The Booze Factor

The wedding really highlighted for me just how different our cultures are in terms of alcohol.

The whole of the medina is actually a dry-zone, with no alcohol available to buy except in hotels for tourists. To buy bottles of wine, beer or spirits for your home, you have to travel to the new town or one of the big supermarkets on the outskirts of the city.

Rather than finding this a problem though, Vincent and I have actually enjoyed not having alcohol readily available on our doorstep. Our normal habit was to have a gin or vodka in the evening before dinner, and then a bottle of wine with our meal. As well as being fattening and expensive, we’ve realised this was probably quite unhealthy but it was our habit nonetheless. However, since moving here (apart from the Christmas and New Year’s seasonal celebrations) we’ve really cut down on our drinking and definitely feel better for it.

We attended a party last year where half the people were young Moroccans, and half westerners. One half were drinking, the other were not, but all had an equally good time – I bet only half of them felt good in the morning though. It was interesting to think about how we feel like we have to drink in order to enjoy ourselves.

And so much of our socialising revolves around alcohol! Whether it’s bars, pubs, clubs or restaurants, all these places are centred on drinking. What would we do otherwise? Where would we go?

I’m not knocking our culture at all, and those who know me know I love a drink, but living here has just made me think about it for the first time and question our dependence on alcohol as a social tool. We still have bottles of gin, vodka and wine in the kitchen and serve them when our friends come for dinner, but I’m now consciously deciding not to drink every day.

Another part of this issue is our restaurant. A major part of our concept (and future revenue) is built around having a decent wine-list but at the moment there are no stand-alone restaurants in the medina with an alcohol license. There are a few places that do, but they’re all part of hotels or guesthouses. The only bars are just outside the medina walls or in the new town. Part of the reason for this is that you’re not supposed to serve alcohol within 50m of a mosque. Come to the medina and you’ll realise that there are so many mosques there is nowhere that’s outside their range! I’ve heard that some enterprising official has now knocked off the zero, bringing the range to 5m. Anyway, an alcohol license is crucial to our business as we don’t have revenue from renting rooms and the profits from just serving food are slim. Much of our discussions in these past months have been about just how difficult getting the fabled license will be. Some say easy, others say it will be our biggest hurdle. Either way, we are pioneers on this quest and if we get it we’ll be the first ones to break the mould.

Our approach will have to be carefully considered, but the argument is that our customers will mostly be tourists or expats so therefore we won’t be corrupting the locals with evil liquor. As Fes is trying to attract more tourists and compete with Marrakesh, we need more European style establishments to cater for their tastes. A common complaint from visitors is that there’s nowhere to go out in the medina at night. With the government’s current drive to promote tourism as a growth industry and the King’s interest in developing Fes, we hope to use these arguments to our advantage.

After hearing all the nay-saying you can imagine our surprise when we received a positive endorsement of the idea from our local Caid. We haven’t quite figured out the levels of administration yet, but each area of the medina has a Caid, who then reports to the Mokkadam, who reports to the Pasha – I think. One of the French residents here, upon hearing of our alcohol license plan advised us to get in touch with our Caid immediately, as he is the one who approves or rejects such things in the neighbourhood. This we did, and he arranged to meet us at our house. After showing him around and discussing our plans for converting the house into a restaurant we warily broached the subject of applying for an alcohol license to find out if he was open to the idea. Expecting some resistance, we were delighted when he said “you MUST have an alcohol license, there is no question!”.

Having him on side is big plus, it now just remains to be seen how much it will cost us to have his official support when it comes down to it.

However the whole thing has made me reflect on our cultural impact here. Part of the reason we moved here was the unique opportunity to live amongst people who’s day-to-day lives have remained unchanged for centuries. While the new town is modern, the medina is like a living, breathing piece of history and we want to contribute to its preservation by restoring one small piece of it – our house. To be able to do that and continue living here though, we need to create a profitable business. And that business will in turn create employment for the locals directly by giving them jobs, and indirectly by attracting more tourists through providing the European-style service that they want.

But at what cost? I know modernisation is inevitable but what makes Fes unique – even compared with Marrakesh – is that they still have an authentic-feeling medina. This is one of Fes’s biggest draw-cards. And the quest for the tourist dollar may end up undermining that uniqueness. The development here will have to be very carefully managed to avoid that outcome. And sure, a handful of restaurants serving wine with dinner may not change the medina too much. But I just don’t want to be the thin end of a wedge that unintentionally destroys what we’re all trying to preserve.

On the other hand, someone else will eventually do it if we don’t. And perhaps the only solution is to be as culturally-aware and sensitive as possible while bringing about the inevitable change. Hopefully we’re equipped to do that.