They say you can always tell the foreigner at a Berber wedding party: he's the one eating the salad.
It's said that if there's a foreigner at your table, you can relax, and smile and encourage them to fill their plate... all in the name of polite hospitality, of course. First of all there is served up a huge communal dish of green salad - onion, corn, beetroot, eggs, peppers, honeyed carrots - with a dressing of lemon, cumin, honey, olive oil and lots of lovely fresh bread to eat it with. The dish is very pretty on the eyes, the ingredients flashing like jewels in the candlelight. This is deliberate. It’s there to pique the appetite. Not to eat but to feast your eyes upon.
The table is cleared, the tablecloth whisked away. Next comes berkouks – a very traditional Berber dish believed to promote fertility. It consists of a large bowl of honey and amlou (crushed almonds with argan oil) accompanying a great dish of steamed couscous. Very rich and sweet (Moroccans tend to have a sweet tooth).
The foreigner digs in. The Berbers around the table take a couple of polite spoonfuls and joke that their potency requires no augmentation.
And once the berkouks has gone along with its tablecloth there comes a beef tajine replete with eggs, onions, prunes and almonds. By now the foreigner is starting to flag, but the locals are happily picking out choice morsels for him, pressing one more mouthful upon him till he’s rubbing his belly and rolling his eyes. No more, he begs. No more!
But of course there is more. Out come several grilled chickens, glowing and golden. The foreigner has given up now. He really can’t eat any more.
Sly glances will be exchanged by the others around the table. They eat some chicken, savouring the fragrance of saffron and butter.
They have room for a little of the next course too, a traditional bstilla – a pie of minced pigeon or chicken and onion, ground almonds and spices, encased in ‘brik’ or millefeuille pastry and dusted with powered sugar.
The foreigner takes a single bite – because it would be rude not to. But it’s so rich! He’s beginning to feel a bit hot, possibly even a little ill.
But the final meat course is the one that all the Berbers have been waiting for. For the locals have done what all canny wedding guests do when sitting down at the start of a Berber feast: they have furtively counted the number of tablecloths laid upon the table. 3 or 4 and you'd better eat a bit of everything. But 5 or more - or the fully traditional 7 - and you know you'd better pace yourself.
Skip the salad - only girls and foreigners eat salad anyway! Go easy on the berkouks and even on the tajines - you have to keep your eyes on the prize! Then you have room to gorge yourself on the mechoui, which is the culmination of every great celebration - a whole lamb that has been slow roasting all day long, slathered in butter and spices, until the meat falls away from the bones and melts in the mouth. And this is when they get well and truly stuck in, with more to go around than there might otherwise have been had the foreigner also hung out for the lamb, until there is nothing left of the beast but bones.
For our wedding celebration, 9 years ago this week, a Berber tent was erected on the roof of our building - traditional black and white patterns on the outside, and sumptuous red, green and gold inside.
Round tables and stools lined the walls, leaving a space for dancing in the centre; and outside the entrance a great metal dish in which burned a fire over which the local musicians warmed their goatskin drums.
The women of the family spent the day preparing food until the whole building was scented with saffron and spices and cooking meat. Songs were sung and dances danced and everyone wore their finery. To begin the celebration, my wife wore a traditional white tamelhaft, a 20 foot length of white silk wound around her and around and pinned on the breast with a silver fibula brooch. She was adorned with heavy silver and amber jewellery and wore a Berber wedding crown and a veil. Her hands and feet had been hennaed the day before in a 5-hour ceremony.
Then she changed into a blue, silver and gold kaftan: it is traditional in our culture to change clothes at least once at a wedding, since the tamelhaft will be used in the dance – the ahwash – which is performed by all the local maidens looking for luck in finding a husband.
I am happy to say that no one was tricked into eating all the salad, and that all the local maidens have since found themselves excellent husbands and claim that our wedding brought them all great baraka – good luck.