Tahir Shah's Blog, page 10

Raining cats, rats and dogs

In Mumbai...
Where I can't remember the monsoon fiercer than it was yesterday. Torrents of water cascading down from the graphite sky... waterfalls ripping through the streets, pedestrians wading, pyedogs huddled miserably in doorways, traffic even more gridlock than ever.
How wonderful though to be back in this mesmerising city, one that I have watch change through twists and turns over two decades and more. The place is booming, although every layer of humanity can be found on each street corner. India defies description and sings to the imagination in ways that most countries could only hope to do.
This morning flying up to Delhi with Rachana and the kids... and planning to visit the Taj Mahal. In all the dozens of times I've visited India, I've never been there. In a strange way it all seemed too easy.
Overwhelmed with a childlike excitement.
TS

Qur'an Burning..?

I'd not usually blog about anything religious, but this caught my eye and I am so amazed and shocked that I thought it deserves attention here. A Florida church group is holding a burning... a book burning. But no ordinary book, but the Qur'an.
It's all over the web, but here's the first link I found:
http://www.secularnewsdaily.com/2010/07/23/florida-church-to-hold-quran-burning/


TS

The Observer

There's a piece about me and Dar Khalifa in today's Observer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/jul/25/travel-casablanca-tahir-shah?page=all

TS

Swiss Train

Two weeks ago I was aboard the fabulous Glacier Express, travelling through the Swiss Alps. I had been asked to write about the experience by Lonely Planet Magazine, and was travelling in the back of the train in the luxury of first class. This morning I heard that the same train went off the rails on a viaduct yesterday. A woman in first class was killed and dozens more injured. As for my article on the virtues of the Swiss transport system... well, I guess it will never now see the light of day. A sad day for Swiss trains and the extraordinary Glacier Express.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10744282

TS

Five Years On

Five years ago at this moment I was crouched in the corner of a solitary confinement cell at a torture jail in northern Pakistan. My Swedish film crew from Caravan Film and I were arrested a week after the London bombings of July 2005, and held without charge for sixteen days, and nights. In the half-decade that has elapsed since our release, I have found myself turning the experience over and over, looking at it in varying ways, and drawing a myriad of conclusions. It was clear that the system had seized us without quite knowing why and that once they had us, they didn't know how get rid of us. The most obvious thing --just open the cell doors and let us walk out -- never appeared to have occurred to them. My conclusions these days revolve less about our actual experience, and more about what it says in terms of the situation that people like me (one foot in the East and the other in the West) now find themselves in the Post 9/11 world. We can't help but be affected, and be regarded with suspicion -- by both sides. It's a ridiculous position, and one which I might find myself drawing amusement from were the stakes not so high. The thing which still astonishes me is the apparent lack of cultural understanding between the Occidental governments and those of countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan. Certainly, they may have a linguistic commonality, but they both appear (to me, anyway) to have almost no intellectual connection. My experience of this has been first hand, most shockingly when interrogated blindfold and manacled night after night in a Pakistani torture room... and then when received at Heathrow by the British secret services. I'm not trying to make a big point here other than to say that we would all do better to learn much more of each other's culture. Reading each other's literature, study each other's histories, understanding dissimilar etiquettes and so on. Beyond that, I write this in anniversary of those terrifying nights, waiting for the jangling of the keys and for the blindfolds, the signal that I was about to be led back down the long corridor to the torture room.

TS

Pictures of Dar Khalifa

Here are some pictures taken this last week by an American photographer, Nadia Diboun.
http://www.pixagogo.com/8619904235
You can visit her blog, here:
http://www.nadiadiboun.com/


TS

Casablanca

I have an article in CNN Traveller...
http://www.cnntraveller.com/2010/07/1...

TS