The Caliph's House

by Tahir Shah

  “You have been poisoned,” he said darkly.

  It was no great feat of detection.

  “I’ve worked that out already,” I said.

  Between the fierce waves of retching, we tried to understand what had poisoned us. We hadn’t eaten in a restaurant for days, and our own kitchen was kept meticulously clean. The doctor inquired where our water came from.

  “From the well,” I said. “We’ve had it cleaned. The water’s pure.”

  Hamza was called, and gave his own opinion, that the illness was caused by bad spirits, by the Jinns. I assured him that, as a medical man, the doctor didn’t believe in Jinns.

  “Of course I do,” the physician corrected sharply.

  “There must be a scientific explanation,” I said.

  “We will see,” he replied.

  Hamza led him away to inspect the kitchen, leaving us huddled around the toilet bowls. I wondered how a doctor with a belief in the underworld could reach an accurate conclusion. A few minutes later, Hamza brought him back to the bathroom.

  “The well is poisoned,” he said resolutely.

  “But we had it cleaned by a professional,” I said.

  “Someone has deliberately infected it,” the doctor said suspiciously.

  “Who would have done such a thing?”

  “Perhaps it was the shantytown’s Godfather,” said Rachana.

  I cross-questioned Hamza. “Has anyone put anything in the well?”

  He looked at the ground. He didn’t answer.

  “Hamza!” I growled, giving in to a new wave of retching. “What’s going on?”

  The guardian washed his hands together nervously. I could tell he was holding something back.

  “Tell me!” I shouted.

  “The Jinns,” he said. “Qandisha.”

  Had I the strength, I would have leapt up and throttled Hamza then and there. I was sick of the talk of Jinns. To hell with cultural sensitivity. We were all violently ill, and as usual, the Jinns were being blamed.

  “Forget the bloody Jinns!” I shouted. “I never want you to speak of them again.”

  The doctor asked Hamza something in Arabic. They chatted calmly for a moment or two.

  “Now I understand,” said the doctor, breaking into a smile.

  “What is there to understand?” I said. “Whenever something goes wrong, the guardians blame it on the damn Jinns.”

  “Of course they do,” said the physician. “And the Jinns are to blame for the poison, indirectly.”

  “What do you mean, indirectly?”

  The doctor put away his stethoscope. “Hamza tells me that a female Jinn lives in your house.”

  “Qandisha,” I said.

  “Yes, that’s her name, or what they call her. No one would dare use her real name. She doesn’t want you to live here. She said she’ll kill you all if you don’t leave. The guardians are very frightened, so they are trying to keep this Qandisha happy. They don’t want her to hurt you or the children. But they’re very worried.”

  “What about the poison?”

  The doctor smiled again. “To keep Qandisha happy,” he said, “Hamza has been putting half a chicken into the well for her every night.”

  “Damn it, Hamza!”

  “He’s just doing what he thought was right,” said the physician. “He wants to solve the problem, to get Qandisha out.”

  I wished I were back in Britain, a land industrially cleansed of superstition.

  “If we wanted to get Qandisha to leave and never come back,” I said, “how would we do it?”

  “It’s easy,” said the doctor. “You would hold an exorcism, of course.”

  COUNTESS DE LONGVIC HAD said that my grandfather would travel to Casablanca once a month to buy coffee from a shop near the Central Market. I checked his diaries, but there was no mention of the city. When I told the countess this, she laughed.

  “Of course not,” she said. “He never called it Casablanca. He always referred to it as W.H., for ‘White House.’ ”

  My grandfather had been brought up in a time when confidentiality was king. Like Kamal’s father, he was infatuated with secrecy. His diaries were full of anagrams, acronyms, and his own code words, often translations from Dari, the language of Afghanistan. I scanned the diaries again. The countess was right. There were regular monthly entries for W.H., the code for Casablanca. The note against it usually included the initials H.B. For example, he wrote “Checked on H.B.,” or “H.B. doing well,” or “Gave fifty dirhams to H.B.”

