The Caliph's House

<p><i>Look into the eyes of a jinn and you stare into the depths of your own soul...</i><br>Writer and film-maker Tahir Shah - in his 30s married with two small children - was beginning to wilt under brash cramped ennervating British city life. Flying in the face of friends' advice he longed to fulfil his dream of finding a place bursting with life colour history and romance - somewhere far removed from London - in which to raise a family. Childhood memories of holidaying with his parents and of a grandfather he barely knew led him to Morocco and to <i>'</i>Dar Khalifa' a sprawling and with the exception of its <i>jinns</i> long-abandoned residence on the edge of Casablanca's shanty town that rumour had it once belonged to the city's Caliph. <br>And so begins Tahir Shah's gloriously vivid funny affectionate and compelling account of how he and his family - aided abetted and so often hindered by a wonderful cast of larger-than-life local characters: guardians gardeners builders artisans bureacrats and police (not forgetting the jinns the spirits that haunt the house) - returned the Caliph's House to its former glory and learned to make this most exotic and alluring of countries their home. <br><i>The Caliph's House</i> <u>is</u> a story of home-ownership abroad - full of the attendant dramas anxieties and frustrations - but it is also much more. Woven into the narrative is the author's own journey of self-discovery of learning about a grandfather he hardly knew and of coming to love the magical multi-faceted contradictory country that is Morocco.</p>