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

by Suzanna Clarke

  A special bandage is sometimes prepared, by marking it with five vertical lines using the liquid from the saffron plant. This symbolises the hand of Fatima, who protects against the evil eye. Two bags containing a mixture of nigella seeds, salt, a tiny silver coin, and various other items are wrapped in red rags and attached to pieces of red wool. One bag will be worn by the boy, while the other one is hung somewhere in the house.

  Early in the morning on the day of the circumcision, the mother will dress her son in a white djellaba and a green felt hat. A male relative, often the boy’s uncle, will collect him on a white horse. The boy sits in front as they ride around town, followed by male family members and friends chanting religious songs. Holy men bless the boy before he returns home.

  The circumcision is done by the local barber, who will be waiting at the house. The imam of the local mosque chants verses from the Koran, along with some of his students, then the women of the house and the female guests sing ritual songs to comfort the boy. In the meantime he is carried to the specially whitewashed room and the barber relaxes him by having a friendly chat. At the chosen moment, the boy is asked to lie on his back and put his feet over his head. A piece of sheep excrement is taken from the bowl and the little penis pushed through it, so that the tip is visible while being held firmly in place.

  Then a favoured distraction technique is for the barber to point to a corner of the ceiling and tell the boy there is a cute little bird there, before whipping out his knife and cutting off the foreskin. The penis is cleaned with antiseptic and bandaged, then a rooster is brought to have its comb cut, the belief being that if only a single cutting is performed, it may bring evil to the boy.

  While this is happening the women continue to sing and clap, and when the boy’s cries are heard they increase their volume. He is carried three times around the circle of singing women, who ululate wildly.

  Afterwards the boy is taken back to the whitewashed room and a huge fuss is made of him. He is served boiled eggs, lamb kebabs and sweets, and given gifts, usually money. The women return to the courtyard, still singing and clapping, and one of them will grab the wooden plate and throw the sheep excrement over the others, to bring fertility to any crops they have, along with general good fortune. The rest of the afternoon belongs to them. They may dress up in even more elaborate clothing and dance to music from an all-female group. Special food is served – a kind of donut, with dishes of butter and honey, followed by a tagine.

  Later, the mother will carry the foreskin to the mosque in a bowl of henna, making a wish for her son to be devout and successful in society, before burying it.

  In the first of the photos, Ayoub looked bemused but proud, as if he knew he was special on this particular day but had no idea why. In later photos he was downcast and miserable, and when Khadija passed these to him he burst out crying, rolling around with tears streaming down his face. His circumcision was obviously a painful experience he would rather forget, yet one his parents were proud to remember.

  Having exhausted the photos, Khadija produced the family videos, but I pleaded tiredness, saying I hadn’t slept very well on my first night in the unfamiliar house.

  That was a mistake. Immediately Khadija said she and Ayoub would come and sleep in the riad to keep me company. Abdul joined in, saying it was fine by him. ‘Ayoub would love it,’ entreated Khadija.

  I thanked them profusely and declined, thinking the matter settled, but when Khadija’s sister arrived home a few minutes later it started all over again. The sister would also be more than happy to come and stay at my house, it seemed. And no doubt the sister’s teenage daughters as well, I thought. My peaceful little house would be filled with women, and the men of the family would be running in and out visiting them. I tried not to look horrified.

  Taking a deep breath, I explained as clearly as I could that I was a writer and needed solitude. I often woke up at odd hours in the night and wrote, I told them. It was my work, my livelihood, and it was necessary. Abdul understood and explained it to the others, and much to my relief the pleading ceased.

  With no way of cooking in my basic little kitchen, I headed out for dinner again that evening. In the souk, crowds of people were going for their nightly stroll. The sweet sellers were doing a roaring trade in sticky mounds of deep-fried confectionery dipped in sugar syrup. I stopped to buy an almond-milk dessert, a bit like blancmange, served in a glass. It was cool, slippery and sweet on the tongue.

