The Caliph's House

by Tahir Shah

THERE WAS A SADNESS IN THE STILLNESS OF DUSK.

The backstreet café in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger.

I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.

and sunshine – unending, glorious sunshine.

Casablanca’s evening rush of traffic rivals any in its ferocity.

Morocco had brought colour to my sanitized English childhood, which was more usually cloaked in itchy grey flannel shirts and corduroy shorts, acted out beneath an overcast sky.

The kingdom had always been a place of escape, a place of astonishing intensity but, beyond all else, a place with a soul.

With a young family of my own, I regarded it as my duty, my responsibility, to pass on the same gift to my child...

We may yearn for rustic detail and old-world charm, but those who have it set their minds on vinyl wallpaper, fitted carpets and all mod cons.

The house had a presence, a sense of faded grandeur. Like an old society belle, it was run down and wrinkled, but it had lived.

But in the Arab world there is no pursuit more honourable for a man than sitting, hour after hour, staring out at the street, sucking down tar-like café noir.

‘But what can we learn here, Baba?’ My father would pause, knock back his tea and slam the empty glass down on the table. ‘My children,’ he would say, ‘it is here that you can learn why the heart beats as it does.’

Wandering the streets, it seemed to me that the vibrancy of Tangier had been replaced with gloom, a melancholy, as if the party had moved on elsewhere.

The value of the dwelling is in the dweller.

We stood out on the deck in the breeze, watching as Africa slipped away. The minarets of Tangier grew smaller and smaller, until they were no more than specks on the horizon. Gulls swooped over the stern, where a dozen crates of fish were packed in ice. We strolled along the guard rail to the bow, where we found Europe approaching.

The past is best left to itself. I find that when it touches the present, it vanishes like a forgotten dream.’

The greatest moment of a long journey, she declared, is the one when you arrive home.

In Morocco, ‘fresh meat’ refers to an animal that is still alive. It is quite normal to choose your chicken from a cage, before its head is whacked off in front of you. The same goes for sheep. Part of the buying process is to watch its throat being slit.

We pushed forward into the fray, wondering how we would ever escape.

Live in a new country and you find yourself making compromises. Make them, and you are rewarded many times over.