On a Lighter Note. . .

Just as we were finishing off a lovely dinner with friends on the terrace, our cell phone rang and we recognized a Los Angeles number: It was the bank calling us to let us know that the wire transfer had gone through! What a sigh of relief.

Of course, while our bank account in Los Angeles in now completely depleted, the money has yet to arrive in our account in Morocco. We can’t help but wonder where it is. It’s not as though a stagecoach with gold coins was loaded on a ship and is now crossing the Atlantic. At any rate, we’re confident enough it will get here that we’re ready to get started on the renovation.

A few details about the house. Dar Noury, as it is known legally, is named for the first owners of the house, but Noury also means a flash of light, akin to a paparazzi’s flashbulb or perhaps a shooting star. Whatever the exact translation, the prospect of living in a well-lit house is exciting.




It’s in a northern section of the medina called Sidi Ben Slimane, which is nearly a twenty-minute walk to the Place, and so home to more Moroccans than tourists. Ben Slimane was a prophet and the green roof of his tomb is less than a stone’s throw from our terrace-to-be. Marrakech has several nicknames, one of which is the city of Seven Men, so-called for the seven prophets who are buried here. There’s an annual pilgrimage during which people travel from one tomb to the next, and we’re ready to help Ben Slimane throw a party to put the other prophets to shame. Despite asking several people, and looking online, however, I’ve been able to find out very little about Slimane other than the fact he died in 1465 and was a sufi mystic. Perhaps we’ll learn more through osmosis as we settle in.

The house is very small and simple, lacking all the interesting architectural details that were so prevalent in Fes, but it’s classical in layout with rooms on four sides flanking a square courtyard. The courtyard, in fact, takes up so much space that while the rooms are generally over 20 feet long, they’re never wider than 8 feet. The house is nestled into a handful of others, so aside from the hallway we share with an adjoining mosque, there is no exterior wall.




We promise not to let this become a home-makeover blog, but are bowing to requests for a few more shots of the house as we found it. The photo above shows three small rooms up one set of stairs will become a bedroom, sitting room and bathroom. The shot below is a bedroom across the courtyard.