A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco

by Suzanna Clarke

  Ayisha danced over and began trying to draw my attention away from the girl in blue.

  ‘Not like that,’ she shouted into my ear. ‘Like this.’ She demonstrated the elusive wiggle. After a few minutes of my trying to emulate her, she announced, ‘That’s enough,’ in a peevish voice, took my hand and led me to the other side of the room.

  I felt like a small child, and could almost hear her thinking, She’s not your friend, she’s mine. I hadn’t been the object of female jealousy since school.

  By this time, it was after two a.m. and I wanted to rescue Sandy and go home. But Ayisha was having a great old time and was in no mood to leave.

  ‘Not yet,’ she protested. ‘Not until after the pastries.’ But once the cakes had been distributed, she continued to dance, ignoring the increasingly glazed looks of her elders. Eventually her mother got up and started to the door. Ayisha followed to bring her back but I hemmed her in from the rear. With an impeccable sense of timing, Sandy met us on the stairs. Ayisha was outnumbered and we were finally able to make our escape.

  Once Ramadan began, the streets were eerily quiet in the mornings as the city slept off the binge-eating of the night before. The skies were noticeably clearer without the daytime smoke from cooking fires. After a few days, people assumed a hollow-eyed, haunted look from inadequate sleep and no food or water during daylight. After a couple of weeks, they looked like faded photocopies of their former selves.

  Night had turned into day. At sunset, after the cannon had sounded, came the call to prayer. This was the signal for everyone to hoe into a Ramadan breakfast of dates, milk and harira soup – lamb or vegetable stock with tomato paste, capsicum, chick peas, lentils, rice, small pasta and coriander. There were side dishes of hardboiled eggs with salt and cumin, and pancake-like breads. To finish, there were deep-fried pastries soaked in sugar syrup, and fruit juice and mint tea.

  Between ten p.m. and midnight the ‘proper’ meal of the day was eaten – either a tagine or couscous or b’stilla, a kind of flaky pastry filled with minced pigeon or chicken and topped with, strangely, icing sugar. After this came sleep, then you woke at four a.m. for another breakfast, before going to sleep again. It was customary for street singers to walk the alleys in the small hours, waking people in a lyrical fashion to remind them to eat before dawn.

  One sunset we had Ramadan breakfast with Si Mohamed and his family, and watched in admiration as he sat at the table, confronted by food, then as the call to prayer sounded disappeared to the mosque instead of slaking his thirst and hunger. His sisters restrained themselves until their mother had finished her prayers and Si Mohamed returned. We all said a thankful ‘Bismillah’ before tucking in.

  It was hard for the manual labourers during Ramadan. At the riad, the pace of work slacked off noticeably in the afternoons, so we cut the working day by an hour. And tempers frayed more easily. A neighbour appeared one morning complaining, not for the first time, that we had knocked plaster off his wall with our banging. I had already agreed to pay to repair the cracks, but now he said it was a matter of urgency that this was done before Eid al-Fitr, the feast at the end of Ramadan, which has as much significance in Muslim countries as Christmas does in Western ones. I told him I would send our plasterer around to fix the damage the following Saturday. As the plasterer was working flat out to finish our place before Sandy’s daughter Yvonne and her family arrived, this was some sacrifice.

  A few moments later, I was surprised to hear raised voices from upstairs. I took the stairs two at a time to find this same neighbour surrounded by our angry workmen. It turned out that instead of just taking my word, the neighbour had found it necessary to go up and declare to the plasterer, ‘Suzanna says you have to come and work at my place on Saturday.’

  As I hadn’t yet spoken to the plasterer about this, he was understandably put out and an argument ensued, during which, a shocked Si Mohamed told me later, the neighbour used Allah’s name as a swear word. All the workers were outraged and downed tools. The plasterer flat-out refused to work for the neighbour at all. I attempted to mediate a situation that was threatening to take on the dimensions of the Danish cartoon crisis.

