Tahir ShahAnmeldelser
Forfatter af The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca
Anmeldelser
Of course I might have been missing something...
It is a lot travelogue, some history, a lot of adventure, some politics, a bit of religion and, at times, very funny. Shah is a good writer and he has the kind of sense of humor that I like...somewhat inappropriate and not interested in being overly politically or religiously correct. He also like to poke fun of ridiculous people and situations and is somewhat self-deprecating.
Ethiopia is one of those countries that I know through stamp collecting. Of the African countries, Ethiopia is one of the more popular collecting areas, especially the earlier stamps which are colorful, exotic and somewhat elusive. As it turns out, it also seems to be a beautiful country, at least as described by Shah in this book. And it also turns out it is a dangerous country to live in...crime, political strife and poor living conditions are rampant in parts of the country and, my guess is if it were anyone else but Tahir Shah making this same trip, they would not have survived.
I am not going to go into the substance of the book because that is what everyone else seems to do and there is already a brief overview in the Goodreads synopsis. I will say that it had me going to Wikipedia and Google maps to look at the various sites and locations he visits in his search for King Solomon's Mines and there were times his encounters with various people along the way were genuinely odd and funny.
I don't think a non-Muslim could have made a similar trip and survived, especially in the years after this trip was made and the book was written. Shah's travels and forms of transportation are hair-raising and some of the tribesmen and situations he gets himself into are just plain dangerous.
In the end I really like the book which is why I gave it 4 stars and I especially like when I get excited about something...I wanted to learn more about Ethiopia so I used google images, maps and wikipedia to look at and learn more about the places Shah visited. It was interesting going to the State Department's webpage and looking at what they had to say about visiting various areas of the country. The border areas with Eritrea, Somalia and Kenya are places to avoid. I also did a search of current archaeological digs/sites in Ethiopia...like Kenya, many of the earliest human ancestors have been found there.
What's more, Shah is funny and I appreciated the humor and it made me smile. I have said before that many supposedly funny books leave me wondering where the humor is...not this one. Trust me, Tahir Shah had to have a good sense of humor to put up with some of the circumstances he found himself in.
> L'APPRENTI SORCIER, de Tahir Shah. — Roman passionnant qui compte l'histoire vraie de la quête de l'auteur et de son initiation au monde des "saints hommes" de l'Inde, des sâdhus, des mages et des sages, tout au long d'un voyage qui l'a conduit de Calcutta à Madras, et de Bangalore à Bombay, à la recherche du monde magique, insolite et secret, qui se dissimule derrière l'Inde moderne. Vous y apprendrez, entre autres, comment boire de l'acide, manger du verre, transformer une baguette en serpent, léviter ou encore, comment un faux gourou du Sud de l'Inde abuse ses disciples en "matérialisant " des objets. Editions de Fallois - 19 euros.
—Infos Yoga, (36), Février/Mars 2002, (p. 37)
1 
Wulfwyn907 | 1 anden anmeldelse | Jan 30, 2022 |
Wulfwyn907 | 1 anden anmeldelse | Jan 30, 2022 | 
I greatly enjoyed it, a fairly quick read. Already made my boyfriend and my mom read it. So glad to see new work from Tahir!
It's basically the story of a big home remodel, so there is not a lot of substance. There is some humor, and a light impression of Moroccan culture, but not enough of either. Unfortunately, there aren't good portraits of any of the other characters, neither in Shah's family nor the Moroccans. Peter Hessler could have done more with this material.
It ends with the exorcism of the house's djinns, on the one-year anniversary of Shah's stay in Morocco. While this might be a natural ending spot, I wanted more closure. What happens to Kamal, to the wannabe American terrorist, or the neighborhood gangster? At least tell us more about the house. Perhaps I have to read the sequel.
> One week I asked if he believed in Jinns. "Of course I do," he said without a thought. "They are all around us. Their world shapes our own."
> Fortunately, his weakened condition made it easy to take control. Unlike him, and everyone else, I was eating three meals a day and sleeping seven hours a night. By the final days of Ramadan, I felt like king of the world.
> As word of the banquet spread, more and more homeless souls arrived to eat. … The architect's face became so ferociously red that I feared he might keel over. I asked for my money. He fired off a salvo of excuses. "Our friends want to touch the paintings," Kamal said. The architect glanced at the beggars' oily fingers, the mess on the floor, and clapped his hands to his cheeks. He strode over to his desk and wrote me out a check.
> as Kamal explained, marriage to a Moroccan woman would set me on a fast track through the ocean of bureaucracy.
