Day332: Merzouga “Fortress”
I walked around the ordinary houses in Merzouga, a town located right beside the Sahara Desert. Many of them are finished with earthen walls, and compared to the brightly painted or tile-covered houses I had seen in Morocco’s larger cities, their harmony with the landscape felt especially beautiful. The earthen walls are made much like traditional construction in Japan, mixing soil with straw. Today, the structural base is often built with bricks, but I was able to see fences woven in a way reminiscent of takekomai, the traditional Japanese bamboo lath technique. In rainy Japan, earthen walls tend to weather easily, so they are often coated with an additional finish except in barns or storehouses. Here, however, rainfall is scarce, and the exposed earth seems both sufficient and appropriate. Houses wrapped in the soil of the very land they stand on blend naturally into the surrounding scenery.
In this place, building a house begins by enclosing the land with walls and fences. As a result, passages are formed between neighboring homes, and even the spaces between houses feel like managed, intentional environments. When many of these structures gather together, they appear almost as a single continuous building — like a fortress — and I found that incredibly compelling.
サハラ砂漠のすぐそばにあるメルズーガの街の普通の家も見て回った。多くは土壁で仕上げられており、これまで見てきたモロッコの都会のさまざまな色のペンキやタイルで彩られた家よりも風景と調和した光景がとても美しかった。土壁はかつての日本と同じように土と草を混ぜて塗られたもの。下地は今はレンガで作ってあったが、塀はかつての日本で言う竹小舞のように編まれていたのを見ることができた。雨の多い日本だと風化してしまうため、納屋とか以外は土壁の上に仕上げを塗ることが多いが、ここは雨が少なくそのままで必要十分なのだろう。その場所の土で包まれた家は風景によく馴染む。
ここでの家づくりはまず壁や塀で土地を囲うところから始まる。そうすると家と家の間に囲われた通路ができ、家と家の間の道も管理された空間のようになる。それが集まっているところを見ると、全て同じ建物のように見え、要塞のようでとても格好よかった。
