A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco (11 page)

Over dinner I suggested a compromise to Hamza. What if he were to act as a supervising consultant, paid on commission, visiting once or twice a week to make sure things were on track? If his team wasn’t available, I could hire another to do the work.

To my surprise he agreed, even suggesting that, to get a head start, he’d arrange to have the carpentry work done on the doors and windows immediately. I was thrilled.

The next day, Hamza returned with his carpenter, who had a look around and quoted twenty thousand dirhams, which covered two new doors, three windows, a set of traditional shutters and numerous repairs. It did not include cleaning the wood or removing the paint from the forged iron on the windows and catwalk.

As we trailed around in the carpenter’s wake, Hamza told me what he thought would need doing next year – this
zellij
taken up, these walls stripped of plaster, this decorative plaster repaired. One of the things that needed immediate attention was the kitchen ceiling, which was about to cave in. On the floor above it was a tap without a drain outlet, and years of sluicing the floor had resulted in water soaking into the insulating layer of earth above the beams, adding to the weight and causing the wood to rot. I felt both excited and alarmed by the extent of the work he was suggesting, but having seen his own house, I trusted him.

Hamza also took me to see a house he was working on for a French man. The entire place had been stripped back to the bricks, and a team of men were removing a layer of rubble from the roof. In the stream of light from the hole they had made, a cloud of dust motes swirled. I felt a familiar tightening in my chest, the onset of an asthma attack, and quickly escaped to the street. I began to doubt that we’d be able to live in our house while work was being done.

And what must the dust be doing to the workers? The air was filled with minuscule lime and wood fragments, and who knew what else besides, none of which could be healthy. The only workers I’d seen wearing any protection were the men shovelling rubble on the terrace, and even then it was just a simple scarf. I reminded myself to bring some masks back with me, and to make sure ventilation was adequate.

At Hamza and Frida’s house, I gave him a cheque for twenty thousand dirhams for the carpenter, along with a list of the work
agreed
to. In the back of my head was my grandmother’s voice, telling me there were two types of bad payers, those who paid in advance and those who didn’t pay at all. When I’d suggested paying after the carpentry had been done, Hamza said he didn’t work that way. I consoled myself with the fact that, as he’d be in charge of our project, it could be considered a start-up fee.

I then spent a couple of hours taking photos of Hamza and Frida’s place for their website, as a favour. They were planning to run it as a guesthouse, something it was ideally suited to, with its huge courtyard and terrace. One of the main suites was without doubt the most beautiful room I had seen in Fez. The view across the river had probably changed little since the place was built hundreds of years before, and the interior decoration was superb – intricate, detailed, with delicate paint and plaster work.

The other thing I needed to organise before I left was someone to stay in our riad. I certainly wasn’t about to ask Larbi again, but David had a young American student who was willing to act as caretaker in return for a place to stay. Sarah was twenty-two, petite and pretty, with an eager-to-please manner. When I gave her a tour of the riad she loved everything about it, and she said all the right things – she was serious about her studies, and not a party person. She’d lived on her own a lot and didn’t like large numbers of people around. That was the problem in her current student house, which was constantly full of people. A Moroccan friend had advised her not to invite the neighbours in because they gossiped about the valuables in the house, and word got around. I’d broken that rule, I thought ruefully.

There was just one thing that concerned me. Sarah was wearing a tight T-shirt with a plunging neckline and the slogan ‘Boys R Toys’. Bringing her to the house, I had seen the way the local youths stared at her, as if they were about to eat her up. This district was one of the oldest in Fez and very traditional. Expectations of behaviour here were different from the more touristy areas and the Ville Nouvelle. Local women dressed conservatively, with no bare heads, legs or arms. Western women could get away with bare heads, but bare arms and close-fitting shirts were pushing the boundaries.

It was the equivalent, I explained to Sarah, of living in a Western city and seeing the woman next door heading out to the shops in just her bra – this was the way Fassis saw it. A local man had told me recently that only prostitutes had bare arms. As the new person on their patch, Sarah’s behaviour would be watched closely. People would know very quickly where she was living and whether she came home late at night alone, so it would help, I pointed out, if she had the reputation of being respectable. That way she’d be less likely to run into trouble.

No doubt she thought me a stupid old bat, but I figured that since she was the one moving into traditional Fassi territory, it wasn’t up to the locals to change their perceptions, but for her to be respectful of theirs. Moreover I didn’t want her creating problems in my relations with the neighbours.

Months later, when I returned, I learned she’d taken my advice to heart and bought a couple of djellabas for wearing in the Medina at night.

On my last evening in Fez, I took a drink up onto the roof and
gazed
across the city, watching the horizon shift from gold to pink to deep blue. A dark stain of smoke from the potteries hovered over the north. I was far from alone – on nearby rooftops, other women and their cats were doing the same thing, except without the gin and tonic. As devout Muslims don’t drink and the Fez Medina is a holy city, alcohol is not on public sale. To buy it you need to go to the Ville Nouvelle, and if on your return the taxi driver hears the telltale clink of bottles, he will most likely refuse to take you and your shopping. Many Fassis have a similar attitude towards the demon drink as we do to heroin.

Now that my departure was so close I didn’t want to leave. Apart from seeing Sandy and friends, I wasn’t looking forward to going home. Western cities may have their physical differences but the organisation of modern life, with its automated services, cars and franchised businesses, lends a similarity to them. Australian streets, by comparison to those of Fez, seem devoid of colour and life. It struck me that we have traded vivacity for the myth of safety. We exist within bubbles of cars and houses, and view the rest of the world through the glass wall of television. Where are all the people, donkeys, cats, the women waiting in doorways with trays of uncooked bread? The touts and spivs, the children playing in the alleyways? The evening streets crowded with those who hide all day from the sun? All the myriad small dramas that make up everyday Fassi life.

