Restoration Dramas: home refurbishment in historic Fès (Morocco), 2000–2009

In the early 2000s, a small number of foreigners began to restore courtyard houses in the old city of Fès (Morocco), generally held to be one of the world's best-preserved Islamic cities. By the late 2000s, foreign restored houses, some operating as guesthouses in the global commodified travel market, could be found alongside multi-occupancy dwellings and houses functioning as cheap workshop space in many areas of the city. Drawing on the authors’ long familiarity with processes of change in the built fabric of North African médinas, ethnographic work provides the bulk of the data for this article. Substantive detail of the practices of transforming domestic locales provides insights into the meeting of different forms of knowledge, the ‘know-how’ of the craftsmen and the ‘know-what’ of the conservation-minded clients. The paradoxes of house restoration by incomers from the global North in Fès are thus revealed. The physical refurbishment of old homes is seen as constructing new meanings in and for a very old place, involving material process and cross-cultural communication. To be successful, immigrant restorers, eventually catering to the global tourist economy, need to learn ‘how-to’ and work within an ethics of communication at a local level.