One of the most time-consuming (and expensive) aspects of renovating a house in the medina is clearing away all the rubble you create. It all has to be bagged up into little sacks and left on the street overnight, for a horse and cart to take away first thing in the morning.
We’ve produced hundreds of cartloads since starting our renovation…hopefully not too many to go now!!
The walls in our house are not exactly uniform, and all manner of old stones and rubble break off during the ‘grattage’ process.
But even so we were pretty surprised to find this bone set into some of the plaster. Images of mafia-style killings filled our minds, but one of the builders assured us – with an alarming level of certainty – that it comes from “a dog on the beach”. Quite how he’s able to be so specific, we’re not sure…
When your house is built onto the battlements of a walled city, you don’t really expect your walls to contain a blocked-off doorway that might at some point have ushered you straight out of the city wall.
But that’s exactly what we found on the ground floor of Dar 91, as shown in this rather grainy photo (You’re just going to have to trust us on this one…it’s pretty dark down there and we didn’t have a lighting crew with us, ok? Ed). Which suggests our house pre-dates the city wall – or that our house was built where there used to be a door into the medina (which seems unlikely).
Kind of annoying, too – could make a rather natty shortcut to the off licence…
In the ‘old days’ there was apparently a tradition of families having stashed treasure in Moroccan houses as they fled from unfriendly regimes…so the builders get very excited when they find interesting things amongst the rubble.
We’re not sure the large iron balls the builders found under the floor are worth a lot, but they’re certainly an interesting find and did get them quite excited for a few moments.
Could they be cannonballs? The ends of weightlifting bars? Any other ideas?