by Tahir Shah
After four nights the chimney was finished. I stacked up a pile of wood, interleaving it with newspaper and twigs. Then I touched a match to a corner of the paper. Within the blink of an eye, the fire was burning like a furnace in Hell.
The mason moistened his upper lip. 'Allahu Akbar! God is great,' he said.
The next night when I tucked Ariane in bed she asked me if the fairies would come while she was asleep.
'When your tooth has fallen out,' I said. 'That's when they'll come.'
'Are you sure, Baba?'
I looked down, her chestnut eyes catching the light.
'Yes, I'm sure.'
'Do you promise the fairies will come when my tooth has fallen out?'
'I promise,' I said.
'How do you know?'
'Because . . .'
'Yes, Baba?'
'Because you believe in them.'
'Is that what makes them real?'
'What?'
'Believing in them?'
'Yes, Ariane, sometimes that's all it takes.'
A popular Moroccan proverb goes: 'A man without friends is like a garden without flowers.' It was said to me in the very first week I arrived to live in Casablanca, by a plumber who had come to clean out the drains. He seemed distraught that I could have moved to a new home in a foreign land where I knew no one at all.
I told him that it felt liberating. 'I don't have to avoid people any more,' I said, jubilantly.
The plumber wiped a rag over the crown of his bald head.
'But how will you live if you don't have friends?'
Looking back to that first week, I now understand what he meant. In our society friends are sometimes little more than people we go to the pub with so we aren't there alone. We have different expectations of them, or no expectations at all. If asked to do a favour, we usually enquire what it is before we accept. But in Morocco, friendship is still charged with codes of honour and loyalty, as it may once have been in the West. It is a bond between two people under which any favour, however great, may be asked.
After we had known each other for a month, Abdelmalik invited me to his apartment. It was small, cosy, and dominated by a low coffee table. On the table there were laid at least ten plates, each one piled with sticky cakes, biscuits and buns. I asked how many other people had been invited.
'Just you,' replied my host.
'But I can't eat this much,' I said.
Abdelmalik grinned like a Cheshire cat. 'You must try to eat it all,' he replied.
A few days later, he called me and announced he had a surprise. An hour later, I found myself in the steam room of a hammam, a Turkish-style bath. For Moroccans, going to the hammam is a weekly ceremony, one of the communal pillars upon which the society is built. Abdelmalik taught me how to apply the aromatic savon noir and the ritual of gommage, scrubbing myself down until my body was as raw as meat on a butcher's block. In the scalding fog of the steam room, he presented me with an expensive wash-case packed with the items I would need.
When I choked out thanks, embarrassed at the costly gift, he whispered: 'No price is too great for a friend.'
As time passed, I braced myself for Abdelmalik's ulterior motive. I felt sure he would eventually ask me for something big, some kind of payment for my side of our friendship.
Then, one morning, after many coffee meetings, he leaned over the table at Café Lugano and said, 'I have a favour to ask you.'
I felt my stomach knot with selfishness.
'Anything,' I mumbled, bravely.
Abdelmalik edged closer and smiled very gently.
'Would you allow me to buy you an Arab horse?' he said.
FIVE
A drowning man is not troubled by rain.
Persian proverb
FROM THE FIRST DAYS WE TOOK UP RESIDENCE IN THE CALIPH'S House, I found myself in a world that lies parallel to our own. Morocco is a kingdom overlaid with a cloak of supernatural belief. A twilight zone, a fourth dimension, its spell touches every aspect of life, affecting everyone in the most unexpected way.
At first you hardly realize it is there. But as you learn to observe, really observe, you see it – everywhere. The more you hear of it, the more you sense it all around. And the more you sense it, the more you begin to believe.
Believe, and what was impossible becomes possible, what at first was hidden becomes visible.
Like everyone else who has ever moved to Morocco, we were destined to brush with the supernatural, whether it be through the shantytown, the workforce, or through our new friends. But it was the purchase of Dar Khalifa itself that sucked us deep into the Moroccan underbelly. With its legions of supposed jinns, the house was somehow directly connected to the kingdom's bedrock of supernatural belief.
The mere thought of spirits struck unimaginable fear into the hearts of the guardians, our maids and all other believers who crossed the threshold. The jinns may have plagued our lives through the belief and actions of those around us, but for me they became an almost tangible link to the world that created A Thousand and One Nights.
That collection of stories is a byword for the exotic, the jackpot of cultural colour. Even in our society, saturated by written information, the title is enough to raise the hairs on the back of our collective necks. It conjures emotion, a sense of treasure, opulence, magic and the supernatural, a fantasy within the reach of mere mortals.
It is just over three centuries since the tales of the Arabian Nights arrived in Western Europe. They appeared first in French, translated by Antoine Galland between 1704 and 1717, under the title Les Mille et une nuit. Galland had been cautious to censor passages he felt overly lewd for sensitive French tastes; as opposed to later translators, such as Burton, who delighted in the abounding obscenity. According to Robert Irwin, author of the remarkable Arabian Nights: A Companion, Galland's translation was based on a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century manuscript. There may have been an even earlier edition, perhaps dating to the tenth or even the ninth century. As Irwin suggests, Galland and subsequent translators added to the base manuscript, expanding it freely with as many new characters and tales as they could find.
