This memoir of coming of age in Morocco in the 1950s is also the memoir of a lost nation. The author's childhood coincides with the end of the idyllic Sephardic culture that had flourished in Tangier for centuries. This is the story of two paradises lost: the dreamy childhood which ends when Michel's parents' marriage breaks apart; the end of Morocco's colonial rule which had allowed the Jews to live peacefully alongside the Arabs. The "wind" in the title is Simoun, an infamous blast that blew in from the Sahara and terrified the author as a child. The wind is also the symbol for the wild...