Read Online A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco by Suzanna Clarke - Free Book Online

sagging on one side spoiled my appreciation of it.
    I looked at the date on the intricate band of plasterwork bordering the ceiling: it read 1292, the Muslim calendar year for the date of the last major restoration to the house. That converted to about 1875 in the Western calendar, and if the house had stood for that long without further maintenance, surely it would for a while longer. At least until we could fix it.
    That evening, I went out to eat in the Medina, returning after dark. It felt eerie being in the riad by myself. Before going to bed, I investigated all the rooms, shining a torch into every dark corner to reassure myself I wasn’t going to get any unpleasant surprises during the night. I had made the downstairs salon my bedroom, and as I lay down I found it comforting to hear muffled voices through the walls. I fell asleep to the buzz of mosquitoes and a persistent blowfly.
    I slept lightly, waking at the fall of a leaf from the lemon tree, and again when tomcats had a territorial stoush on the terrace. In the early morning I was roused by the sound of a mournful song, and a short time later came a muezzin’s call. This went on for half an hour, joined by competing chants from other mosques. Just as they finished a cool breeze drifted in, displacing the hot and heavy night air, and I slept well for a couple of hours.
    The next time I woke it was to the sound of my mobile phone. It was Sandy, who’d tried to call on three other occasions and got a Moroccan who spoke no English. Odd, given he’d dialled the same number each time. Sandy had just spent several weeks in Sydney, filling in for another radio presenter who’d quit unexpectedly. He was back at home now, with the cats curled up on his knee. I felt a rush of love for my small family. Some men might have felt resentful and paranoid at having their partner out of sight for so long. The truth was, I hadn’t met anyone in years who came close to touching my mind and my heart the way Sandy did. Nor was I looking to.

    Buoyed by my success with the small bathroom, I decided to get started on the fountain. It was quite a few years since it had done anything but collect leaves, and the roots of the trees on either side appeared to have interfered with the water pipes.
    I fetched the old plumber and immediately ran into communication difficulties again. As with the toilet, the problem with the fountain was greater than it looked, and understanding it required a translator. The restaurateur came to the rescue once more, explaining that the plumber was at the limit of his skills, and wasn’t about to start removing the beautiful
zellij
around the fountain.
    Zellij
is like a jigsaw puzzle; the pieces are built up progressively into a pattern. You can’t simply take some out then easily repair it, and at the equivalent of thirty dollars a metre it was, in Moroccan terms, extremely expensive. The restaurateur smiled and said he would send me a real plumber, who was a good Muslim. I guessed that meant he would be respectful and wouldn’t try to cheat me.
    Unable to do anything further, I strolled to the souk and bought some luscious peaches for Khadija and her family, which cost about half Abdul’s daily wage. It was Friday and I’d been invited for lunch.
    While we ate – chicken with noodles, a tomato and onion salad, fresh fruit to follow – I asked how she and Abdul had met. He’d first glimpsed her when she drove in to park at his parking station, he told me, his unshaven face lighting up as he spoke. Somehow he’d mustered the courage to approach her, though I gathered Khadija hadn’t been too impressed with him at first. Perhaps she harboured higher aspirations – I didn’t ask. But he won her over and went to her family to ask for her hand in marriage.
    When I enquired how she’d felt about this she glanced down coyly. Her dowry of two thousand dirhams had been arranged, and they had an elaborate wedding that went on for three days and nights.