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

by Suzanna Clarke

  Shortly after my visit to the old slave market, I asked a neighbour if he knew anything about the history of our house.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he smiled. ‘When my mother was a child a man called Bennis was the owner. He belonged to one of the wealthiest families in Fez and was a silk trader who often travelled to India. He had three wives.’

  My neighbour held up his fingers, nodding at my quizzical expression. ‘Yes, three. He used to live in a very rich house in another area with the first and second wives. There was a beautiful young woman, a slave from Sudan, working in that house. Bennis paid for her with camels and coral. He decided to make her his third wife, although he was getting old by then and she was very young. To set her up, he bought your house and gave it to her. Neither of the other wives knew about the third wife.’

  So Bennis’s third wife had gone from being a Sudanese village girl to a slave, to mistress of her own house – our riad. Quite a transition in one lifetime. I wondered how Bennis had explained his repeated absences to his other wives. Or maybe he was away on business so often it wasn’t a big deal. But surely someone had seen him coming and going. Fez wasn’t that large, and like I said, everyone knew everyone else’s business.

  ‘Did they have any children?’ I asked.

  ‘Two daughters. But Bennis disappeared when they were young. He went to India when he was seventy and didn’t come back. Some people said he found another wife there, others said he died of an illness. And there were those who said his ship sank.’

  I imagined the beautiful Sudanese woman bringing up her two daughters and waiting and wondering why her husband didn’t come home, until one day she realised he wasn’t going to.

  ‘So what happened to her after he disappeared?’

  ‘My mother said she stayed for a while, living quietly, and then one day she was gone. She and her daughters moved to Casablanca to make a new life for themselves.’

  Thereafter, as I went about my daily chores in the riad, I thought about that former slave girl. I wished I could bring her across the passage of time for a short while, to show her what we were doing to preserve her beautiful house. I had the feeling she would approve.

  Some time later, I found out the real reason Ayisha disliked her father. When she was a child, she told me, she witnessed him beating her mother.

  ‘And he and my brothers also beat my older sister,’ she said. ‘To escape, she accepted the first offer of marriage that came along. That was a big mistake. Now she lives in the mountains with her husband’s family and they treat her very badly. She must wear a full veil and is virtually a prisoner there.’

  There’d also been a couple of attempts by the husband’s family to poison her sister, Ayisha told me. This reminded me of India, where they burn brides, usually because the husband or mother-in-law thinks the girl’s family hasn’t provided a sufficient dowry, or they have fallen behind with their dowry payments. Burning her can be disguised as a domestic accident and the husband can marry again without dishonouring himself.

  ‘I was determined not to be weak like my mother,’ Ayisha continued. ‘I told my brothers and my father that if they laid one hand on me I would go to the police, and so they are wary of me.’

  It took a particular determination to resist the weight of tradition working against Ayisha. And being some years younger than her sister, she had grown up with access to mobile phones and email, things that make a significant difference to the lives of Moroccan girls. While many are forbidden to have relationships with men before marriage, they can now communicate without their fathers or brothers knowing.

  Ayisha confessed to a long-distance relationship she’d been having with an Englishman she met the previous summer. She had only spent a few days with him but he had asked her to marry him. She was thrilled about this, seeing it as a means of escape from her limited life and prospects.

  My antenna went up, and I told her the story of an American friend of ours who had been working in London and on holiday in Morocco when he met a beautiful young woman on a beach. They had only a few words of French in common but that didn’t stop them becoming madly infatuated with each other. A few months later, they married in a traditional ceremony with white horses, silver thrones, and the blood-spotted sheet to prove her virginity.

  After the honeymoon, our friend took his bride back to London. I could imagine her arriving in the strange city full of hope for her new life with her kind and intelligent husband. The following year, she had a son. Whereas in Morocco she would have had the support of the women in her family, here she had no one. Her husband’s family were in Los Angeles and he worked long hours, leaving her alone with the baby all day in a small flat in an unfriendly city. She went slowly crazy.

  Eventually she hooked up with a local junkie and abandoned her husband. For two years he fought through the courts for custody of his son. Then one morning his wife arrived on the doorstep and handed him the child. Her boyfriend did not want him and she was unable to care for him any longer.

  Our friend moved back to Los Angeles with his son. When he remarried a couple of years later, his new wife and the boy did not get on, and in his early teens the boy ran away from home, joined a gang and roamed the streets, constantly in trouble with the law.

  Ayisha was intrigued by this story but could not see how it might apply to her. ‘My English is good,’ she said. ‘And I know how to make friends.’

  I tried to get across to her that England was not all light, colour and warmth like Morocco, quite the opposite. It could be cold, grey and expensive, and social acceptance was often difficult for immigrants. Because of their skittishness about terrorism, many English tended to view Muslims with suspicion. Ayisha was dreaming of a London that existed only in her head.

  AT THE END of May, we found a supervising architect, as required for the building permit. Rachid Haloui was one of the best architects in Morocco. Based in Fez, he designed projects all over the country, gave lectures on Islamic architecture in France, and had written a book on the coastal city of Essaouira. He cared deeply about the Medina and had been the founding president of the Fez Preservation Society.

