A House in Fez, by Suzanna Clarke, illuminated for me a perspective of Fassi culture (and through it, Moroccan) that really cannot be obtained by reading any Wikipedia article. Away from the common tourist destinations of Marrakech, Tangier, and even the Ville Nouvelle, Clarke’s narrative of life in the Madina offers a microcosmic vision of Morocco: just like the nation as a whole, the Madina is struggling with how to modernize for the sake of, rather than to replace, the cultural and historic past. Her rich, first-person tale of the renovations of the Riad Zany convey how, even amidst intense efforts to modernize and liberalize, wide cultural and gaps separate Moroccans from the West in terms of business and personal relationships.

The book uses extensive detail to create an image of the Madina as a city both in transition and frozen in time. Modern appliances and innovations lie beside ancient architecture designed and built long before drywall, electricity, and internet wiring. It is a testament to human ingenuity that Clarke’s builders were able to connect modern stoves and toilets to ancient sewer lines, without destroying the beautiful zellij mosaics that decorate the houses of the Madina as they have for hundreds of years. One of the most significant moments to demonstrate the fascinating way that the anachronistic, seemingly competing modes of life in the Madina coexist was Abdul’s digging out the ancient sewer. The sewer is nothing like the Western type, full of complicated piping, insulation, junctions, and fastenings that require years of training to repair. It was simply a ditch, kept open by tiled walls. This simple sewer line was more than adequate for Riad Zany’s modern toilet to flush. On another occasion, Clarke walks through the souks to pick out produce and meat, both charmed and somewhat alarmed by how fresh everything is—in the case of chickens, still wriggling when you purchase it. She uses both experiences to highlight what Clarke portrays as an important part of Morocco: how close the locals are to every facet of life. There is nothing fancy or magical really about the sewer system—a little bit of training is required to understand what needs fixing for sure, but nothing is truly incomprehensible to the lay person. There is nothing mystical about how animals are raised, slaughtered, and butchered. As a result, on the one hand, things might not work as reliably or be as easy, but on the other, one becomes better grounded and can set his or her priorities straight.

Similarly, the community is much more down to earth than most Western ones. Clarke states numerous times that everyone knows everyone else’s business, an obvious but important observation considering the nature of Madina architecture. The place was not designed from the top down, with a utopian vision for how to control people’s behaviors, but rather developed organically through interactions, both friendly and less so, between neighbors. Moreover, residents of the Madina seem to consider their neighbors’ usiness their own, as there is little sense of division between private and public space. This makes the community an interesting and charming contrast to the West, where interactions between servicers and clientele, while often friendly, is strictly business. In contrast, it appears that individuals’ employment and social lives are closely intertwined. Khadija, Clarke’s one-time neighbor, frequently blurred this line. In Clarke’s eyes, she was a close friend for whom she would buy gifts in Australia, yet the relationship was always tense and perhaps ultimately broken by Khadija’s desire to leverage their friendship for employment. Whether it was to clean Riad Zany or for Suzanna to hire Khadija’s husband Abdul as a laborer in the renovation project, requests that seemed to Khadija to be mutual favors—useful work for Suzanna and money to help Khadija’s family—seemed to Clarke to breach a border that would make things awkward when something went wrong, such as Abdul’s possible theft of towels from Clark’s riad. This distinction was an intriguing one, helping to highlight how countries with similar government bureaucracies, political systems, and commercial laws can reach different levels of modernity and retain different societal features.

Taken together, Clarke’s writing illustrates the most relevant concepts about life in the Madina. The ancient city is not simply a tourist attraction or a sight to see; it is more than just interesting architecture. It is a breathing city whose aura offers a case study in how different facets of society can be changed and what the effect is. Clarke’s immense contextual analysis and (sometimes overbearingly) elaborate details clearly convey these concepts to the reader. However, the books is not without flaws in its accounting. She never really answers the nagging problem that she may fail to capture a full picture of how Madina society operates differently from the West precisely because her and the locals’ norms are different. It is unclear to what extent her being foreign affects workers’ behavior around her, or her attitude towards locals. While Clarke makes note of these problems frequently, she never provides even a provisional explanation of how this affected her experience. Unfortunately, this fact may point to an unsavory truth that ultimately, colonial philosophies can never truly be removed from interactions with foreign cultures perceived as in greater desperation or a lower status.