The Caliph's House, Tahir's Notes
Moving to Morocco and leaving our small London apartment behind was something about which I gave quite little thought. Now I look back, I reel with amazement at how I talked Rachana into the dream -- my dream -- and how I pushed the fantasy forward. Sometimes in life it's best not to think too much. I rarely speculate, and find myself cringing while others dissect an idea, a dream. Speculate too much and the fragile idea dies before it has life. So we didn't think too much, and I outlawed any speculation. We lived moment to moment, and day to day.
Renovating Dar Khalifa was something that at times drove me to almost madness, and at other times I wondered how it would ever end. I knew that if I could only get out of bed each morning and stand up, then I would have a fighting chance at getting through the day. Even when the days were bleaker than the darkest nightmare, I knew the secret was to blinker myself, to hide the perils around me, and to keep struggling towards the distant horizon.
THE CALIPH'S HOUSE, my book on the ordeal, was born from the struggle. It rolled out of my fingertips very fast. Writing it somehow purged the memory, and helped me in a kind of primitive therapy. I wrote the book here at Dar Khalifa, whereas normally I tend to make a journey and write about it somewhere else. That helped me, to be here, writing. I could feel a sense of consciousness in the walls of The Caliph's House. It's something I feel sitting here now. I don't quite understand it, but I have learned to appreciate it, to love it.
The greatest moment for me was when the first copy of THE CALIPH'S HOUSE arrived across the threshold. I felt as if we had made it, as if in some way we were complete. I don't like it when authors rant on about their publishers, dousing them in praise. I don't really even like writing acknowledgements in my books. I don't know why, perhaps because I think they take the reader's eye off the tale. But my publisher at Bantam Dell in New York, Philip Rappaport, was an extraordinary force behind this book. He believed in it, and because he did as strongly as he did, it helped me to believe as well.
I think that a good story comes out of a struggle. It has to be earned, lived, experienced. That's why THE CALIPH'S HOUSE is special for me. It was crafted out of hardship and dire uncertainty... and as far as I am concerned, a story written from the heart takes on a life of its own.
Another reason I am so pleased that THE CALIPH'S HOUSE is thriving, is that it is drawing people here to Morocco. I feel fortunate to be living in this Kingdom, one of the most magical lands on Earth. And, nothing brings a faster smile to my face than when someone drops me an email saying that THE CALIPH'S HOUSE encouraged them to come to Morocco and to follow a dream of their own.
Renovating Dar Khalifa was something that at times drove me to almost madness, and at other times I wondered how it would ever end. I knew that if I could only get out of bed each morning and stand up, then I would have a fighting chance at getting through the day. Even when the days were bleaker than the darkest nightmare, I knew the secret was to blinker myself, to hide the perils around me, and to keep struggling towards the distant horizon.
THE CALIPH'S HOUSE, my book on the ordeal, was born from the struggle. It rolled out of my fingertips very fast. Writing it somehow purged the memory, and helped me in a kind of primitive therapy. I wrote the book here at Dar Khalifa, whereas normally I tend to make a journey and write about it somewhere else. That helped me, to be here, writing. I could feel a sense of consciousness in the walls of The Caliph's House. It's something I feel sitting here now. I don't quite understand it, but I have learned to appreciate it, to love it.
The greatest moment for me was when the first copy of THE CALIPH'S HOUSE arrived across the threshold. I felt as if we had made it, as if in some way we were complete. I don't like it when authors rant on about their publishers, dousing them in praise. I don't really even like writing acknowledgements in my books. I don't know why, perhaps because I think they take the reader's eye off the tale. But my publisher at Bantam Dell in New York, Philip Rappaport, was an extraordinary force behind this book. He believed in it, and because he did as strongly as he did, it helped me to believe as well.
I think that a good story comes out of a struggle. It has to be earned, lived, experienced. That's why THE CALIPH'S HOUSE is special for me. It was crafted out of hardship and dire uncertainty... and as far as I am concerned, a story written from the heart takes on a life of its own.
Another reason I am so pleased that THE CALIPH'S HOUSE is thriving, is that it is drawing people here to Morocco. I feel fortunate to be living in this Kingdom, one of the most magical lands on Earth. And, nothing brings a faster smile to my face than when someone drops me an email saying that THE CALIPH'S HOUSE encouraged them to come to Morocco and to follow a dream of their own.
posted by Mangorains at 2:08 AM
1 Comments:
Dear Tahir,
I very much enjoyed your book ... our local Moroccan bistro/sandwich bar here in Cambridge (UK), where my wife and I love to go for breakfast, affords regular opportunity to study a map of Morocco, and it's beginning to affect my mental holiday planning ...
Meanwhile, my wife dreams of investing some money in a house in St. Lucia ... yes, there is a lesson to be drawn here. The mind can always supply reasons to silence a heart's desire.
We have recently moved house as well, running our translation business from home now, and I can relate to what you say about a house having a sense of consciousness. Travel plans and exotic ambitions notwithstanding, we feel happy in our new home and appreciate its presence. Of course, we had nothing like the struggle you had to go trough in terms of renovation and acclimatisation, only a surfeit of work at a time when it might have been good to have more time to tidy our belongings ...
As you say, a book written from the heart takes on a life of its own. That is very apparent in The Caliph's House. The way our beliefs and expectations shape what we perceive -- or block access to what we might perceive -- is a theme that I keep returning to since reading your book.
In the end, a jinn is as real as the effect it is having, and if we note what it is that determines what we see and don't see, then it seems to me we might already have understood something about such entities as jinns.
With thanks, not least for the laugh-out-loud moments in the book, and best wishes --
AK, Cambridge
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