I moved to Casablanca with my family in 2004, having bought
a large, rambling mansion on an acre of land in the middle of a shantytown.
I knew I wanted to move to Morocco – I had lived in Marrakesh before, but
out of the blue I was offered this extraordinary house. In Arabic, it’s called Dar
Khalifa – the Caliph’s House. It was quite well known in Casablanca, and was
supposedly haunted by djinns. In the Islamic world almost everyone believes
in these parallel life forms that live invisibly among us; they are not ghosts, but
often malevolent spirits. Nobody wanted to live in this house, and it had been
empty for a long time. Over about two years we renovated it, using traditional
Moroccan techniques, such as the tadelakt plaster walls they have in bathrooms.
And of course we held a very large exorcism. Since then the shantytown has been
mostly cleared away and replaced by apartment buildings. Casablanca in the last
50 years has morphed and spread in all directions. It’s a melting pot of Morocco
and pretty much everyone has come from elsewhere: I dived in at the deep end.
It's a city that's so misunderstood, with many layers to it that even locals don't
realise exist.
MY CASABLANCA
Writer Tahir Shah on the city where he made his home
and which inspired his book, The Caliph’s HouseCASABLANCA