"The Caliph's House - A Year In Casablanca"

Tahir Shah is the author of "The Caliph's House - A Year In Casablanca."  It is the story of how he uprooted his family - a wife, small daughter, and newborn son to move to Casablanca from England.  Not having a lot of money he jumped at the offer to purchase "The Caliph's House" for a modest amount.  What he discovered was that the home needed alot of work, came with three guardians and lots of evil spirits.  The work to restore it took a year and his telling of how it came about makes for a great tale.  He started out thinking like an Englishman but had to learn to think like a local to accomplish anything.

Tahir's grandfather was Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, the son of an Afghan chieftain.  When he was 23, he traveled to Edinburgh to study medicine, fell in love, and married Bobo, a girl from an Edinburgh elite family when she was 17.  The marriage was not sanctioned by her family so she ran away to marry him and live abroad.  They were married more than 40 years and when she died suddenly of cancer just weeks before her 60th birthday, he was devastated.  He decided to move to Morocco because it was a country where they had never lived or traveled together.

As Tahir tells the story of restoring his new home, he also searches for information about his grandfather and the two stories make a fascinating read.  I love his storytelling and look forward to reading another of his books.  pazt