The Anthologies: South

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Spanning a number of distinct genres – in both fiction and non-fiction work – the collections incorporate a wealth of unpublished material.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: 9781914960451

Book preview

For Khaled Hosseini

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 & 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

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First published by Secretum Mundi Publishing Ltd, 2019

THE ANTHOLOGIES: SOUTH

© 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: 978-1-914960-45-1

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

The Great Rudolfo

A Price on their Heads

Vine of the Dead

On the Skeleton Coast

Fresh Eyes

Two Gifts

Love in the Desert

The Chainsaw Gang

In the Tradition Business

On the River of God

In Diamond-land

Condor Messenger

Living it Up in Buenos Aires

Old Cape Town

The Hummingbird

Brazil’s Sanctuaries from Abuse

Ostrich Hats and Model Ts

Anaconda-man

In Patagonia

Introduction

THE FIRST TIME

I crossed the equator into the southern hemisphere was on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi, in the first week of January 1986.

Nineteen years old, I was venturing to sub-Saharan Africa to study at a small American university there. Shortly after breakfast, a turquoise-clad flight attendant came to where I was scrunched up in economy.

‘First time?’ she asked brightly.

‘First time for what?’

‘Flying south of the equator.’

I nodded.

‘Yes.’

The attendant handed me a certificate.

‘Fill out the name yourself.’

Since then I’ve crossed the equator on dozens of occasions – in the air, on the ocean, and on land as well. Most of the time I don’t think about it, because it doesn’t really matter. After all, the invisible line marked red on globes and world maps only holds the significance we place upon it.

Economists like to drone on about the North-South divide, as do geographers, and all kinds of academic types. On reading their theories, as I tend to do, I find myself groaning at their deductions. I’m not interested in comparing North and South, just as it doesn’t interest me to contrast East with West.

What does interest me is observing the southern hemisphere of our planet, without contrasting it to the north. I’m drawn to the study of considering the southern hemisphere by itself. And, better still, by the pursuit of searching out its individual wonders.

In the early ’nineties, I travelled to the Seychelles and spent several weeks roaming that Indian Ocean archipelago. Although pretending I was on the trail of certain spices, I was in actual fact searching for buried pirate treasure.

In 1721, Olivier Levasseur, known as La Buse – ‘The Buzzard’ – plundered a Portuguese ship called Virgem do Cobo. Fearing for his life, he supposedly hid the treasure – valued at more than $200 million – on the island of Mahé. The hoard is said to have contained a vast amount of gold coins, as well as the seven-foot-tall Cross of Goa, encrusted with precious gems, and fashioned from the purest gold.

An encoded treasure cryptogram was in circulation at the time. A great many adventurers had spent months, and even years, interpreting it. Shunning their deductions, I used my knowledge of the Abjad – an ancient Arabic system of transcription and divination – to make sense of the map.

While my budget held out, I searched for the treasure and had all kinds of adventures on Mahé, and on a number of the other islands.

One evening I sought sanctuary in a bar on the beach, reflecting how I was the only single foreigner in the entire country. Couples, and especially honeymoon couples, frequented the islands. As a result, almost every dish on every restaurant menu was prepared for two, from Chateaubriand steak to Crêpes Suzette.

While sitting at the bar, watching the sun slip graciously into the Indian Ocean, I was approached by a boisterous Seychellois. Reeling theatrically from side to side, he was clutching a half-empty bottle of gut-rot palm rum.

‘Looking for the treasure, aren’t you?!’ he yelled, his slurred words spoken in French.

‘News travels fast,’ I said.

‘There are no secrets on Mahé, my friend.’

‘So do you have any tips for a treasure hunter?’

Taking a good, long swig from the bottle, the man punched a fist up into the air.

‘We look for treasure because it excites our dreams,’ he cried. ‘There’s no hope of finding it, but it doesn’t matter at all. What matters is being changed by the experience of adventure!’

A moment or two later, the drunk man and his lengthening shadow had vanished. But what he said to me in that fleeting encounter stuck with me in the most profound way.

