When photographer Jack Parsons told me of a Moroccan mansion up in northeast New Mexico, my eyebrows went skeptically skyward. We’ve all seen garish architectural impositions on the American landscape and been amused or appalled, or both. It’s a peculiarly American phenomenon, unforgettably captured by F. Scott Fitzgerald in his hilarious description of the bootlegger’s raw castle in The Great Gatsby. Parsons was going up to photograph the place and wondered whether I’d like to come along. I would. The apparent audacity of the house’s style in that setting was an irresistible lure.

I’d never been to the Maghreb—Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco—but like many of us I had plenty of images of it stored away, gifts of film, photographs, and the words of writers like André Gide and Paul Bowles, where a vague and persistent menace is embodied in the bewildering mazeways of the tile-roofed cities, the eyeless façades of casbahs, the huddled tents of nomads. Of course, the architectural and cultural realities of the region are infinitely more complex than these cartoonish simplicities. In Morocco, the traditional architecture can be stunningly intricate, whether you’re considering a riad (a palatial garden-house) or a more modest home, a dar. Whatever the scale, it’s true that the exteriors of Moroccan houses tend toward the blank and unadorned and represent a defense against the defilement and dangers of the secular world. The interiors are a wholly different story, constellations of tiled rooms and passageways, capitals and cupolas of masterfully carved stone or plaster, enclosed patios, and in the riads, lavish gardens that genuflect towards that well-watered paradise described in the Koran. Colors are everywhere, particularly greens, pinks, and deep blues.

To some Western sensibilities, tyrannized by decades of minimalism, all this amounts to a kind of visual assault. But we must continually bear in mind that Morocco and the Maghreb generally remain under the powerful spell of their people’s nomadic origins. The house is therefore traditionally regarded as a refuge from an unforgiving environment. And just as it is probably impossible to overstate this, so it is probably difficult to create a domestic interior that is too luxuriant and easeful.

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