The Anthologies: Childhood: The Anthologies

By Tahir Shah

During a career of thirty years, Tahir Shah has published dozens of books on travel, exploration, topography, and research, as well as a large body of fiction.

Through this extraordinary series of Anthologies, selections from the corpus are arranged by theme, allowing the reader to follow certain threads that are of profound interest to Shah.

Spanning a number of distinct genres – in both fiction and non-fiction work – the collections incorporate a wealth of unpublished material. Prefaced by an original introduction, each Anthology provides a lens into a realm that has shaped Shah's own outlook as a bestselling author.

Regarded as one of the most prolific and original writers working today, Tahir Shah has a worldwide following. Published in hundreds of editions, and in more than thirty languages, his books turn the world back to front and inside out. Seeking to make sense of the hidden underbelly, he illuminates facets of life most writers hardly even realize exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jun 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781914960338

Book preview

For Malala Yousafzai –

An inspiration in giving children a love of books,

a sense of wonder, and imagination.

The Anthologies:

Africa

Ceremony

Childhood

City

Danger

East

Expedition

Frontier

Hinterland

India

Jungle

Morocco

People

Quest

South

Taboo

By Tahir Shah:

Travel

Trail of Feathers

Travels With Myself

Beyond the Devil’s Teeth

In Search of King Solomon’s Mines

House of the Tiger King

In Arabian Nights

The Caliph’s House

Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Journey Through Namibia

Novels

Jinn Hunter: Book One – The Prism

Jinn Hunter: Book Two – The Jinnslayer

Jinn Hunter: Book Three – The Perplexity

Hannibal Fogg and the Supreme Secret of Man

Hannibal Fogg and the Codex Cartographica

Casablanca Blues

Eye Spy

Godman

Paris Syndrome

Timbuctoo

Midas

Zigzagzone

Nasrudin

Travels With Nasrudin

The Misadventures of the Mystifying Nasrudin

The Peregrinations of the Perplexing Nasrudin

The Voyages and Vicissitudes of Nasrudin

Nasrudin in the Land of Fools

Stories

The Arabian Nights Adventures

Scorpion Soup

Tales Told to a Melon

The Afghan Notebook

The Caravanserai Stories

Ghoul Brothers

Hourglass

Imaginist

Jinn’s Treasure

Jinnlore

Mellified Man

Skeleton Island

Wellspring

When the Sun Forgot to Rise

Outrunning the Reaper

The Cap of Invisibility

On Backgammon Time

The Wondrous Seed

The Paradise Tree

Mouse House

The Hoopoe’s Flight

The Old Wind

A Treasury of Tales

Daydreams of an Octopus and Other Stories

Miscellaneous

The Reason to Write

Zigzag Think

Being Myself

Research

Cultural Research

The Middle East Bedside Book

Three Essays

Anthologies

The Anthologies

The Clockmaker’s Box

The Tahir Shah Fiction Reader

The Tahir Shah Travel Reader

Edited by

Congress With a Crocodile

A Son of a Son, Volume I

A Son of a Son, Volume II

Screenplays

Casablanca Blues: The Screenplay

Timbuctoo: The Screenplay

Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd

PO Box 5299

Bath BA1 0WS

United Kingdom

www.secretum-mundi.com

[e-mail]

First published by Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd, 2019

THE ANTHOLOGIES: CHILDHOOD

© TAHIR SHAH

Tahir Shah asserts the right to be identified as the Author of the Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Visit the author’s website at: www.tahirshah.com

ISBN: 978-1-914960-33-8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Contents

Introduction

Monsters Under the Bed

The Pebble

The Son Will Finish It

First Steps in the Expedition Business

He Who Scatters Souls

A Mountain to an Ant

A Problem with Secrets

The Gift of Cultural Colour

A Tortoise for Ariane

Why the Heart Beats as it Does

The Book of the Book

Blindfold at the Farm

Joha, the Moroccan

Tell Me a Story…

When Abnormal was Normal

Stories: Handle with Care

Competing Through Children

The Power of Imagination

Buried in Culture

The Water of Paradise

The Man Who Listened

Slipper Feet

Melon City

The People Collection

The Treasure Box

A Child’s Dreamworld

The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water

Children in Need of Chocolate

The Imagination of Children

Melting the Ice

Mistress of Her Own Fate

Heard on the Medina Grapevine

A College for Storytellers

Nasrudin Against the Red Army

Boy’s Toys

The Value of Selflessness

The Wise Fool

The Gift of a Story

A World Upside Down

Introduction

I THINK OF

my childhood more than most people.

The reason is that, the way I see it, the childhood years are a magical realm of delight – or at least they ought to be. A testing zone for ideas, emotions, sentiments, and all kinds of other interrelated components, they allow a lump of dough to be kneaded before it’s baked into bread.

