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

Ahmed Salat

DAW 2018

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

1^st July 2018

Suzanna Clarke’s A House in Fez: Building A Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco is a great novel, rich in culture, that pretty much covers how great living in one of the oldest cities in the world can be. The novel covers Clarke’s experiences with the city in the early 2000s.

In the novel, Clarke gives an account of her journey in restoring an ancient riad in the Medina and through her explanation of the restoration, helps the readers learn a lot from life in the Medina, from the amazingly friendly Fassis to centuries of Moroccan history to the challenges a foreigner is  likely to face. When Clarke visited Morocco in 2002, she fell in love with the culture and as she says, “found it as multi-layered and intriguing as the patterns in the tile work adorning the buildings, each of which has its own hidden meaning” so she  felt that it was an amazing idea to buy an ancient house and restore it instead of transforming it into a modern house thus conserving centuries old architecture and breathtaking tilework, the zellij . After searching for a suitable house for a while, Clarke and her husband, Sandy, finally found a good riad for a reasonable price and bought it. However, the restoration work was tougher than they thought- while the amount of work needed to restore the riad  to its former glory was itself a lot, other factors such as exhausting Moroccan bureaucracy, somewhat inefficient workers and sometimes language barrier made the process tougher.

Through Clarke’s interaction with the locals involved with the restoration and maintenance of the house such as Hamza, Salim, Khadija and Clarke’s friend Ayisha, we get to see a lot of the Moroccan culture. Her constant visits to shops in search of various materials further sheds light on a lot more of the Fassis culture. Reading this book right before coming to Morocco helped me learn so much about Morocco and Fez in particular even before getting there. When I arrived, I immediately started experiencing Fez through the lens of Clarke’s experiences. I remember finding the bathroom sewer hole covered thus accumulating water while I showered yet didn’t unblock it until I spoke with my host mom first lest I was possessed by a Djinn keeping in mind what  Aisha said: “they find their way out into our world through places where there is water. That is why you must cover your drains.” So I wondered if my host covered their drain to stop Djinns from coming into the house and feared that removing a cover to drain the water would get me possessed or  release a Djinn to ‘my house’ endangering my host family and possibly our neighbors too.

The friendliness of Fassis was evident just like Clarke wrote and so was the locals trying to take advantage of our limited ability to speak Arabic or French and overcharging us during our taxi rides. On our third night at Fez, we were taking a taxi from the Ville Nouvelle to Batha Hotel, close to the Medina, when our driver said “ثلاثة عشر  dirham”– 13 dirham- when we asked how much the fare was only for him to ask for  30 dirham when we got there giving no proper explanation, or well maybe we just didn’t understand whatever he was saying.

While the novel does a pretty good job at representing the Fassis in the best light possible, there were areas that I particularly felt a slight uneasiness to. In my opinion, Clarke displayed the common white savior complex just like Europeans and Americans visiting Africa and other developing countries are usually said to have. These includes instances when she said she didn’t feel bad about paying the locals more than they were paid by other Moroccans for the same amount of work or when she felt she was being ripped off but she didn’t complain simply because she could afford it and saw it as a way for alleviating their suffering! Or her trying to justify the crazy amount of work the workers did in her house- which she even says made her seem like one of the ancient slave owners- by saying that she was paying more than they could have earned anywhere else anyway.

I definitely recommend Clarke’s novel as it gives a a lot of important information on Morocco and Fez in particular. Moreso, I would say this is a must-read for anyone traveling to the great city of Fez or anyone who just wants to learn about Moroccan culture and all those who appreciate ancient architecture as the novel gives unique insights on the above categories and many more. I hope you enjoy reading the book.