by Tahir Shah
'I saw it, too,' she declared. 'And I know it was the work of a mischievous spirit. He's always there in that same spot, causing trouble.'
I pulled the curtain back and glanced out through the mattress shop. The crowd had grown in size. The old man was being carried off to a battered-looking orange ambulance. A policeman was being petitioned by the mob.
'Where you come from,' said the astrologer, 'you have jinns as well, but you don't know about them. When misfortune touches your life, you imagine it's random. But it's not.'
'Will you tell me about the holy man?' I said.
Sukayna peered at the flame and closed her eyes for a second.
'There's another difference between Morocco and Europe,' she said.
I looked up, waited for the answer.
'It's that here in Morocco we work things out. We listen, we watch. But in your countries you do the opposite. You expect everything to be worked out for you, handed to you. You expect other people to use their brains so you don't have to use your own. In your society people are lazy. They want everything now, everything for free.'
'But what about my dream? And what about this holy man you mentioned?'
Sukayna washed her hands over her face.
'The answers are in front of you,' she said. 'Open your eyes and you will see them.'
FOURTEEN
'Tell me, Baba,' said Joha's son to his father, 'why do you speak so little and listen so much?'
'Because I have two ears and only one mouth.'
MARWAN COULD SEE I WAS STILL HAVING A PROBLEM UNDERstanding Morocco. He may have been a modest carpenter by trade, but he had the wisdom of a man much given to deep thought. When I told him about the astrologer's caution, that I should use my own brain, he broke a twig from the hibiscus hedge and scratched a circle in the dirt.
'This is Morocco,' he said. 'Every point is connected to every other point. It's a whole, balanced and more complete than you might first think.'
He drew another circle, but just fell short of joining the two ends.
'And this is the West,' he said. 'It looks very similar, but it's not quite whole. One day the ends may touch but, until that happens, your world will be incomplete.'
'What difference does that make?'
The carpenter threw the twig back into the hedge.
'In Morocco we have a saying,' he said. 'We say that a fool thinks he's wise and that a wise man knows he is a fool.'
Burt had left Dar Khalifa and gone to Marrakech to buy souvenirs for all his friends. As he walked slowly out through the shantytown, I watched him, knowing instinctively that he would be back. It was just a matter of time.
A day or two passed. Then another. It was a cold afternoon, sheets of rain lashing at the windows. Ariane and Timur were riding their bicycles around the sitting room, gathering speed. Rachana was cooking in the kitchen and I was drifting off to sleep in one of the low club chairs we had shipped from India.
The doorbell rang. A long, hard buzz followed by a series of shorter bursts. I opened an eye, jolted upright. The next thing I knew, the Bear was leading a gold raincoat into the salon. The figure inside it was drenched from head to toe.
'Hello,' said a calm voice, 'have I missed you guys!'
Burt unbuttoned the coat and let it flop on to the floor. He was shivering. I fetched a towel and some dry clothes.
'How was Marrakech?'
The Californian unlaced his shoes, pulled off his socks and splayed his bare white feet out in front of the fire.
'It was like stepping into an episode of The Twilight Zone,' he said.
'Did you enjoy it?'
Burt stared into the flames. He didn't look happy.
'In California our lives are so comfortable,' he said. 'The drinking water's clean, the supermarkets are massive and gasoline is cheap. It's all easy and in a way it's perfect. So much so that we get trapped and we forget.'
'What do you forget?'
'That there's a world out there, out here.'
'That happens everywhere—'
Burt broke in. 'No, you don't get me,' he said. 'We were living in a bubble, a bubble of security. It seems real, but it never is. And now terrorists are beating down our door, we're all surprised.'
'The world's changing,' I said.
'I wish every American could spend five minutes in Marrakech,' said Burt. 'I wish they could stand in that great square and see, smell and hear what I did.'
'How did it make you feel?'
