BOOKPATHS

Morocco

Marcel Theroux visits Tahir Shah, author of The Caliph's House.

The success of 'The Caliph's House' has already made the house the object of literary pilgrimage -- the American ambassador and his wife have popped out to take a look.  Future visitors will be subsidising recycling.  -- from "Casablanca Writ Large," by Marcel Theroux, The Guardian

Casablanca, Morocco

Writer Tahir Shah offers an “insider’s guide to Casablanca.”

Six years ago I dragged my wife and two small children from our cramped flat in the East End of London to live in Casablanca. We bought a rambling mansion with five courtyards, gardens and a pool in the middle of the sprawling Sidi Ghanem shantytown. It is quite the most magical spot but the learning curve has been a steep one, especially when we learned that the house was said to be infested from the floor to the rafters with wicked spirits, known as jinn. After lengthy exorcisms and endless renovations, we set about getting to know the city that had become our new home. – from “Of All the Medinas…Insider’s Guide to Casablanca,” by Tahir Shah, The Guardian

Morocco

Susan Orlean returns to Fez to explore the donkey’s “central role in the life of this desert kingdom.”

So a good donkey is respected and valued – it is estimated that 100,000 people in the Fez area depend in one way or another on a donkey for their livelihood – but the animals are not sentimentalized.  – from “Where Donkeys Deliver,” by Susan Orelan, Smithsonian (September 2009)

Tangier, Morocco

Stephen Emms goes to see if the “artistic spirit lives on in Tangier, the ‘city of dreams.’”

“Samuel Pepys, quite definitely, was not a fan: only Hell itself was worse. Neither was Mark Twain, who desired to leave next day. But for dozens of artists and writers, from Henri Matisse to Paul Bowles, Tangier, on the corner of Africa and Europe, the Atlantic and the Med, has possessed a je ne sais quoi. Its raffish reputation may have dried up since being reclaimed by Morocco in 1956, after decades as an international zone, but, in 2008 is a cultural renaissance again rumbling through the 'city of dreams'?” – from “Tangerine Dream,” by Stephen Emms, The Guardian

Morocco

Read Maya Jaggi’s interview with poet Tahar Ben Jelloun, “brought up in Morocco,” imprisoned, and living in exile in Paris since 1971.

“The young Moroccan composed his first poems, in French, during those 18 months in army camp, after his arrest in 1966 for taking part in student demonstrations in Casablanca. The experience was pivotal.” – from “Voice of the Maghreb,” by Maya Jaggi, The Guardian