At the shrine of Sidi Ali Ifni


Today I am leaving. I am leaving the Library, my house, my friends, the city where I live. I do not know where I am going. Strangest of all, I am leaving the Library in order to find a book. The only thing I have to guide me is the notebook of the last Librarian. I can scarcely ask him, for he has gone, and his disappearance is precisely what drives me to find out what he found - if indeed there is anything to discover.
This postcard from my travels comes from the south of Morocco. Above is a detail of the shrine of the Sufi marabout Sidi Ali Ifni, in the photo below his shrine is in the foreground with the eponymous town behind it. Sidi Ifni was the Spanish enclave and art deco military garrison of Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña until it was reclaimed and renamed by Morocco in 1969 after a long-running territorial dispute. The quotation comes from Sufi inspired The Book of Strangers by Ian Dallas who became the controversial Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi before writing The New Wagnerian using his Western pen name.


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