Richard Galloway and Dally Margolis

Richard Galloway and Dally Margolis are an intimate couple whose life at Azna makes their relationship both a private bond and a public spectacle. Their wealth and elaborate hospitality help sustain the local economy, but their foreignness and sexuality also make them objects of gossip. When a young man’s death brings the possibility of scrutiny by his family and the police, the couple’s differing responses expose a tension between Dally’s urgency to settle the matter and Richard’s more cautious insistence on waiting.

A Relationship Under the Local Gaze

The old people living near the cliffs describe Richard and Dally’s homosexuality with disapproval, yet that judgment coexists with a reluctant admiration for the couple’s money and cosmopolitan habits. Their visitors’ spending brings unusually high wages, household staff, and improvements to the ksour. The local view is therefore divided: the couple’s presence is morally suspect to those who discuss them, but materially advantageous to the community. Their relationship is seen through the same contradiction as their wider way of life, resented as foreign and strange while also associated with comforts and cash.

Rumor assigns the two men distinct roles, casting Dally as submissive and Richard as dominant. This is reported as local talk, not as a confirmed account of how the couple understands itself. The distinction shows how people beyond the relationship try to make it legible by sorting its members into familiar positions. Their intimacy becomes part of the visitors’ public identity, narrated by the community alongside stories of supernatural displeasure at infidels living in a place built for Muslims. The couple’s relationship thus attracts attention not only as a personal matter but as a visible marker of cultural difference.

Hospitality and Complementary Roles

The weekend gatherings at Azna give Richard and Dally a shared public role as hosts. They expect about forty guests, and the small houses fill as staff prepare the grounds and visitors gather in the main house and courtyard. The occasion is not casual hospitality: it is a carefully staged event, complete with fruit punch, iced rose water, figs, and a Gnawa performance. The scale of the gathering makes their wealth visible and extends the couple’s influence beyond their private household to the staff and guests who participate in the weekend.

The narrative presents Dally as particularly capable of organizing this display. An observer imagines him as part clock and part ballerina, a figure whose careful workings produce an appearance of ease. Dally runs several United States e-commerce sites specializing in European fashion, one of the few areas of the economy said to have escaped recent difficulties. The account connects his commercial activity with his skill at managing appearances, though the characterization is an observer’s impression rather than a direct explanation from Dally. Richard, by contrast, is identified with a background in the fine-wines division at Christie’s and an eye for Islamic art. The pair are associated with different forms of expertise, but the evidence places them together at the center of the same affluent household and its social performances.

The visitors’ spending also defines the limits of their belonging. Oranges arrive from Spain, butter from a store in Paris, and drinking water from Meknes. These particulars make their comfort concrete while emphasizing their reliance on imported goods and on local employees. Their life in Azna is sustained by money and labor, yet remains conspicuously unlike that of the older residents who watch them. The couple’s hospitality can create employment and beautify the ksour without dissolving the suspicion attached to their presence.

The Death and Their Diverging Responses

The contrast between Richard and Dally sharpens when a young man is found dead. Dally takes Richard’s arm and speaks rapidly in English so that their conversation will remain private in front of the staff. He is visibly upset and asks what they should do now that Richard has called the police. Dally proposes resolving the matter that night by paying those involved. His suggestion makes an immediate settlement seem preferable to an uncertain public process, though the evidence does not establish what payment could secure or whom it would reach.

Richard does not accept that proposal as a sufficient answer. He points out that the young man’s identity must first be discovered and that knowing it could change the situation. The difference is practical as well as emotional: Dally presses for swift action, while Richard treats the missing identity as a decisive fact that cannot yet be bypassed. The scene gives each man a distinct response to danger without suggesting that either has full control over what follows.

Dally fears that the dead man’s family will arrive and accuse the foreigners of killing him. Richard agrees that such an accusation could be made, then tells Dally that they should calm down and says that the family will not trouble them. His assurance follows his acknowledgment that the accusation would be true. That juxtaposition makes his composure difficult to read as simple denial: he recognizes the force of the charge even as he predicts that it will not become a direct threat to them. Dally’s alarm and Richard’s attempt to contain it reveal different ways of confronting their exposure to the consequences of the death.

Intimacy, Wealth, and Responsibility

Richard and Dally’s relationship is drawn through public descriptions, shared hosting, and a crisis in which they do not respond alike. The local gossip reduces their intimacy to a hierarchy of roles; the weekend presents them instead as joint organizers of a wealthy household. Neither view supplies a complete account of their private bond. What the narrative does show is that they act together in public and that, under pressure, Dally seeks an immediate settlement while Richard delays judgment until the young man is identified.

Their social position shapes the stakes of that disagreement. The same money that supports staff, imports, and lavish gatherings gives the couple a degree of practical influence, while their foreign status makes them vulnerable to suspicion and rumor. Richard’s confidence that the family will not trouble them sits uneasily beside his admission that the feared accusation would be true. Dally’s proposed payment, meanwhile, places money at the center of the couple’s first response to the crisis. Their relationship therefore becomes a point where private solidarity, local distrust, and the unequal power of wealthy visitors meet; the evidence leaves unresolved how they will act once the young man’s identity and family are known.