Safia Shah

Safia Shahis a peculiar hodgepodge of Anglo/Afghan/Indian/Scottish ancestry.

She spends her time zigzagging between Casablanca, Morocco and Surrey in the UK. In Morocco she lives by the ocean, where she has ducks, cockroaches and tiny tortoises. (She prefers the tortoises to the cockroaches but is trying hard not to have favourites). In Surrey she and her husband are renovating a hundred year-old grain barge called Joja. They drive around in an old London taxi. They are former journalists. They escaped from east London, where they once had a traditional British food shop called A.Gold.

Before settling in Morocco, Safia worked with Afghan refugees in Pakistan, almost starved to death in Germany, and spent years pretending to perfect her French in Paris. She comes from a family of writers. She has two young children and her mission is to help breathe new life into endangered words. Her current ambition is to somehow publish ‘bonnyclabber’, ‘curmudgeon’ and ‘the screaming ab-dabs’ in a single sentence. (That’s one ambition down then, just another jillion to go) . . .