Mint tea in the medina and Kureishi in the kasbah: the arts festival arrives in Morocco

Valiantly contesting the electronically amplified cry of a nearby muezzin in Marrakesh, the British writer Hanif Kureishi was getting literature off his chest. "Well, it's all hateful. Honestly." About a hundred people were sitting on the cushion-strewn floor, some drinking mint tea from little glasses. Two giant stands, each bearing a score of lit candles, provided the only light. "Really, writing was a cure for boredom. I was interested to see whether I could do it or not." As darkness fell, the muezzin continued. "Maybe it's disrespectful to interrupt God," said somebody. "It seems to me it's more disrespectful for God to interrupt us," snorted Kureishi.

At this point, a young woman with long hair entered, bearing a tray of lit candles. She half ducked her head, and the candles sensed an opportunity. Within half a second, half her head was alight. As she screamed, the novelist Esther Freud leapt off her cushion and beat the flames away. So began the first Arts in Morocco (AiM) Festival.

AiM is the latest trump card for the self-defined capital of Arabian chic. Arab and British writers and artists arrived for three days of debate and interviews in the medina, the ancient centre of the city, alongside an exhibition of Moroccan painting and a show of British contemporary art.

As this was a proper festival, there was also a series of parties, hosted largely by the Branson family, which first came here when the Virgin King was attempting to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon. Apparently, Marrakesh is highly conducive to high-altitude ballooning. I learned this from Eve Branson, the family matriarch, as we drove between exhibitions, sitting on the back seat alongside Annie Lennox. While the programme's success relied somewhat on chance (there are no maps of, or street names in, the medina), this was no low-key event. The British art show, curated by Richard B's sister Vanessa, included one of Grayson Perry's pots showing the artist in transvestite mode, a particularly nasty sculpture of a deformed child by Jake and Dinos Chapman, and an unknown work by Tracey Emin. Unknown because it was deemed so outre that the authorities insisted it be removed before the show opened.

At Vanessa's party, held around the pools and palms of her palatial riadh, guests included Antony Gormley, Alan Yentob and an American art dealer who had flown over from Minneapolis for the night. "If Vanessa was holding a party on the moon, I'd go there," said the dealer. She could probably afford to. "Do you know who was sitting next to me in first class? King Mohammed VI's hunting dogs! In a little basket!"

So was it all mint tea and canapes while, outside, illiterate children begged barefoot in the dust? Not quite; as the festival organiser, Abel Damoussi, explained the next day at the Kasbah Agafay, there is a point behind chic festivals with attendant parties thrown by millionaires. As well as bumping up tourism, AiM could "encourage Marrakesh as an arts destination. Such programmes help elevate Moroccan art, and encourage a notion of cultural exchange." These ambitions are the cliche of arts festivals; here, however, the aim of AiM seemed real, as British publishers bemoaned a paucity of Arabic literature, while the Moroccans pushed for book exchanges and more translations. A door might well have been opened.

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