  When I returned to the riad Ayoub was waiting at the top of the alley and called out excitedly. Abdul and Khadija were sitting on their steps with, wonderfully, a bottle of gas for me. They had even gone to the trouble of buying the hose and valve to fit it. I repaid them, touched that they had gone to the trouble. Now I could cook. As I didn’t plan on having hot water in the kitchen, I’d bought an enormous copper kettle to boil for the washing up. But right now it was me who was getting the wash.

  The kettle boiled quickly on the strong gas flame. I diluted it with cold water, poured it into a bucket, and carried it to the larger bathroom near the downstairs salon. Once, this long narrow room would have been a reasonable size, but now the bulging of the inner wall – the flambement, according to the engineer – had reduced its width considerably. The blue and white tiles were still appealing, but the shower and pipes were in an advanced state of decrepitude – rusty and useless. Like the work of a drunken plumber, they meandered all over the room in a most peculiar fashion, before heading ceilingwards to supply another tap upstairs.

  I’d tested the shower previously, only to discover that the water squirted straight upwards. It needed more than a new shower head; the pipes had to be completely redone, but I didn’t want to do that before the flambement was repaired. Until then, I would have to make do with bucket washes.

  But for every thoughtful act by Khadija and Abdul, there seemed to be one that left me feeling doubtful. One evening, they appeared at my door with a man they introduced as the guardian for the district. I had noticed him dabbing brown paint on doorways lower down the alley in the past few days, but now Abdul said the guardian was offering to remove the bags of rubble left by the door by the previous owners. I was happy to have this done, and after some consultation with Abdul, a price of a hundred dirhams was quoted. That sounded pretty steep; the restaurateur had told me it would be around forty dirhams.

  Khadija took me to one side and explained that, as this man was the guardian of the area, he was my second line of defence after them, so I needed to establish a good relationship with him. He also cleaned the street, she said, and if I paid him an additional twenty dirhams he would keep a special eye on my house.

  I felt as if I were being ambushed. Was this some kind of strategy to extract money from me? What would happen if I didn’t pay the money? Would the guardian let one of the neighbourhood thieves know when I was out? Feeling pressured I agreed, but only to paying half the amount now, and the remainder when the rubble was removed.

  The street guardian started to finger my door thoughtfully, running his hands over the protruding metal studs. I knew he was just dying to be let loose on it with that tin of brown paint I had seen earlier. ‘Non,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Non, merci.’

  Next morning the rubble was gone, and that evening, quite late, there was a knock on the door and three men I’d never seen before were waiting outside with Abdul. They wanted the rest of the money. I had no idea how they fitted into the picture, but I gave them the remaining fifty dirhams and they wrote me a receipt for twenty. Since I’d now paid a hundred dirhams, I told them I wanted a receipt for that amount.

  They looked a little surprised, and Abdul quickly leapt in with an explanation I couldn’t understand. They altered the amount and I closed the door knowing I’d been fleeced, but uncertain how they had divided the proceeds.

  DAVID FINALLY RETURNED to Fez, having spent August in the United States. I was on my way to catch up with him over dinner one evening when something unpleasant happened.
Two young American women stopped me, saying they were lost and asking if they could follow me.

  ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘I’m just going down to where the taxis are.’

  A moment later, a local man in his early twenties appeared. ‘I will show you the way,’ he said in French. It was a statement, not an offer.

  ‘Thanks, but it’s okay,’ I replied. ‘I’m taking them.’

  He stared at me coldly. ‘No,’ he insisted, ‘I will show them. The Medina can be a dangerous place.’ He narrowed his eyes, clearly annoyed that I was getting between him and a potential fee.

  ‘Non, merci,’ I said firmly, not about to let him intimidate me.

  He began to walk right in front of us, forcing us to slow our pace to his. I stopped to let him get ahead and the girls halted behind me, but he paused as well. ‘I am showing you the way,’ he said.

  I told him that I lived in the Medina, I knew the way, and we did not need his help.

  ‘I know exactly where you live,’ he replied, his piercing green eyes staring right into me.