> As I toured the great buildings of Morocco, I found myself perplexed that they had ever been completed at all. Whenever I ran through the house ranting, the master craftsmen would grin broadly and exclaim that only Allah was complete.
> "They have asked you to have all the books translated into Arabic by an official translator." "But there are more than ten thousand books," I said. "Each one's more than two hundred pages." I did a calculation. "That's at least two million pages." "An official translator charges ten dollars a page," said Kamal.
> Two days before Eid, the poor creatures became invaluable sales tools. Buy a new washing machine and you got a ram thrown in for free; buy a used car and you got half a dozen of them. One electronics store on Boulevard Zerktouni raffled an entire flock the night before Eid, causing absolute hysteria.
1 rlsova | 30 andre anmeldelser | Oct 29, 2019 |
rlsova | 30 andre anmeldelser | Oct 29, 2019 | For Tahir Shah his dream home was, far away from London, in Morocco. A place he'd only ever vacationed a few times as a child. So after searching for the perfect place, he settled on Dar Khalifa, a dilapidated mansion, in the middle of a shantytown, by the sea in Casablanca. Along with his wife, who had just given birth to their first son, and their daughter all moved to their new "dream" home and that's where their journey truly begins.
While I found Shah's story worth the read, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Whether that's because it simply wasn't the right time for me to read this book or the fact that I found him to be, dare I say, self-indulgent in his quest to have dozens of rooms, extravagant furnishings, servants to wait on him hand and foot, a library to house over 10,000 books...
I felt particular sympathy for his wife who seemed to have to stay at home, amidst the constant "remodeling," to deal with a young daughter and a newborn baby, servants, rats, roaches, and of course the constant threat of jinns, while Tahir went out and about to relieve the stress of their new home. She even pleads with him a few times because of those very situations.
I've watched home renos on TV, many of them, even been through a couple myself, and reading about what the Shah family went through to restore Dar Khalifa was something out of a movie. Did you ever watch the 80s movie The Money Pit? Yeah like that, but in a country where everyone's goal seems to be to take what the other one has and/or abuse someone's kindness to the point of mooching off them. Maybe it was all just a huge culture shock for me and hard for me to relate because of that shock.
If nothing else, I learned a lot about Moroccan culture, customs, artistry, antiquities. The house certainly turned out beautifully.
3 stars
"With a young family of my own, I regarded it as my duty, my responsibility, to pass on the same gift to my children--a gift of cultural color. It would have been far easier to have given in and not to have made the great escape from the island's shores. But something deep inside me goaded me: a sense that if I did not seize the moment, I would regret it for the rest of my life."
"Sometimes silence with a friend is more memorable than the most animated conversation."
I won a signed copy of this novel in a Goodread's giveaway.
I really liked this novel, hence the reason I gave it 5 stars. I loved the historical setting of this novel, I thought the author's accuracy to the setting was great, giving the reader a sense of exactly how it was, and allowing us to imagine it in depth.
The novel is separated into lots of small chapters, making a very large novel a lot more manageable, with each chapter being about a different character. This also added a bit of tension to the novel as you were made to wait to continue a certain characters story.
The plot of the story was very fast paced for such a long novel, meaning it didn't seem that long at all. The plot had lots of twists and turns that I didn't see coming, they were very unexpected, and kept me captivated until the very end. This novel was a real page turner for me, I just couldn't put it down.
I also liked the diverse and large number of characters included in this novel. Normally a large cast of characters can be difficult to keep track of, but the author described each character so well that I had no problem distinguishing who the characters were. I liked how all the characters link, and all loose ends are tied up by the end of the novel, giving it a nice sense of closure.
Overall I thought this was a really great novel, even if it was so heavy I could hardly lift it! I would recommend this novel to fans of historical fiction, as the historical aspect of this book is excellent.
Got it. Opened it. Already feel engaged and would not have torn myself away to write this note had I not had to get up anyway to answer the phone. Going back to it now.
Ok, done. A couple of times I got exasperated and thought I'd probably rate it low. The author doesn't analyze or follow through with his anecdotes and episodes - it's so frustrating to get such a superficial, almost 'ugly American' tour. Maybe a sequel will help - apparently he and his family still live in Casablanca. I'd like to know if his wife is as insane as he is. Sometimes we get a glimpse of her extreme joy, sometimes of her extreme frustration. Well, they are adventurers, so ok. And I do feel as if I have a tiny bit of understanding of Moroccan cultures. And it was funny - not as self-indulgent as [a:Bill Bryson|7|Bill Bryson|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1189096502p2/7.jpg] thank goodness but still very funny. I do recommend it if you're interested, but not if you want a serious/ authentic picture of Moroccan life. I am considering looking for more by this author.
eta: forgot to say there are neat sayings opening the chapters - uncredited is one I really like - If you have much, give your wealth; if you have little, give your heart.""