I believe we are born into the world with a default psychological setting, one that prepares us in the most perfect way for life. The problem is that Occidental society has reprogrammed itself to phase out the genius of our original calibration.

Through a decade or more of so-called ­‘education’, children sit in class and are taught how to understand the society they will inherit. However well meaning, I believe the conventional educational system doesn’t prepare kids – ­because it’s going about it in the wrong way.

When Ariane and Timur were young I fretted a great deal, anxious for them to evade reprogramming, and maintain the default setting of imagination with which they were born.

One evening, as I got them ready for bed, they asked me for a story. In my restless state, I remembered one my father used to tell us – a tale called ‘When the Waters were Changed’.

When they were in their pyjamas and tucked into bed, I told them the tale.

This is how it goes…

There was once a land where the water was very sweet, and where everyone was very happy. The trees were tall, the flowers scented, and the mountain landscapes pristine.

One day, a man who lived in a remote valley had a dream. Through it, he learned that in the coming weeks, the waters of the region would change overnight. The sweet water everyone knew and loved would be swapped for new water. It would look the same and taste the same, but the new water would change the way people would think.

Through his dream the man came to understand that he had to channel the existing water into a reservoir, and drink only from that supply. Without any other instructions, he did as he was bid to do by his dream. Accordingly, he filled a reservoir and made sure he only drank its water. Then, running through the kingdom, he warned others of the impending catastrophe, begging them to do as he had done.

A little time passed. Just as the voice in the dream had described, the waters of the kingdom were magically changed.

The old water was exchanged with new water.

As has been foretold, the new water caused the people to think in a different way. To the man who was drinking the old water – and who kept thinking in the old way – it was a terrible thing. He found that the new thinking was at odds with everything he believed to be right. Everyone thought in the new way because, of course, they were all drinking the new water – all except for him.

As the months passed, people began to regard the man from the remote valley as insane. They couldn’t understand it, but they knew he was wrong and they were right. This conclusion was reached because there were more of them than there were of him.

More time passed, and the man who was drinking from his reservoir of old water found himself becoming increasingly isolated. The people down on the plateau shunned him when he ventured there. They became progressively bitter, asserting that he was sick or mad, or both.

One day, the man could stand it no more. He went to the reservoir of old water he’d kept in secrecy, and drained every last drop. Then, anxiously, he moved down to the plateau and lived among the people there – drinking the new water just like they all did.

At first, they continued to spurn him.

But with time, they saw he was quite sane. After that, they’d say to each other that the man had gone mad for a time but had eventually reverted to normality again thanks to the power of prayer.

In the same way that the man in the story tried to hold out, but had no choice but to go with the flow, I see Ariane and Timur – and all the other kids out there – have no alternative but to be like everyone else.

Or do they?

Perhaps, if we recalibrate ourselves little by little, we’ll reach a time when there would be no need for recalibration at all – because we will be exactly as we were at the beginning… programmed in a way we were supposed to be, right from the start.

Tahir Shah

Monsters Under the Bed

ON THE EVE

of my sixth birthday, my father tucked me into bed.

‘Are you excited for tomorrow?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I whispered.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m frightened.’

‘Frightened of what?’

‘Of the monsters under my bed.’

Stooping down, he peered into the darkness.

‘Nothing there.’

‘That’s because they’re invisible monsters.’

‘If you don’t think about them, they’ll go away.’

‘But they’ll just hide under someone else’s bed, and that doesn’t seem fair,’ I said. ‘You see, that’s how they came to my bedroom in the first place.’

Perching on the edge of my bed, my father smoothed the blanket with his hand, and said:

‘I’ll tell you something… something that will protect you throughout your life.’

‘From monsters?’

‘Yes. And all kinds of other things… things that frighten you, or that you don’t understand.’

‘What is it, Baba?’

‘A suit of armour.’

‘Like the one down in the hallway?’

‘A little bit like that, but different as well.’

‘Will I wear it?’

‘Yes you will.’

‘Can I see it?’

Leaning back, my father grinned, the kind of magical grin that preceded something special.

‘This suit of armour isn’t like others that you’ve seen before. It’s different because it’s not made of metal.’

‘Then it won’t stop the arrows and the swords.’

‘Ah, but it will… in its own way.’

‘How?’

‘By protecting you from the inside out.’

I didn’t understand. All my friends had fathers who said things simply, while mine spoke in riddles.

‘What’s it made of, then?’

‘Of stories.’

‘What kind of stories?’

‘Stories about the bravest and most amazing fool who ever lived.’

‘What’s his name?’

Dark eyes reflecting the lamplight, my father replied:

‘His name is Nasrudin.’

The years passed, and eventually I broke free from the shackles of childhood.

While my former classmates set about getting sensible jobs, fat salaries, and supposed trophies of success, I embarked on an altogether different path.

I decided to devote my life to the restlessness that filled me from the tip of my heels, to the great swathe of nut-brown hair that once crowned my head.