  I bundled the neighbour downstairs and said that if our plasterer would not work for him then he needed to find another one, but I would pay only as much as ours quoted for the job. The neighbour scurried off to find one, and for hours afterwards I could hear the indignant tones of the men upstairs as they discussed the failings of the neighbour. Who needed Neighbours or The Sopranos when you had a real-life soap opera?

  For months now, whenever people asked when the house would be finished, I’d been saying three weeks. Now here we were with just weeks left and there were some things we clearly couldn’t manage this time round – taking the roof off the massreiya and repairing the carved and painted ceiling, for one. This was a job that couldn’t be rushed, and we figured that since it had been there for several centuries, it could hang on until the following year.

  Inevitably, as we got closer to the end, events conspired against us. Part of the ceiling in the downstairs toilet collapsed while Mustapha was repairing it. Fortunately he wasn’t standing under it at the time, but fixing it required digging up some of the stairs and was a major job.

  At no point did getting the plumber to finish his work become any easier. He continued to show up at strange times, when Si Mohamed was not around to translate and the shops were shut, so he was unable to buy the parts he needed. He seemed incapable of thinking ahead, so I pinned him down and got him to make a list of everything he needed to complete the job and asked him to buy them. He refused, saying Si Mohamed should do this, which meant that half of the items were not the right ones and had to be exchanged – more wasted time.

  When he’d fiddled with one of the toilets for the third or fourth time, unable to fix it, I told him to finish the rest of the work first.

  ‘But where are the parts for the hand basin?’ he asked me.

  ‘I presume they were on the list that you made, so you must now have them.’

  He wandered off. A while later, we were thrilled to discover that the hand basin was connected. No more running across the courtyard to wash our hands. We stood and watched with satisfaction as the water swirled down the plughole.

  Doing the dishes later that evening, I pulled the plug out to empty the sink and there was a gush of water from the cupboard beneath, soaking my feet and the floor. Opening the cupboard door, I saw that the parts connecting the sink to the pipe had been removed. Well, that explained why our hand basin now worked.

  At least the catwalk was almost complete. Our relationship with the temperamental master carpenter Abdul Rahim might have begun badly, but our respect for him had grown. We’d been surprised when he turned up to do the catwalk himself, instead of sending an apprentice, and were even more amazed when he stuck with it, turning up day after day and doing an excellent job. We found out that his previous employers, French people, had sacked him, which was why we had the privilege of his services.

  As he had only given us a quote for the structure, I asked how much he wanted to do the decorative facing, a job of a couple of days, and he gave me a price equivalent to more than half the total cost of the catwalk, which I declined. When the work was very nearly finished I looked up to see him putting a straight piece of wood along the top of the catwalk roof. I had been told that when you use traditional, handmade green tiles, as we planned to, a special piece of scalloped wood must be put in place to contain them. But when I asked Abdul Rahim about this he grew irritated, saying if we wanted it done the traditional way we’d have to pay extra.

  ‘It’s a piece of decoration,’ he explained.

  ‘So do you put it on after the tiles are in place?’ I asked.

  ‘No, before.’

  ‘Then how can it be decoration? That’s structural.’

  Other people, including Mustapha, confirmed that this piece of wood was an essential element in a traditional roof, but Abdu
l Rahim would not install it without additional payment. As we had settled on a price for a finished job, we said we would pay him the agreed amount minus what it would cost for Noureddine to complete it. I considered simply paying what he asked for the sake of keeping the peace, but it annoyed me that he kept shifting the boundaries and trying to extract more money. We were already paying him, in Moroccan terms, a small fortune. Enough was enough.

  When I explained my position he was furious, shouting that he had intended to ask for even more money and would not take less. He refused to accept the final cash payment I was holding out to him and stormed off. A few days later, he rang and said he wanted his money, and funnily enough, accepted what was offered.

