In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams

A reviewer

In this very touching and personal book one is absorbed into the very fascinating life of the author Tahir Shah. Hedraws one in from the start and manages to hold one's attention with rapt anticipation for the next twist and turn in the story.He makes the reader appreciate the art of storytelling by telling all his own life's stories. And what a life it is! A joy from start to finish!

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Morocco through Western eyes

Only by living there can a westerner begin to understand the Moroccan people, and then, only if willing to see beyond stereotypes and the filter of European cultural norms. Living in a house in a poor section of Casablanca, dealing with repairmen, superstitious servants, and a house infested with jinns or evil spirits, is both a trial and a joy.
Add the wonderful tales told by an old Moroccan storyteller, and you have a fascinating picture of the Morocco of today.

The Jinns are Back

I read Tahir Shah's previous book, "The Caliph's House" with much enjoyment and was happy to see this, another round of stories from Morocco! Shah lays out his book in the style of The Arabian Nights, as stories within stories, or rather as overlapping one another. There are Jinns in the house again (maybe), A Sorceress (perhaps), and a host of characters and situations that rival Monty Python routines (absolutely). He does not, however, sugar coat his experiences as evidenced by the opening chapter where he relates his incarceration in a Pakistani jail, saving his sanity by playing in his mind every memory of his life that he could thus setting up the importance of "stories" in an increasingly story-less world. In the course of the book he finds he needs to search for the "story of his heart" and goes about it almost to exclusion of everythng around him. His wife is very long-suffering (no sugar-coating here either, there's some real tension at times. Sometimes I wondered how they stayed together)

As with "The Caliph's House" this is one of those books I couldn't read fast enough but was sorry I did so because I didn't want it to end! I hope Shah has more stories to relate in the future!!

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