An Inside Look at Casablanca

The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca by Tahir Shah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Very short review:

This is an entertaining and informative book. I liked it, and you might too.

Slightly longer:

Tahir Shah uses sharp insight and unflinching honesty to bring us with him to his new life in a broken-down house in Morocco, the Caliph's House, a structure that had housed important people through the decades but now seems to be inhabited by jinns. I wanted to find--like him, maybe--that this move was an easy thing to do, that entering a different culture, learning the ways of another people, was mostly a pleasure. It wasn't, though, and he does a good job showing how he manages, how many mistakes he makes, how little he understands the ways of the local people and their superstitions. I cringed every time he got taken advantage of, but there are moments of cheering, too. (His friendship with Hicham Harass, an old man who answers his questions about Morocco in exchange for collectible stamps, was my favorite part of the story.) Each of the people in his life are well-drawn characters, people with skills and flaws and humor and idiosyncrasies, and it's amazing to meet them, literarily, at least, from half a world away.

I don't know if I learn a lot about Morocco, or Casablanca, or the Muslim world. There's no way to tell whether his experience is universal or utterly unique. But I feel like I learned something about the world, and it now interests me even more than before to learn more.

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