One of the great joys of Fez is the feeling that it’s worn in and loved, appreciated equally by visitors as by those whose families have lived there for centuries. If there’s a downside, it’s that a great number of the buildings are in need of repair in varying degrees. The climate is largely to blame — blazing hot in summer, freezing in winter.
UNESCO regards Fez as a world heritage center and has supported the city, quite literally. Under its initiative, thousands of wooden staves have been put up to keep those buildings most in danger from falling down. Others are working to help in a more modest way.
The American-born director of the city’s Arab Language Center, David Amster, has lived in the Fez medina for more than a decade. Passionate that any renovation be completed to the same exacting standards achieved by the original craftsmen, he ploughs anything he can spare into renovating public streets of his neighborhood that are falling into disrepair. The focus is on micro-reparation, much of it aimed at correcting badly-done repairs made in the modern era. Amster’s craftsmen strip walls of their modern cement finishing, replacing them with natural render, as was traditionally used, so allowing buildings to breathe once again. They use hand-made nails and frown on the kind of uniformity that power-tools provide. The artisans tend to work at night when the streets are empty, in what is essentially guerrilla renovating. The idea of giving back to the community anonymously is appropriate of course, for anonymous charity is at the heart of the Islamic faith.
Back on Tala’a Kabira, the medina’s main street, Abdul-Lateef is crushing a mortar half-filled with dried damask roses. He coaxes his little son, Mustapha, to pay attention; after all, the boy will inherit the shop just as his father did. An American tourist pauses to photograph the front of the shop, before his wife reels over and barks for him to hurry up and get back to the group. When they have gone, Abdul-Lateef wipes a hand over his brow.
“If that man had time to spare I could give him some of this,” he says, holding up the potion he’s mixing. “It’s a special preparation that would make his wife beautiful again.”
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