to reassure me I could trust him before he dropped his bombshell. ‘I’ve just bought the riad next to you and I’m afraid to say that it transpires that I own the terraces directly above it.’

  I let him continue while his words slowly sank in. ‘As you know, El Fenn was once part of a massive riad that’s been divided up over the years, but I’m afraid the law dictates that the property owner has possession of the terrace directly above their rooms.’ I visualised the areas he was tal
king about – our terraces with the magnificent views of the Koutoubia.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ I said, surprising myself with my conviction. ‘Those are our terraces and we’ll fight you at every turn to prove it.’

  ‘I see,’ he said, somewhat taken aback, before he said a hasty goodbye. Sensing he was about to enter a fight he couldn’t win, he withdrew his offer for the riad, but Howell and I had the feeling that the only way to prevent endless legal battles in the future would be to buy the contentious building ourselves.

  The very next week, Frederic told me that Mum had taken a shine to the riad on the other side of El Fenn. Now, I love my mother very much, but the prospect of her using El Fenn, with its adoring staff and endless whisky supply, as a glamorous old people’s home was going to push our relationship to its limit. My wonderful business partner understood my anxiety. ‘Ah well, darling,’ laughed Howell. ‘We’ll just have to buy that riad too!’

  Before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the world felt awash with money and, with the encouragement of Richard, who explained that a hotel can’t be financially viable without at least thirty bedrooms, we borrowed almost two million euros against our London homes and bought the two adjoining properties. Both had at one time been part of the original grand palace, so El Fenn would be complete once more. Frederic began drawing up plans for the development in earnest.

  We had a working formula by this time: don’t fight the building. We followed the generous spaces already available, which meant twin showers, plunge pools on private terraces, intricate stucco ceilings and elegant colonnades. To finish, we decorated with brightly coloured tadelakt walls, feature fireplaces and retro light fittings. Hand luggage restrictions were less strict back then, so we took out 1950s Sputnik desk lamps and more paintings on each trip: works by David Shrigley, Robin Rhode and Dr Lakra. Each room was different, and each room offered a surprise.

  Alan Yentob, the creative director of the BBC and a fellow Notting Hill parent, had become a key supporter of AIM; he generously advised us and introduced us to people for each edition. He was staying at El Fenn while we were embarking on the new refurbishment, part of which had previously been a cavernous mattress workshop. ‘You have to put a stage there,’ he said, and so the Alan Yentob Stage was built, along with an integral cinema screen.

  Years later I was often asked how on earth you start a biennale. The truth is that there was no initial master plan, but by trusting the energy of those with a similar vision, projects tend to take on a life of their own. After two editions of AIM, I spoke to Abdellah Karroum, who was then the only curator of note in Morocco. He had an artists’ space called Apartment 22 in Rabat and had also contributed a remarkable show for AIM 2. Abdellah was happy to become the curator for the next festival on two conditions: that we raised the ambition of the event by calling it the Marrakech Biennale and, to prevent Moroccan artists becoming ghettoised, that we show Moroccan artists alongside international greats. I agreed.

  Abel was justifiably anxious about fundraising for an arts event of such vision and stepped down. I wonder now if I would have continued had I known about the challenges involved in running a not-for-profit event of this ambition, and particularly one without core funding from the state, but ever the optimist, I pushed on.

  The Biennale was evolving; it was still acting as a cultural bridge, but we wanted the content to be world-class. I was supported by a dedicated board who made the event possible with their collective wisdom and fundraising. Whenever I became overwhelmed or demoralised, Curt Marcus, an American board member, would remind me of the vital role the Biennale played in Morocco’s development; there was no way I could give up. The king was happy to give us his royal patronage, which opened doors to the mayor’s office, who granted us permission to use the city’s public spaces and historic buildings. The tourist board welcomed us with open arms, providing airline tickets and helping with hotel rooms. Given time, there was no reason why the Marrakech Biennale shouldn’t be judged alongside Venice, Sidney or Sao Paulo. We had a number of unique things going for us: stunning spaces in which to show works, a curious local audience, a workforce of artisans keen to support visiting artists, hundreds of students willing to volunteer and an international arts-savvy public who loved visiting the glorious town. There was nothing to stop us from being ambitious.

  For decades Morocco had discouraged independent thinking – young people were bought up not to question their parents, their teachers, their mosque, their king or their god. The nature of good art is that it makes you see the world through different eyes. The current king’s father, Hassan II, made artists and writers feel distinctly uncomfortable; King Mohammed VI, on the other hand, is an art enthusiast but has a difficult job bringing the rest of the ruling elite along with him. Communicating the role that the arts play in stimulating innovative thinking and driving the economy forward has been hard enough in the west; in an emerging North African economy, it was always going take time.

