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In Arabian Nights Kindle Edition
In this entertaining and penetrating book, Tahir sets out on a bold new journey across Morocco that becomes an adventure worthy of the mythical Arabian Nights.
As he wends his way through the labyrinthine medinas of Fez and Marrakesh, traverses the Sahara sands, and tastes the hospitality of ordinary Moroccans, Tahir collects a dazzling treasury of traditional stories, gleaned from the heritage of A Thousand and One Nights. The tales, recounted by a vivid cast of characters, reveal fragments of wisdom and an oriental way of thinking that is both enthralling and fresh. A link in the chain of scholars and teachers who have passed these stories down for centuries like a baton in a relay race, Shah reaches layers of culture that most visitors hardly realize exist, and eventually discovers the story living in his own heart.
Along the way he describes the colors, characters, and the passion of Morocco, and comes to understand why it is such an enchanting land. From master masons who labor only at night to Sufi wise men who write for soap operas, and Tuareg guides afflicted by reality TV, In Arabian Nights takes us on an unforgettable journey, shining a light on facets of a society that are normally left in darkness.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBantam
- Publication dateDecember 26, 2007
- File size1899 KB
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Intensely felt…. Teeming with sorcerers, enchanted animals, jinns, and dervishes….Shah’s Moroccans and the shards of their tales create a brilliant literary mosaic.”—Booklist
"Creates moments of wonderment.... And worthy of note, especially in these times, is its illumination of a part of Arabic culture that is gracious, gentle and wise."—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A spellbinding journey from Casablanca to Fez and Marrakech…unforgettable… Highly recommended for larger armchair travel collections and for collections on the Arab world.” —Library Journal
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Be in the world, but not of the world.—Arab Proverb
The torture room was ready for use. There were harnesses for hanging the prisoners upside down, rows of sharp-edged batons, and smelling salts, used syringes filled with dark liquids and worn leather straps, tourniquets, clamps, pliers, and equipment for smashing the feet. On the floor there was a central drain, and on the walls and every surface, dried blood–plenty of it. I was manacled, hands pushed high up my back, stripped almost naked, with a military-issue blindfold tight over my face. I had been in the torture chamber every night for a week, interrogated hour after hour on why I had come to Pakistan.
All I could do was tell the truth: that I was traveling through en route from India to Afghanistan, where I was planning to make a documentary about the lost treasure of the Mughals. My film crew and I had been arrested on a residential street, and taken to the secret torture installation known by the jailers as "The Farm."
I tried to explain to the military interrogator that we were innocent of any crime. But for the military police of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, a British citizen with a Muslim name, coming overland from an enemy state–India–set off all the alarms.
Through nights of blindfolded interrogation, with the screams of other prisoners forming an ever-present backdrop to life in limbo, I answered the same questions again and again: What was the real purpose of my journey? What did I know of Al-Qaeda bases across the border in Afghanistan and even, why was I married to an Indian? It was only after the first week that the blindfolds were removed and, as my eyes adjusted to the blaring interrogation lamps, I caught my first burnt-out glimpse of the torture room.
The interrogations took place at night, although day and night were much the same at The Farm. The strip-light high on the ceiling of my cell was never turned off. I would crouch there, waiting for the sound of keys and for the thud of feet pacing over stone. That meant they were coming for me again. I would brace myself, say a prayer, and try to clear my mind. A clear mind is a calm one.
The keys would jingle once more and the bars to my cell would swing open just enough for a hand to reach through and grab me.
First the blindfold and then the manacles.
Shut out the light, and your other senses compensate. I could hear the muffled screeches of a prisoner being tortured in the parallel block and taste the dust out in the fields on my tongue.
Most of the time, I squatted in my cell, learning to be alone. Get locked up in solitary in a foreign land, with the threat of immediate execution hanging over you, a blade dangling from a thread, and you try to pass the time by forgetting where you are.
First I read the graffiti on the walls. Then I read it again, and again, until I was half-mad. Pens and paper were forbidden, but previous inmates had used their ingenuity. They had scrawled slogans in their own blood and excrement. I found myself desperate to make sense of others' madness. Then I knelt on the cement floor and slowed my breathing, even though I was so scared words could not describe the fear.
Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much that your skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath all afternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smells like cat pee, no doubt from the adrenaline. However hard you wash, it won't come off. It smothers you, as your muscles become frozen with acid and your mind paralyzed by despair.
The only hope of staying sane was to think of my life, the life that had become separated from me, and to imagine that I was stepping into it again . . . into the dream that, until so recently, had been my reality.
The white walls of my cell were a kind of silver screen on which I projected the Paradise to which I longed to return. The love for that home and all within washed out the white walls, the blood-graffiti, and the stink of fear. And the more I feared, the more I forced myself to think of my adopted Moroccan home, Dar Khalifa, the Caliph's House.
There were courtyards brimming with fountains and birdsong, and gardens in which Timur and Ariane, my little son and daughter, played with their tortoises and their kites. There was bright summer sunlight, and fruit trees, and the sound of my wife, Rachana's, voice, calling the children in to lunch. And there were lemon-colored butterflies, scarlet red hibiscus flowers, blazing bougainvillea, and the hum of bumblebees dancing through the honeysuckle.
Hour after hour I would watch my memories screened across the blank walls. I would be blinded by the colors, and glimpse in sharp detail the lives we had created for ourselves on the edge of Casablanca. With my future now in the balance, all I could do was to pray. Pray that I might be reunited with that life, a melodious routine of innocence interleaved with gentle calamity.
As the days and nights in solitary passed, I moved through the labyrinth of my memories. I set myself the task of finding every memory, every fragment of recollection.
They began with my childhood, and with the first moment I ever set foot on Moroccan soil.
The ferry had taken us from southern Spain, across the Strait of Gibraltar. It was the early seventies. Tucked up in the northwest corner of Africa, Tangier was a melange of life like none other. There were beatniks and tie-dyed hippies, drug dealers and draft dodgers, writers, poets, fugitives, and philosophers. They were all united in a swirling stew of humanity. I was only five years old, but I can remember it crystal clear, a world I could never hope to understand. It was scented with orange blossom, illuminated by sunshine so bright that I had to squint.
My father, who was from Afghanistan, had been unable to take my sisters and me to his homeland. It was too dangerous. So he brought us on frequent journeys to Morocco instead. I suppose it was a kind of Oriental logic. The two countries are remarkably similar, he would say: dramatic landscapes, mountain and desert, a tribal society steeped in history, rigid values, and a code of honor, all arranged on a canvas of vibrant cultural color.
The animated memories of those early travels were relived on the whitewashed walls of solitary, mile by mile. As I watched them, I found myself thinking about the stories my father told as the wheels beneath us turned through the dust, and how they bridged the abyss between fact and fantasy.
The interrogations in the torture room came and went, as did the jangle of keys, the plates of thin soupy daal slipped under the bars, and the nightmares. Through it all, I watched the walls, my concentration fixed on the matinees and the late night shows that slipped across them. With time, I found I could navigate through weeks and years I had almost forgotten took place, and could remember details that my eyes had never quite revealed. I revisited my first day at prep school, my first tumble from a tree-climbing childhood, and the day I almost burned down my parents' house.
But most of all, I remembered the tales my father told.
I pictured him rubbing a hand over his dark mustache and down over his chin, and the words that were the bridge into another world:
"Once upon a time . . ."
Sometimes the fear would descend over me like a veil. I would feel myself slipping into a kind of trance, numbed by the frantic debauched screams of the prisoner being worked over in the torture room. In the same way that a bird in the jaws of a predator readies itself for the end, I would push the memories out, struggle to find silence. It only came when the uncertainty and the fear reached its height. And with it came a voice. It would ease me, calm me, weep with me, and speak from inside me, not from my head, but from my heart.
In a whisper the voice guided me to my bedroom at the Caliph's House. The windows were open, the curtains swaying, and the room filled with the swish of the wind in the eucalyptus trees outside.
There is something magical about the sound, as if it spans emptiness between restraint and the furthest reaches of the mind. I listened hard, concentrating to the hum of distant waves and to the rustle of crisp eucalyptus leaves, and walked down through the house and out onto the terrace. Standing there, the ocean breeze cool on my face, I sensed the tingle of something I could not understand, and saw a fine geometric carpet laid over the lawn. I strolled down over the terrace and onto the grass, and stepped aboard it, the silk knots pressing against my bare feet. Before I knew it, we were away, floating up into the air.
