Idries Shah: Gentleman at Large
At the time Idries Shah published “Destination Mecca” he was just 33. Just seven years later he would publish “The Sufis,” a watershed that firmly established Shah as a Sufi authority. But here, in Destination Mecca, we see Shah as a Gentleman at Large. We find him in search of himself; trying to come to terms with the world. It is like we have a front row seat to seeing how Shah became Shah.
The book feels like a cross between a personal journal and a newspaper investigative report. The book begins with Shah at his club in London. One of those old time clubs with panel walls, leather chairs and old men smoking cigars or pipes. Shah realizes that his home was not here.
Shah began his search for himself in Tangier, Morocco smuggling cigarettes from Tangier to Spain.
"Several one-night dashes on the “bread-and-butter” run across the Straits from North Africa to Spain had taught me a good deal about such things as security, engine repairs, even navigation. I certainly knew now just how good and how bad my nerves were."
It appears that, to cut his chops as it were, Shah made these smuggling runs as a journalistic exercise. Or did he? Why risk capture by the police and prison just to write an article about smuggling cigarettes? Interestingly, Shah avoids sharing a backstory that could explain his choice. At Shah’s birth, his parents brought in a divine who foretold that he would die of drowning. As a result, his parents kept him out of water and never taught him how to swim. So on those night runs between Tangier and Spain, Shah tempted a loss greater than prison; he faced down his own death.
And thus Shah begins a deep dive into the Middle East, zigging and zagging from Egypt to Baghdad to Arabia to Sudan to ….. Along the way, he restores a depth and richness to the our understanding of the mysterious east. We also get a peek at our own biases. Shah shares a wonderful vignette about himself that reveals how we from the west view the people of the east.
"As a party of English-speaking tourists stopped to watch the self-inflating bluey jellyfish washed up on the shore, I raised my camera – forgetting my Arabian robes, sandals, rosary and curly black beard. “Could I have a picture, please?”
They seemed frozen to the spot. Then they all burst out laughing. They were apparently Australians: mother, father and three teenage daughters. The father grinned at me. “Who do you think you are, Cobber – Lawrence of Arabia?” I suppose something was incongruous. It must have been my English. But I couldn’t help it if I went to school in England. I did not quite know whether to be annoyed or not. But I made my way back to the hotel, shaved my beard, and put on a white suit."
Shah, Idries. Destination Mecca . ISF Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Overall this book, gives us a look behind the veil. Despite the 60 plus years since its publication, the book is fresh and gives no hint at its age. Highly recommended.
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