Philosophy
Dyafa is the old Moroccan word for receiving someone under your roof. It still runs this house.
You are not a customer here. You are a guest. Tea when you arrive, rooms made ready by hand, and Zahra, who knows the house and the lanes around it and looks after you as she would look after family.
Rest, food, quiet. That is what we look after.
Dark rooms, thick walls, a door that closes on the city: the night is for sleeping, and the house is kept that way. Warm bread, fruit from the season, olive oil and honey, breakfast on the roof where the morning light lands first. No music piped in; birds, and the call to prayer at dusk, so that you hear your own thoughts again.
A Medina house was built to turn its back on the street and its face to the sky. Thick walls hold the cool of the night into the afternoon; the roof catches the first light and the last. Plaster a little uneven, wool that has been walked on, a painting that was never meant to match the cushions. Nothing here is perfect, and nothing is pretending.
The origin of dyafa
In the caravan towns, a traveller who knocked was taken in for three days, fed and sheltered, no questions asked. The guest was protected, and the house was honoured by having one.
Dyafa runs both ways.