Threads of Home Around the World
I’ve been daydreaming about the house I would design for myself in a Moroccan style. I used to “design” my imaginary homes all the time while living at home, talking to my dad about his projects and playing in his studio.
I’ve stayed in two different riads this recent trip — in Essaouira and Marrakesh, and I’d previously stayed in riads while traveling to other cities in Morocco when I was teaching at the Casablanca American School in 2009–2010.
I love the way riads feel — the word oasis springs to mind, which can’t be helped in a country of so much desert and mountain, with cities that are bustling to the point of being a constant assault on all five senses.
You enter the door — often from some random side street with high walls or low archways, strong odors, stray cats, small children and young men lingering nearby — and you’re utterly transported into a haven of quiet, clean, calm.
The word riad comes from the Arabian term for garden, Arabic: رياض, ryad. The ancient Roman city of Volubilis provided a reference for the beginnings of riad architecture during the Idrisid Dynasty.
Riads are a traditional type of Moroccan house built around a central courtyard, which either has a fountain, garden, patio, or pool in the central area and is open up to the sky. The rooms are built around this central area so that open windows allow the airflow swirling in the center to come in.
The riads were inward focused, which allowed for family privacy and protection from the weather in Morocco. This inward focus was expressed with a centrally placed interior garden or courtyard, and the lack of large windows on the exterior walls of clay or mud brick.
In my experience, which is to say as a 21st century tourist, the riads are generally painted white, sometimes with blue accents and tiled floors.
Upon arrival, I’ve always been shown to their sitting area and Moroccan couch, built into the wall and wrapping around the sides of a room, and offered mint tea as a welcome.
The walls and surfaces (including the sinks, tubs, and showers) are often all built of the same material in unending curves, a smooth plaster in some color like beige, red, lavender. The ceilings are typically wood, either simple cross-beam construction or with intricate carvings.
While much of the experience living and traveling in Morocco is overwhelming and I personally stand out as unquestionably “other” — an obvious foreigner in this world with my pale skin, blue eyes, and curly blonde hair — the riad is somewhere I instantly felt at home.
This is due, in part, to the fact that Islamic architecture tends to be incredibly beautiful, especially for the upper classes (even on my budget, where I fall in this country). But the riads in particular are built to be a sanctuary, especially the tourist-centered hotels I’ve visited.
As I wandered through Marrakesh’s Maison de la Photographie, looking at images of Morocco from 1870–1950, I kept feeling small waves of relief in the space.
I’d walked from my riad to the museum, about 30 minutes through the winding streets and souks of the medina, constantly cat-called by men…
bonjour! hello! where are you from! ça va? what are you looking for? *kiss kiss* I like your ass! where are you going? are you American? I’m single! are you looking for my address? hey relax! (grabs my arm) why do you look sad? cherchez mon addresse? hey lady! please smile! *hiss* hey German girl! why do you ignore me? give me a smile!
…while trying to furtively check my phone for the blue dot to find its way across the map in spite of lacking data, locking my arm down over my purse to prevent theft (it’s worked for me twice so far in attempted muggings), watching carefully every hand that neared my personal area to ensure it wasn’t going to make contact with me or my bag.
It sounds ridiculous, perhaps, but I have the experience to know it’s not unwarranted. And it becomes absolutely exhausting so quickly. I’d almost forgotten how much energy it takes to be on high-alert at all times, how tiring it is to have so many sensory inputs.
So arriving to a riad or any other quiet, calm haven after the heightened endeavor of existing in Morocco is an utterly welcome shift in space.
This trip has made me doubly grateful for my roommate that year in Casablanca, someone to commiserate with, to laugh with (and so hard we’d almost pee ourselves) instead of losing our minds over it all. She showed me the importance of a partner to face life with — our mad Moroccan experience became an entertaining, playful game instead of a lonely slog.
Traveling alone, though, I have no one to help me reframe the world, no one to roll my eyes at and giggle with, no one to approach the shenanigans with as an adventure. Yes, I can try to do it on my own, and I can (and do) text her and other friends when I’m back on wifi for support and camaraderie. But it’s not quite the same.
So for now, I have architecture.
And what is a home besides a refuge and a place to host others? Somewhere that is serene and unbothered by the world around it, yet allows you to still look up at the sky and the stars, feel the breeze or the rain, hear the birds in the morning.
This is what a riad offers, so I began to imagine how I’d do it for myself, whenever and wherever that house would exist (as in my childhood, I still don’t have those answers).
As I continued to think about what traditional Moroccan elements I’d want to include or not, what modern features and amenities I’d like, what comforts I wanted, what use I would be serving with the spaces, I realized that the riad reminded me very much of something else: New Mexican architecture.
Growing up in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado were the vacation spots for summer and winter breaks alike. New Mexico, though a US state, has a very different feel from the rest of the country — the architecture, landscape, food, and languages present set it apart, even the smell of piñon that wafts into the car upon crossing the state line confirms I’ve reached unique territory.
My dad, an architectural designer (not architect — not certified, very strict about my terminology), did a project in New Mexico that took years between design and construction, so we spent considerable family vacation time on road trips to Taos.
His research and exposure to their architecture found its way back into our house at the time, with him creating his own version of colored stucco to use on the walls of our house — chocolate brown hallway and master bedroom, salmon pink in my sister + my bedroom, burgundy in the dining room. I helped select and design the tile patternss in my bathroom, covering the walls, shower, and sink with colorful clay spreads.
Like a riad, the houses in New Mexico (the mission style, at least) often are built around a central courtyard with tile and adobe/stucco surfaces everywhere.
The more I thought about this theoretical house of mine, the more I saw the similarities between the two styles — Moroccan and New Mexican — and it occurred to me that perhaps these architectural parallels were one of the reasons I had been able to feel at home in Morocco in the first place.
It’s ironic how often in my travels I’m able to compare places — whether it’s landscape and geography, cuisine and ingredients, architecture and style, or cultural.
At this point, I’ve traveled through North America, Europe, South America, Southeast Asia, and parts of India. Though I’ve by no means exhausted what the world has to offer, I have seen far beyond my original trappings of Fort Worth, Texas.
It’s a funny thing to realize how similar the world is, that everyone is simply trying to live the best life they can, that we typically have more in common than we realize, that symbols of home will unexpectedly turn up thousands of miles away in a culture that previously seemed undeniably foreign.
My desire to explore new places, my seemingly unquenchable curiosity, my addiction to the unknown and different, my love of travel continues to encourage me onward.
But the more I see, the more I realize that maybe I don’t need to keep going to new places only to discover the same human truths hold; the same earth underfoot; the same sky overhead.
I don’t know when I’ll create my home, or where that would even be, or whether it will resemble a Moroccan riad or New Mexican mission or modern flat.
Then again, perhaps I don’t need to, when I can find threads of home woven everywhere I go.
Katherine is a digital nomad, working remotely while she travels the world — on the road since June 2014. She’s a member of Remote Year 2 Battuta, living around the world with 75 other digital nomads from February 2016 to January 2017.
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