In the years that followed, I searched for magic, lost cities, prehistoric cave systems, hidden manuscripts, and yet more treasure. Each time I chose a quest, I made sure it was even more captivating than the one before. Of course I knew the odds were stacked against me. But like the drunk on the beach had grasped so keenly, there’s no need to actually find the treasure.

The important thing is to embrace adventure and find oneself.

Tahir Shah

The Great Rudolfo

THE FIRST TIME

I heard the word ‘Argentina’ was as a child, when a troupe of puppeteers came to my childhood home at Langton House.

They had read my father’s books in Spanish translations, and were feverishly excited at having arrived at our home in a quiet corner of Kent. Even though they were from Argentina, they were dressed in sheepskin coats from Afghanistan – something I didn’t understand.

But then I was only four and a half.

They showered my sisters and I with gifts they’d made themselves from scraps and junk. Sequinned bags and tie-dyed waistcoats, lamps fashioned from old tin cans, spinning rainbow discs, mobiles, and stained-glass wigwams lit by tea lights.

The thing I liked best of all was the stuffed toy one of the Argentinian visitors brought me. His name was Rudolfo and he said he’d made it himself...

A soft toy of Nasrudin on his donkey.

Skewed awkwardly to the side, it was stuffed with second-hand stockings, and it smelled unlike anything I had experienced before. My mother grimaced when she saw it for the first time. She said it was how Argentina smelled, and that I ought to wash my hands after playing with it.

When the puppeteers left, my father slumped in a low leather chair, and seemed lost in despair. Even though I was young, I could see something was wrong.

So I asked what the matter was.

My father sat up, his head bowing down to my level.

‘Show me your Nasrudin,’ he said.

I held the stuffed toy up by the donkey’s foot.

Pressing his nostrils into the fabric, my father breathed in, lids lowering over his eyes as though he were experiencing the most delicious perfume.

‘Smell it,’ he said.

‘I already did. Mummy says I have to wash my hands after touching it. She thinks it smells like dirty old socks.’

‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’

‘Why not, Baba?’

‘Because she’s never been to Argentina.’

‘The place the puppet men come from?’

My father nodded.

‘That’s right. Argentina.’

Pulling the toy away from him, I hugged it tight and nudged my nostrils into it.

‘That’s right. Smell your Nasrudin,’ he said, ‘and never forget that smell... because one day you’ll go there.’

‘To Argentina?’

‘Yes.’

‘What will I do there?’

My father grinned.

‘You’ll go in search of Nasrudin,’ he said.

With time all dreams come true, and I finally got to Argentina.

The first time I went, forty years had passed since my father had lived there, reaching the Argentine capital by boat. About my age at the time of his arrival, he had accompanied my grandfather on a humanitarian mission on behalf of the India Office, to source halal meat for Muslim soldiers. As ever, they were shadowed by spies, who regularly filed disparaging dispatches to Whitehall.

After several months in Argentina, they made plans to leave, their mission completed and their funds spent. The day before the ship set sail back to Europe, my father was sitting alone in a café on Avenida Santa Fé when a young man stumbled in, touting lottery tickets.

Spotting a foreigner, he made a beeline for him.

‘Señor, your last chance to buy a ticket!’ he announced breathlessly. ‘The national lottery is to be picked this afternoon!’

‘I won’t win. You know it as well as I.’

The ticket-seller clicked his tongue.

‘No, no, Señor, on the contrary... I am absolutely certain you are going to win!’

‘How can you be so sure?’

The vendor selected one of the paper squares, holding it in his fingers as though it were treasure.

‘Because this is the winning ticket, that’s why.’

My father sipped his coffee.

‘If it is, then why don’t you buy it yourself?’

The young man sighed.

‘If I did as you suggest, and buy the winning ticket for myself,’ he answered, ‘I would be robbing you of your destiny.’

So, my father handed over a coin and bought the lucky ticket.

That afternoon, he won the lion’s share of La Grande de la Nacional, the Argentine National Lottery.

Next day, my grandfather set sail for Southampton, leaving my father to spend a bale-and-a-half of peso notes. Had he taken