Galland's translation was an overnight sensation. The salons of polite French society swooned at the richness in storytelling seldom seen on the Continent. The event can be compared to the blandness of European food prior to the sixteenth century, before spices arrived from the Orient. Granted the Latin and Greek classics were well-known, but they lacked the mystery, the dark layers and sublayers of the East.
The public demand for the tales led to linguists, historians, and Orientalists struggling over translations of astonishing complexity and scope. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, at least a dozen separate translations appeared in English, the most famous by Edward Lane, John Payne, Joseph Mardrus and, of course, Richard Burton. They ranged from the concise to the encyclopedic and were found in the libraries of royalty, of institutions and of gentlemen.
From the moment they reached Europe, the Arabian Nights were surrounded by intrigue. The anonymity of the text led to incessant speculation. Some claimed that the stories were a kind of tonic that could boost flagging spirits. Others asserted that no man could ever read the entire collection without dropping dead from the feat. That of course was hyperbole. Translators, editors and printers, as well as scores of readers, read them from cover to cover and lived to tell the tale.
The Arabian Nights are stories within stories. One character tells a tale about a character who recounts a tale about another, who tells a further tale. The structure leads to multiple layers, extraordinary depth and frequent confusion.
The premise for the collection is that a fictional king, called Shahriyar, discovers that his wife is having an affair with a servant. Enraged, he has her executed. So as not to be betrayed again, he marries a virgin each night and sleeps with her, before having her beheaded at sunrise. The arrangement goes on for some time, brides' heads rolling, until the daughter of the grand vizier
, Sherherazade, begs her father to allow her to marry the king. With great reluctance, he agrees. Unlike the other victims, she has no intention of meeting the executioner or his sword.
She has a plan.
Sherherazade is wedded to King Shahriyar and taken to his quarters. Before they sleep, she begins a tale that cannot be finished in a single night. The king allows her to live an extra day so that her tale may be completed. The next evening, she begins a tale inset, 'framed' within the first. Each night that follows, the tale is left unfinished, or it links to another. The king has no choice but to allow his bride to live another day, so that she might complete her story.
A thousand and one nights pass.
During that time, Sherherazade reveals the greatest single repertoire of tales ever told. And in the same span of time she bears her husband three sons, calms his rage and remains his queen.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Western literature was influenced heavily by the Arabian Nights, as were the arts. Oriental themes were thrown into vogue. Paintings of scantily-clad nymphs reclining in harems became popular, as were images of mysterious domed palaces and scenes of Arabian courts bedecked in jewels and gold. The effect of the stories was so profound that it touched everything from costume to furniture, from wallpaper to architecture.
The legacy continues to be seen to this day. Anyone unwilling to believe it need only travel to the Sussex coast and look upon the Prince Regent's Eastern aberration, the Royal Pavilion at Brighton.
My friend Abdelmalik had seemed crestfallen when I declined his offer of an Arab stallion. He said that, by accepting, I would be honouring not only him but every male member of his family that had ever lived. The next week, when we were sitting together at Lugano's, the conversation turned from horses to stories once again.
Abdelmalik drew a horizontal line in the air with his finger.
'Here in Morocco, we live on a tightrope,' he said. 'It's because of our belief. We know that God is there for us, and because He is there we hope He will send angels to catch us if we fall.' He slapped the table with his hand. 'If the angels do not come,' he said, 'it's because He wants us to hit the ground.'
The waiter distributed fresh glasses of café noir. When he had gone, Abdelmalik continued.
'The stories reflect our lives,' he said. 'The people in them walk a fine line between prosperity and disaster. That's the way it's always been and that's what makes us who we are. In a single life a man can know wealth, poverty, thirst and hunger, as well as satisfaction. You may describe our lives as being like a rollercoaster, up and down. We would say that they are full, that they are rich even though we may be poor.'
I asked him about jinns.
'They're as real to me and every other man in this café as this glass of coffee,' he said. 'I may not be able to see them, but I know they are right here beside me.'
'How do you know that, though?'
'Can you see clean air?'
'No.'
'But would you doubt its existence?'
I asked if he had ever searched for the story in his heart. He pushed his sunglasses up on to his head and grinned.
'You have been talking to a Berber,' he said.
'Do you know the tradition?'
'Of course.'
'If I wanted to find out my story, where would I look first?'
'You could search near a shrine,' he said. 'But you can't start just like that.'
'Why not?'
'You must prepare yourself first.'
'How would I do that?'
'By changing the way you see.'
Abdelmalik explained that I would have to learn to observe with untainted senses again, like a child.
'An athlete doesn't start running until he's warmed up,' he said. 'In the same way, you have to ready your mind if you want it to work for you. It's a point that has been known in the East for thousands of years, but something you're still ignorant of in the West.'
'How do I ready my mind?'
'You must appreciate without prejudice,' said Abdelmalik. 'Only then will you be ready to receive.'