  I telephoned the countess and asked if she knew about the mysterious initials.

  “He used to say he came to Casa for the coffee beans,” she said. “That it reminded him of the coffee he had in Kabul.”

  “But what about H.B.?”

  “Is it a kind of coffee?” she asked.

  “No, that wouldn’t make sense,” I said. “He may have been eccentric, but an obsession with coffee beans doesn’t sound right.”

  I would have asked Kamal for his opinion, as he was good at crosswords. But he didn’t turn up for an entire week. I called his long-suffering girlfriend and asked if she knew where he was.

  “Probably run off with another girl,” she said. “I wish her luck.”

  Rachana told me to check with the police. I didn’t because Kamal himself had once warned me about contacting the police.

  “Ask them for directions,” he had said, “and you’ll find yourself behind bars.”

  IF I NEEDED AN exorcist in Britain, I wouldn’t know whom to ask. The English yellow pages certainly don’t have a listing, and if I stopped someone in the street and asked them, I’d probably be dragged away to an asylum. There were many things that were hard to find in Morocco, but an exorcist was not one of them. The guardians beamed with delight when I lined them up and asked for their advice on exorcists.

  “In the mountains,” said the Bear.

  “Yes, at the top of the mountains,” said Hamza.

  “But how do I make contact with them?”

  “Go and ask at Sidi Abdur Rahman,” Osman suggested.

  Until then I had only heard gossip about the tomb of the saint Sidi Abdur Rahman. It lay on an outcrop of rocks two hundred yards into the Atlantic, a mile from the Caliph’s House. I would often pass it and found my eyes drawn to the cluster of whitewashed buildings propped up on a plinth of jagged rocks. It looked like something out of a science fiction film. When the tide was in, it became an island, and when the tide was out, you could walk across to it if you dared.

  Morocco has hundreds of such tombs. They are a focal point for anyone hoping to be healed or to attain baraka. Ordinary people flock to them in times of need. If their mother is sick, or they can’t get pregnant or find a wife, they go to the tombs and pray, make a sacrifice, or beseech the resident sorceress to cast a spell. A wizened old woman in the bidonville once told me that the tomb of Sidi Abdur Rahman was the most blessed place in all Casablanca. She said that you could be touched by its power simply by looking at it.

  In most Arab countries, people revere the tombs of the good, especially those of Sufi mystics. But I had not come across a Muslim country in which such strength was drawn from the burial grounds of saints. For me, the deep unwavering belief in them hinted of Morocco’s pre-Islamic past.

  Osman explained that I should go to the tomb before dawn on Friday. He said he would take me. Thankfully, the tide was out when we got there. The sky was lightless but not dark, the air very cold, a breeze sweeping in over the surf. The waves were far out, black crests breaking into white. It was hard to believe we were on the edge of a great city. The tomb itself had an outlandish presence. It seemed to glow. The only sounds were of the waves in the distance and the faint hum of a voice in prayer.

  Osman led me over the jagged rocks, toward the island. It was comforting to have him there. I have never been unnerved in Morocco, but if there was a place to be afraid of, it was surely the tomb of Sidi Abdur Rahman. Where the rocks ended, a cr
ude stairway began. We ascended it and found ourselves on the islet.

  A group of four women were crouched on the path praying, faces veiled, bodies rocking gently back and forth. Beside them was a cluster of knapsacks.

  “They have come from far away,” Osman said. “Their need must be very great.”

  We walked up the path toward the tomb. Coarse one-room buildings lay on either side, the homes of pilgrims who had come and never left. Spend time in Morocco and you hear tales of people so fearful of Jinns that they move into a mosque or a shrine and refuse to go home. Kamal had told me that his own father was once so frightened of bad spirits that he slept in a mosque for an entire year.

  To the left of the path was a patch of bare rock, a place of sacrifice. It was early but the specter of death had already visited. We stood there as dawn broke, the first rays of pallid pink light reflecting off the rock pools of fresh blood. Osman motioned to a door.

  “That’s where the sorceress lives,” he said.

