A Courtyard in the Riad
A Review of A House in Fez by Suzanna Clark
Fez is one of the few remaining medieval cities in the world and predates “modern” urban centers like New York or Brisbane, Suzanna Clarke’s home city. Although no person or corporation, including Google, knows every street and back alley of Fez’s Medina, there is a sense of structure to the Old City that is not immediately evident to first-timers. As our guide told us yesterday, Fez is organized into sections related to either commercial or residential areas and designed to moderate temperature. Even in the short two days that I have experienced Fez, I have started to learn just how difficult it is to accurately summarize and appreciate the complex culture and people of Fez.
Suzanna Clarke, a self-proclaimed photojournalist and blogger, attempts this feat in A House in Fez. Her account takes place over a decade ago, when tourism in Fez was limited. While leading a group of Europeans through Morocco, Clarke and her husband grow tired of the sterile modernity of the five-star hotels her clients desire. Their personal appreciation of Moroccan architecture prompts Clarke and her husband to purchase a riad, or a large house, in the Fez Medina.
Clarke constructs her narrative around the restoration of this riad. Through this framework, Clarke aims to “journey into Moroccan customs and lore” and provide “a window into the lives of its people” (back cover). Clarke’s description of the restoration process is impressively detailed, however, her claim to authenticity falters with her struggle to reconcile her role in modernization and her one-dimensional characterization of the people she interacts with.
Although she is relatively new to Morocco, Clarke states she does not have the typical Western approach to living there. In the first few chapters, Clarke glorifies the communal support and craftsmanship of her adopted city. She also claims to appreciate the city and its people more than the typical tourists she and her husband guide through Morocco. Clarke clearly admires the Moroccan aesthetic and hopes to restore her home by utilizing its traditional craftsmen and materials. This task consumes most of her writing, but she also includes information on Moroccan culture through descriptions of wedding practices, religion, family life, and more. Along the way, Clarke adopts local pets – some animal and some human – and tries to become a part of Moroccan scenery.
The most engaging aspect of Clarke’s writing was about the restoration process itself. Early in process, she describes the “feral spaghetti” of cables that dominate her courtyard. This vivid image underscores the evolution of the house’s structure. While the cables were not original components of the home, they speak to the changes the riad has witnessed over time. In another instance, she returns a room to a more original form when she adds a halka, or a decorative atrium, to the kitchen (181). This change creates more open space and showcases the massreiya on the ceiling above. Her careful reasoning behind this alteration speaks to her adherence to detail and her respect for elements of the past.
Clarke’s contradictory writing celebrates the old, yet struggles to accept her part in contributing to the new. When she begins her book, she wants to “find a house that had been spared the process of modernization,” since current renovations often result in the loss of a home’s ornamentation in Fez (18). Clarke compares the renovations of some riads to colonial times, but when her husband compares her to a colonial administrator on pay day, she protests by stating that she pays her workers well. What she fails to acknowledge is that she occupies a similar position of power, even if the level of exploitation is not the same. Her decision to learn French, the language of Morocco’s former colonizers, rather than Darija, the local Arabic dialect, only exacerbates this issue and leads to communication problems throughout her story. Clarke echoes her distaste for modernity again when she visits Marrakesh, where she is “dismayed to see a modern, fluorescent-lit boutique between the stalls” (219). Once again, she acknowledges that Western culture drives these changes, but does not address how she might work against it or that she even plays a part in Marrakesh’s tourist culture to begin with. While Clarke is entitled to her own tastes, she presumes that she has a right to dictate the tastes of others.
Throughout the book, Clarke characterizes Moroccans as hard to understand and backwards. When she describes her neighbor Khadija, Clarke focuses on her poverty and difficulty communicating (43). Khadija is treated as entertaining at times, but mostly seems like a nuisance when she comes with the added baggage of her family. Clarke’s complaints ignore the strong role of family in Moroccan culture. Ayisha, another local woman, falls into a similar category of cluelessness. She shares her belief in djinn, her love life, and her family’s celebrations with Clarke, who responds by viewing these things as odd or naïve (243). Some of these impressions hold true, but Clarke generalizes Ayisha’s beliefs to represent typical Fassi life instead of considering the different experiences each of Fez’s 1.1 million residents. Given that most of Clarke’s friends are expats, her fairly narrow view of Fez’s people is understandable. However, if A House in Fez journeys into Moroccan customs and lore, Clarke rarely goes off the beaten path.
A House in Fez appeals to its audience through its promise of revitalization, and although it has strong redeeming qualities, its occasionally patronizing tone hinders its ability to give an accurate representation of culture in Morocco. Although I could easily imagine the buildings of Fez and some of its cultural practices, Suzanna’s “friends” in Fez were too often paper-cut-outs, rather than real people. This characterization, paired with Clarke’s white-savior complex, made the book an informative read, but it was not a full picture of the Moroccan culture I have experienced so far. Clarke assumes that her personal experience renovating the house provides key insight to Moroccan culture and norms. While she successfully restores her house, the limitations of her language, Western perspective, and social circle hinders a nuanced account of Moroccan culture.
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