  A chill ran down the back of my neck. I tried to keep my face neutral and move past him. At that moment he turned, stepping in front of me, and I accidentally kicked his ankle. Swinging round, he glared at me, eyes now filled with hate.

  ‘Excuse moi, monsieur,’ I said with a hint of sarcasm.

  ‘You will follow me,’ he stated, starting to lead us again.

  I had had enough. ‘Imchi,’ I said, an Arabic word which I thought meant ‘keep walking’.

  His reaction was explosive. A stream of Darija spat from his mouth. I didn’t know their meaning but I had a feeling they detailed sexual acts involving donkeys and the origins of my birth. At least what I’d said had the intended effect, and he disappeared up a side alley. The girls were grateful but I remained disturbed.

  I told David about the incident over dinner. We were at a formal, French-style restaurant in the Ville Nouvelle, which was empty when we arrived at seven o’clock, an early hour to eat in Fez.

  ‘What does imchi mean exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s the Egyptian Arabic equivalent of “fuck you”,’ David said with a smile.

  No wonder the guy was angry. ‘Great. So I’m doing well making friends in the neighbourhood,’ I said. ‘That’s healthy.’ I had a vision of being knifed in some dark alley on my way home, or coming back to find my laptop and camera gear gone.

  ‘Look, the Medina is generally pretty safe,’ David said. ‘But something did happen last year.’ He proceeded to tell me about a French couple who’d been walking past a mosque with their son and had exchanged a kiss right outside. Enraged at such Western sacrilege, some nutter ran out with a knife and tried to kill the woman. When the son defended her he was stabbed to death instead. ‘The whole thing was hushed up,’ said David. ‘They didn’t want it to impact on tourism. Anyway, the guy who did it was deranged.’

  I knew he was right. Murders and assaults were rare in Fez; most crime was property-related, a result of poverty. David knew of a British couple, new to the Medina, whose house had been robbed. A neighbour had seen the burglars, and although reluctant to go to the police, he had given the names of the offenders to the couple. The police had already caught one of them, a fifteen-year-old who’d immediately confessed.

  This was what came of living in a close community, I thought, where everyone knows everyone else’s business. My house in Australia had been robbed a couple of times, and when the police eventually turned up they as good as admitted they were going through the motions, and there was little prospect of catching anyone.

  The British couple were concerned about what would happen to the boy who’d been caught, and had considered not pressing charges. David assured them that Morocco had French and not Sharia law, so the boy wouldn’t have his hand cut off. (While some Moroccan fundamentalist groups advocate the introduction of Sharia law, the French system is so well entrenched that this is unlikely.) David thought it was better to let the police do what they had to, or word would get around that there were no consequences for stealing from foreigners.

  Our food arrived – gurnard, a delicious fish – and the conversation moved on to Larbi and the ghost guardian. David looked speculative.

  ‘Do you know something I don’t?’ I asked.

  ‘Last year a couple paid him a deposit for a house. In the end the sale didn’t go through, and of course they wanted their money back. Eventually Larbi came up with half of it, but he still hasn’t returned the rest. He claims he gave it to the owners but he doesn’t have any proof. He keeps saying he’ll pay, then puts them off.’

  So Larbi had money troubles. A small light shone on my own situation. It seemed that he’d pretended to employ a guardian in order to keep the payment for himself.

  I told David my thoughts and he shrugged. ‘I think Larbi is trustworthy up to a point, but I’d never tempt him. A few years ago I gave him the keys to my house to take care of it while I was away. When I came back I found a bottle of women’s perfume next to my bed.’

  ‘So he used it for a tryst?’

  ‘There’s nowhere here for couples to go,’ David said. ‘So they make use of wherever they can. I changed my locks after I got my keys back. Have you done that?’

  I hadn’t. I’d arranged for them to be changed after the final payment to the vendors, but Larbi had had my keys since then.

  ‘If your keys have been in Larbi’s possession, it’s safe to assume he has copies,’ David said. ‘It’d be a good idea to change them before you have any kind of dispute with him.’