Some time ago I reviewed The Last Storytellers by Richard Hamilton, a book that collects some of the tales of the last storytellers of Marrakech. Also the book about which I am writing today dives deep into the world of Moroccan storytellers.
Tahir Shah, the author of In Arabian Nights, is well equipped to undertake this journey into the heart of Morocco through its stories and storytellers. He has roots in the Orient (his family comes originally from Afghanistan), but he lived most of his life in the West (he grew up in Britain). He comes from a dynasty of storytellers himself: his father Idries Shah collected and published many books with traditional oriental tales and stories that contain a lot of the wisdom of the Sufi dervishes. Also the author's aunt, Amina Shah, to whom the book is dedicated, was a collector and master storyteller of Arabic and Oriental stories and tales.
The probably best-known book by Tahir Shah is The Caliph's House in which he describes how he settled in Casablanca with his family and bought an old house there. In Arabian Nights describes what happened after this period covered by the previous book.
It starts with a deeply disturbing and traumatic experience. When the author is preparing a documentary film he wants to make in Afghanistan, he is arrested by Pakistani police as a terror suspect and has to endure a several week long ordeal in one of the many Pakistani torture prisons, before he is finally released. What sustained him during these weeks were the stories told to him by his father when he was a child in Morocco and that he tried to recollect and repeat to himself.
After his return, the author starts to search for "his" story - based on an old Berber belief that each person has his/her own story, a story that has a special meaning for this person, and that you are only a complete person after you found that story.
Tahir Shah takes us readers on this journey which is full of interesting, frequently funny encounters and events. We meet storytellers in the most improbable disguise: from the craftsmen and guardians of the Caliph's House, to the regular guests of Cafe Mabrook, a men-only coffee shop and hideout for henpecked husbands who hide here from their Alpha females at home; from the cobbler who repairs the author's shoes, to Monsieur Benito, an old Italian gentleman who owns the first edition of Richard Burton's Arabian Nights; from Mohamed Mrabet, the famous Moroccan storyteller, to a guardian in a mental hospital; from a Tuareg guide to Sufi masters: we get to know a great richness of stories - stories that are never only meant to entertain people but that have usually many layers below the surface, and the deeper the layer we reach, the deeper the meaning of the story. The author is taking us to the Atlas mountain and to Chefchaouen, to the Sahara desert and of course to Marrakech, the capital of storytellers, and to Fès, the dark heart of Morocco.
This book is not only a book about storytelling. It is also a travel book of course. But it is also a book about friendship and the high value it has in the traditional Moroccan society. When Dr Mehdi, a retired surgeon and one of the regulars in Cafe Mabrook with whom Shah makes friends, is asking the author for a favor, Shah agrees to do him the favor without asking (that's a big difference to the Western world where everybody would first ask about what kind of favor it is - thus diminishing the friendship in the eyes of a Moroccan). Dr Mehdi is asking him to bring him some special salt from the Sahara desert that is needed for a wedding. It will be a journey that will have a deep impact on the author. And the journey has a surprising end that is also a lesson in friendship:
'Is there enough salt for the wedding?' - The surgeon took a deep breath. 'There is no wedding,' he said. - 'What?' - 'The favor I asked you was less a favor to me and more a favor to yourself.' - 'I don't understand.' - 'Think of the things you have seen, the people you have met and the stories you have heard,' he said, emptying the bag of salt on to the path. 'You are a different man than you were seven days ago.'
Another thing I really like about the book is the author's attitude to Moroccans in general and to the poor people in particular. He is always truly respectful and willing to learn from them and to understand their way of thinking. The bidonville, the shantytown that borders the Caliph's House, may be a mess. But good people are living there with their hearts in the right place.
This is one of the most delightful books I have been reading since a long time. But be careful, dear reader, this book might ignite a life-long passion for Morocco in you. After reading this book, you will almost for sure think about your (next) journey to this country that is so full of wonderful stories. Tahir Shah is opening our eyes, ears and hearts for these stories and for Morocco.
1 Mytwostotinki | 7 andre anmeldelser | Mar 19, 2016 |
Mytwostotinki | 7 andre anmeldelser | Mar 19, 2016 | I actually began reading this book several years ago & put it down as I didn't have the interest to finish it, but I guess "Things Change"....
In 2004, Tahir Shah, purchased a house in Casablanca, Morocco known as Dar Khalifa. It was once owned by wealthy people but had fallen into disrepair and it had the distinction of being on the border of the slums.....
