A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco
Testament.
    When I returned to the hotel Sandy, through his sniffles, was still determined to be enthusiastic. ‘The house is wonderful,’ he said. ‘It’s a real find. Everything will be all right, you’ll see.’
    I decamped and went for a coffee with David, who didn’t make things easier by pointing out that the riad was a significant piece of architecture and definitely worth saving. Eventually, bowing to the inevitable, I agreed to buy it, still harbouring considerable misgivings.
    A couple of days later, we were ready to confirm the purchase. Sandy, rarely sick, had to struggle to get out of bed. He had an extremely high temperature and trouble standing. With the aid of medication, Nabil and I propped him upright long enough to get him into a taxi to the bank, to arrange our initial payment of fifty per cent of the price.
    In Australia this would have taken all of ten minutes, but in Fez it was two complicated and frustrating hours before all the formalities were completed. The charming young bank executive was so helpful that every time a new person came through the door he would stop working on our account and switch his attention to them. It took him more than an hour to fill out our one-page form. 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.
    Like many people in the Medina, the vendors of the house had no bank account. Our attempts to procure a bank draft which could be cashed over the counter failed when the bank told us it needed to be made out to a specific name. We rang Larbi, who said he had no idea what the vendors were actually called.
    ‘So what do we do?’ I asked, wondering why he was getting such a healthy commission when he didn’t even know this most basic of facts.
    ‘You should get the money in cash,’ he said.
    After further delays, we were presented with a huge pile of money. We had nothing to put it in, and the bank couldn’t produce a single plastic bag, so the three of us stuffed our pockets with wads of notes and waddled out looking as though we’d done a heist.
    Back at the house, the elderly vendors were waiting in the
massreiya
with the scribe and his assistant. The old man sat cross-legged on the floor, dressed in a dark brown djellaba, the milky disks of his sightless eyes reflecting the light from the window. The bearded scribe was shouting alarmingly into his ear and gesticulating with a roll of parchment that resembled one of the Dead Sea scrolls. The old man’s wife looked worried.
    ‘What are they saying?’ I fretted to Sandy. In the wee small hours I had gone over my doubts about the wisdom of the venture, but now I just wanted it to happen.
    ‘No idea,’ he shrugged, struggling to focus through his feverish haze.
    Just when we needed him, Nabil had disappeared with Larbi to have a look at the house, so we could only guess, and wait.
    Down in the tiled courtyard, two sheep waited their fate at
Eid al-Kbir
, the Feast of the Sacrifice, in three days’ time. Callously I hoped that their blood wouldn’t stain our tiles. In the orange tree just outside the window, small birds hopped about, chirping in the cool winter sunshine.
    Nabil returned. The scribe was still shouting at the old man. ‘Can you find out what the problem is?’ I urged.
    He listened for a moment and then shrugged. ‘He’s just telling him he needs to pay his back taxes before the sale can go through.’
    That sounded harmless enough. I breathed a sigh of relief. At this point I would have paid the taxes for him.
    Finally the scribe began to read a description of the property, which might have been a verse or two of
A Thousand and One Nights
for all our knowledge of Darija. Nabil didn’t translate, but simply inclined his head. When the scribe had finished intoning there was a pause, and he turned his gaze expectantly to us.
    ‘Please tell the owner,’ I told Nabil firmly, ‘that
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