"The Caliph's House" by Tahir Shah

"We may have been beset with local difficulties, but we were blissfully separated from our previous lives.
When the telephone rang, it would be our relatives or friends, rather than some annoying voice trying to sell a holiday or a pension. There were no computerized switchboards to deal with or parking meters, no gridlock traffic or triangular sandwiches with upmarket names. Certainly, there was language barrier, and a cultural one, but I found myself happier than I had been in years." (about moving from London to Casablanca)

"On the way home I asked Zohra how she had come to meet Mohammed the architect.
'Through the dental community,' she said." (about how things are always dealt with through the connections)

"Pamela said she had spent years living and traveling through the Mediterranean and North Africa. Much land passed beneath her feet, but her first love was always Morocco. She returned to the United States and opened a Moroccan restaurant in Los Angeles, but even that wasn't enough to satisfy her heart.
'One morning I packed it in,' she said quietly. 'I bought a one-way ticket, and arrived here with a pair of suitcases and my favorite traveling cat. I have never looked back.' (...)
'Whoever you are,' she said, 'Morocco takes you in. Before you know it, you have a home and friends, and you've forgotten your troubles.'"

"'Sometimes I pass it,' the countess said gently. 'I am curious, but I never ring the bell. The past is best left to itself. I find that when it touches the present, it vanishes like a forgotten dream.'"

"'You don't know how good we've got it here,' he said. 'The people are saints. Saints, I tell you!'
'But they never finish anything,' I said despondently. 'And now my workers are walking all over me.'
François cackled. 'They're good people,' he said warmly.
'I thought you hated them.'
'Are you mad?' he said. 'I love them.'' (the example of love and hate relationship)

"Had I the strength, I would have leapt up and throttled Hamza then and there. I was sick of the talk of the Jinns. To hell with the cultural sensitivity. We were all violently ill, and as usual, the Jinns were being blamed." (about the Jinns/ghosts who were believed by the guardians to be haunting the Caliph's house)

"Part of it was being in Africa. The sky was vast, the landscape severe and unrelenting. There was a sense that anything was possible, that I was no longer held back by the telescoped outlook of Europe."

"A sense that Casablanca had transgressed the boundaries originally set out for it by the French. It was a rare hybrid of a place, a hotchpotch of people from different corners of the same kingdom, thrown together in a great human stew. You never heard a word of praise for Casablanca. It was the butt of every joke, the place people came to but never admitted coming from. No one belonged there. But at the same time, we all belonged." (another example of love and hate relationship)