In A House In Fez, Suzanna Clarke explains how she and her husband fell in love with a country and purchased, then renovated, a centuries old house in Fez, Morocco. Their “new” home (riad) is over 300 years old and in dire need of renovation before it collapses. They are determined to restore it to an authentic Moroccan home. They find native artisans who do all the work by hand. Only able to spend a few months at a time in Morocco, a lot of the work had to be done remotely from Australia with a few good friends back in Morocco helping out where they can. The Medina, which is the old city of Fez, is the best-preserved medieval walled city in the world. Suzanna Clarke not only writes of the process of renovating the house, but also provides meaningful insights into the lives and personalities of the Moroccans. You hear about different people’s everyday life, dreams and culture. It’s heartwarming to learn the similarities that cross cultures. And it’s mind-opening to learn the differences.

In between the story of the renovations, locating tradesmen and overcoming obstacles, Suzanna also relates the rich history of the country, the religious beliefs and the customs of the people she comes across. On trying to overcome, she was quoted saying: “This is how things are done in Morocco, I kept reminding myself, taking deep breaths. It was just as well my high-school French didn’t run to swear words.” One of the things she learns, for example, that when invited for dinner it’s considered rude to stay at the host’s home after dinner is eaten. As soon as the meal is done the party is over. She also learned that comments to a family that their baby is beautiful are considered a wish for bad fortune for the baby. One of the hardships she experiences is when her Ipod got stolen. One afternoon after Sandy returned from Australia, she purchased several brass lanterns from the men who came to the riad from the lighting shop. She noticed their Ipod missing after the men left. But through it all, it was the people who helped with the restoration that made the difference. She also learns that the people in the Medina as welcoming and friendly. “The day we left, they phoned us from their new place of work, the mobile being passed around to wish us ‘trek salaama’ – safe travel. They chattered on happily in Darija and I had no idea what they were saying, but I understood the sentiment. Having shared our lives with them for so long, they felt like family. We would miss them all.”

However, as much as I enjoyed the book, sometimes I was slightly put off by the author’s tone. I sensed a bit of a Western superiority complex. Throughout the book, she complains almost way too much about how the Moroccans attempt to lie and exploit her for money. She constantly portrays herself as the weak and victimized foreigner who gets taken advantage of by the ill-intentioned natives. Right from the beginning, the author talks about how she knew she was much richer than everyone around her, and how in awe all the locals must be of her wealth and how difficult it was for her to have houses on opposite sides of the world. Her tone was sometimes too whiny. She often spends too much time complaining about how difficult it was to renovate this house. I know that living in a construction zone can be challenging, but she wasn’t doing it herself. She had a team of workers doing the actual work in the house.

Though the book leaves much to be desired, I found that it was engaging and only made me more excited to travel to Morocco and experience the culture and explore the beautiful country. Suzanna’s story is an uplifting story about how close they become with the working team, and with their new neighbors who became friends. From her story, I enjoying seeing how it is not only the final product that matters, but about the people you meet and the lessons you learn that help you grow as a person. Suzanna finds that beautiful restorations, as well as beautiful friendships, occur as “inshallah”, which means God willing in Arabic. This is the most common phrase throughout the renovation. The book really does test Suzanna’s motto – “it’s possible to do anything if you really want to; whatever you envisage just go ahead, give it a go, try. And I bet you really can.”

        Suzanna Clark’s A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco is a story about an Australian couple who become enamored with the Medina in Fez, Morocco, where they make an effort to create a second home. The story is told from the author’s Western perspective and outlines the process she and her husband, Sandy McCutcheon endure restoring the property they buy. The reader experiences Fez from an outsider’s perspective as Clarke and McCutcheon integrate into Moroccan society. She relays the sights, sounds, and smells of the Medina, and the reader is instantly enchanted by her magical descriptions. Through Clarke’s story and encounters with the people working with her to restore the property, the reader gains a unique understanding of Moroccan culture as it pertains to hospitality, work ethic, and general social interaction. The reader also experiences her journey developing friendships and connections to other locals, which allows deeper insight into the culture specific to Fez. Ultimately, she and her husband complete their project and build Riad Zany after a long, frustrating, but fulfilling process.