I had never been in such a vibrant, vitally alive place.

WHEN SANDY AND
I returned to Fez at the beginning of the following May his excitement was palpable. Mine was more subdued. I was apprehensive about what might have happened in our absence. What if the carpenter had removed the decoration on the big doors to the salons? Or messed with the wonderful
massreiya
ceiling?

We arrived to find the inevitable dust, along with workmen’s tools and boxes of garbage strewn about, but it was still good to be back. The courtyard was filled with sunlight, there were oranges hanging out of reach on one of the trees, and a couple of baby sparrows were hopping around. Someone had put a grubby teddy bear on the fountain spout, adding a surreal touch.

The carpenter had done part of his job. The salon doors had been repaired, decoration intact, as had a couple of others, and upstairs there was a new set of shutters and two new doors. But
some
of the work looked slapdash. The bathroom door frame, which needed a section of rotting wood replaced, had had a blob of cement slapped onto it. There was a new window in the kitchen that I hadn’t asked for, while the three I had listed remained undone. The smell of fresh cedar permeated the air, but it looked as if Sarah hadn’t been here in weeks. There was off milk in the fridge, and the mattresses were stacked against the upstairs walls. When I got round to ringing Sarah later she said that the carpentry work had forced her to move out.

We’d barely deposited our luggage when there was a bang on the door. It was a young girl from across the alley with welcoming cups of tea. She pointed out her door as the one I knew as Khadija’s. I had never seen the girl before and asked where Khadija was, but couldn’t make myself understood. No matter, I thought, Khadija would be over the minute she heard I’d returned. In the meantime we busied ourselves with making the riad habitable.

Twenty-four hours after we arrived, there was still no sign of Khadija. I missed seeing cute little Ayoub playing in the street, and having Khadija pop her head out the door whenever I went out. Even though at times I found her exasperating, she had been part of the fabric of my life here and I’d been looking forward to seeing her. I’d bought her a new set of sheets, a painting set for Ayoub, and printed up a photo of them both. Eventually I asked another neighbour, who told me that Khadija and her family had moved to a small town in the countryside. I was surprised by how disappointed I felt on hearing this, and not only because she’d helped me so much.

Sandy and I were to be in Fez for seven months on this trip, and there was much to be done. We arranged to meet Hamza to discuss the next stage. As only half of the carpentry work had been completed, and that of variable quality, we were apprehensive about him overseeing the rest of the work.

He arrived late, well into the afternoon, with his Irish accountant in tow, and was his usual charismatic self, exuding a
bonhomie
and confidence that were belied by the endless cigarettes he smoked. He had fallen out with the carpenter who had given the original quote, he told us, and the replacement was more expensive. Hamza would return with the new carpenter to address the shoddily done work, and assess what more he could do for the money we had paid. Fair enough, I thought.

With the accountant he then had another look around the riad, muttering about the huge amount of work to be done. There were a couple of ‘pregnant bellies’, as Hamza put it, where moisture had entered the ceiling beams, forcing pressure downwards and making the walls bulge – what the engineer had called the fl
ambement
. We were a bit shocked when he said that the beautiful old
zellij
in the courtyard needed ripping up and relaying, as it was uneven. We thought the uneven patches, caused by tree roots, was part of its appeal.

We moved on to the issue of money. Hamza wanted forty per cent of the cost of the work up front, with each stage paid for in advance. It made sense from his point of view; he had been left holding the baby on one job and ended up bankrolling it out of his own pocket.

But forty per cent up front was a commitment we didn’t feel comfortable making. What if a few weeks down the track the arrangement wasn’t working? But our choice was limited – there were few people in Fez capable of supervising the work – and we parted saying we would get back to him in a couple of days.

Regardless of who oversaw the restoration, we wanted to get started as soon as possible. As there would be strangers working all through the house, we needed a place to store our valuables, so in time-honoured fashion we decided to buy a wooden chest. We found one we liked in an antique shop near the tanneries. It was embossed with brass shields and had a lock with a moveable pin mechanism that dropped in and out of place as the key was turned. Similar locks have been in found in Egyptian tombs dating back four thousand years, and are the forerunner of modern pin tumbler locks.

‘It was made by the Tuarag people from the Sahara,’ the shopkeeper said, oozing sincerity. But the price tag was far beyond what we’d planned on spending.

‘I make you a special deal,’ he whispered, as if afraid his regular tourist clientele would overhear, and more than halved the price. But it was still way above what we thought it was worth.

‘Two thousand dirhams is what we can afford to spend,’ I said. We stuck to that, and miraculously ended up buying it. A porter appeared and threw the heavy chest onto his back as though it were made of balsawood. He moved so fast through the crowded streets we were forced to trot to keep up with him. Jogging along in his wake, I noticed that the finish of the wood was uneven and
there
was a small chip showing blond wood beneath. The chest had probably been knocked up in Fez the previous week. I felt stupid for being diddled in the dimness of the shop. I did like the chest, but it was certainly only worth as much as we’d paid, if that. Expert traders, the Fassis had had hundreds of years of honing their skills on gullible foreigners like us.

The day before, I had gone to the souk to buy herbs. ‘How much?’ I asked an old man holding up two bunches of oregano.