  When Rachid walked into our courtyard and looked up at the big wall dominating one side he muttered, ‘Interesting, interesting.’ He observed everything else in the riad with little comment until he came to the pillars in the massreiya, two of which bore elegant script. Rachid, with an eye for detail, was immediately taken with these but had trouble reading the ancient Kufic letters, lovingly created in zellij. He pulled out a camera and took a photo.

  We later discovered that they were phrases from the Koran. One translated as ‘If you follow Allah he will give you what you need’, and the other ‘Allah will take care of you’. It was not an Islamic scholar who translated them for us, but our devout and educated builder.

  Up on the terrace, Rachid pointed out that our rear wall was in line with the brick fortifications that had been the city’s outer walls at the beginning of the seventeenth century. This, he explained, showed that when our riad was built it would have been just inside the city’s boundaries. Over subsequent centuries, houses had spilled out well beyond these limits so that our place was now situated in the heart of the Medina.

  We had a good feeling about Rachid. As well as being highly experienced, he was a kindly, careworn man, honest and direct, with a genuine love of traditional architecture. The one disappointment was that he wasn’t able to recommend a builder. He was used to working on a much larger scale, with teams of contractors. I guessed too that if we found our own builder and he performed badly, it wouldn’t reflect on Rachid. They all had problems, he said, and added ominously, ‘They must be controlled.’

  But he did suggest an engineer to oversee the structural work, and also agreed to give us an attestation – a formal notification that he was in charge of the project – so we could get a roqsa and begin work. As soon as we found someone to actually do it.

  I quizzed David about the builder who’d visited
the riad the previous August and promised a quote that never eventuated. He was a contractor, David told me, and would simply employ another builder and take a cut.

  The list of people who would need to be paid was multiplying like relatives at the reading of a will. We’d also had to hire another translator, to communicate with the workers and help me buy materials. Si Mohamed had spent a couple of weeks working for Jon and Jenny, and although inexperienced he seemed keen to learn. So we were already up for a fair whack before we even got to the builder, his labourers, the plumbers and electricians. Not to mention whatever carpentry work was still outstanding after we resolved the situation with Hamza.

  David knew of an older, well-respected builder who used to be head of the mason’s guild in Fez. In this role he had overseen the quality control for all the masons in the city, and would know which ones were capable of doing our job. Jon and Jenny were friends of this man’s son, so I gave them a call.

  Jon immediately saw a problem. ‘Hmm, if I ring the son then he’ll want to do the job.’

  ‘But he already has a full-time job.’ I knew the son worked as another expat’s builder.

  ‘That won’t make any difference. Even if he can’t do it himself he’ll still want to control your builders and make money from you.’

  So we were back with the problem of how to avoid hiring a contractor when what we needed was a traditional builder, to whom we’d be happy to pay above-average daily rates. Jon and Jenny didn’t think the one they’d used was up to the complex structural work our house required.

  I explained our predicament to Salim when I ran into him one day on my way back from the souk. He suggested a contractor friend of his.

  ‘We just want a traditional builder, not a contractor,’ I said. ‘We’ve engaged Rachid Haloui to oversee everything.’

  ‘But you will pay much more,’ said Samir. ‘Three hundred dirhams a metre instead of one hundred. And why do you need an architect? You only need an engineer.’

  I explained that we needed a supervising architect in order to get a roqsa, but Salim claimed this wasn’t necessary; an engineer was acceptable. This was news to me but it was too late now. We had already appointed Rachid and his engineer. However, I was determined to avoid adding a contractor to the mix.

  ‘Our friends did their restoration without a contractor,’ I said. ‘They got an architect then engaged the individual craftsmen. It was much cheaper.’

  ‘How much?’ Salim challenged, aware that any arrangement he had envisaged with his contractor friend was now vanishing.

  I fudged on this. ‘So do you know of any good traditional builders?’ I pressed instead.

  Reluctantly he admitted he did, and named someone, adding that some of his work was not far from where we were.

  I followed him through several alleys until he pointed out a rebuilt exterior wall. It wasn’t much to go on, but the work looked competent. Would he be capable of replacing our huge beams without the walls falling into the street? Only Allah would know.

  ‘Will you give me this builder’s phone number?’ I asked.

  ‘You can find him through me,’ replied Salim.

  I took this to mean that if I wanted the builder I’d need to engage Salim as the engineer, but I didn’t need another one. ‘Does he work on his own?’ I persisted. ‘Do you have his number?’

  ‘Tomorrow I will ring you, inshallah,’ Salim said.

  Naturally he didn’t ring, and I spent several fruitless days chasing him.

  Sandy, meanwhile, had been working on a new novel and on our weblog, ‘The View from Fez’, which we’d started for friends. It had taken on a life of its own and was now the top Moroccan weblog in English, and needed constant feeding. Having been cooped up inside during the day, he relished our walks through the lively Medina of an evening.