  “Shall we go there?”

  “First we must buy some lead,” he said.

  I didn’t understand why the metal was needed. But I handed ten dirhams to a man with a pile of the silver strips. Osman strode up and tapped at the sorceress’s door. A woman appeared. She was short and broad shouldered and had a cocked eye. Osman greeted her with respect, and I held up the lead foil. The woman fluttered a hand at the door in invitation. We slipped inside.

  The room was extremely small, damp, and cold, its ceiling hung with bunches of dried leaves. There was a pile of white seashells heaped in one corner, and a Qur’an on a stand in the middle. We sat on our haunches.

  “Tell her we need an exorcist,” I said.

  Osman took a breath, smiled nervously, and explained. The sorceress frowned, sneezed, then talked about Jinns.

  “What’s she saying?”

  “She says she can see it in your face,” he said.

  “See what?”

  “That there is a Jinn inside you.”

  “It’s not in me, it’s in the house,” I whispered gruffly.

  “It’s the same thing. She says she has seen the Jinn.”

  “What’s he like?”

  More chatter, then nodding.

  “It’s not a male Jinn. It’s female,” he said. “She’s strong, powerful, and very angry.”

  “What about the exorcist?” I said.

  Osman put the question to the sorceress. She took the lead and melted it in a saucepan over a gas burner. When it was liquid, she poured it into a steel bucket half filled with water. There was a crackle and a muffled fizz of something very hot becoming cold. The woman pushed up her sleeves, delved for the lead, and inspected what she found. She said something to Osman. His face paled with fear.

  “The Jinn is b’saf, very great,” he said. “She wants to kill you. There’s danger. One exorcist won’t be enough. You will need twenty of them.”

  “But where do we find so many exorcists?”

  Osman translated the question. The sorceress inspected the silvery metal again.

  “In Meknes,” she said.

  ON THE SEVENTH NIGHT after his disappearance, Kamal rang the bell. He was wearing a white blindfold and had been led to Dar Khalifa by a small boy. I welcomed him, but didn’t comment on his apparent loss of sight. I knew an explanation would be forthcoming. We sat down and Rachana brought in a tray of coffee. Kamal fumbled for the cup. I remarked how nice the garden was looking.

  “I can’t see it,” he said.

  “What happened this time?”

  “Emergency laser eye surgery,” he said.

  The thing about Kamal was that he told the truth as if it were a lie. I would always assume he was lying, only to find out later it had been the truth. He had taken time off only days before, claiming to have diabetes. I had telephoned the hospital. To my surprise, his explanation had borne out.

  He fumbled for a crumpled scrap of paper in his pocket and held it in my direction. It was a prescription for glasses.

  “There’s no time for you to go blind,” I said frostily. “We’ve got to get twenty exorcists. We’ve got to go to Meknes.”

  Kamal lifted the corner of his bandage and peeked over at me, blinking. “I know just who to ask,” he said.

  WORK AT THE HOUSE continued. On some days there were more than sixty craftsmen bustling away at the floors and walls, the masonry and woodwork. At least half of them had moved into the salon, where they slept in rows like conscripts heading off to war. By the middle of March the winter blues were behind us. We were on a fresh course, sailing toward stifling heat. The garden was alive with bees, tempted by the scent of honeysuckle, jasmine, and the fire red hibiscus flowers. And birds of every shape and size flapped around the trees—storks and woods pigeons, ibis and turtledoves.

  The artisans remained unable to complete any job they had begun. The painter would pause before making the final sweep of his brush, and the mason would leave the last nail sticking out. The curse of unfinished work caused me to drown in frustration, but there was nothing I could do. We would have been able to move into our bedrooms months before we did if a simple band of tiles had been finished around the bathroom walls. Without them, the tadelakt team couldn’t do their plasterwork, and without that, the plumber couldn’t do the bathroom fittings, and the electrician had to hold back, too. It was the same downstairs. The sitting rooms were waiting for a few stray panes of glass. Until they were glazed, the painters refused to start, and the floors could not be oiled until the ceilings had been done. Everything at Dar Khalifa was inextricably linked, in a great twisted mess of interconnecting lines.