'Alive,' he said. 'It made me feel alive. What I saw there was real, totally real. There wasn't the bullshit, the sterile wrapping that we use to cover everything. We're so good at wrapping that we take our eye off the ball. We forget what we're actually wrapping up.'
Burt moved over to the window and watched the rain. I told him about Ariane's box, the one that holds the 'Tale of Melon City' – the container and the content. He asked me to stand up. Then he gave me another bear hug.
'Your head's screwed on right,' he said. 'You understand the East and the West. You're at home in both. You know both. You know what you are?'
'What am I?'
'You're the bridge.'
The more I asked Dr Mehdi when I ought to leave for the desert, the more he pressed me to stay.
'The time will come,' he said dreamily.
'But I'm ready to go now.'
'This isn't the right time,' the doctor replied.
'Why not?'
'Because certain things are not ready yet.'
'What sort of things?'
'The conditions.'
At Dar Khalifa, Ariane was going up to bed. I tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. Just as I was about to turn off the light, she said there was something she wanted to ask.
'Can't it wait till tomorrow?'
She shook her head. 'No, Baba, unless I know the answer, I won't sleep.'
'Tell me then, what do you want to know?'
Ariane nestled her head into the pillow.
'I want to know about honour,' she said.
'What about it?'
'Can you tell me what it is, Baba?'
I had once asked my father the same question, while lying back on his turquoise couch. I told Ariane.
'And what did he say?'
'He told me this story.
'Once upon a time there was a wandering dervish, a holy man. He was crossing the vast deserts of Arabia when he was taken prisoner by a clan of nomads. They said: "You are a spy and we are going to chop off your head."'
'What did the dervish say?' asked Ariane.
'He said: "I am not a spy. Before you kill me I want to ask a favour. Give me a sword so that I can kill one of your men. Then, when you kill me, you will have done so out of revenge and your honour will have been saved. Because, as things stand now, your honour is in danger of being tarnished by killing an innocent man."'
The Caliph's House may be surrounded on all sides by a sprawling shantytown, but it's located at the edge of Casablanca's exclusive suburb called Anfa. Land in the area is so valuable that all the developers in the city have their eye on the shacks. Ripping them down would be a licence to print money. The government have regarded the bidonvilles in Casablanca and elsewhere as breeding grounds for fanaticism. The thinking goes that if people live in deprived circumstances they have less to lose and are more likely to listen to radical talk.
Whenever I asked them about the future, the guardians looked at me with faraway eyes. They had always been bonded by a communal fear, a fear that one day the shantytown would be torn down and they would be homeless. Over the time we had lived at Dar Khalifa, there had been moves to sweep away the bidonville. They had failed, perhaps because there had been no plan to settle the inhabitants elsewhere. But things had changed. The guardians, and all the others who lived around us, had been seduced with new promises.
'They will build a great tower,' said Marwan, his eyes wide with wonder. 'It will soar up towards heaven, all dazzling and white.'
'Who will live
in it?'
'We will,' he said. 'We all will.'
'Where will it be built?'
'In Hay Hassani, near the mattress shop,' he said. 'There will be running water and electricity as well, and television, toilets and huge windows through which we will look down on the city.' Marwan wiped his nose. 'It will be Paradise,' he said.
One February afternoon, I was walking through the old Art Deco quarter of Casablanca, when I spotted a young man
standing on the corner outside the Central Market. He was a little taller than average and very thin, the buckle of his belt pulled up to the last hole. A tray was suspended round his neck by a frayed length of cord. Laid out on the tray were some home-made cards. They all looked the same – green with red polka dots. I wasn't sure if he was selling the cards or offering a service. So I watched.
A client would approach, hand over a coin and choose a card. The skinny man with the tray would read the card. More often than not, the client would burst out laughing and wander away into the throng. My curiosity was piqued. I went over, gave the man the required amount and chose a card. He turned it over and translated a short text.
'Every night Joha would bolt his shutters and hang out bunches of garlic. His neighbour asked why he did it. "To keep the tigers away," he said. "But, Joha, there are no tigers here," said the neighbour. "Then, it works, doesn't it!" said Joha.'
I thanked the man and gave him a tip.
'What is this for?' he said, pocketing the money.
'It's for making me very happy,' I said.
Joha is a medieval folk hero, a wise fool, whose humour is known in Morocco, in China and in all the lands in between. In Turkey they call him Hodja; across North Africa, Joha; and in Afghanistan they know him as Mulla Nasrudin. He's known in Greece too, and in Russia, Sicily, Albania and even in Uzbekistan. Tales of his own special brand of warped genius fill the teahouses and caravanserais of Fès, Cairo, Kabul and Samarkand.
Everyone knows a few Joha jokes and they tell them to pass the time, to deliver a nugget of wisdom to illustrate a point, or to bring a smile to a glum face. For the Sufis, Joha is a tool, a kind of Trojan horse. The humour deviates the mind, the concentration, and allows something more serious to slip inside the subconscious.
My father brought us up with Joha's exploits. He was obsessed by the character and published four collections of his tales. He used to say that a short story with a beginning, middle and an end was like a magic wand: that it could effect a change that would be impossible to emulate by any other method. Why? Because of the way the human mind is wired. Throughout history, every community has told stories, he would say. People told stories long before they understood mathematics or psychology, before they could read or write, even before they had built the first mud hut. These stories kept the human brain in check, balanced it and maintained a kind of cerebral status quo.
From an early age we were encouraged to choose a Joha tale and to turn it round our minds. 'Take it into yourself,' my father would say, 'and it will become yours.'
When I was very young, I asked him if I could go and meet Joha. My father waved a finger.
'You have to think in a different way,' he said softly. 'With Joha, the message he gives is more important than the man who gives it or the way in which it is given. Do you understand, Tahir Jan?'
I didn't quite understand, but I said that I did. My father touched a hand to my cheek.
'It's like the box,' he said: 'the contents are a key, but the box itself is nothing more than something that protects something else. Learn to find the key, and to use it, and you will have received something very important.'
Years passed and, very gradually, I learned that Joha jokes were about decipherment just as much as they were about humour. And I learned that the study of seven Joha tales at a time was regarded as a special preparation in itself. The stories usually involved known variables, each one with a second higher meaning. Understand these meanings and, like a cryptologist, you have a chance of deciphering the riddle, a chance of reaching another layer. For Sufis, this ultimate layer – or layers – is the ideal, a kind of jackpot. But at the same time the student of the story can be content with base level, the joke itself.
One rainy afternoon my father had demonstrated how to unpick a Joha tale. If I concentrate hard, I can hear the even tone of his voice.
'Salt had become so expensive that Joha went into the salt business,' he said. 'He loaded his old donkey with panniers of salt and was heading to market to make a fortune. On the way there, the pair were forced to wade through a river. As they crossed, all the salt dissolved. On the other bank, the donkey rolled on its back, delighted at the loss of its burden.
'The next week, Joha filled the panniers with wool. This time when they waded across the river the wool became soaked and the donkey almost drowned. Joha was delighted. 'That will teach you,' he yelled, 'for thinking that every time we cross, you will come out better.'
'I will explain it to you, Tahir Jan. But you must pay attention well. For Sufis, the salt – called milh in Arabic – is a homonym for another word that means "being good". The donkey symbolizes Man, or the pupil. The river is the process and Joha is the teacher. By discarding one's goodness, a person feels much better. But the drawback is that he loses his chance at prosperity, or attaining enlightenment. The wool signifies the Sufi. When they cross the river the second time, Joha is again the teacher, the one leading the pupil. This time the load is heavier, more spiritually valuable, its weight, gravity, only increased by its passage through the river.'
Until that day in Casablanca, I had never heard a Joha tale told in Morocco. I supposed that the character's popularity had died out, killed off by Egyptian soap operas.
When I got back to Dar Khalifa, I asked Marwan if he knew of the folk hero. He burst out laughing.
'Oh, yes, yes, Monsieur Tahir,' he said. 'Just thinking of Joha makes me laugh.'
'Do you know any of the jokes?'
Marwan had already begun.
'Joha was a known smuggler and would cross the frontier every day,' he said. 'The patrol guards would search his donkey each time, but could find nothing in their loads of hay. Sometimes they would confiscate the hay and set fire to it. Despite having no income, each week Joha became more and more wealthy. One day he became so rich that he retired across the frontier. Years passed and one day the police chief bumped into him. He said to Joha, "We spent years trying to catch you, but we could not. Tell me, brother, what were you smuggling?" Joha smiled and said: "Donkeys. I was smuggling donkeys."'
The next week, I arrived at Café Mabrook to find Abdul Latif standing guard. He was holding a kind of home-made club in his fist. I asked what was happening.
'My regular clients are like my family,' he said, scowling. 'They are like my children. I love each one of them.'
'And we come here because we value you so highly,' I said. 'But please explain what is bothering you.'
'A woman came here and looked at me in a certain way!' he replied.
'Was she a beggar?'
Abdul Latif swished his club.
'No, she wasn't begging. She was a sehura, a sorceress.'
'But what business did she have here?'
The waiter stared out at the street.
'She wants to give me the evil eye,' he said.
'Whatever for?'
'She's working for the café over there,' he said, pointing out of the door. 'And they want to put us out of business.'
Inside, Dr Mehdi was talking to Hafad, the clock enthusiast. They were discussing a new kind of watch, one powered by the heat of the wrist.
'It will never catch on,' Hafad said sternly.
'Why not?'
'Well, imagine,' he said. 'Imagine if you die.'
'Yes . . .'
'Well, it would stop.'
I sat down and asked them if they had ever heard of Joha. The surgeon clapped his hands.
'Hah! Here's your Joha,' he said, patting Hafad on the back.
>
'So you know him, Joha?'
'Of course we do,' said Hafad.
'Everyone knows Joha,' declared Dr Mehdi.
'He's from Meknès,' said Hafad.
'But Turks say he's Turkish, the Russians claim he's Russian, and the Afghans will tell you he's from Afghanistan,' I said.
Dr Mehdi stood up and slapped his hands together so loudly that everyone else in the café, including Zohra's husband, looked round. I was surprised he had lost his characteristic veneer of cool.
'Well, all the others are lying!' he snapped.
I ordered more café noir and changed the subject. 'When shall I leave for the Sahara?'
The surgeon regained his composure.
'On Thursday afternoon,' he said.
Each day more and more e-mail messages arrived from people who had read The Caliph's House. My ego was inflated beyond all reason by the attention and the praise. Whereas our lives had been invisible up till then, the location of our home was suddenly published in glossy colour magazines in a dozen countries. A few diehard adventurers like Burt managed to find us through the maze of the bidonville. There were others who sought me out not because of the books I had written on Casablanca, but because of my father.
In his effort to popularize teaching stories and the Sufi tradition, my father's work has attracted a wide range of readers across the world. They come from all types of social strata, backgrounds and professions. Since my earliest childhood, I have met thousands of them, because they have beat a path to our front door.
Most of them are pretty conventional. A few are questionable. And a handful are downright odd.
When my father died from a heart attack a decade ago, his mail – sent to his publishers – was forwarded to me. Over the years, I wrote to hundreds of his readers, explaining that my father, Idries Shah, was no longer alive. The majority took the news with sadness, but were satisfied to have an answer nonetheless.
There was, however, one reader from Andalucia, in Spain, who refused to believe that my father was no longer alive. Every month he wrote an airmail letter addressed to Idries Shah, sometimes begging, and at other times ordering him to make his whereabouts known. At first I wrote back, assuming the gentleman had not heard the news. But the years passed and the letters continued with increased regularity.