The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca - Memoir of Expat Life in Morocco | Perfect for Travel Enthusiasts & Cultural Explorers

The Caliph's house is a wonderful romp through a year spent doing the mundane in the most unusual of circumstances. Tahir Shah, with the heart of a poet, peels back the layers and layers of Moroccan culture that hold his 400-year old mansion in Casablanca together. He has sought out this exotic locale partly to get away from the predictability of English life and to reconnect with his past. His grandfather, an Afghani scholar, diplomat and adventurer, had found peace in the endless North African skies of Morroco.I loved Shah's fascination with the architectural and social arts of Morrocan life. I have never been anywhere in Africa or the Middle East, but his descriptions of the intricacies of tile inlay and the black market efforts needed to acquire both the workmen and the materials glow and shimmer. In contrast to Men of Salt, a masterful work on the salt caravans of Timbuktu, the Caliph's House reveals an entirely different culture. Casablanca is an urban place infested with all manner of malevolent energies, human and divine, as opposed to a wild, open desert of Mali, where the lack of internal strength and comradely fortitude can become one's greatest enemies.Tahir Shah's writing is marvelous -- his descriptions flow lightly across the pages but with a marvelous, limpid accuracy. One moment the reader is adrift in the crowds at the souk or bazaar, but there's a girl selling chicks died pink. In another moment, an old beggar, to whom Shah offers a lift, makes off with his car. While The Caliph's House is about the trials of restoring an old dilapidated property on the edge of a shanty town, the book is really about the inner and outer rhythms that shape Morrocan life -- especially the geniis.Coming from the same Indo-European root that became "Divine" in English, the pre-Islamic word, Djinn or Jnun, meant a magical being who was capable of all kinds of mayhem but, if managed appropriately, could be tricked into providing protection and assistance. With great humor, Tahir Shah reveals himself to be a man of the industrial era who cannot "see" what his Morrocan friends and household help believe to be utterly "true" -- that his house is also the home of a very upset genii called Qandisha. It is only when he realizes that he must hire a band of exorcists that he sees that his dreams are more than a question of ownership and skill.Like a great panomaric movie, Shah's book opens a vista of dazzling romance and beguiling exoticism. I heartily agree with the other reviewers that if Shah had written more, I would have greedily read every page. Like a lovely Mediterranean meal, his story refreshes but does not weigh down the stomach. However, I would have loved to have seen his people evolve. He has dozens of fascinating challenges. There are his three house guardians -- who see it as their mission to protect him from his own house; the police and courts -- who can neither affirm nor deny that he owns his mansion; and, there are the architects and artisans -- who can only begin but never finish projects. When Shah occassionally pauses from his magnificent choreography to let his subjects speak for themselves and the motives that fill their hearts, his writing is at its best.Indeed, while Shah's pulls away a veil of mystery in Morrocan life and his family's past, he himself remains something of a mystery. Other people would have quit far sooner and other wives would have walked out. After all, who wants to live in a house with rats, roaches and locusts and only one bathroom for 11 adults? Perhaps, it is the genii of Shah's humor that says there's something more to life than projects, deadlines, and trying to control things that can't be controlled. Enjoy and wonder!