We moved over the Atlantic without a sound, icy waters surging, cresting, breaking. Gradually, we gathered speed and height until I could see the curve of the earth below. We crossed deserts and mountains, oceans and endless seas. The carpet folded back its edge, protecting me from the wind.
After hours of flight, I glimpsed the outline of a city ahead. It was ink-black and sleeping, its minarets soaring up to the heavens, its domed roofs hinting at treasures within. The carpet banked to the left and descended until we were hovering over a grand central square. It was teeming with people and life, illuminated by ten thousand blazing torches, their flames licking the night.
A legion of soldiers in gilded armor was standing guard. Across from them were stallions garlanded in fine brocades, elephants fitted with howdahs, a pen of prowling tigers, and, beside it, a jewel-encrusted carousel. There were oxen roasting on enormous spits, tureens of mutton stewed in milk, platters of brazed camel meat, and great silver salvers heaped with rice and with fish.
A sea of people were feasting, entertained by jugglers and acrobats, serenaded by the sound of a thousand flutes. Nearby, on a dais crafted from solid gold, overlaid with rare carpets from Samarkand, sat the king. His bulky form was adorned in cream-colored silk, his head crowned by a voluminous turban, complete with a peacock feather pinned to the front.
At the feet of the monarch sat a delicate girl, her skin the color of ripe peaches, her eyes emerald green. Her face was partly hidden by a veil. Somehow I sensed her sadness. A platter of pilau had been put before her, but she had not touched it. Her head was low, her eyes reflecting a sorrow beyond all depth.
The magic carpet paused long enough for me to take in the scene. Then it banked up and to the right, flew back across the world over mountains and deserts, oceans and seas, and came to a gentle rest on our own lawn.
In my heart I could hear the hum of Atlantic surf, and the wind rippling through the eucalyptus trees. And in my head I could hear the sound of keys jangling, and steel-toed boots moving down the corridor, pacing over stone.
Chapter Two
Examine what is said, not him who speaks.—Moroccan proverb
On our childhood travels to Morocco, my father used to say that to understand a place you had to look beyond what the senses show you. He would tell us to stuff cotton in our nostrils, to cover our ears, and to close our eyes. Only then, he would say, could we absorb the essence of the place. For children the exercise of blocking the senses was confusing. We had a thousand questions, each one answered with another question.
At dusk one evening we arrived at Fes. As usual the family was squeezed into our old Ford station wagon, vinyl suitcases loaded on the roof, the gardener at the wheel. That evening I caught my first sight of the massive medieval city walls, impenetrable and bleak like the end of the world. There were figures moving beside them in hooded robes, carts laden with newly slaughtered sheep, and the piercing sound of a wedding party far away.
The car stopped and we all trooped out.
In the twilight my father pointed to a clutch of men, huddled on the ground outside the city's grand Imperial Gate.
"They're gamblers," said my mother.
"No, they are not," my father replied. "They are the guardians of an ancient wisdom."
I asked what he meant.
"They are the storytellers," he said.
For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than listening to its stories. He would often line up my sisters and me, and enthrall us with episodes from Alf Layla wa Layla, A Thousand and One Nights. The tales worked in a special way, he said, diverting the mind while passing on a kind of inner knowledge. Listen to the stories, he would repeat again and again, and they would act like an instruction manual to the world.
As far as he was concerned, the stories and the ability to tell them were a kind of baton to be passed from one generation to the next. He used to say that many of the tales he related had been in our family for centuries, that they were fastened to us in some way, a part of us.
He would sometimes make me uneasy, stressing the grave duty, the burden of responsibility, sitting on my shoulders. My school friends used to love stories as much as me, but we differed. From before I could walk I was reminded that these tales were magical, that they contained wisdom, and that one day I would be expected to pass them on to my own children. Deep down I never really expected the time would come to pass the baton on.
But it did.
One night as I tucked her into bed, Ariane put her arms round my neck and whispered into my ear: "Tell me a story, Baba." I froze, for the words had been mine thirty years before.
I felt under-equipped to handle the duty of teaching with stories. Ariane and Timur enjoyed listening to my small repertoire, but when I tried to explain the many layers, they said they didn't understand, or that I was boring them. I thought back to how my father recounted the tales to us, how he had passed the baton on. I pictured myself in his study with my sisters, sitting in a line on his turquoise divan. He would be perched opposite, leaning forward cupped in a grand leather chair, fingertips pressed together, sunlight streaming in through French doors behind.
