A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco (36 page)

Once at the top, Sandy headed for the men’s entrance in the wall surrounding the compound, while I went to the women’s area. Through a keyhole gateway, more than six thousand people were trying to cram into a space that could comfortably hold only half that number, so I stayed outside the inner sanctum and found a spot against the wall. The women around me were unrolling their prayer mats, performing prostrations, then settling themselves like birds on a perch. As they took off their shoes, I saw that many of them had elaborate hennaed designs on their hands and feet.

With typical Moroccan generosity, the woman next to me insisted I share her prayer mat, and I sat leaning back on the cold stone wall, eyes closed, feeling the warmth of the sun’s rays on my face. The women joined in the chanting, until there was a sea of sound on which I drifted, held aloft by the unified voice of thousands in a ritual older than the city itself.

Strolling through the deserted streets of the Andalusian quarter afterwards, it seemed as though we had the city to ourselves – as if the entire population had somehow been body-snatched,
leaving
just the shell of buildings, like a film set waiting for the director to shout ‘Action!’ I loved those buildings of Fez, but I loved the people more. Every piece of wood and brick had been carved and crafted, carted and placed by hand.

It was finally time for Rachid Haloui to pass judgement on the house. He hadn’t seen it in months, and while it wasn’t completely finished, it was close enough.

Before his arrival, we’d run around in a mad frenzy moving piles of building rubbish and shoving junk into cupboards. Perhaps ridiculously, I felt nervous, but it was important to me that he liked what we’d done.

I needn’t have worried. As soon as Rachid walked through the door, his eyes lit up. He drank in the newly plastered courtyard, the renewed catwalk, the exquisitely crafted
halka
. In the
hammam
he saw Mustapha’s precise wall of traditional bricks and the old spring that was now the basis of the hand basin. He walked around not saying very much, taking in the subtle colours and the simplicity that had been the basis of our approach. Sandy and I followed in his wake like earnest students.

Eventually Rachid said, ‘I like the way you have worked in this house. This is very rare. You have respected not only the architecture but the spirit of this place.’

We breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Usually,’ Rachid went on, ‘people want to make their own fantasy, but you have not done that. You have adapted it,
of
course, but changed it so that anything new fits in with the old. I would like to bring other clients of mine here, to show them how it should be done.’

Sandy and I smiled at one another, thrilled by his approval. ‘We would be honoured,’ I said.

Later, when we were drinking tea in the downstairs salon, I asked Rachid if he was optimistic about the future of the Fez Medina and he shook his head sadly.

‘I have been very anxious for a long time. The Medina grew in harmony until the beginning of the twentieth century, but now acculturation has become de-culturation. The city no longer has the capacity to adapt.’

He went on to talk about the dangers of a superficial approach to ‘rescuing’ the Medina, by those who did not fully understand what was being saved. ‘You cannot rescue something unless first you know what it should be. The other danger is this new fashion of foreigners buying houses. I have nothing against people coming and restoring, but the way they renovate and modify makes me anxious – the Medina is losing its spirit. If they come to invest money, or with an Orientalist, Arabian-nights fantasy, they do not understand it. The Medina is like a street girl. Everybody takes something but they give nothing back. It must not be a question of taste – you must respect what is. Many people come here and say, ‘It’s very nice,’ and then they remove what is nice. People who want to make a fantasy should build it somewhere else. Don’t try to do it in the Medina.’

Was there any hope? I wondered.

‘At least in the Fez Medina there are fourteen thousand buildings,’ Rachid said, ‘whereas Marrakesh has only four thousand, which may mean Fez has a greater degree of resilience. Here we have a chance, unique in the world, to live as they did in the fourteenth century. We can make it more comfortable, of course, but we don’t have the right to change it fundamentally. It should not become a theme park.

‘This city is also about emotion,’ he went on. ‘Following an old man in a djellaba down an alley, with everything close and dark, wondering where you’re going. Then you enter a house, a courtyard, and see something jaw-dropping. I’m fifty-four and I never come to the Medina without discovering something new.’

And then we were packing to leave. Si Mohamed would look after the house until we returned the following year. Departing was such a wrench, we were tempted to rearrange our lives so we could live in Fez full-time. Sandy had resolved to resign from the radio station and come back to Fez for a few months a year until I could join him. But I wasn’t ready to give up working yet – there were still things I wanted to do, and one of us needed to earn an income.

We had a special thankyou lunch for the workers, who were in high spirits and toasted the house with mint tea. We’d managed to organise work for our regular team with another expat, but they promised to try to come back to us for the next stage – repairing the
massreiya
. Sandy had set up a website for the
plasterer
, who was getting a continual stream of work as a result.

The day we left, they phoned us from their new place of work, the mobile being passed around to wish us
trek salaama
– safe travel. They chattered on happily in Darija and I had no idea what they were saying, but I understood the sentiment. Having shared our lives with them for so long, they felt like family. We would miss them all.

Piling our luggage into a taxi at R’Cif we set off to the train station. Near the main street in the Andalusian quarter, the driver was forced to slow to a crawl to avoid a man performing an exuberant dance, arms akimbo, in the middle of the road. He was a tall thin ragged figure, and his face was suffused with the ecstasy of being alive. I had no idea why he was dancing there, but I knew exactly how he felt.

Afterword

WHEN SANDY RETURNED
the following February to supervise the remaining work, Mustapha and his team were overjoyed to see him. Each of them gave him a huge hug and kissed his cheeks repeatedly. On their first day back they made a tour of the riad, pointing out to one another things they had done. The pride they felt in the house was evident.

Even Tigger returned, as Peter and Karen were departing once more for Australia. She did not seem in the least fazed to find herself back in her old haunts, and immediately started chasing sparrows.

A local Sufi brotherhood, the Hamadcha, offered to bestow
Baraka
, a blessing, on Riad Zany, and one Sunday night, fifty guests and twelve musicians packed into the courtyard. Most of the guests were Moroccan, and after a couple of hours the ceremony reached the point where many had danced themselves
into
a light trance. Several of the women progressed to a frenetic deep trance, including Ayisha, who danced so wildly she needed to be restrained by three people. It was as if she truly were possessed by a djinn, and after she collapsed she said she remembered nothing of the experience.

A local restaurateur made food for everyone in our kitchen, and the following morning the house was a chaotic mess. There came an unexpected knock on the door: it was the decapo ladies, Fatima and Halima, insisting that Sandy leave while they cleaned the place.

Although I was sorry not to be at the ceremony, I received a multitude of emails and photos from people who attended, telling me how much I was missed. Even on the other side of the world, I too felt blessed.

A view over the Fez Medina, with the green-tiled roof of the Karaouiyine Mosque in the foreground

The view from our terrace

The downstairs salon on the day we purchased the house