When Suzanna Clarke, current arts editor of the Brisbane Courier, and her husband Sandy McCutcheon, formerly of ABC Radio National, first travelled to Morocco in 2002, little did they think they would end up buying and painstakingly restoring a house there. The idea was preposterously 19th century, as one of their friends dismissively commented, and their lives were well and truly based in Brisbane, not in the Maghreb. But the medieval medina in Fez, Morocco’s most historically important city, worked its magic on them and soon they were the proud owners of a 300-year-old, architecturally significant riad(traditional courtyard house). This book tells the story of their painstaking restoration of the house, and of Suzanna and Sandy’s growing understanding of the Moroccan people and their wonderfully rich culture.