Tangier (2 page)

Tangier proved rich in people. They follow all the professions counted on fruit stones, excluding neither the poor man nor merchant chief. Besides the Moroccans, many of whose women are fragile of facial bone structure and among the most beautiful in the world, there are colonies of French, Spanish, Italians, Indians, Jews, British and Americans all subsisting within a heterogeneous city no larger than the average English market town. There is even a
choice of seas. The crescent bay, above only a third of which the New Town is built in parallel arc, is the Mediterranean in temperament and tide: technically it is the Strait of Gibraltar. Peer from a secretive window high in the Kasbah and one's unambiguously looking at the Atlantic. The shore is straight, the sea unpredictable, its deserted sands and changing face of the water a different colour.

Geographically the promontory of Tangier is a corner. Offshore two seas meet turbulently or harmoniously. There are months of brilliant sunshine and soft, starlit nights; the Levanter, notorious for its ability to produce odd mental states; yellow sea mists; rain which hits the pavement and bounces a
metre; southern twilights, the sky like salmon scales a moment before the quick darkness. But historically, ethnically, religiously and politically Tangier is a junction or crossroads too. The church bells are properly discreet, even sited so as not to occlude the calls of muezzins from minarets. One might see a white-robed Sudanese; a blue-eyed Berber girl in traditional striped skirts and straw hat; a Spanish schoolboy; an Italian nun; a hippie family with barefoot, cross-blooded infants; a rabbi; tourists in crocodile; a congenital syphilitic without a nose; this or that painter, writer, filmstar; a lottery ticket seller blinded by trachoma; an Anglican priest; a refrigerator on a handcart; junior Italian naval officers with little ceremonial daggers, and RN ratings giving them a sceptical glance; a performing monkey; an acrobat; a town policeman with white-holstered automatic; a beach guard (with brown one plus solar tepee); a pair of King Hassan's most loyal troops: simple peasants in khaki
djellabas
,
metre-long truncheons (which can rapidly be supplemented with rifles) suspended from their belts; an Indian girl wearing a sari and Hindu caste-mark; a Moslem funeral processing with pedestrian dignity to the wandering, transcendental music of flutes. . . .

Which would be unremarkable had I not identified one of each during ninety minutes' immobility on an outdoor café chair. Lacking was a motor car. They're not allowed in the Petit Socco unless they belong to the police, and even they
respect the limitations of a square the area of which is less than a third of a football pitch. At that afternoon hour another sight unfamiliar to an Englishman was
also missing: the steel-helmeted file of seven
crack troops with sub-machine guns tends only to stalk the town after dark. The government likes Moroccans to know they are around. 'Third World' is a loose term with many connotations.

Sometimes I've changed names, and also made transposition of precise circumstance. The motive has been to respect privacy while neither sacrificing fact nor distorting point.

The best moment in time to begin narrative seemed to be 1969: a little past midway in my experience of Tangier; but also when I had £300 and no responsibilities except the perennials: loyalty to friends and the compulsion of exorcism. I returned to the magnetic town, hoping to establish a pad of my own.

Above Heathrow the sky was colourless with a pale yellow paring of cloud, like the twist of lemon peel in a martini. The image wasn't fortuitous. We British, seize our duty-free concessions with eagerness. It's almost conditioned reflex. Encumbered with cut-price poisons, a holiday has really begun. Most of my fellow passengers clasped elegantly boxed bottles, and cartons of cigarettes like silver bullion bars. I did too. A quick stride through the boarding gate. When it comes to aeroplane window seats I'm a child, I look up at the single yellow cloud again.

'Evening
News
, sir? Or
Standard
.' The question carries an assumption. The hostess smiles. 'They're quite free!' But I don't want the London papers. This window that's going to lift into the sky is magical and I want simply to stare through it. Just now its revelation is fascinating. On our wing something curiously domestic is happening. A mechanic leans over an opened flap on one of the engine cowls. He draws out an oil dipstick, studies it, wipes it on a rag, lowers it tentatively again. The cycle is repeated three more times. He might be an anxious car owner on a suburban Sunday.

'You can unfasten your belt now, sir.' The stewardess, faintly amused. 'Would you like a drink before dinner?' I shake my head vaguely and do as I'm told. Below is the Isle of Wight in clear evening sunlight. There are cliffs felted green like a billiard table. Shallows in the Channel are the palest lettuce-leaf. We're crossing Newport, flying almost due south. Suddenly there are the Needles, standing bony like the eroded vertebrae of a stranded whale.

I'm returning to Tangier via Gibraltar and the ferry which crosses the eighth-mile strait that divides Europe from Africa, rather than flying direct in to the browned airstrip of Boukhalf. Spain's blockade of the Rock makes this way cheapest. I've never counted the chickens on the Rock of Gibraltar; though the apes Churchill signed on to the wartime garrison payroll are said to be carefully numbered still — as is customary with members of Her Majesty's Forces. There is certainly no cow, As a consequence it's reasonable to assume that beneath our floorboards are crates of eggs, and fresh milk measured in pints rather than litres.

