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"If you get an invitation to visit Caitlin Dowe-Sandes and her husband, Samuel, in Marrakech, leave the travel alarm at home. Thanks to the sound system of the mosque next door, the adhan, or call to prayer sung by a muezzin, reverberates through their house&amp;#039;s gleaming white rooms and the slumbering neighborhood of Sidi Ben Slimane just before dawn. But the expat Americans welcome the interruption. &amp;quot;Whoever is on morning duty has a beautiful voice,&amp;quot; Caitlin says of the melodious exhortation, one of five broadcast daily from the city&amp;#039;s dozens of minarets. &amp;quot;We lucked out on that front.&amp;quot; They got pretty lucky in real estate too. Little more than a week after moving from Los Angeles to Marrakech on a whim two years ago\u2014&amp;quot;We had never lived abroad together and realized if we just kept talking about it, we&amp;#039;d be 65 before we actually tried,&amp;quot; says Caitlin\u2014the former public-relations executive and her filmmaker husband found the perfect perch: Dar Noury, a traditional courtyard house in a decidedly nontraditional location. Rather than opening onto a bustling alley like most houses in the clay-walled medina where they live, the Dowe-Sandes residence can only be accessed by walking into a centuries-old mosque, heading down a long corridor, and opening a discreet nail-studded door adjacent to the prayer hall. Dating from around 1760, the three-bedroom, two-story house behind the door was likely constructed for &amp;quot;an imam or someone who worked for the mosque,&amp;quot; Samuel says, which helps explain the curious placement of its entrance within the house of worship.  Aside from that unexpected feature, Dar Noury (dar means house in Arabic, while Noury is the surname of a former owner) was standard medina fare when the Dowe-Sandeses found it, equipped with hole-in-the-floor toilets, high, narrow rooms, and a sunny courtyard. With the guidance of project manager Hamoud El Foukahi, the couple renovated the structure in three swift months. Samuel says, &amp;quot;It took longer to build our deck in Los Angeles!&amp;quot; Architectural authenticity was a key consideration, so the owners chose to respect and refine where others less sensitive might have cheerfully gutted. (Modern plumbing, however, was a must.) Masonry walls were resurfaced, and the ceiling of a corridor was opened to expose the picturesque cedar-and-bamboo structure behind it. The couple also preserved the old-fashioned cement tiles in the courtyard, primarily because the black-and-white motifs were as surprising as they were fortuitous. &amp;quot;We love color and pattern, but Marrakech is famous for its incessant pinks,&amp;quot; Caitlin says. &amp;quot;After a while, all you crave is white.&amp;quot; Since the paints in the local hardware stores come in either matte or high gloss, the couple hand-mixed a crisp white that has sheen but not too much shine. Smooth finishes, it turns out, are highly practical in a city known for housekeeping challenges. The dust churned up by donkey carts and speeding mopeds\u2014and the occasional sandstorm\u2014makes its way indoors with regularity, but &amp;quot;it doesn&amp;#039;t seem to cling so much to slick surfaces,&amp;quot; Caitlin explains. Not every wall in Dar Noury went snow-white, however. The master bedroom got dramatic coats of elephant-gray, the tiny dining room is nail-polish-red, and a dashing black stripe snakes up the new white staircase that leads to the roof terrace. Weeks were spent trolling the Bab El Khmiss flea market for vintage furniture because the Dowe-Sandeses moved to Morocco with little more than cargo pants, laptops, and some guidebooks. (Emboldened by their intrepidness, Samuel&amp;#039;s sister, Lulu Sandes, moved here last summer to teach at the American School.) Sofas would take up too much space in the narrow rooms, so they focused on slimmer seating, such as Art Deco armchairs and Saarinen look-alikes. As the couple began to intersperse these with pierced-metal lamps and painted-wood tables ordered from artisans, they found themselves yearning for creative outlets of their very own. And though they enjoyed do-it-yourself projects\u2014one of which involved fringing a mirror with quills that Samuel gingerly plucked from a porcupine carcass he bought in a souk\u2014their ambitions were loftier. &amp;quot;All these incredible craftsmen are within arm&amp;#039;s reach, so we thought if we could combine our ideas with what they do well, it could be fun,&amp;quot; Caitlin says. A year ago she and her husband launched Popham Design, a company that makes artful encaustic-cement tiles and whose name refers to the beach in Maine where they wed. The firm&amp;#039;s whimsical patterns are showcased throughout Dar Noury, from lazy squiggles on the living room floor to coral branches on a guest room wall. Like the house they ornament, the handmade tiles are a labor of love turned into a sprightly statement of personal style. As any foreign resident of the Red City will attest, the first months of expat life are all about relaxing on your terrace and sipping chilled Moroccan ros\u00E9. &amp;quot;But when you see people making things everywhere around you,&amp;quot; Caitlin notes, &amp;quot;you just have to join in.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/a3803/religious-experience-a-47581/>