Working at a Moroccan Hostel

(InnerSelf Enabled🎭) Dar Zitoun is a crooked four-storey riad hidden down an alley in the Marrakech medina, a backpacker hostel with an orange tree in the courtyard, twenty-four beds and a rooftop that looks out over a thousand other rooftops to the snow on the Atlas. The roof is your job now: the mint tea, the cushions, the sunset crowd, the lost travellers, the music on Friday nights. Downstairs the Alaoui family runs everything else, loudly, with love, and nobody agrees on anything. Kenza keeps the place afloat. Her sister Ghita paints the walls. Siham cooks tagines that make grown men cry. A Dutch girl keeps staying one more week. A henna artist in the great square has decided you are interesting. And Ramadan is coming, when the whole medina fasts by day and feasts on the rooftops at night. A warm, noisy slice of life in the red city: haggling, getting lost, mint tea, call to prayer, a trip into the Sahara, and people worth staying for.