Winter

It’s hard to believe winter has only just begun. Here in Fes, it feels like it’s been winter for months. Today, as usual, it is cold and rainy. I am alone in my 10 room, drafty house. The tourists have gone and Hassan in traveling with a group from Peru. His family is away as well, having piled into the eldest daughter’s van to deliver daughter number two and her family to Marrakech and from there they will fly home to London.

I am enjoying my solitude however. I move from room to room, watching the play of light from the well in the center of the house filtering onto the tiles and listening to the rain tap on the plastic. Like everyone else, I have found that plastic is the ultimate solution to keeping rain from coming through the skylight above.

A pile of laundry awaits the return of the sun … most people here do not have a clothes drier. We depend on the sun to dry our wet linens and clothes. On those rare days when the sun does come out, it seems every woman in the Medina can be found on their terrace hanging clothes and carpets in the air. On these days, the terraces are festooned with color and the steady movement of household maintenance marks the passing hours of the sun’s all too brief appearance. If you haven’t wrung enough water out of your clothes before hanging them on the line, they will not dry. Today I hand washed socks, underwear and tights. I have run out of these items and must hang them from the rafters to dry in couple of days.

Buckets. I seem to buy a lot of buckets for they are widely used here. I have a bucket to bathe from. Buckets to clean dishes and laundry, buckets to catch the rain that is leaking from the terrace floor. And women are seen carrying buckets to and from the hammam every day (but I never go to the hammam anymore … the scene is too crowded, too intense and – dare I say – too dirty for me). Then there are buckets for construction work. These inevitably end up full of dried cement or paint and crack under use. I’ve never had so many buckets in my life.


Life here is elemental. Talk about getting back to basics! Sometimes it is hard and sometimes it is soothing. Today I am soothed. For there is little to do beyond prepare for my class this evening and feed myself along the way. No house guests to look after, no demands to make an appearance at Hassan’s family house for lunch or dinner. No workers to clean up after and no one knocking at the door to ask for Hassan.

In this sociable society, I am a curiosity for I often prefer to keep to myself. And I especially don’t want to go out in this dreadful weather. “Aren’t you afraid to be alone in that house” they ask? “Why don’t you spend the night in our family house … sleep with us (all 6 or 8 or 10 of us) in this warm room…” But this is not who I am. I prefer to be alone or just with my husband when I sleep and when I awake and then ready myself for the upcoming day. Even as a young girl I remember the weekly shopping trip with my mother and my siblings. I was always hanging back, walking several paces behind them. I enjoyed the sense of being on my own. And I’ve never changed. I will never be someone who seeks constant companionship. In fact, I avoid it. I do like the company of others, but in small doses. I like to make guest appearances, kind of like the sun during this long winter season.