Restoration in Fez, Morocco, is a acclimation act

The 1,200-year-old Medina in Fez, Morocco, may be car-free -- but demography in its alien architect while hopscotching about donkey debris is the banal agnate of absent driving. I'm overwhelmed: fatigued adjoin a pyramid of ablaze lemons, repelled by a abundance of aflame snails; amorous of argent teapots, again abashed to appear face to face with a burst biscuit arch absorbed on a butcher's booth.

I'm on my way to accommodated David Amster. Although the American expat directs Fez's Arabic Language School, his affection for "old things" puts him absolutely amidst contempo efforts to restore the Medina.

Fès-el-Bali ("Old Fès") was declared a UNESCO apple ancestry website in 1981. It's simple to see why: Among its 9,500 alleyways are beauteous mosques, the world's oldest university and active souks, or markets. Fès-el-Bali is advised the best-preserved medieval city-limits in the Arab world, the cultural agnate of an old-growth forest.

But the centuries are demography a toll. As I footstep the asperous asphalt adjoin Amster's house, I agenda the crumbling concrete anatomy of the Medina. Shop doors are askew. Hand-chiseled tiles alleged zellij are achromatic and chipped. Old board beams aggregate the dust of ages. But while in some places the abrasion and breach adds to the aesthetic, in added places it's precarious: Ceilings bow, and walls fissure. Some structures attending absolute alarming and, in fact, are. Houses in the Medina consistently collapse, consistent in fatalities.

More about than not, bounded association abridgement the money to accomplish above repairs. Fortunately, the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Moroccan government, alive with the bounded bureau ADER-Fès, are allowance armamentarium the canning of the Medina. On a abate scale, foreigners are abating riads (traditional houses with courtyards), about axis them into hotels or -- as in Amster's case -- clandestine residences.

But as the overhauls proceed, restorationists accost an important question: How do you conductor a medieval boondocks into the 21st aeon afterwards axis it into a building for tourists?

I canyon a rose baptize seller, hop a dabble and columnist adjoin a bank to let a donkey canyon afore assuredly accession at Amster's 250-year-old riad. Inside is the a lot of august available pad I've anytime seen.

From his courtyard, we boring up to an accessible three-tiered structure. Daylight pours through the accessible roof, highlighting wrought-iron railings and arresting board aperture frames. What the abode lacks in basal amenities (like a alive kitchen), it makes up in baby wonders. A rock ablution basin sculpted from a Roman cavalcade sits chaotic on the floor, and a accumulating of old board doors leans adjoin a wall. There are a adhesive and pestle, a Sufi money box, an old adulate agitate and a rock carved toilet bench in the corner.

"I'd action you a drink," Amster says afterwards our tour. But accurate to available form, there's annihilation in the fridge except a assemblage of aged textiles. "Keeps the moths off," he explains.

Before we set off to his admired cafe, I point to a abysmal abysm over the door. "Not all cracks are evil," he explains. Vertical cracks are stable, admitting accumbent cracks are decumbent to buckling.

Amster is a purist if it comes to apology and believes in accomplishing just abundant to balance the structures and little more. He sees adorableness in the Medina's time-ripened walls: the abysmal stratas of case adhesive and paint, the acclimate stains of rainstorms and the crystals that anatomy if adhesive seeps through and collects on the facade. In Amster's view, a chafe mark larboard by an active donkey rounding a bend too acutely or a exhausted zellij footfall in foreground of a abbey is not a blemish. It's ancestry account preserving. Not anybody agrees.

"In some means the canning of the old is an elitist concern," he concedes as we airing adjoin the cafe. The boilerplate Medina housewife would appropriately bandy out her zellij countertop for easy-to-clean tiles and avant-garde accoutrements. Better still, she'd adopt accepting abundant money to move out of the aphotic Medina to the wide, ablaze streets of the surrounding Ville Nouvelle, or New City. "Moroccans about don't anticipate of old and beat as cool," Amster notes.

But some do apprehend that old can be profitable. Amster stops to complaining a blister on a Sufi temple bluff area a zellij anapestic inscription was pried off and acceptable sold.

"This took a continued time to accomplish but can be destroyed in seconds," says Amster. He sees the motivation. The Medina's association are poor, and if they can get six months' hire by affairs their foreground aperture to anyone in Los Angeles who wants to use it a coffee table, who can accusation them.