Tahir Shah

This is the simple story of a man who buys a house in Casablanca. Just kidding, the mere act of buying sets off a chain of events that sends the reader headlong into the intricacies of Moroccan history, society, and culture. Tahir Shah has no idea what he's in for, but luckily, he lives to tell the tale. From bothersome guardians to a shady assistant to an actual exorcism involving a live goat, this book is weird and wonderful and makes for a pleasant afternoon read.

Tahir Shah wearies of London and its safe banality. He finally convinces his pregnant wife to buy a disaster of a mansion in Morocco and relocate there with their young daughter. From the beginning, their adventure feels doomed. Cats are found hanging by ropes from trees, strangled. The next door neighbor is the mysterious head of the Casablanca Mafia. Renovation efforts are led by a team of workers who can’t seem to complete anything. Everyone seems to believe in diabolical jinns, spirits show more who live in the mansion and who appear to want the family to abandon the house. Banality starts looking better and better to Tahir. show less

Tahir Shah likes to play the fool, but behind the jokes is a sharp observer of people. Trail of Feathers is actually a fascinating adventure and serious work of ethnopharmacology masquerading as yet another dumb European travelogue (as a Pakistan Brit raised in the West, I count Tahir as Western, at least compared to indigenous Amazonians). A chance encounter with a mysterious Frenchman at a London auction for shrunken heads gives Tahir the bug of an idea. The Inca flew, and he's going to show more find evidence of pre-Columbian flight.

The first part of the book takes Tahir through the Peruvian tourist trail: Cuzco, Machu Pichu, Puno, Nazca, where encounters with other seekers and Peruvian shamans push him towards his ultimate destination, the Shuar tribe of the Amazon rainforest. The second half of the book is intense, a long journey by water in the Amazon, guided by a Vietnam Veteran and crewed by a handful of superstitious Peruvians on a leaky boat, towards the deadly Shuar headhunters. When he arrives at their village, he find that evangelical missionaries have gotten there first, but a few shamans hold to the old beliefs. Tahir convinces one of him to let him participate in the ayahausca ritual, which is a potent and truly awful hallucinogen, and yes, he meets the Birdmen.

For all that Tahir's quest is weird and exotic, it's also firmly grounded. He has no patience for those who say the Nazca lines were created by ancient aliens, and besides the lines are boring compared to Nazca mummies, which are nothing next to Peruvian textiles. I'm engaged to an Andean archaeologist, so I know Peruvian textiles are Serious Business. I've done a fair bit of the Peruvian tourist trail, and while it may have been grittier 20 years ago, any combi ride you walk away from is barely a hardship. Tahir exaggerates the standard Lonely Planet stuff for effect. That said, I've never been to Iquitos, and the whole jungle voyage thing seems like a real venture, with some real danger. On the last trip, the one by ayahausca is indescribable, and if you expect birdmen, you'll find them. While these days The Onion can crack jokes about the commodification of shamanic voyaging, Tahir's book holds up as a great adventure. show less

O.M.G. This book blew me away. It was so good I had to give away two copies, (not mine - they will need to rip my copy out of my cold dead hands if someone wants it). This book is amazingly beautiful. It is a book that makes a wonderful present. It is a book that if you leave it on your table your guest will have to pick it up. And they will not want to put it down. Spread throughout the book are maps. I delighted as much in these beautifully drawn maps as the stories. The stories. *insert show more huge sigh* Oh the stories! They are adventures that you will be drawn into. They will come alive in your mind and you may find yourself going back in time. Back to childhood where you begged just one more story. Back to a time when stories took you to lands far away where you met exotic people who had unbelievable things happen to them and had they a moral to them. You will be enthralled with Scorpion Soup, reading with eyes wide open, your mind and heart racing. You will finish a story and want another even though you have things to do. And then when you sleep, just as you had as a child, your sleep will be filled with rich dreams where you revisit the stories you read earlier. Scorpion Soup is a magical book written by a master dream weaver. I want to tell you my favorite part of this book but when I try I just keep coming up with so many things. The stories that weave a spell making it impossible to pick just one favorite. The maps you can, and will, pore over imagining the world you read about and making up your own adventures. That brings us to another best - the stories and maps incite your imagination. To me, that is the sign of a master storyteller. Not only do you get lost in his words but you begin adding to them or just dreaming a whole new adventure. True storytellers inspire and that is something Tahir Shah does well. The final "best" part of this book? It is a book to be shared. It is a book to read during family read hour or as bedtime stories. It is a book to tell friends and strangers about. If you think this is a book you will read once and then put it on a shelf to get dusty you will be proven wrong. Since I received this book I have gone back and read it again and once again. Most likely I will start it again before the summer is finished and I know, during the winter, I will probably read it again. There are very few books I do this with. After all there are thousands of books I want to read and thousands more that will be written. There is just something so comforting yet exciting about Scorpion Soup that makes me read it over and over. I hope you will get this book. If you have children read it with them. If you have grandchildren what a wonderful book to share with them, especially if you live far away. What could bring you closer, across the miles, than listening to Grandma or Grandpa reading this story over the phone or on Skype? How wonderfully loved your grandchild will feel hearing a bedtime story from you. There is violence in the book so I would read it first to judge how the child would react. In thinking back to my children, I would have started the book with them when they were 8 or 9. show less