Ruth Ostrow writes a regular column for The Weekend Australian Magazine. She also has a host of books to her credit in the areas of human relations, sex & relationships, financial fitness, well-being, and spirituality. She is a former financial journalist and broadcaster. Here is here article:
There’s a moment when we all feel a profound sense of envy at someone else’s success.
Talking to photographer and journalist Suzanna Clarke - who has just written a beautiful book, A House in Fez, about her experiences renovating a dilapidated house in Morocco - was just such a moment.
Suzanna did what many of us dream of doing. She went to an exotic location, found a beautiful but run-down home and bought it for the equivalent of $40,000. “Nutty,” is what people said, scratching their heads. “There’s political turmoil in the area, you never know what could happen…” Undeterred, she hired local tradespeople and began restoring the house to its former glory, painstakingly crafting it tile by tiny tile.
While she was in the middle of this scheme, Morocco was declared “the new Tuscany”, attracting the crème de la crème of European money – people wanting a “desert-change” experience far from the chilly, urban landscape.
Not interested in selling for a cool profit, Suzanna says the property will be somewhere she and her partner, writer and former broadcaster Sandy McCutcheon, can eventually spend six months of the year, getting away from the cold. They’ll holiday-let it the rest of the time.
“It’s the sort of lifestyle many people do envy,” she laughs when I express my green-eyed monster, especially since she has now geared up against the appreciated value and done the same thing with an historic apartment in the south of France. “But the thing is, anyone can do it.”
Indeed, she started with only $20,000 in the bank and has worked for decades on a wage. “Financially I had very little, no inherited money, just some savings. The greatest asset I had was the ability to think outside the box and give it a go. It’s not magic; it’s imagination and vision. Let no one reading this feel intimidated. In life you make your own luck!”
Listening to her, I got a sense of Fez being a metaphor for the dream inside us all – the one we abandon out of fear.
Suzanna’s story is testimony to what’s possible if we have the courage to follow our secret passion. It’s never too late to create our own “house in Fez”, whatever that means to each of us – be it love, a place in the sun, or a coveted career. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
The collector's edition of the book is available from Australia and is a hardback. The UK and USA editions will be in paperback with only half the number of photographs. Other editions will be published in France, India and a Korean translation will be available next year.
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