Product details
- ASIN : B000W93CR2
- Publisher : Bantam; 1st edition (December 26, 2007)
- Publication date : December 26, 2007
- Language : English
- File size : 1899 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 403 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 0553384430
- Best Sellers Rank: #157,668 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #6 in Morocco Travel
- #22 in Morocco Travel Guides
- #65 in General Africa Travel Books
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Tahir Shah was born in London, and raised primarily at the family’s home, Langton House, in the English countryside – where founder of the Boy Scouts, Lord Baden Powell, was also brought up.
Along with his twin and elder sisters, Tahir was continually coaxed to regard the world around him through Oriental eyes. This included being exposed from early childhood to Eastern stories, and to the back-to-front humour of the wise fool, Nasrudin.
Having studied at a leading public school, Bryanston, Tahir took a degree in International Relations, his particular interest being in African dictatorships of the mid-1980s. His research in this area led him to travel alone through a wide number of failing African states, including Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Zaire.
After university, Tahir embarked on a plethora of widespread travels through the Indian subcontinent, Latin America, and Africa, drawing them together in his first travelogue, BEYOND THE DEVIL'S TEETH. In the years that followed, he published more than a dozen works of travel. These quests – for lost cities, treasure, Indian magic, and for the secrets of the so-called Birdmen of Peru – led to what is surely one of the most extraordinary bodies of travel work ever published.
In the early 2000s, with two small children, Tahir moved his young family from an apartment in London’s East End to a supposedly haunted mansion in the middle of a Casablanca shantytown. The tale of the adventure was published in his bestselling book, THE CALIPH'S HOUSE.
In recent years, Tahir Shah has released a cornucopia of work, embracing travel, fiction, and literary criticism. He has also made documentaries for National Geographic TV and the History Channel, and published hundreds of articles in leading magazines, newspapers, and journals. His oeuvre is regarded as exceptionally original and, as an author, he is considered as a champion of the new face of publishing.
www.tahirshah.com
www.twitter.com/humanstew
www.facebook.com/TahirShahAuthor
http://www.youtube.com/user/tahirshah999
www.pinterest.com/tahirshah
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They describe it as an excellent read before a trip to Morocco. The travelogue opens up a fascinating view of Morocco and its people. Readers appreciate the vivid descriptions and writing style that captures the authentic pace of the Moroccan people.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers enjoy the author's storytelling ability. They appreciate the book's focus on story-telling culture in the Arab and Muslim world. Readers find it engaging and an open love letter to storytelling. The book is a reminder that what we read has origins in spoken words.
"...It is a book to remind readers that what we read had origins in spoken words heard, enjoyed and valued. Does he find his story?..." Read more
"...Morocco (there are some), this book better serves as a form of cultural immersion into Morocco, namely the importance of storytelling and the..." Read more
"...The streams of his story flow merrily only to disappear beneath the sands of some trauma (or jinn); but they bubble up again and again if you wait..." Read more
"...This is also an open love letter to storytelling and a plea to not let this ancientest of ancient arts wither out...." Read more
Customers like the book's readability. They say it's an enjoyable and deep read that reads more like a daily journal with a plot that is more complex. It's one of their all-time favorite books.
"...is a glossary and list of recommended readings. It is a book for a journeyer who wishes to understand that there is more to travel than moving..." Read more
"This is an excellent book, which I devoured in less than a week and will read again and again and again...." Read more
"...A wonderful book, full of surprises, opening the beautiful world of Morrocco and its people and at the same time giving us the beauty and depth of..." Read more
"...The cast of characters he meets along the way are terrific...." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and a good read. It opens their eyes to a beautiful world of Morocco and its people. The descriptions come to life, making them want to travel there. Readers describe it as a different kind of travelogue.
"...I was pleasantly surprised to realize that this is a different kind of travelogue (if it can even be called that)...." Read more
"...That said, In Arabian Nights is in a league all its own. Its the best travelogue I've ever read because he travels as many miles inward as he does..." Read more
"...truths that form the roots and become these perceptive and very special, many- layered stories... I can't begin to describe it...." Read more
"...A wonderful book, full of surprises, opening the beautiful world of Morrocco and its people and at the same time giving us the beauty and depth of..." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's visual quality. They find the stories vivid and imaginative, painting an amazing picture of Morocco and Afghan culture. The book has many small illustrations to tease the imagination and become perceptive.