Upon arriving Shah & his family came upon the "guardians" of Dar Khalifa, who of course were more than reluctant to accept the family & the changes they proposed to make to the the house & property, lest they displease Qandisha, the resident Jinn (who was eventually "exorcised").
Not one to be discouraged, Shah went ahead with the onerous project, meeting & dealing w/ more than one "difficult" party.... In the process he did meet a few friends of his grandfather's and made many new friends as well......
It amazed me, that a man of well being, who himself was from Afghanistan, allowed himself to be so cowed by the people who worked for him!
But it was an interesting book, well written and rather detailed towards the end describing the interior construction of the house.
Some time ago I reviewed The Last Storytellers by Richard Hamilton, a book that collects some of the tales of the last storytellers of Marrakech. Also the book about which I am writing today dives deep into the world of Moroccan storytellers.
Tahir Shah, the author of In Arabian Nights, is well equipped to undertake this journey into the heart of Morocco through its stories and storytellers. He has roots in the Orient (his family comes originally from Afghanistan), but he lived most of his life in the West (he grew up in Britain). He comes from a dynasty of storytellers himself: his father Idries Shah collected and published many books with traditional oriental tales and stories that contain a lot of the wisdom of the Sufi dervishes. Also the author's aunt, Amina Shah, to whom the book is dedicated, was a collector and master storyteller of Arabic and Oriental stories and tales.
The probably best-known book by Tahir Shah is The Caliph's House in which he describes how he settled in Casablanca with his family and bought an old house there. In Arabian Nights describes what happened after this period covered by the previous book.
It starts with a deeply disturbing and traumatic experience. When the author is preparing a documentary film he wants to make in Afghanistan, he is arrested by Pakistani police as a terror suspect and has to endure a several week long ordeal in one of the many Pakistani torture prisons, before he is finally released. What sustained him during these weeks were the stories told to him by his father when he was a child in Morocco and that he tried to recollect and repeat to himself.
After his return, the author starts to search for "his" story - based on an old Berber belief that each person has his/her own story, a story that has a special meaning for this person, and that you are only a complete person after you found that story.
Tahir Shah takes us readers on this journey which is full of interesting, frequently funny encounters and events. We meet storytellers in the most improbable disguise: from the craftsmen and guardians of the Caliph's House, to the regular guests of Cafe Mabrook, a men-only coffee shop and hideout for henpecked husbands who hide here from their Alpha females at home; from the cobbler who repairs the author's shoes, to Monsieur Benito, an old Italian gentleman who owns the first edition of Richard Burton's Arabian Nights; from Mohamed Mrabet, the famous Moroccan storyteller, to a guardian in a mental hospital; from a Tuareg guide to Sufi masters: we get to know a great richness of stories - stories that are never only meant to entertain people but that have usually many layers below the surface, and the deeper the layer we reach, the deeper the meaning of the story. The author is taking us to the Atlas mountain and to Chefchaouen, to the Sahara desert and of course to Marrakech, the capital of storytellers, and to Fès, the dark heart of Morocco.
This book is not only a book about storytelling. It is also a travel book of course. But it is also a book about friendship and the high value it has in the traditional Moroccan society. When Dr Mehdi, a retired surgeon and one of the regulars in Cafe Mabrook with whom Shah makes friends, is asking the author for a favor, Shah agrees to do him the favor without asking (that's a big difference to the Western world where everybody would first ask about what kind of favor it is - thus diminishing the friendship in the eyes of a Moroccan). Dr Mehdi is asking him to bring him some special salt from the Sahara desert that is needed for a wedding. It will be a journey that will have a deep impact on the author. And the journey has a surprising end that is also a lesson in friendship:
'Is there enough salt for the wedding?' - The surgeon took a deep breath. 'There is no wedding,' he said. - 'What?' - 'The favor I asked you was less a favor to me and more a favor to yourself.' - 'I don't understand.' - 'Think of the things you have seen, the people you have met and the stories you have heard,' he said, emptying the bag of salt on to the path. 'You are a different man than you were seven days ago.'
Another thing I really like about the book is the author's attitude to Moroccans in general and to the poor people in particular. He is always truly respectful and willing to learn from them and to understand their way of thinking. The bidonville, the shantytown that borders the Caliph's House, may be a mess. But good people are living there with their hearts in the right place.
This is one of the most delightful books I have been reading since a long time. But be careful, dear reader, this book might ignite a life-long passion for Morocco in you. After reading this book, you will almost for sure think about your (next) journey to this country that is so full of wonderful stories. Tahir Shah is opening our eyes, ears and hearts for these stories and for Morocco.
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So why four stars? Because I could not put this book down. Completely engrossing.