This week’s book is a change of style – it’s a non-fiction.
Book 23 – The Caliph’s House, by Tahir Shah. The book is an account of Shah’s experiences as he gives up life in London to live in Casablanca, Morocco. The book covers his first year – a steep learning curve about cultural differences, understanding our fellow travellers through life, and the transformative powers of change, all set against the backdrop of the ramshackle house he buys and renovates.
Before I get into the review I have to make a confession. I find it incredibly obnoxious in this book that the glory of living in Morocco is pitted against the awfulness of living in the UK. I do not live the stifled, grey, Victorian life he portrays as the British norm and it irritated me to keep reading about this life. It may have been his experience but that doesn’t make it universal, or make living in the UK something to pity. This feeling of irritation may colour my review!
My mum recommended this book, and I can see why. The experience of giving up one life and starting another is something many people dream of, although not quite on such a huge scale.
The book starts with Shah signing a contract for a house, written in a language he doesn’t understand, right before suicide bombers detonate their bombs around Casablanca. It is a moment when most of us would have turned around and run away to safety.
The house is a mess, there is a resident evil jinn and none of the family speak Arabic, but it is too late to turn around and go back to the UK. It is clear Shah thinks a return would be a failure.
The house comes with thee guardians and through the course of the book I never really got to grips with what exactly they all did, except make life awkward for the family in many different ways. For example, they choose to ignore the instructions they don’t like, refuse to allow Shah into certain parts of his property, tell Shah who he should and shouldn’t employ.
A lot is made of the author being a humble writer with limited finances but there is a long list of staff, vast quantities of house repairs, masses of purchases and so on. There is no real sense in the book of what anything really costs (with a couple of notable exceptions) because the two constant messages of low funds, and massive expenditure, don’t really fit together. One element of true value – friendship and instruction – was bought with stamps. That was a beautiful and moving part of the book.
I found the personal stories much more interesting than Shah’s forays into the black market and the casual violence towards people and animals. I would have loved to read more exploration of the traditional skills, learnt about the people who decorated his house and made it a home once more. The sense of a place being reborn was oddly missing despite all the complaints about the damage done by inept workmen and corrupt architects.
I was also fascinated with the interconnectedness of Shah with his own history – although Shah didn’t remember his grandfather, he wanted to find out about the man, and his discoveries showed that they had walked many of the same paths through Casablanca. That was another element of the story that was very moving.
This book is about Shah, very specifically – his experiences, his learning, his thoughts, his interactions. His immediate family is incidental because what he learns, and the people he meets, are the focus of the anecdotes he chooses to share.
This writing and editing choice makes me wonder why some of the information was retained. I also wonder why Shah spent so long explaining that he didn’t trust his assistant, and suggesting something bad was coming, for nothing particular to happen at all.
I never got the feel for the Caliph’s House itself, and that’s kind of how I feel about the book as a whole: I wasn’t really given a proper sense of where everything fitted. The bits I enjoyed most – the personal stories, artisans and the discovery of his grandfather’s life – were the elements that had the most substance to me.
Travel writing, memoir, journal, whatever it is, some of it appealed and some of it didn’t. It took me over a week to read and I can’t say it sped past, but I did finish it. That’s a success at this point!
Happy reading,
EJ
🙂
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