"...The book has numerous small illustrations to tease the imagination in understanding the stories...." Read more
"...unearth philosophical truths that form the roots and become these perceptive and very special, many- layered stories... I can't begin to describe..." Read more
"...and its people and at the same time giving us the beauty and depth of the Afghan culture, that of hospitality, and honor through the authors..." Read more
"...is my favorite, so far, and I think it will remain so because of the subtlety and depth of the topic: storytelling...." Read more
Customers enjoy the author's writing style. They find it easy to read and enjoyable. The author writes with honesty, expressing his questions regarding the book.
"...He writes with complete honesty, showing in his prose his many questions regarding the acts of life...." Read more
"Nicely penned, a follow up to Caliph's house - Tahir had to write something to justify his costly home, his shift from UK, and to pass his time in..." Read more
"...The stories told in this book were also much easier to read than the original Arabian Nights and I appreciated that fact very much." Read more
"...Tahir Shah writes beautiful prose and is a consummate storyteller. This book is a gem...." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's pacing. They find the story engaging and authentic, capturing the pace of Moroccan life.
"...That is quite expensive. The book is slow paced with special empasis on story telling culture of Arab and Muslim world - a mention of his..." Read more
"...settle into, but when I did, I realized how it truly captured the pace of the Moroccan people and how authentic it felt." Read more
"...And I wasn't disappointed. I read it slowly, savoring his exquisite writing like a delicious tajine..." Read more
"I read The Caliph's House and enjoyed it thouroughly. The pace of the story, the characters and the action kept me riveted; however, to say that In..." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2022The author of this book presents himself as a person raised in a world of stories, finding himself in a place of stories but seeking his own story. The reader is taken along as he travels through Morocco seeking stories, storytellers and the places they live and perform.
Along the way, this journey provides the frame in which several stories are told and lessons provided. Just when you feel it might be a travelogue, he finds a setting for a story which you happily stop and enjoy. The book has numerous small illustrations to tease the imagination in understanding the stories. There is a glossary and list of recommended readings.
It is a book for a journeyer who wishes to understand that there is more to travel than moving along a route. It is a book to remind readers that what we read had origins in spoken words heard, enjoyed and valued.
Does he find his story? Well, telling you that now would betray the art the author teaches, and what’s the fun in that?
I have already returned to this book and enjoyed parts of it again as I have told friends about it. The book is a sequel to a prior work by the author in the same location. I have not read that book but it did not seem to reduce the feeling of “completeness” of this book.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2018I picked up 'In Arabian Nights' to prepare for a trip to Morocco. I expected a typical travelogue narrative with the author traveling about the country and sharing their journeys throughout. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that this is a different kind of travelogue (if it can even be called that). Though you won't follow Shah on an assortment of trips throughout Morocco (there are some), this book better serves as a form of cultural immersion into Morocco, namely the importance of storytelling and the various (what Westerners would perceive as) superstitions embedded into the culture. Highly recommended for anyone interested in or heading to Morocco themselves.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2013In Arabian Nights is a wide-open window into another world, but only because Tahir Shah draws us into himself. He writes with complete honesty, showing in his prose his many questions regarding the acts of life. He is a storyteller, but that does not reflect in his book as a simple story, for the book is much more complicated--and simple--than that. The streams of his story flow merrily only to disappear beneath the sands of some trauma (or jinn); but they bubble up again and again if you wait for them.
He is a storyteller in search of the story in his heart. In the process of looking for that story, he sifts through the stories around him as well as the one he is living, and looks at each...weighing it...trying to know it. It is his awareness that he is participating in a story that makes the book so precious.
