Anybody who has seen the film thinks they know Casablanca. Sam at the piano in a smoke-filled Rick’s Cafe Americain, lashings of intrigue, all set against the vibrant backdrop of wartime Morocco. There’s never been a finer film portrayal of the mysterious East. But that’s the strangest thing, for it is a city planned and built by the French. In its heyday — the 1940s, the same decade the film was released — it was arguably the grandest art deco city on Earth. Anything in the Moorish style was shunned.

In recent years, Europeans have made a beeline for the medinas of Marrakesh and Fez. They rent rooms in the glorious riads or even buy them and embark on their renovation. Talk of Casablanca and most foreigners sneer: “It’s not the real thing.”

Casablanca was the last Moroccan city in which I expected to live. I inspected about 70 riads in Marrakesh and half as many in Fez. It seemed that every day I searched the prices soared. Whenever I made an offer, someone with deeper pockets outbid me. Then one day I received a phone call out of the blue. It was the mother of an old school friend. She’d heard I wanted to live in Morocco. Then she explained she owned a large old house on the western edge of Casablanca that she wanted to sell. It was called Dar Khalifa: “the Caliph’s House”.

The next day I flew south to Casablanca and toured the house. It was a gem: courtyards and fountains, stables, gardens and a labyrinth of rooms.

I knew instantly that it was where I wanted my children to be raised. The owner realised that few foreigners would want to move to Casablanca. Beyond that, she understood that any Moroccan who bought the place would have torn down the house and put up monstrous apartment blocks in its place. She loved it too much to let that happen, and sold it to me for about £200,000.

My love affair with Morocco had begun in childhood. My father, an Afghan, had never been able to take us to his homeland. So he took my sisters and me to Morocco instead. With its tribal clans, mountain strongholds and fiercely proud people, the kingdom is strangely similar to Afghanistan. Years later, living in London with two small children, I was desperate to escape to a new life with abundant space and blazing sunlight. Morocco seemed the most obvious destination.

I was ready to overcome language barriers, but nothing prepared me for the cultural ones. In line with the Islamic faith, all Moroccans believe in djinns, spirits who live in a world overlaid on our own. The Caliph’s House had been empty for a decade. The caretakers, who we inherited with the house, believed — along with the workmen and everybody else — that it was packed full of evil spirits. Before there could be peace, the spirits had to be exorcised.

So I spent a great deal of time and money tracking down a team of exorcists. Twenty-four of them arrived one morning, whooping and screeching. They sacrificed a goat in one courtyard, skinned it and nailed up its gallbladder. Then they cut themselves with knives, drank their own blood and baptised the place in fire. In the process, they almost burnt down the house. The exorcism cost about £500. Judging by the effect it had on the community, it was the best £500 I think I’ve spent.

I hired a local architect with a fondness for fine Cuban cigars, who insisted I paid him in advance. Once he had cashed my cheque, he spent a full year avoiding me. In the end I fired him and learnt to seek out artisans myself. Working with them directly was the only way to keep my head above water. I discovered that the best master craftsmen talked very little, thought long term, and hardly ever bargained on the price.

My dream was to make use of the finest Moroccan crafts: zellij, geometric mosaics, handmade terracotta tiles called bejmat, and to prepare the walls with tadelakt, a kind of Venetian plaster made from marble dust and eggs. I wanted to construct a galleried library, too, in cedar wood for my 12,000 books, and to commission three new fountains.

Gradually, we moved ahead, testing craftsmen before giving them more work. The greatest joy is that in a place like Casablanca you can let your delusions run wild. Compared with Britain, prices are within one’s means. A vast fountain with many thousands of handcut mosaic tiles costs about £500; the galleried library in the very finest cedar was £6,000.

But the greatest discovery of all were Casablanca’s junkyards. Many of the fabulous art deco villas and apartment buildings are being torn down. It’s a great crime. The only upside is that the junkyards are stacked high with architectural salvage, most of it crafted in France between the wars. Cast-iron roll-top baths are about £12 each, and sublime porcelain sinks, a metre across, are about £18. You can find painted floral lavatories for £20, and carved cedar doorways are £40 and up.

For me, Casablanca is Morocco’s secret jewel. Villas and old art deco flats are affordable (from about £70,000 for a villa, and from about £35,000 for a period apartment).

The ocean is a five-minute drive away; the restaurants, schools and shopping are excellent, and there are no tourists at all. But best of all is that Casablanca offers one a contented life against a backdrop of faded grandeur, in a land where one’s fantasy can, and does, come true.

The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca, by Tahir Shah, is published by Doubleday, £15

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