  Being an outsider has been an advantage, meaning that I don’t get bogged down in the local politics that have a tendency to divert people from the goal at hand. The Biennale’s artists and curators were sensitive to the environment, and we experienced virtually no censorship. On one occasion, though, I did receive a panicked call from Abel, saying that officials wanted to close the main show down because the artist Faouzi Bensaidi was using a naked, androgynous shop mannequin in his installation; I simply slept on the request, and the problem disappeared.

  The next curators we selected, Nadim Samman, a Lebanese–Australian living in London, and Carson Chan, a Chinese–Canadian living in Berlin – life in the art world has no national borders – introduced a rigorous set of core principles and environmental guidelines. To engage a local audience and encourage lasting relationships, we invited artists to come and stay in Marrakech and saw our role as enabling their visions to become a reality. The town’s incredible range of craft and engineering capabilities was thrilling for artists – as we know, ‘In Morocco anything is possible.’

  One of our most magical installations was Alexander Ponomarev’s upside-down helicopter and he later constructed a thirty-metre reproduction of the Costa Concordia, the Italian ferry whose captain famously said that he’d accidentally fallen into a life raft rather than stay behind and search for survivors when the vessel ran aground. Ponomarev’s boat, stranded like Noah’s ark on the top of a hill in the dessert, was the very image of the folly of man. Another much-loved work, by Eric van Hove, was an exact facsimile of a Mercedes car engine, made by forty-two medina-based master craftsmen using bone, leather, metal and silk.

  With the help of the British Council, we initiated an internship programme and worked with language students from the desperately underfunded Cadi Ayyad University, formally awarding them certificates at an official ceremony. I still get a thrill whenever I’m stopped in the street by one of these kids and hear how the Biennale gave them the experience and confidence to take interesting jobs.

  I scoured my address book and called on old friends and acquaintances to help. We invited Oscar-winning producers, directors and screenwriters including Julian Schnabel, Kevin Macdonald, Eric Fellner and Christopher Hampton to work with students from ESAV, the school of visual arts. Provided they were available, no one on our wish list could resist an invitation to join us.

  Over the years, I worked with dozens of driven young people, and their knowledge and technical and language skills, along with their tact, energy and humour, was contagious. It struck me once again that the tougher a challenge is, the deeper the resulting friendships. We relied on help from young volunteers who were grateful for the experience. While most artists were sympathetic to our meagre budgets, two high-profile authors pushed us to our limits.

  We received almost daily emails from the PA of one of them. ‘A.S. only stays in five-star accommodation,’ she insisted. The next day we received an email saying ‘A.S. always travels first class, and would you see to it that sh
e flies in the front of the plane?’

  I happened to see the author’s publisher that night and mentioned her PA’s attempt to bankrupt us. ‘Don’t be taken in by that old trick,’ Alexandra replied. ‘A.S. hasn’t got a PA!’

  Jess Bannister, Matthew’s daughter who had grown up alongside my children, was that year’s co-director. We were taken aback when Jess received a grumpy email from a writer for making the understandable error of booking her flights to and from London, when in fact she lived in Rome. Seconds later, Jess received a second email from the author intended for a friend and detailing an embarrassing medical complaint. As quick as a flash, her computer pinged as a third email came through, pleading to delete the last one and apologising for her grumpy and demanding first message. Of course we deleted the missent email, but we’ve relished that glorious moment of schadenfreude ever since.

  The 2014 Biennale was directed by Alya Sebti and curated by Hicham Khalidi and went on to be ranked in the top twenty biennales in the world. The photographer Leila Alaoui had worked with us for three editions, taking my portraits for various articles and generously introduced me to her generation of young Moroccan creatives. She was a hard-working free spirit who lived in Beirut and worked all over the world.

  On 15 January 2016, I received a phone call from Leila’s cousin Yalda. ‘A ghastly thing has happened,’ she whispered.

  Yalda told me Leila had been caught up in gunfire during a terrorist attack on the Hotel Splendid in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. ‘She’s a fighter, Ness,’ said Yalda. ‘Someone so beautiful can’t die.’

  Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world but sadly the medics there are all too experienced at treating gun wounds, so there was real hope. Leila had been shot by a young Al-Qaeda follower who had been just one metre away from her and must have looked her in her terrified kind eyes, before her driver heroically threw himself in front of her, attempting to shield her from her attacker.