  To finish the catwalk we needed to buy handmade roofing tiles, the same green tiles that grace the roofs of traditional buildings all over Fez. They are made, as they have always been, at Ein Knockby on the outskirts of the city, where the same kilns are used to fire the famous Fez blue pottery and the multi-hued tiles. From any vantage point in Fez, clouds of black smoke rising from these kilns are visible.

  Mustapha, Si Mohamed and I went to make the purchase together, taking a petit taxi then walking the last half-kilometre. The air was redolent with the sweet smell of the olive pits used for firing. The tile factory was in a courtyard, surrounded by charmless concrete workshops. Mustapha had been coming here since the current owner’s father ran the place. The man’s grandfather and great-grandfather had run the place before him.

  Next to a pile of tiles destined for the roof of the Karaouiyine Mosque, we located the smaller ones we needed – half-flowerpot shapes, with the lower half glazed deep green and the top left unglazed. While waiting for our thousand-odd order to be loaded, I watched a craftsman making tiles.

  He took a rectangle of clay, flipped it onto a wooden form that resembled a trowel, and then wet the clay. He made a few little flares around the edges before placing the tile in a row on the ground to dry in the sun. The whole thing was done with an ease and skill born of years of practice. Around him, the ground was covered in tiles waiting to be put into the kiln.

  The artisans of Fez work hard at their trades. The guilds they belong to have survived for hundreds of years, although their numbers decreased after the French arrived, due to the import of mass-produced European goods. These days they’re taking even more of a hammering with competition from the Chinese.

  But such is the importance of the artisans’ guilds that there is still one day a year, in September, when their survival is celebrated. We had given our workers the afternoon off to watch the procession of guilds and Sufi brotherhoods from the Bab Bou Jeloud to the tomb of Moulay Idriss II, one of the most revered shrines in Morocco. Moulay Idriss II is now regarded as a saint who watches over the city he created.

  Late in the afternoon, Sandy and I had set off to join them. Thousands of Fassis were lining the streets and taking up every available vantage point on the surrounding rooftops, legs dangling from the parapets. We squeezed into a spot on the step of a shop.

  The sound of trumpets heralded the entrance of the silk-makers through the blue gate, followed by the brass makers, metalworkers, shoemakers, blacksmiths and merchants, all accompanied by pipes and drums and cheers from the crowd. When some of the musicians paused to perform a fleet-footed dance, the roars of approval could have been heard from the Ville Nouvelle.

  A camel stalked regally down the Tala’a Sghira, followed by a group of men balancing silver tyafar on their heads. These tagine-shaped containers contained symbolic offerings, such as small cakes, to be placed at the tomb. Other men carried oversized candles to illuminate the tomb’s interior, and behind them came an enormous banner on which Koranic verses were embroidered in silk.

  Next came a four-tiered box, encased in red cloth embroidered with verses from the Koran and carried with great ceremony on the heads of specially chosen weavers. This box was known as al-Kaswa, and each year a new one was placed on the tomb of Moulay Idriss II. Following it were four men carrying an outstretched cloth to gather money for Moulay Idriss’s descendants. Then a bull entered, running around in confusion, dispersing onlookers in its path. It was the first of four that would be sacrificed that day as part of the ritual.

  The procession over, music and dancing extended well into the night. This celebration had continued for more than a millennium, and I hoped it would continue for at least another yet.

  Ayisha had had a bumpy ride since graduating. She’d quit a job as receptionist at a Moroccan-owned guesthouse when they did not pay her. Then she was offered a position with a foreign company in the Ville Nouvelle, but had a crisis of confidence and took so long to get back to them that the job went to someone else.

  And yet she was desperate to move out of the tiny room in which her whole family lived. Her father claimed that if she moved out by herself he would never speak to her again – an unmarried Moroccan woman’s reputation was sacred – so she was hoping to rent an apartment and take her parents with her.

  I’d put the word about in the expat community that I had a talented Moroccan friend looking for a job, and one day I got a call from the owner of a lovely guesthouse who needed a front-of-house person. We arranged an interview for a Friday morning, but when I went to collect Ayisha she hadn’t even got up yet.

