Free The Caliph's House by Tahir Shah

apricots; a pair of sea bream marinated in a saffron sauce and served on a bed of couscous. After that came
bistiya,
a vast platter of sweet pastry, beneath which lay wafer-thin layers of pigeons, almonds, and egg.
    Zohra said the family was the center of Moroccan life, and that food was at the center of the family.
    â€œIf only we could do everything as well as we cook,” she said with a smile, “we would be rulers of the world.”
    The conversation moved away from food and on to love.
    â€œWhen I am married to Yusuf,” Zohra said, “we will live in a little house, with small red flowers around the door. We will have two children—a boy and a girl, and . . .” she said, pausing to sip her orange juice, “and we will never be apart, not even for a night.”
    â€œIt sounds idyllic,” I said.
    â€œOh, it will be, it will be,” said Zohra dreamily.
    I asked how she felt when they met for the first time.
    â€œI told you,” she said, “we met on the Internet.”
    â€œBut how was it when you first met in person, face to face?”
    Zohra swallowed hard and blushed.
    â€œYusuf and I have never met,” she said.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    ARIANE WAS STILL VERY small, but she pleaded with me to buy her a tortoise. She wanted one like the tortoise at school. I fended off the request for as long as I could, as all my energy was taken up dealing with the problems brought to me morning and night by the guardians. Most of these centered around the well-being of Qandisha the Jinn and the trail of destruction left by the wrecking crew. Ariane begged and begged for the tortoise, until I could stand it no more. Hamza had got wind of her wish and insisted that nothing would bring more
baraka
to the house than a strong, healthy tortoise. The reptiles, he insisted, were the luckiest of all ever created by Allah. I asked Zohra to find out where to buy them. Two days later she reported. The only place to look was, she said, in Tan-Tan.
    I looked at my wall map of Morocco. I couldn’t see Tan-Tan.
    â€œMove your finger down,” said Zohra. “No, down much more.”
    Then I saw it.
    â€œBut that’s way down south in the Sahara!”
    â€œOf course,” said Zohra.
    â€œCan’t you buy tortoises in Casablanca, in a pet shop?”
    Zohra scoffed at the remark. “Do you want your little daughter to have low quality?” she said. “A tortoise that’s been tortured and kept in a cage? Or do you want to be proud that you’ve given her the best, one that will really bless the house?”
    I was sick of Casablanca, of talk of tortoises, and of the Jinns, and so I packed Rachana and the children into the car. We loaded suitcases on the roof, and we headed south, in search of tortoises with divine spirit. We hadn’t left the city limits of Casablanca when Ariane threw up all over her lap. Her Moroccan childhood had begun.
    We shunned the highway and took the old, disintegrating road that ran along the coast as far as Agadir. Beyond it, we were in the desert. After many hours in the wretched butcher’s car, I swore I’d buy my own vehicle as soon as we got home. The only things to take our minds off the rotting seats were the sand and the dust, and the boys swinging squirrels. There were just one or two at first, standing on the side of the road. As soon as they saw a car, they would whip their arms up, whirling strings around their heads like lassos. At the end of each string was a terrified ball of fur. I slammed on the breaks, cursed the boys, bought their squirrels, and released them a few miles on—just in time to meet another group of boys with another clutch of squirrels. The more damn squirrels I rescued, the more there were being tortured, waiting for a stupid foreigner to save them.
    The journey revealed to Rachana, Ariane, and baby Timur the raw North African beauty I had known myself as a child. We had