I lived in Morocco for the first 20 years of my life. My memories of that time are primarily of my Moroccan childhood spent in a delightful and mellow climate. Morocco is a country of scents, extraordinary colors, extreme gentleness, and at the same time, expresses an extravagant and overwhelming sensuality.

I remember the pleasure I felt as a child floating in the water for hours, daydreaming. I remember Morocco with its vast landscapes and its expansive horizon, as we came down from the mountains, a feeling of infinite space as we faced the plain.

As I grew older, I rediscovered this feeling of harmony in my adolescence and in friendships. I am Jewish. My friends were Moroccan or French, Jewish or Arab. We visited each other; we celebrated the same holidays. It was a great mosaic, rich, lively and tolerant.

I Have always been grateful for the tolerance of Morocco, the concept of respect for your neighbors. Tolerance, for Moroccans, also means intellectual cooperation. I discovered later, while writing my first novel, that Sufis and Cabalists shared the same alphabet and their mystics were searching for a common truth.

When I arrived in France, I brought all these Moroccan feelings with me, but they became confused and buried in my subconscious. My culture was French, and french was my mother tongue. I was attracted by rock music with all its connotations of rebellion against my surrounding. I recorded two albums.

Then one day, something surprising happened to me that changed the rest of my career. I happened to be at a concert of Arab music. I was filled with nostalgia and intense emotion, and tears came to my eyes. I adored this music that was coming back to me - folk Andalusian, the Gnaouas, the Jajoukas.

The mixture of sounds that had formed my musical sensitivity flooded back to me. I understood then that my personal development lay there, in the assimilation of my Arab culture. From that moment on, I approached my work differently, and with immediate success. Today, my music evokes Morocco.

I feel the need to find my roots again. My family is no longer in Marrakech, but I have a house there that reminds me of my childhood and the coolness inside other houses.

For a long time, I was considered a tourist and I had to remind everyone that I sang in Arabic in order to be accepted. It was not easy and it was a slow victory. Today, Morocco is now for me a reconquista.