        I enjoyed this book and found it useful as an introduction into Moroccan social culture, since  I am participating in Duke in the Arab World, staying in Fez for three weeks. I appreciated how Clarke foregrounded  the history of Fez, as it  truly gave life to the city and served to make it a more vibrant place in my imagination. I have heard and read so many wonderful things about Fez, and Clarke creates such vivid imagery, which further fuels my excitement to be surrounded by so much history and rich culture. One of the most interesting points in her book is how Fez is such a unique city, having maintained its charming, historical nature. She discusses how other cities like Marrakesh have  a greater number of  inhabitants, tourists, lights, and  malls, and that they cater  to tourists. While Fez has preserved ancient landmarks, architecture, and infrastructure, the city of Marrakesh has replaced or modernized these things. This was especially important for Clarke, as through the process of restoring the Riad (adding modern plumbing, electricity, etc.), she and the workers make an effort to retain much of the original beauty of the house, specifically the tiled mosaics in the house.

        Clarke describes all the beauty and allure of Morocco while also mentioning some of the challenges that foreigners may experience. Most significantly, the language barrier proves to be a difficult obstacle. While Sandy decides to study Darija, the Morrocan Arabic dialect, Clarke makes an effort to improve her French, which is useful because French is. Clarke further points out cultural differences, like dress code and treatment of women, which she briefly addresses after some of her interactions with local women. She offers a sentence here and there about how there are differences in women’s rights in her home country of Australia versus those in  Morocco, but she never provides a detailed discussion, which could have been interesting. For instance, after expressing appreciation for communal bathing, she mentions how she would not feel comfortable discussing saunas, a shared experience between men and women, because of the differences in their two cultures. However, I was grateful that Clarke depicted the variety of friendships she forged with traditional women like Khadija and progressive or liberal women,like Ayisha. It allowed the reader to understand that there is a spectrum of values and political beliefs among women in society despite the relatively conservative patriarchal sociopolitical structure  in comparison to Australia (although compared to some other Muslim-majority nations like Saudi Arabia, Morocco is progressive).

         Clarke is a talented writer whose words bring to life a historic and beautiful city. I would argue, however, that there are some significant issues with the book regarding her portrayal of Moroccan culture through a limited perspective. was how Clarke often voices Western concerns or even complaints, such as the slow pace of work or inconvenient methods of purchasing or locating certain products, despite the fact that she is now in a Moroccan context. She began the book genuinely passionate about integrating into a new society and meeting new people, but she ends up mostly with friends who came from other Western nations. She often portrays her frustrations with the relaxed pace of Moroccan society and seems unreceptive to the cultural lack of privacy. It seems to me that as she is an outsider moving into someone else’s neighborhood, she could express more graciousness. I will point out, however, that even she questions herself, when after deciding to no longer hire a worker who did not measure up to her expectations, she says, “Was I, despite my best intentions, succumbing to a colonial way of life after all?”(92). While her concerns and complaints came across a bit bothersome to me, I recognize how it would resonate with other Westerners visiting the country who did not previously have much exposure to a lesser developed, majority Muslim country.

        Despite this negativity, Clarke presents a generally positive narrative of the Moroccan population and their religion and expresses her own appreciation for the country and its people. By the end of the book, she even describes the workers in her home as family. She introduces the reader to different Moroccan customs, going as far as to say that she begins to miss hearing the call to prayer when she leaves the country. She explains the month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset for thirty days. She expresses an admiration for the practice and even participates in part of it. Further, she discusses how similar Islam is to Christianity and Judaism and explains the seemingly minor differences in belief systems. She expresses her incredulity with how there could be so much violence for centuries about religion when different religions generally believe the same things. She quotes a young Muslim girl who tells her, “The reason people hate and kill one another is because of cultural and political differences. They use religion as an excuse” (218). In the end, beyond her frequent discomfort or irritation with locals, she humanizes this North African, Arabic-speaking Muslim population which is incredibly positive for the region.

       After finishing the book, I visited the Riad Zany blog, which appears to verify Clarke’s story and provides photos and posts that promote Riad Zany and Fez. Additionally, Clarke’s  blog offers a list of local organizations that readers may consider supporting,  like the Fez Medina Children’s Library. Riad Zany’s story is interesting for anyone, but it definitely imparted knowledge important for me as I prepare to travel to Fez. Clarke’s work is engaging and relatively well-rounded in its portrayal of the people and the city, full of detailed imagery. However, I think an interesting change could be to write the story from two points of view: one from Suzanna’s perspective as an outsider moving into Fez, and another perspective from a local as he or she adjusts to this outsider settling into his or her neighborhood. This suggestion would provide a truly comprehensive tale and would serve to elevate the story to make it more trustworthy and intriguing.