  Part of the problem was communication, not verbal but cultural. It was true I could hardly have a conversation with any of the craftsmen, but I got the feeling that even if I had spoken fluent Arabic, we would still have been unable to understand each other.

  I reminded myself not to be deceived by Casablanca. It was an enormous thriving city, with the latest European fashions, fast cars, and chic restaurants. But all that was froth on the surface. The real Casablanca was a place of die-hard tradition, in which ancient Moroccan customs endured. The artisans had learned their skills as apprentices and were part of the rock-solid underside that kept the kingdom on course.

  The inability to finish work brought out the worst in me. I found myself taking it out on Kamal, who took to wearing glasses with lenses as thick as milk-bottle glass. He was the only person who could understand my tirades.

  “Why the hell can’t they finish one damn thing before they move on?” I complained again and again.

  Kamal would creep behind me, his head low. “It’s the Moroccan way,” he would reply. “We may not finish things, but we start them so well!”

  One morning Rachana found me cringing in the bathroom, unable to come out and face the world. I felt as if a nervous breakdown was coming on.

  “You can’t go on like this,” she whispered gently.

  “I know,” I said, my mouth foaming at the side. “But they’re driving me mad. They can’t finish anything.”

  “There’s only one way to get the house done,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  Rachana smiled. “You have to be like a Moroccan,” she said.

  TOWARD THE END OF March, I was walking down Boulevard Mohammed V, the main avenue through the old town, when I spotted a coffee seller. The shop was old-fashioned, very plain, and right in front of the French-built Marché Central. It was the kind of establishment that survives because of the quality of the product it purveys, and not because of newfangled marketing techniques. I went inside.

  A woman in her thirties stiffened on her chair and welcomed me. She said she had not seen me before.

  “We don’t have many new customers,” she said.

  “It’s my first time here,” I replied.

  “We sell coffee from Brazil,” she said. “Have you had it before?”

  I said that I had, that I liked it very much.
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  The woman seemed overcome with delight. “Some people prefer coffee from Asia,” she said, “but my grandfather says you must concentrate on one product if you want to sell it well. He must be right, because he has been selling coffee here for sixty years.”

  Along the wall behind the cash register was a picture of the king and a series of polished copper urns. They bore the names of fine Brazilian beans—Yellow Bourbon, Fazenda Jacaranda, and Carioca. I asked which was the darkest roast. The saleswoman tapped a thumbnail on the last urn, marked Boléro.

  “You must take this one,” she said.

  I asked about her grandfather. “Is he still alive?”

  “Of course,” she replied. “He’s old, very old, but he sits there every afternoon.”

  She pointed to an armchair in the window. Its stuffing was coming out at the sides, and the cushion was compressed as if it had been well loved. I paid for my coffee and took the brown paper bag. Then I hesitated. The woman breathed in.

  “Is there anything else?” she asked.

  “Um, er . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “This may sound stupid,” I said, “but my own grandfather used to come to Casablanca every month from Tangier. He came to buy coffee. It is very, very unlikely,” I went on, “but perhaps he used to come to this shop.”

  The saleswoman straightened her back and smoothed a hand down her dark mane of hair. “Did he like Brazilian coffee?” she asked.

  RACHANA WAS RIGHT. THE only way to get the house completed was to head full force into the storm. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. It was as if blinders had been wrenched from my eyes. I ran up onto the upper terrace and surveyed the Caliph’s House. Normally, I would have looked down, cursing at all the unfinished projects. But instead, I jotted down all the other things we could start doing.

  First, I wanted to convert an old stone workshop at the side of the house into a hammam, and then to renovate the dilapidated guesthouse at the end of the vegetable garden. After that, I had plans to build another fountain and decorate the room across from my library with a fabulous mosaic floor. Until then I had held back in the name of moderation. I jotted down eight new projects and handed the list to Kamal.