Cities and housing

Interviewer: Your book is about sleeping on rooftops in the old town of Belqara. How common was it? Soraya: Until the 1970s, almost universal in summer. Whole families carried their mattresses up at dusk. It tends to be pictured now as a private escape, a couple alone under the stars, but that's not what it was. The roofs of the old town touched, so you were really sleeping in a second neighbourhood, where marriages were quietly negotiated and quarrels patched up across a parapet. Interviewer: I assume air conditioning put an end to it. Soraya: That's what everyone told me, but the dates don't fit. Hardly anyone could afford a unit before the eighties, and by then the roofs had already emptied. What changed first was the skyline. Once the first tall blocks went up, anyone on a traditional roof could be looked down on, and a mattress under the stars stops being restful when you suspect you're being watched. Interviewer: A hotel in the old town now sells 'rooftop nights' to tourists. Soraya: So I gather. The mattresses are lovely, and the stars are the same stars. But the guests are strangers who'll never meet again. They get the roof. What the roof was for can't be sold to them.