Onions cooking slowly in olive oil. A tagine on low heat, lid on, steam coming out in a thin line under the cone. The window is open. The courtyard is warm today.
A cat on the kitchen step. The radio is on — Moroccan station, mostly music, occasionally news that nobody listens to.
Whatever is in the tagine won't be ready for another hour. That's fine. Nothing else is happening.
The Ramadan cookie. Flower-shaped, fried, dipped in hot honey and sprinkled with sesame seeds. The dough has orange blossom water, anise, cinnamon, saffron — it smells like a perfume shop.
Making them at home is an all-day project. Most people buy them. The best ones come from the stalls that only appear during Ramadan — they set up, sell for a month, and disappear.
They go with harira. The sweetness against the savoury soup is the whole point.
Bare feet, cold tiles. No fountain yet. Just the birds and the muezzin and then quiet. The courtyard is still cool — something about the walls, the fountain basin.
Yunnan black tea in the chipped cup. Not mint tea. Mint tea is later.
The zouak on the ceiling has gone pink where the reds faded. The blues are still gorgeous. At this hour, everything looks right.
Half seven — fountain on, kettle on, footsteps on the stairs.
The hour before iftar. The medina at its quietest. The kitchen is done — harira, dates, chebakia, eggs, bread. Same table every night for a month. The souks are empty. The cats are in charge.
The cannon goes off from the Koutoubia and then — the spoons. Hundreds of them, metal on ceramic, all at once. Doors open. Children run. The whole derb smells like harira for about thirty seconds.
From the rooftop, the sound carries far.
Nothing prepares for the silence. Not the kind of silence that means no noise — the kind that means no reference point. No walls, no ceiling, no echo. Just sand and sky and the line where they meet.
The colour changes every hour. Pink at dawn, white at noon, gold in the afternoon, red at sunset. The sand itself is finer than flour.
At night the stars are so dense they look fake. The Milky Way is a thick stripe across the sky, not a faint suggestion of one. No light pollution for hundreds of kilometres.
The wind shapes the dunes overnight. What was there yesterday is different today.
The smoke hits first. A hundred grills going at once, the fat from the lamb and the merguez hitting the coals, and the smoke rises into the lights. Each stall has a number. The men call out.
Underneath the smoke — harira, fried fish, snails, sheep heads, mixed grills, fresh bread. The noise is enormous. The lights are harsh and beautiful. Steam everywhere.
The tourists sit at the stalls. The locals stand around the edges with small bowls of soup. The cats work the perimeter.
From the rooftops of the cafés above, the whole square looks like it's on fire.
The Horse in the Chinese zodiac — fire energy, restlessness, a need to move. Not the steady horse that pulls a cart. The wild one. The one that runs because standing still feels wrong.
In the cycle of elements, this year's Horse carries wood — growth, expansion, roots pushing through soil. Wood feeds fire. Everything accelerates.
The Horse doesn't plan. The Horse moves and the plan reveals itself. The direction becomes clear in the running, not before.
The qualities associated with it: courage, independence, impatience, a terrible poker face. Every emotion visible. No talent for pretending.
After iftar the medina comes back to life. The streets fill again. The sweet stalls appear — tables piled with chebakia and briwat and sellou and things that only exist during this month.
The energy is different from any other night. There's a generosity in the air — plates of food passed between houses, the neighbours sending over things without being asked.
The mosques are full. The sound of prayer carries through the open windows and mixes with the street noise and the television sets and the children still running in the alleys at midnight.
The city doesn't sleep during Ramadan. It just shifts its schedule.
Notes from the house