As a storyteller myself, I admire Tahir Shah's metacognitive frankness, his knowledge of story, and his awareness of the stories pressing against him from both within and without. As someone who has been to Marrakesh, he brought back to me the taste of the tepid water from goatskin bags...and it makes me smile. Like the stories of Joha (Nasrudin), you can read this book on a number of different levels. But if you choose to dive deep, there is much for the soul and the intellect to revel in.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2009First, if you haven't read The Caliph's House, do read that first. In Arabian Nights is the sequel and definitely should be read in the right order to fully appreciate his evolution of learning to live in Morocco. That said, In Arabian Nights is in a league all its own. Its the best travelogue I've ever read because he travels as many miles inward as he does across the country following an old Berber tradition of aiming to discover the story in his heart. The Moroccans he meets whereever he travels- the blind man who says "I have never had eyesight to hold me back" to the shoe cobbler whom he befriends to many, many more- challenge his way of thinking and being, and his curiosity, immense respect, and awe for the land, the Morrocan people, and their heritage in which he and his family now live is extraordinarily moving. This is also an open love letter to storytelling and a plea to not let this ancientest of ancient arts wither out. There are very few books where I get to the end and I want to go right back to the beginning and read it all over again but this was one of those rare ones.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2018This was a lovely way to be introduced to Moroccan culture. The author's aim was to convey to the reader the power of stories, as organic components that take root in the mind and heart, and ultimately blossom, illuminating truth to those who pay attention. Not what I expected as an introduction to Morocco, but edifying and entertaining.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2010This is an excellent book, which I devoured in less than a week and will read again and again and again.
However, a correction is in order here. One of the past reviewers (who did not like the book) wrote - and I quote: "The book is a journey about a story - every person has a story that is close to his or her heart. Finding that story is the hard part. Mr. Shah does indeed find the story, but guess what? The reader has no idea what it was!" Were we both reading the same book? Reader, do not be put off by such a remark. This book is not about a wild goose chase. Mr Shah does indeed find the story close to his heart and even has physical reactions and symptoms that indicate this story is the right one. Please read the book carefully -- it's there in black and white!
I must admit I did find the characters' names a bit daunting and confusing. Without knowledge of Arabic, it was difficult to tell the characters apart by name only... A future edition of this wonderful book would benefit greatly by the addition of a Character List at the front, designed especially for Western readers, as is often found in Russian novels such as War and Peace or Dr. Zhivago. Publishers, please take note!
Top reviews from other countries
- YadavReviewed in India on March 16, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome read
Every once in a while, one comes across a book in which every word is to be savoured, stories and anecdotes which are to be played and replayed on our 'inward eye', the lilting cadence of the poetry to be harmonised with the self and when such a book comes, one feels great pride and satisfaction in having read it. The author's quest of story in one's heart through the labyrinthine travels across Morocco and an excellent and detailed observation about the beauty of orient, celebrating its differences with the occident makes this book truly a treat to read. If time is short or you are too distracted or simply you find oral wisdom nothing but mumbo jumbo, u may skip it, but for a deeper appreciation of an ancient culture that mirrors our own, and a better understanding of self, read it slow.... soaking in the underground streams of wisdom that crisscross not only this kingdom but also the book.
Yadav
Reviewed in India on March 16, 2021
Images in this review - Gabriola CrowReviewed in Canada on March 29, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars A very enjoyable read!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I have visited Morocco several times, including Casablanca, and it brought back many happy memories.
- Sally GoodchildReviewed in Australia on January 1, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it
I loved this book, with its stories of Morocco and the characters there
-
wasserwerkReviewed in Germany on May 30, 2013
5.0 out of 5 stars Großartig!!!
Ein wahrhaft reichhaltiges Buch.
Tahir Shah hat einen lustigen und einfühlsamen Stil. Er bringt einem arabische Denkart auf eine äusserst unterhaltsame und intelligente Art und Weise nahe.
Ich lese diese Buch extra langsam, denn es ist ein Genuß.
Wie so oft bei Tahir Shah weiss man manchmal nicht was Fiktion, was Realität ist.
Ich empfehle jedem dieses Buch, der/die ein stetiges Gefühl von innerem Lächeln in sich spüren mag.
- UKTraveller143Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 12, 2012
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read whilst in Marrakech......
Read this whilst in Marrakech and it was an illuminating and highly entertaining experience. This is tale about story telling - and Tahir Shah is an expert himself in that regard. Wonderful tales of the family, the staff and friends, plus a real insight into Moroccan way of life, customs and traditions. It was fun to read this book and then head out into the souks of the medina and recognise all that I had read. However, it would be equally entertaining wherever you are. Highly recommended.