  ‘Quick, quick,’ I told her, and rang the owner of the guesthouse to say we’d been held up waiting for a craftsman at the riad. Ayisha clattered down the stairs a few minutes later, clad in jeans and a casual top.

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, looking her up and down. ‘You really need something more professional.’ I followed her back upstairs and she fished out a black skirt and a smart shirt, and took her time to dress. She seemed to have no sense of urgency and was at once charming and infuriating, stopping to chatter and pass me gifts of walnuts. I had to subdue an urge to drag her out by the arm.

  Finally we were on our way. The guesthouse was one of the nicest in Fez, and the owners were friendly. I knew they were seeing several other applicants, but hoped Ayisha’s English proficiency and her engaging personality would impress them. I made myself scarce while she was being interviewed.

  ‘How did it go?’ I asked as we walked home.

  ‘Good, I think,’ she said. ‘The only problem is the timing. They need someone to start straightaway and I want to take a couple of weeks off next month, but I don’t know which ones yet.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, knowing this was unlikely to suit the owners.

  ‘Because the American guy is coming and I want to spend some time with him.’

  This was the married man with a small baby. Ayisha had told me she’d finished with him, but it seemed the affair had started again.

  ‘He is separated,’ she assured me, sensing my disapproval.

  ‘Is he still living with his wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then he’s not separated. Do you think he’s running his life around you?’

  This man couldn’t even commit himself to an arrival date, let alone his existing marriage. It seemed to me that Ayisha was forgoing the prospect of a good job because of a Cinderella fantasy: a man, who already had a wife, would rescue her from her need to look after herself by whisking her off to foreign climes where money was plentiful and people didn’t have to work. She’d hardly be the first young woman to squander opportunities by pursuing a fantasy, but I felt irritated and had to remind myself that it was her life. I only hoped that when she fell to reality the ground wouldn’t be too hard.

  A few days later, Ayisha bounced into the courtyard at the riad, sexy and radiant in hip-hugging jeans and a daring top that revealed a flash of bra strap.

  ‘The American guy is here,’ she breathed.

  ‘So you’re having a good time. That’s great. What happens next?’

  ‘Oh, probably marriage,’ she said airily.

  ‘Then he’s leaving his wife and child?’

  ‘Not exactly. He says he can’t leave his baby, it wouldn�
��t be fair.’

  ‘But then you can’t get married.’

  ‘Well, under Islam, I can.’

  I was gobsmacked. Ayisha as a second wife? It was hard to imagine. It was even harder to picture her being happy under such an arrangement – or the first wife, for that matter.

  ‘How is it going to work?’ I asked. ‘Is he going to take you back to his country and set you up in your own house? How often will he be able to be with you?’

  She shrugged, annoyed by my questions. It was apparent she hadn’t thought that far ahead, and didn’t want to. Polygamy might be more honest than the Western practice of having a bit on the side, but I just couldn’t see how it was going to suit Ayisha.

  ‘I think you’re selling yourself short before you even start,’ I said, but she ran off to meet him, feet hardly touching the ground.

  She was back a week or so later to say she’d just been to see a lawyer about the marriage. I was impressed. She had more sense than I’d given her credit for.

  ‘He says I can only become a second wife if the first wife agrees,’ she said. ‘Do you think she will?’

  ‘Would you, if you were in her position?’ I asked, and Ayisha hung her head. She already knew the answer, and just wanted it confirmed.

  ‘So what should I do?’ she said.

  ‘Well, you really have no control over him leaving his wife or not. But if that’s what you want him to do, you need to set a deadline for him to make a decision. After that, you have to get on with the rest of your life.’

  It sounded like a hopeless case, but Ayisha was so infatuated it was going to take a while for her to see it. By the time I left Fez, she still hadn’t.

  Eid al-Fitr was approaching, the celebration that marked the end of Ramadan. In the days beforehand, people wished each other ‘Eid Marbrouka’ – ‘Eid blessings.’