The storyteller

Tahir Shah laments the passing of the traditional morroccan storyteller in the age of television but they are alive and kicking in Taroudant. Two work together in the square and draw a large (male) crowd every morning particularly on Sunday which is market day. They act out the stories together with limited props like fake guns and clearly an amount of comedy routine although I, of course, cannot understand a word.

Crowd watching storyteller in Plcae Assareg Taroudant 4.11.10

Storytellers Taroudant Place Assareg 4.11.10

Tahir Shah comes from a family of Afgani extraction exiled round about WWII. His grandfather lived in Tangier but his father, Idries, brought up the family in Tunbridge Wells. Tahir Shah moved to Casablanca a few years ago and renovated an old house which he writes about in "The Caliph's House" and "In Arabian Nights". His father Idries Shah was a Sufi and wrote both about Sufiism and numerous "teaching stories" in the Sufi tradition for both children and adults. I am currently reading his collection of traditional stories about Mullah Nasrudin. Here is one of them:-

The Mullah went to see a rich man.
"Give me some money"
"Why?"
"I want to buy..an elephant"
"If you have no money, you can't afford to keep an elephant"
"I came here",said Nasrudin, "to get money, not advice."