Conville & Walsh

Upon moving from London to Morocco, Tahir Shah was struck by the importance of oral story-telling in Arabic culture and, notably, of the role of the teaching story: a story which puzzles when first heard, but which then slowly begins to embed itself in the listener’s mind and, in so doing, reveals its secrets.

Born the son of Idries Shah, the Sufi philosopher who himself spent a lifetime collecting stories from all over the world, Tahir Shah was raised in a family where fictional characters were as real to him as his own relatives.

One night in Morocco, Tahir Shah meets a story-teller who explains to him the Moroccan belief that everyone is born with their own story: the trick is simply to find it, and to recognise it as one’s own.

And so with two small children of his own, who each night demand a fresh story from the vast hoard which he himself inherited, Tahir sets out on a quest to find his own story, travelling widely, and with open ears, and listening to the old stories told to him in the depths of the nights by cobblers, by Berbers and by professional story-tellers.