  It was good advice. The last thing I wanted was to be involved in a conflict, but unless I was willing to pay up and shut up, it seemed inevitable. It was possible Larbi would simply come and remove what he thought he was owed.

  ‘I think you need to insist on a meeting with the guardian and the translator, without Larbi,’ David said. ‘Don’t pay unless you meet him and are satisfied he was actually there.’

  This was along the same lines I’d been thinking, but it was reassuring to have it confirmed. I valued David’s good sense and support.

  I had never met anyone so wonderfully obsessive about old things as he was. He had started collecting antiques at the age of seven, going to auctions, fairs and antique shops with his mother. When I met his sister some months later she told me he’d been an odd child, always wanting to hang out with the old people across the road and hear their stories of days gone by, instead of playing with the other kids. I found this endearing. Even David’s mobile phone had an old-fashioned ring-tone.

  Next day, I called Larbi and said I wanted to meet the guardian. He didn’t miss a beat, although not surprisingly he wasn’t willing for the meeting to go ahead without him. I turned up at the appointed time, waited half an hour, but no one showed.

  A few nights later, I was in bed reading when there was a knock on the back door. At first I ignored it. It was around ten p.m. and I wasn’t expecting anyone at that hour. I wasn’t about to open the door at night to someone I didn’t know. But the knocking continued, louder and more insistent.

  ‘Who is it?’ I called out in French.

  There was no answer, just more knocking, so I called out again. This time a male voice said something about wanting to come in and look at my house. What the hell for, at this time of night? I didn’t think so.

  ‘No,’ I shouted. ‘I don’t know you.’

  The knocking stopped and I breathed a sigh of relief. But a couple of minutes later it began on the front door. Since getting there required going round several alleys, the man obviously knew the layout of the house. This time I didn’t answer. Then I heard Khadija calling.

  ‘Madame?’ Khadija and Abdul were having a conversation with whoever was outside.

  ‘Non,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know this man.’

  Some time later I thought I heard someone climbing the scaffolding in the back alley, where neighbours were having their wall painted. I knew the scaffolding w
asn’t high enough to enable anyone to climb over my wall, if that was what he was trying to do, but I did not sleep well that night.

  I was still wondering who it could have been in the morning. The ghost guardian, come to claim his money? The creep who’d threatened me the other day? Some bored teenager with nothing better to do than go scare the bejesus out of the weird foreign woman? There were no other foreigners in this part of the Medina; they usually bought property in the more touristy areas at the top of the two tala’as. The mystery was never solved.

  A few days after this incident, my houseguests arrived. John and Nicole were travelling minstrels in a folk duo called Cloudstreet and were going from festival to festival in the United Kingdom during the summer. This was their first visit to Morocco, and was a good excuse to do some sightseeing myself.

  Fez, like all Islamic cities, is centred around the souks. We went first to the food souk in R’Cif, where hundreds of tiny stalls are piled with vibrantly fresh vegetables, fish, meat, olives, coffee, spices, sweets. The meat stalls often display the heads of camels or goats, and I had got in the habit of going early whenever I bought meat, before the flies got to it. The practice of not refrigerating meat may sound unhygienic, but as it’s usually killed and sold the same day it’s considerably fresher than that found in Western supermarkets.

  I couldn’t bring myself to buy chickens, though – they were a bit too fresh. Looking a squawking chook in the eye while it was being weighed and then having its neck wrung at my behest was beyond me.

  In the souk of the artisans’ guilds, everything is made by hand, much as it has been for centuries. Seeing it through John and Nicole’s eyes, I realised anew how much it was like being transported back to the Middle Ages, except that many of the goods produced now are exported or sold to tourists. In Place Sefferine, a constant rhythmic tapping sounds as coppersmiths make kettles, couscousiers and cooking pots. Some are for hire, big enough to whip up a feast for two hundred or so of your closest friends. Nearby are the knife makers, who, with a single foot operating a dangerously spinning stone grinder half their height, sharpen blades to surgical precision. In an adjoining street, brass makers cut, shape and emboss lanterns, plates and various household items.