I want this house'." So Kadiri packed his bags and built a new one. "It was easy," he says, in his soft French accent. "I had the land, I have a building company; it was like putting up a tent."

Three months later, the sumptuous "tent" was built, decorated and crammed with unusual artefacts. It cost Pounds 1 million, but included a few acres of land.

Kadiri's new home is in the Palmeraie, an oasis of palm trees outside Marrakech and surrounded by the Atlas Mountains (where he is also building 40 exclusive houses to sell for upwards of Pounds 1.75 million each). His property is up a dirt track and ringed by a mud wall. Three classic cars are parked outside. In the garden, a pug chases a camel beside an Ottoman daybed shaded with fuchsia sequinned parasols. A surreal scene.

"Soon we'll have a baby elephant," chuckles Kadiri, 44. Last year, in a glamourous 15-day Indian wedding in Udaipur, he married Priti Paul (who manages the Paul family's shipping, tea, hotel and bookshop businesses).

"She gave me an elephant as a wedding gift." The couple, who also have homes in London, Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta, think the elephant will like Morocco.

The adobe-red house, Villa Kadiri, is built like a pavilion, with a separate master bedroom, child's room and oriental alcove grouped around a lily pond - a style typical of Marrakech. The architect was Stuart Church, a Tangier-based American, who wears a Father Christmas beard, strawberry trousers, pea green shirt and mustard shoes when I meet him. The house, he says was built with bricks and cement mixed with straw. "There's a law in Marrakech that all the buildings have to be earth-coloured so that everything harmonises. We tint the cement and mix it with straw to make it look like the earth." The windows and door frames are painted green.

Enter the house and you find vibrant decor that combines the sensual exoticism of North Africa and the Orient with Indian spirituality: call it Maharaja-meets-harem-style. Everywhere there are rich colours: magenta, turquoise, emerald, gold and a thousand shades of pink. ("Pink is a happy colour," says Kadiri, glancing at a silver filigree-framed photo of Jad, his newborn son.) And every surface is covered with one of Kadiri's eclectic collections - from Buddhas and Berber rugs to books, antique trunks, Krishna pictures and cinnabar beads collected in the Marrakech souks, to 19th century Moroccan glass, treen and antique pots.

"I collected the pots over 20 years of travelling in southern India and the Moroccan desert, where they are used to store cold water," he says.

Kadiri - who boasts a wardrobe of clothes larger than his wife's - is wearing a saffron and scarlet outfit. He is also very keen on fabrics: "My father had a textile factory and my mother is a leading Moroccan clothes designer. It is probably an interest I picked up on the factory floor." There are framed textiles on the walls, tub armchairs upholstered in antique Persian rugs, and beds draped in vibrant saris.

The house has a winter and summer reception area, divided by three huge arches. The summer room has large windows leading onto the verdant garden and overlooking a swimming pool, which is also for irrigation. The tadalak (limestone) walls are emerald and a pigment in the cement floor makes it look like green marble. All the furnishings - from the pink sofa to the bronze sconces and Venetian- style curtain pullbacks - were crafted by Moroccan artisans. The painted cedar ceiling - high The adjoining burnt-umber winter room is intimate. Its doors and windows can be covered with umber curtains, while incense burn and logs crackle in an open fireplace. It is full of erotic Indian sculptures, and coloured glass balls hang from the ceiling.

"They come from a ninth century mosque that my father looks after in Tetouan," says Kadiri, who says he is descended from the founder of Sufism, a Muslim order. "The balls were a present when I gave them a chandelier for the mosque." Two guest bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms and polished tubs lead off to the sides.

THE exotic master bedroom has apricot walls and a powderpink tongue-and-groove ceiling with gold-leaf cornices, an open fire, an antique Indian mirror, 19th century cedar wood Goan four-poster with sari hangings, and a 10-seater oriental day bed scattered with orange and pink cushions.

"Very unlike our London apartment, which is white, white and more white," he laughs.

Now, however, their architect is designing the couple a second, more permanent home nearby. It will have gazebos, domes, pavilions, a library, hammam (Turkish bath), numerous reception areas, 10 guest suites and somewhere for their dogs. Though a palace, it will take just nine months to complete. Then they had better not invite any presidents for a drink.

THE LOOK (be prepared to travel)

FOR Berber rugs similar to Jaouad Kadiri's, take a trip to the Bazaar du Sud in Marrakech. Travel on to Fez, also in Morocco, for elaborate metalwork. For silverware, visit the Chandni Chowk market in Delhi; for Rajasthani throws, block-printed duvets and saris, try the Johri Bazaar in Jaipur, and for wooden pots, candlesticks and Indian antiques, the markets of Cochin in Kerala are a must.

(c)2005. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.