  In the streets around Tala’a Sghira, waves of Arabic pop music competed with Bollywood hits, jazz, and the roar of football. The scent of rose petals and incense and ripe fruit hung in the air, along with the smell of hashish wafting from groups of likely lads (making them far more docile than their alcohol-fuelled counterparts in Western cities). Snail sellers offered bowls of snail soup, and kids were fishing the tiny molluscs out with safety pins. Whole families were out for an evening stroll – children riding on their fathers’ shoulders, boys playing vigorous games of soccer, people stopping to greet one another and chat in the warm night air. This was what living in a city without cars meant.

  Our battle for a roqsa was not yet over. When I returned to the baladiya, armed with the document Rachid had prepared, the nice chap told me he’d sent the second inspector to our house but we weren’t there. I was surprised. Either Sandy or I had been home during working hours every day, and I said as much as I gave him the paper.

  He glanced at it, raising his eyebrows when he saw Rachid Haloui’s name. ‘You need to write a letter to your architect,’ he said.

  ‘Why? I can phone him. Anyway, he’ll be at my house next Tuesday.’

  ‘No, you must write a letter telling him that work will start. If you come back in an hour I will give you one.’ He turned his attention to the next customer.

  I left, puzzling over why I needed to write Rachid a letter when he already knew about the work. To fill in the hour I went and pestered Maroc Telecom. I had been assured that technicians would arrive the day before to install the phone, and of course they hadn’t. The pleasant man behind the desk made a call, failed to get a satisfactory response, and took my mobile number instead, saying he would call when the technician was on his way.

  To my surprise, a week or so later he did just that, and a technician turned up at the riad. He neatly strung a line through the kitchen window, up underneath the catwalk and in through the window of the salon. When they’d gone they rang twice to check that the number was working, and to tell us that perhaps as soon as tomorrow we would be able to make calls out, inshallah.

  It was a simple but miraculous thing. This was the first time the riad had had a telephone in its 300-year-plus history. Decades were being leapt in a single bound. Next week the Internet was also due to be connected, inshallah.

  Meanwhile, back at the baladiya, the letter was not ready, but no matter, the nice chap took a sheet of paper and proceeded to draft a letter in French telling Rachid that work was about to commence and that we would be honoured by his presence. I was then informed that I must pay a 250-dirham administration fee at another counter, then post the letter by registered mail and return to the nice chap with both receipts. Welcome to Moroccan bureaucracy. It all seemed arcane, but I had no choice but to comply.

  I took the payment to a man in a side office, then trudged to the post office in sweltering heat. I sent the letter by registered mail as instructed, and hoping that the baladiya hadn’t closed for lunch, I trudged back again.

  The nice chap was nowhere to be seen. I presumed he’d escaped for lunch, and eyed the four women behind the counter who were sitting chatting and studiously ignoring me. After a couple of minutes, another fellow who was waiting told me the nice chap wasn’t coming back. ‘He got a phone call from his wife,’ he said. ‘She told him both his parents just died.’

  I was astonished and dismayed. While I’d been worrying about relatively petty concerns, his life had altered inexorably. I mentally wished him well and vowed to be more patient with officialdom.

  It turned out that the nice chap had completed my roqsa before he left. I had a strange eureka moment when one of the women finally came over to give it to me – a tiny, insignificant-looking piece of paper that allowed us to start work on the riad.

  It was at once a huge relief and, because of the death of the nice chap’s parents, a sharp reminder of how quickly life can change.

  I finally got hold of Salim and managed to arrange a meeting with the builder he’d recommended. We met at Jon and Jenny’s place, which was near where he was working, and he turned out to be about seventy, with thick-lensed glasses and only on
e eye. Wearing an immaculate cream djellaba and a white skullcap, he sat on the edge of his chair looking distinctly uncomfortable.

  I found it hard to picture him scrambling up and down ladders and hefting heavy beams, or judging the straightness of a brick wall. On the plus side, I told myself, he was bound to have a vast wealth of experience and would be more reliable than younger workers.

  Jenny conducted the interview through a translator, with the occasional question from me. I wondered if this venerable fellow minded being quizzed by Western women dressed in immodest clothing that revealed their ankles and hair. Perhaps not, because he agreed to return the following morning and take us to see the house he had almost completed.

  But next morning the appointed time came and went. When the translator called him, the builder said he would come that afternoon but refused to be pinned to a precise time. I was getting the impression he didn’t really want to work with us but did not wish to say so.

  ‘This has been the problem trying to employ people all along,’ Jenny sighed. ‘They’ll give a meeting time and then not show up, even when we call them half an hour before to confirm. It’s the Moroccan unwillingness to disappoint.’

  It seemed to me that Moroccans had their priorities sorted. Life is more important than work, and if something more interesting comes along, why not pursue that instead? This is why inshallah is such a useful word. If Allah wills me to sit here drinking coffee with friends rather than meet with a prospective employer, then that’s the way it is.

  A few days later, Jon had a lead on another builder. ‘At least this one is under forty and has two eyes that both seem to work,’ he texted me.

  Omar came to see the house the following Monday. Big, brash and confident, he gave lengthy explanations via Si Mohamed of what was wrong and how he intended to fix it. It got a bit worrying up on the roof when he blithely announced that the entire job would take three weeks.