A Look at Suzanna Clarke’s A House in Fez

            In Suzanna Clarke’s autobiographical book A House in Fez, Clarke makes the inspired (and yes, impulsive) decision to purchase a riad in Fez’s Madina along with her husband and pursue a lifestyle totally different than the one she had while living in Australia. Such an adventure is one few would consider let alone actually go on, and from that adventure came Clarke’s A House in Fez. From what I gleaned from the book, the Madina of Fez is a vibrant, chaotic center of culture and economy that has existed for hundreds if not thousands of years. It seems like a place that is both unforgiving and nondiscriminatory in how it requires constant wits and attention from those that exist within it. Such a way of life becomes second nature for those who have lived there, and is very foreign seeming to those who have not. For example, despite Clarke’s clear desire to live as the Moroccan’s live, she “couldn’t bring (herself) to buy chickens, though—they were a bit too fresh. Looking a squawking hen in the eye while it was being weighed and then having its neck wrung at (her) behest was beyond (her)” (Clarke, 68). However, if given the necessary time to assimilate and develop the muscle memory to not only avoid the many ways in which one can be taken advantage of in the Madina, but fully allow yourself to take in all the splendor the Madina has to offer. Such an environment is where the protagonist of A House in Fez finds herself after falling in love with all the chaotic splendor of the Madina and deciding to buy and restore a house there. However, despite her and her husband’s initial optimism, they encounter many issues dealing the drastically different paradigm and how that mindset manifests itself in the bureaucracy and every day business practices of the Madina. Over time, through improving her confidence, linguistic abilities and cultural fluency, Suzanna was able to create a living area that existed in a balanced state between the modern accommodations she was used to before moving to the Madina and the ancient way of life that she and her husband fell in love with. Furthermore, she was able to become a self-sufficient, confident, and capable member of society. Such is demonstrated during an exchange Clarke has with her carpenter, Hamza. After tacking on surcharge after surcharge to the Clarkes’ bill, Hamza demanded an additional 20% commission while walking away. Due to having the strength and confidence necessary to stand up to such a breach of trust, Clarke yells out, “I am not paying you any more money. You decide–either give us our remaining money back or do the three windows  Such a display of growth is uplifting for her audience, who likely are composed for the most part of people interested in traveling to Morocco and also getting the most out of their visit. It is from her point of view that the story is told, putting the city in a perspective that is easy to relate to for other foreigners looking to break into the city and truly live as close to how the natives do. The book does a good job of explaining both specific concepts, like that is very well defined is that of InShaAllah, as well as more general concepts, like that concerning the differences in mindset that permeate the world of commerce in the Madina. The book does a decent job of portraying the experience of the locals, but instead prioritizes its pages to a description of Suzanna’s experience and the architectural gems that are all over. I found this to be unfortunate, as to me it is the people that define a culture and not the buildings in which they live. Furthermore, this shortcoming in Suzanna Clarke’s writing diminishes her authority as a writer, and instead establishes her moreso as a very thorough and motivated tourist. Now, while it is clear that she is not this, her writing does not reflect the true extent to which she immersed herself in the lives of the people she seemed to have interacted with. For these reasons, I would not rate the book nearly as highly as I would the actual experiences Suzanna went through. That being said, because the book dedicated such an extensive amount of space to providing a clear and vibrant picture of Fez, it did an excellent job of instilling a fascination in the romance offered by classical architecture and the beauty of not only the architecture but also the entire environment that exists within the Madina. Overall, Clarke’s A House in Fez creates a gripping picture of what life is like for a foreigner in Morocco, especially if that person is trying to be more than just a foreigner, but rather a functioning and capable part of Moroccan society. Such a role is exactly what I would like to leave Morocco having accomplished becoming. For this reason, A House in Fez was the perfect piece of reading material for me to gain an introduction to Moroccan culture, especially now that I will be living in the Madina as well. While I’m sure Clarke could have done more to illuminate the people she interacted with, she gave me everything I could need before setting out to discover the Madina’s people for myself. In fact, upon further reflection, such an apparent shortcoming may in fact be a very deliberate and effective tool of making the book more accessible to her audience, as it is a story of the house and the city more than a story of Clarke or the select people she met. As such, the city is open to all who are daring enough to take the first step and passionate enough to take the second.