Kashfi Shah was the daughter of an Indian poet. She travelled extensively, settling in the UK, where she met and married Idries Shah. Her children describe her as a compulsive knitter and cat-lover, who was incapable of passing by a child in need, without doing something to help. “Shah, we must do something” is a phrase Safia and her siblings grew up with, often uttered shortly before their sandwiches and other edibles were snatched away to be given to children on the street. Looking back, they have come to understand that her fiery social conscience meant their mother Kashfi felt responsible for a whole world of children – making it easy for Safia to pick a name for her educational non-profit Kashfi’s Children.