The next day I was reading in the large garden courtyard, glancing from time to time at the tortoises meandering through the undergrowth. The sun was blazing gold against a cobalt sky, and I was thankful for the peace. Out of the corner of one eye I saw a shadow approaching fitfully and heard feet shuffling over the rough terracotta path. I looked up and spotted Hamza edging towards me, his favoured woolly hat stretched nervously between his hands.
'Monsieur Tahir, you must forgive me,' he said.
'Forgive you for what, Hamza?'
The guardian didn't reply at first. He stood there, chewing his lower lip.
'Hamza, what is it?'
'I am going to leave you and find another work,' he said.
'But, Hamza . . . you have worked here for twenty years.'
'Yes, Monsieur Tahir, twenty years.'
'What is the problem? I'm sure we can solve it.'
Hamza lowered the lids over his eyes and swung his head from side to side in an arc.
'It is the shame,' he said.
From the outset, it seemed that the Arabian Nights had something for everyone. Early on, a shrewd publisher realized that if the language was simplified and the sexual innuendo toned down, the books would appeal to children. The attraction to younger readers was so widespread that our society tends to forget the collection has strong adult content and was designed very much as an entertainment to be kept far from children. Some translators, like Burton, highlighted the mature content. During decades of Victorian repression, he relied on the surfeit of innuendo and the outright lewdness contained within the collection to reach a vast swathe of sophisticated society eager for such raunchy material.
One of the reasons Burton released his edition by private subscription was to avoid censorship laws that hammered books offered for public sale. The so-called Society for the Suppression of Vice hunted authors contravening the strict moral code, threatening them with hard labour. Publishers who released their work were fined or closed down, as were the printers who actually manufactured the books. While Burton toiled at the translation, word of its licentious nature reached the ears of the censorship squad. His wife, Isabel, wrote to the printer saying she thought their London apartment was being watched. The printing firm, Waterlow's, feared being hit with the Obscenity Publications Act and pressured Burton to sign a contract assuming all responsibility for his text.
In a further safeguard to avoid prosecution for pornography, Burton announced the arrival of his forthcoming series with a clarification, stressing that the volumes were reserved for academia alone: 'It is printed by myself for the benefit of Orientalists and Anthropologists,' he wrote, 'and nothing could be more repugnant to me than the idea of a book of this kind being published or being put into the hands of any publisher.'
After hearing Abdelmalik's words, I tried to do as I had been forced as a child, to look beyond what my senses revealed. I went down to Casablanca's old town, a place charged with a full spectrum of life. It was Friday morning and the streets were packed with severe-looking housewives laden with shopping. There were street hawkers, too, touting the usual range of pressed flowers, puppies and Shanghai bric-a-brac.
In the middle of the bustle I found an impressively dilapidated men-only café. I strode in, ordered a coffee and sat down near the window. The room was curved like the shell of a snail, a counter running through it in an arch. Behind it, a man in maroon and black was steaming yesterday's croissants on a 1930s espresso machine. At each table sat the regulars cloaked in their jelabas, smoking black tobacco, staring into space.
When the waiter had deposited the café noir along with five sugar cubes in a twist of newspaper, I took out a wad of cotton wool. Then I shut my eyes, shoved the cotton in my ears and up my nostrils, and closed my mouth and hands. It was as if I had been transported back a generation.
I struggled to absorb the café through a kind of
crude osmosis.
Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside us all, dulled by endless television reruns and by a society that reins in fantasy as something not to be trusted, something to be purged. But it's in there, deep inside, a spark waiting to set a touch-paper alight.
As I sat in the café, I felt my back well with energy. It was as if there were fireworks shooting down my spine. My eyes burst alive with brilliant colours – vibrant reds and shocking blues. My tongue tingled with zest and my nose sensed the fragrance of a thousand jungle flowers.
It was raw imagination.
For three days the guardians kept to themselves. Osman and the Bear climbed on to the roof and pretended they were sealing it with tar. I called up, pleading for them to come down and explain Hamza's decision to leave. Eventually, I cornered Osman behind the stables, where he was sprinkling grains of rat poison along a wall.
'Hamza has left and will not come back,' he said. 'There is nothing you can do to change his mind.'
'But why? I don't understand. He's been here for decades.'
'Monsieur Tahir,' said Osman, straightening his back. 'It is the shame . . . that is why.'
The next day, I met Dr Mehdi at our usual table at Café Mabrook. He was wearing his pyjamas under a light grey raincoat. His brow was glistening with sweat and he looked much paler than usual.
I asked if he was all right.
'For three days and three nights I have had a terrible fever,' he said. 'Only this morning when I woke up, I felt a little better, although I'm rather weak. During the fever, I had dreadful frantic dreams – savage tribes slaughtering each other, monsters, ghouls and jinns. I didn't know how to get away from it all. And the harder I tried to escape, the deeper I became trapped in the nightmare.' Dr Mehdi paused, and wiped his wrist across his face. 'I should be in bed now,' he said. 'My wife was screaming at me to stay at home, but I had to come to tell you . . .'