A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco (37 page)

Looking through the Bab Bou Jeloud into the Medina

Local women do their shopping in the vegetable souk at R’Cif

One of Fez’s last surviving brocade makers

‘Liberace’, at the café where he’s worked for forty years

Perfume oils and sacred and medicinal herbs for sale

The courtyard, for many months our living room, was in constant chaos

The decapo ladies, Fatima and Halima, whose work revealed the beauty of the cedar beneath up to seven layers of paint

The first of many deliveries of lime and sand that were to continue for months

The kitchen stripped bare. The outline of the old window shows where it once joined the house next door.

Putting zellij on the kitchen floor

The difficult and dangerous task of lifting the catwalk balustrade into place

Looking down into the completed courtyard

After months of work, the courtyard is finally complete

The finished downstairs salon. The door at the end leads to the main bathroom, the door on the right to the courtyard