Shah - The Caliphs house : a year in Casablanca

Contents

This book is for Ariane and Timur,
and for their lives at the Caliphs House

Look into the eyes of a Jinn, and
Stare into the depths of your own soul.

MOROCCAN PROVERB

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could not submit this book without thanking three women:

Elisabeth, your generosity was greater than you can know.

Emma, the sound of my voice hinted at my gratitude.

Rachana, with much love and thanks for staring severe uncertainty in the face.

Tahir Shah
Dar Khalifa, Casablanca

ONE

Two reeds drink from the same stream.
One is hollow, the other is sugarcane.

MOROCCAN PROVERB

THERE WAS A SADNESS IN THE stillness of dusk. The caf was packed with long-faced men in robes sipping black coffee, smoking dark tobacco. A waiter weaved between the tables, tray balanced on upturned fingertips, glass balanced on tray. In that moment, day became night. The sitters drew deep on their cigarettes, coughed, and stared out at the street. Some were worrying, others dreaming, or just sitting in silence. The same ritual is played out each evening across Morocco, the desert kingdom in Africas northwest, nudged up against the Atlantic shore. As the last strains of sunlight dissipated, the chatter began again, the hum of calm voices breaking gently over the traffic.

The backstreet caf in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.

My wife, Rachana, who was pregnant, had reservations from the start. These were fueled all the more when I ranted on about the need for uncertainty and for danger. She said that our little daughter required a secure home, that her childhood could do without an exotic backdrop. I raised the stakes, promising a cook, a maid, an army of nannies, and sunshineunending, glorious sunshine. Since moving from India eight years before, Rachana had hardly ever glimpsed the sun in the drab London sky. She had almost forgotten how it looked. I reminded her of what we were missingthe dazzle of yellow morning light breaking through bedroom curtains, the drone of bumblebees in honeysuckle, rich aromas wafting through narrow streets, where market stalls are a blaze of color, heaped with spicespaprika and turmeric, cinnamon, cumin and fenugreek. All this in a land where the family is still the core of life, where traditions die hard, and where children can grow up knowing the meaning of honor, pride, and respect.

I was tired of our meager existence and the paltry size of our apartment, where the warring couple next door plagued us through paper-thin walls. I wanted to escape to a house of serious dimensions, a fantasy inspired by the pages of The Arabian Nights, with arches and colonnades, towering doors fashioned from aromatic cedar, courtyards with gardens hidden inside, stables and fountains, orchards of fruit trees, and dozens and dozens of rooms.

ANYONE WHO HAS EVER tried to make a break from the damp English shores has needed a long list of reasons. I have often wondered how the pilgrims on the Mayflower ever managed to get away at all. Friends and family regard would-be escapees as crazed. Mine were no exception. At first they scoffed at my plan to move abroad, and when they realized I wasnt interested in the usual bolt-holessouthern France or Spainthey weighed in with fighting talk. They branded me as irresponsible, unfit to be a parent, a dreamer destined for failure.

The pressure to abandon my dream mounted. It became so great that I did almost back down. Then, one dreary winter morning, I passed a crowd of people on a central London street. An elderly man at the middle of the group was being wrestled to the ground by two police officers. He was dressed in business attirepressed white shirt, silk tie, and three-piece suit, with a plump red carnation pinned to his lapel. In a bizarre display of eccentricity, he had taken off his trousers and was wearing his underpants on his head. The police, who were not amused, were busy cuffing the mans hands behind his back. A young woman nearby was screaming, begging the authorities to lock the madman up. As the man was bundled into an armored police van, he turned and shouted:

Dont waste your life following others! Be individual! Live your dreams!

The steel doors slammed, the vehicle sped away, and the crowd dispersedall except for me. I stood there thinking over what I had seen, and what the supposed madman had said. He was right. Ours was a society of followers, trapped by an island mentality. I made a promise to myself right then. I would not be subdued by others expectations. I would risk everything and leave the island, dragging my family with me. Together we would search for freedom, and for a land where we could be ourselves.

CASABLANCAS EVENING RUSH OF traffic rivals any in its ferocity. But it has never been so wild as it was on the late spring day that I took possession of the Caliphs House. I had sat in the caf all afternoon, waiting for the rendezvous with the lawyer. He had told me to come to his office at eight P.M. At seven fifty-five I pressed a coin to the tabletop, left the caf, and crossed the street. I passed a glass-fronted hotel flanked by proud date palms. An empty tour bus stood outside it, a pair of donkey carts beside, each piled high with overripe fruit. A moment later I was climbing up the curved stairwell of a dilapidated Art Deco building. I rapped at an oak door on the third story. The lawyer opened it, greeted me stiffly, and led the way into his office.

There was an official-looking Arabic document on the desk. The lawyer ordered me to read it through.

I dont know Arabic, I said.

Then youd better just sign it, he replied, glancing at a gold Rolex on his wrist.

He handed me a Mont Blanc. I signed the paper as instructed. The lawyer stood up and slid a hefty iron key across the desk.

You are a very brave man, he said.

I paused for a moment to look him in the eye. He didnt flinch. I lifted the key. As I did so, I was knocked to the floor by the force of a violent explosion. The windows blew inward, shattering with spectacular energy, sending a hailstorm of glass through the office. Deafened, covered in broken glass, and confused, I struggled to my feet. My legs were shaking so badly that I had trouble standing. The impeccably dressed legal man was crouched beneath his desk, as if he had previous experience of this kind. He rose silently, dusted the glass from his shoulders, straightened his silk tie, and opened the door for me to leave.

Out on the street, people were screaming, running in all directions, fire alarms shrieking, police sirens wailing. There was blood, too. Lots of it, strewn across faces and over slashed clothing. I was too shaken to be of any use to the injured, who were now streaming from the glass-fronted hotel. As I observed them in slow motion, a small red taxi pulled up fast. The driver was calling desperately from the passenger window: