by Tahir Shah
No one is quite sure when the tradition began, but everyone will tell you that the marriages which follow betrothal there are blessed in an almost magical way.
The first time I visited Imilchil almost twenty years ago, I met a young couple, Hicham and Hasna. They had met, fallen in love, and been betrothed, all on the same morning. They were glowing, their cheeks flushed with expectation and new love.
Last year, when I visited Imilchil again, I tracked down the pair. They look a little older now. Hicham’s hair had thinned and his face was lined from a life outdoors tending his goats; and Hasna looked fatigued. But then she had given birth to six children, four of them boys.
As we sat in the darkness of their home, a wooden shack nestled in a copse of poplar trees, I asked them how the years had been.
Hicham looked across at Hasna, and smiled.
‘On that day all those years ago,’ he said, ‘I became the happiest man in all the world. And each day since has been conjured from sheer joy.’ He glanced at the floor. ‘Do you want to know our secret?’ he asked me bashfully. I nodded. Hicham touched a hand to his heart. ‘To always remember the love of the first moment, the tingling feeling, the first time it touches you, and the first moment your hands touched.’
A few days after leaving Hicham and Hasna at their home in Imilchil, I reached my own home overlooking the Atlantic, in Casablanca. As I stepped in the door, my two little children, Ariane and Timur, ran up and threw their arms around my neck. They both asked where I’d been. I told them about the winding mountain roads, the Berber villages, and the Gorge of Ziz. ‘And what did you bring?’ they asked both at once, straining to look sheepishly at the ground.
‘I brought you a secret.’
‘What is it, Baba?’
‘Always to remember the feeling of tingling love,’ I said.
FORTY-ONE
The Royal Mansour, Marrakech
IN MOROCCO, REAL NEWS isn’t spread through the papers, but on whispers in the wind.
That was how I first learned of the Royal Mansour, the latest in top-notch grandeur on the Marrakech hospitality scene.
Our maid had heard from her brother, and he from his wife’s cousin’s friend, that a palace was being constructed, one that would put shame to almost anything else ever created by Moroccan artisanal hands. Years passed, and I quite forgot hearing of the rumour. Then, one morning recently the whisper came again:
‘It’s opened,’ said a low voice.
‘What has?’
‘A palace fit for a king.’
In a city that’s hemorrhaging hotels, the Royal Mansour is set apart by its sheer decadence. Slipping in through the gates, set into the ancient honey-coloured city walls, is like lifting the veil on a fantasy, one that’s usually off limits to mere mortals.
The first thing that hits you is the scent of jasmine piercing the evening air. It’s as overpowering as the silence. A handful of carefully positioned staff glide up without making any noise at all. They greet you in whispers, and offer the refreshment served in the desert to travellers – succulent dates and cool buttermilk. Then, only when you are ready, they lead you to your quarters, through a labyrinth of jaw-dropping opulence.
Wherever you look, every inch of every surface is adorned with exquisite workmanship and textures – acres of intricate zellij mosaics, hand-sculpted plasterwork, cedar ceilings, and geometric painted wood. The furnishings are equally lavish, including fabulous Suzani embroideries from Bokhara, suede cushions and throws, and miles and miles of silk.
At the heart of the hotel is a central courtyard open to the sky. Hanging like an ivory medallion above, is the full moon; fabulous bronze lamps suspended below, each one in itself a true work of art. All around there are Andalucian cabinets crafted in Cordoba, lovely mosaic and marble fountains, and Damascene banquettes, inlaid with fragments of mother of pearl. And the entire fantasy is bathed in the kind of hush that simply doesn’t exist elsewhere in Marrakech.
This being the Royal Mansour, there’s no clumsy bell-hop lumbering ahead with your luggage. Rather, the hotel’s impeccable manager escorts you himself to your quarters, making equally impeccable small-talk as he goes. Everyone you pass greets you by name, and exudes a warmth, as though they are genuinely thrilled to meet you. It is the feeling of real celebrity, as if you’re Mick Jagger and that, as soon as your back is turned, the staff rush off and call their friends to boast that they’ve seen you in the flesh.
Desperately trying to suppress all delusions of grandeur, you follow the manager into an Andalucian courtyard. It’s filled with the sound of trickling water and with fragrant trees, all of them laden with perfectly ripe fruit – pomegranates, oranges and mouth-watering dates. And, eventually, you arrive at a medina, a mirror of the old city in miniature.
Instead of rooms or suites, you are taken to your very own riad,a three-storey building set around a colonnaded courtyard. As you approach, the door opens magically inward. A manservant steps silently from the shadows. Coutured in flowing robes, with a turban crowning his head, he asks permission to serve you vintage Champagne. Oh, the hardship of making such difficult decisions.
Miraculously, your luggage has already arrived, and the genie-like steward, has unpacked. Whatever your wish, he’s already anticipated it, as if trained in mind-reading as well in hospitality. But the most extraordinary thing of all is how he, and everyone else, comes and goes invisibly, without ever stepping in or out through the door.
The Royal Mansour is a pleasure dome of magic, but none of the wizardry is more amazing than the great secret that makes its illusionary realm possible. For, beneath the entire property – laid out over eight acres – is a vast maze of secret tunnels, worthy of a James Bond villain’s den. A city in itself, it houses vast kitchens and warehouses, laundries and staff quarters. And, plying the wide subterranean passages, is a fleet of brand new golf carts.
Morocco is a land of tradition, and one where the tradition of royal patronage dies hard. The king is almost expected to champion projects that will keep the ancient crafts and traditions alive. In the ’nineties, the present monarch’s father, Hassan II, constructed a colossal mosque in Casablanca. Bearing his own name, it stands at the western edge of the Islamic world. Having reigned for a decade, King Mohammed VI, conceived the Royal Mansour himself, and directly oversaw every detail of the project.
Built from scratch in less than four years, twelve hundred moualems, master craftsmen, were called upon to do the best work of their lives. For each of them the challenge was all the greater because they were working directly for their king. And it’s this point which has ensured that the Royal Mansour isn’t just another plush address to stay in Marrakech, Morocco’s ultra chic desert retreat.
‘We have strived to create a landmark of Moroccan culture,’ says sales manager Soufiane Berrada, ‘through architecture, hospitality, cuisine and art, all of it in one place.’ Leading me on a tour, he points out details hidden from view, like the high tech air cushion heating system that allows the central courtyard to be open to the sky even in winter.
In the cigar lounge he shows me a cabinet of rare Cognacs, including an unopened bottle of 1888 Armagnac Laubade. On the wall above it, hangs a fabulously intricate bronze appliqué frieze, crafted by the British-born Moroccan artist, now so celebrated that he goes by his first name alone – Yahya.
We step through to the library. As I wonder aloud why there’s a giant telescope in the middle of the room, the manager presses a button set into the marquetry, and the cedarwood roof slides silently away.
Of the fifty-three riads, arranged in clusters, as they are in the actual Marrakech medina, most are two-and three-bedroom, with private salons, dining rooms, swimming pools, kitchens and roof-top terraces, from which you can glimpse the snow-clad Atlas mountains. There’s a Riad d’Honneur as well, a palace in its own right, with two pools, gardens, private spa and underground cinema. Former French President Jacques Chirac and his wife were in residence during my
stay, the riad guarded by dozens of swarthy men in black.
After two days and nights of the high life, I found myself back on the street, the mayhem of Marrakchi traffic frothing all around. I felt like Maruf the Cobbler from A Thousand and One Nights, whose desert palace had appeared by magic, before vanishing in the blink of an eye.
As I crossed the street to get a bus, I smiled to myself. After all, what would luxury be if it were not tempered by a little hardship from time to time?
FORTY-TWO
Subcontinent of Miracles
THE AUDIENCE WAS QUAKING WITH FEAR.
The man standing before them was astounding, even by Indian standards. Stained in greasy black paint, his body adorned with mysterious symbols, his hair was matted with dirt and his eyes fixed in a maniacal stare. He had four arms, a vile protruding tongue, a golden filigree crown on his head, and a garland fashioned from human skulls hanging over his chest. In one hand was a cleaver dripping with blood, and in another was clenched the head of a butchered enemy.
The crowd of three hundred Bengali villagers edged backwards as the demonic figure addressed them. But, as I soon realized, their apprehension resulted not from fear, but from expectation.
For the deity was about to perform a miracle.
Whispering cryptic incantations, the avatar – a devotee of Hinduism’s bloodiest goddess, Kali – rubbed a thumb and forefinger together six times. Moments later, a plume of smoke was spiralling up from his fist. The villagers glanced at each other with wonder.
Then the godman performed his second feat.
Stepping over to an urn of boiling oil, he plunged one of his four arms into the pot. There was no time for applause. Wasting no time, the sadhu gargled a mouthful of secret liquid from a clay cup, pulled a red-hot poker from his ceremonial fire, and stuck it into his mouth. As before, he seemed oblivious to the pain and, as before, the throng of villagers clamoured with delight.
Traipse through the Indian countryside for long enough and you’re sure to cross paths with an avatar, like the Kali deity, who was weaving his magic in a small village two hours west of Calcutta.
Like him, thousands of others are making a good living as mystical advisers, healers, resolvers of disputes, dispensers of knowledge and as entertainers, all rolled into one. India’s illusion business, booming as never before, hasn’t enough godmen to go round. From Assam to Mumbai there are vacancies for anyone who can put on a good solid miracle performance. The main, if unlikely, reason for the sharp growth of the profession is Harry Houdini.
All but extinct in the West, Houdini’s magic is alive and thriving across India. In the greatest cities and smallest villages alike, his magical feats are performed daily as miracles by godmen, India’s mortal incarnations of the divine. Remembering Houdini only for his straitjacket and handcuff routines, we tend to forget he was the pioneer of modern stage magic as well as escapology.
Houdini’s vast repertoire of magic has migrated east and taken root in India. The explanation lies in the magician’s chest of formidable ingredients. For the majority of Houdini’s magic – and that of many other nineteenth-century illusionists – was based on hazardous chemicals, the likes of which are hard to come by in our safety-conscious society.
Ask at a British pharmacy for ferric chloride, ammonium salicylate or mercuric nitrate, and you risk being reported to the police. But visit the smallest Indian bazaar – far from the ‘nanny’ states of the West, and you can snap up oversized tubs of even the most noxious compounds at bargain basement prices. The result: godmen and avatars, sages and sadhus are drinking nitric acid, sucking red-hot pokers, eating glass, spitting fire and even levitating.
The four-armed, cleaver-wielding godman in West Bengal might have impressed Houdini with his dexterity and showmanship, if not with his originality. For each of the supposed miracles was developed by the great American maestro himself.
The sadhu’s fingers must have been treated with a solution of yellow phosphorus and carbon disulphide, which smokes on friction. And a cup of lime juice had doubtless been poured into the urn of oil. The citric juice sinks to the bottom and foams up at a low temperature, as if the oil is bubbling. As for the red-hot poker, the Kali godman had surely swilled his mouth with liquid storax, which absorbs the fiery poker’s heat.
Far from taking pleasure in the new popularity of his tricks, Houdini must surely be spinning in his grave. Whereas he always claimed that he was performing nothing more than skilful feats of illusion, India’s godmen are passing off their tricks as genuine miracles.
In his latter years, Houdini tried to debunk those whom he said pretended to have supernatural powers. He devoted an entire book to exposing his near-namesake and former hero, Robert Houdin.
But not all the miraculous feats one comes across in India can be attributed to Houdin. Some favourites are far older. Many sadhus know how to turn water into wine, and how to transform a rod into a snake.
Indeed, the ‘rod to snake’ illusion is said to be the oldest of all.
It was witnessed by Aaron at the court of the Egyptian pharaohs (Exodus vii, 10 –12). The snake is cooled, then pulled straight between outstretched hands. The magician’s thumb and index finger are clamped onto the reptile’s head. Fearing that a gigantic predator has caught hold of it, the snake goes rigid – like a rod. Only when it is cast to the floor does it revive and slither away.
Other feats were developed more recently, most notably by Uri Geller. Indian swamis and godmen have, it seems, just learned how to read sealed envelopes and to bend spoons with mind power.
As India’s brotherhood of godmen swell in number as never before, a small band of devoted men and women have vowed to expose them through public humiliation. Touring the country in a battered old van, they demonstrate how the tricks are done.
Dipak Ghosh is a leading member of India’s Rationalist Movement. He has seen it all and is keen to tell how Jesus fed the five thousand, how a godman levitates, and how Uri Geller bends spoons.
‘You cannot underestimate these fraudsters,’ he says. ‘They’re hoodwinking people of their life savings. It’s nothing more than common theft. Some are certainly excellent stage magicians, but they have no miraculous powers. With a few rupees they can purchase supplies of chemicals that will last them for months. They’re becoming more devious every week. Worst of all is that new deceptions are being thought up all the time.’
Mr. Ghosh may have declared all-out war on the avatars, but it appears that he’s fighting an uphill battle. India is a land where belief in miracles and the supernatural is a way of life.
Not long ago, I met a man in the small town of Solapur, known as ‘Goadbaba’ to his friends – which means ‘Mr. Sweet’ in Marathi.
Goadbaba is one of a new breed of illusionists.
He shook my hand and asked me to lick it. To my surprise, my palm tasted sweet. He touched a chair and a spoon. I licked them. Both tasted very sweet indeed. Goadbaba said that he had mysterious magical powers. He asked me to take him to London so that he could gain an entry into the Guinness Book of Records.
Some time after our meeting I learned the secret of the godman’s Midas touch magic. It was Sweet ’n Lo, a sachet of which he had rubbed onto his hands.
FORTY-THREE
Swallowing Live Fish
INDIA IS A LAND OF MIRACLES.
Godmen levitate or walk on water; oracles speak from mountainsides; effigies of elephant gods have even been known to spontaneously drink milk. But by far the greatest Indian miracle of all is revealed on a single day each year, a few hours before the first monsoon downpour.
Every June, at the first sighting of the Mrigasira Karthe star, about half a million people converge in a tiny whitewashed house in the old city of Hyderabad. They travel there from all corners of India. Frenzied, wheezing, and weary after the journey, they queue up to swallow live fish.
What’s more, most make the trip three years in a row. Animal rights groups are apoplectic: but their pleas
fall on deaf ears. For in Hyderabad swallowing a live fish is part of a mysterious ‘miracle cure’ – for asthma.
The free miracle remedy is handed out by the Gowds, a modest, impecunious family whose home is embedded in the labyrinth of narrow lanes and back streets that make up Hyderabad’s old city. The current generation is continuing a tradition that began more than a century and a half ago.
With Indian cities as polluted as any others in the developing world, asthma is an ever more menacing problem. Spend a few days in Old Delhi, Calcutta or Mumbai, and you can find your chest tightening as if crushed by rogue elephants. Every year tens of thousands of Indians are diagnosed as asthmatics, the majority of them are children.
And, while the local pharmaceutical industry offers cost-price drugs for all, many are suspicious of the temporary relief that Western medicines provide. Why use an expensive inhaler all the time when a live fish can be swallowed for a permanent cure? It’s this straightforward thinking that brings asthmatics flocking in droves to the Gowds’ two-room residence.
Rather than being appalled by the unorthodox treatment, Indian asthmatics can’t seem to get enough of it. In the first week of June, special trains, buses and flights are laid on to ferry people to Hyderabad from the farthest reaches of India. Many stake their life savings to make the journey. Others bring their entire families for the expedition of a lifetime.
It has become a pilgrimage.
In a rare show of solidarity, Muslims, Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus from every caste, gather with their belongings. By the eve of monsoon, every hotel and guest house is full to bursting. Mosques and temples, wayside cafés, bus depots and railway stations are cluttered with asthmatics from far away.