The Courtyard in March

March is the best month. I'll argue about this with anyone. The cold has left the stone but the heat hasn't arrived yet. The house sits at a temperature that no machine could reproduce — something the walls worked out over three hundred years of accommodation, a thermal intelligence baked into the mud and lime.

The orange tree is doing something extraordinary. It blooms once a year, in March, for about two weeks. The smell comes through the whole house. Guests come down to breakfast and stop in the doorway. You can see the exact moment it lands on them.

The zellige around the fountain was laid by someone who is long dead. The slightly uneven tile in the third row from the bottom is where his hand slipped. I find this enormously comforting.

A riad courtyard is not decorative. It is functional in a way that modern architecture has forgotten how to be. Open to the sky for light and rain and air. The fountain for cooling. The thick walls for everything else. In summer, the courtyard is ten degrees cooler than the medina street. In March, it is simply perfect.

People ask about the best time to visit Marrakech. They mean: when is it not too hot, not too cold, not too crowded. The answer is March. The answer has always been March. Come in March and sit in the courtyard with your tea and the orange tree doing its annual thing above the fountain, and you'll understand why I've been here for eleven years and haven't left.

The swallows come back in March too. They nest in the same spot above the courtyard door, year after year. I don't know if it's the same swallows or their children. It doesn't matter. They know the house.