Why are the beds so hard?

There's a fair chance you're sleeping on wool — carded, stuffed into a cotton case, and stitched by hand, resting on a wooden banquette. No springs, no foam, no apologies. New, it's dense; after a year it settles into something a judo instructor would approve of. Households keep it civilized through the ndaf, the wool carder, who comes once a year, unpicks the whole mattress, fluffs the wool back to life with a tool like an enormous bow, and sews it up again. Maintained this way, a mattress outlives its owners' opinions of it.

The firmness has a second job. The sedari lining every Moroccan salon is seating by day and beds by night — the room converts, which is how a medina house swallows twelve relatives at Eid without anyone blinking. A mattress that moonlights as a sofa cannot afford to be soft.

Tourist riads mostly buy sprung mattresses now, so a hard bed in a renovated riad is usually a choice or a budget rather than a heritage. But if it's dense, smells faintly of lanolin, and sits on a carved wooden base — congratulations, you're sleeping the way the house always slept.