My neighbour's name is Murli. He's an Indian Gibraltarian shopkeeper. I know his name and profession because he once sold me a pair of five-shilling cuff-links. I'm wearing them, as they're the only ones I possess. Murli is looking very much the significant businessman he undoubtedly is. He sells everything from silks to refrigerators; but also has relations in Tangier. The Indians are scrupulously honest once a bargain has been struck. One could confidently have given fifty pounds to an Indian in Gibraltar and collected Moroccan dirham from a colleague in Tangier at advantageous rate. But this black market no longer exists.

We settle on to the Madrid runway in darkness. The May night is strangely cool, delicious. The stewardess lets me stand in the open doorway, but not descend the steps. 'How long do we stop'.' I ask. Just ten minutes.' And for just ten minutes I inhale Madrid air. Not even a private helicopter could make it to the Prado.

There's been a change of seating. Murli has found a
confrère
and crossed the aisle. Next to me now is Jonathan, aged three, driving a Dinky toy abstractedly up and down my left forearm. 'Jonathan, he's bigger than you and might bash you,' his mother says. There's some truth in this. Jonathan, I discover, is going to visit Granny Pink (as opposed to Granny Cigarettes) who lives on the Charf in Tangier. His soft toy is a much patched creature called Foxy, one of whose eyes is suspended on a thread like some horrible example of Arab justice half accomplished. Jonathan and the maimed Foxy are strapped in together. We land with precision at Gibraltar. Its runway begins and ends in the sea.

Gibraltar is a mixture of Spanish courtesy and British phlegm. There is too that peculiar cohesion of any besieged community.

In A.D. 710 the Moors swept into southern Spain, extending their empire steadily northwards. The following year Tariq-ibn-Zeid took possession of the natural rock fortress, naming it Djibl-Tariq, or Tariq's Hill, which was subsequently corrupted by the British to Gibraltar. But for seven and a half centuries before it was captured for Britain in 1704 by Sir George Rooke (with Dutch assistance) the Rock remained a Moorish stronghold, its natural limestone caves being fortified progressively, and with increasing sophistication to become the mysterious NATO storerooms of the present day. The Rock forms one of two massive promontories known to the ancients as the Pillars of Hercules and left, as legend has
it, when the hero wrenched Europe and Africa apart. The other, the Djibl-Moussa, stands to the east of Tangier; and sailors used to believe that the narrow Strait formed a protective bottle-neck that saved the familiar Mediterranean from being overwhelmed by the unknown Western Ocean, or Atlantic.

The Rock's utility, particularly to the English living in Tangier, is unchanging. 'Next the talk turned upon Gibraltar, that inevitable topic; the great Gibraltar, centre of attraction for all Europeans scattered along those [North African] coasts, where their sons are educated and where they themselves go to buy their clothes, order furniture, hear the opera, and inhale a mouthful of European air.' So writes the Italian Edmondo de Amicis in 1879, setting out for Fes as official chronicler of a small embassy sent by Victor Emmanuel to the Sultan Moulay Hassan, and studiously conscious when selecting a docile mule for the journey that: 'From henceforth until our return all the hopes of Italian literature in Morocco were pinned to that saddle.'

But the Gibraltarian utility de Amicis reasonably neglects to mention is the Sterling Area and its low-tariff imports. Main Street boasts virtually any portable luxury in the world. It's a raven's hoard and glitters, precedence going to cameras, watches, jewellery, and a veritable insanity of electronic equipment. One could comfortably shop for the moon on Main Street; or equip one's terrestrial home with everything from baby-cry alarms to closed-circuit television and video tapes. Her shopkeepers are well used to customers strapping on their new Omega, or breast-pocketing a battery of Sheaffer pens, while ruefully declining their presentation boxes.

My own commercial occasion on the Rock was innocent in the extreme. For years I'd travelled with a battered Olivetti, paying excess in aircraft, rather than buy a second typewriter to live in Tangier. Next morning accordingly saw me on Main Street. 'I want to buy a typewriter, but pay with a cheque on London.' A large store immediately said yes; but neither of their models was familiar. Rejoicing that I could have some sort of typewriter and be in Morocco before my bank noticed, I went on my way. I was to have lunch with a delightful Gibraltarian family who had befriended me for some years. Arriving at midday, I raised the question of my search. After some telephoning, my host assured me that the Olivetti concession was held by the Supermilk Company. This arrangement struck me as more Moroccan than Gibraltarian, However I found my way to the dark vaults of the Supermilk Company where, sure enough, if after a moment's reflection, a raffish gentleman recalled that he was indeed Olivetti.

'Only I'm afraid we don't have one of the things, old boy. Nothing at all'

'I see. Are any of the shops likely to?'

' 'Fraid not, old boy. There's not one on the Rock.'

I asked him which of the unfamiliar models I'd been offered might be the better buy. In as many words he really hadn't a clue; but some more moustache manipulation recalled to him that, 'Beddles have a whassit, old boy - an
Emperor
?'

'An Imperial!'

'That's it, old chap! Stupid of me!'

'Not a bit,' I said; thanking him, and dashing off to buy my Japanese-built Leicester-licensed Imperial 2000. I was assured it was the only Imperial 2000 on the Rock, and felt duly proud. The following day, fluttering some old labels and bearing arabesques of my own invention drawn with a piece of chalk I happened to find in a gutter, it entered Tangier, with myself, and the happy cry of '
touriste
!'

I met a retired Scots couple, holidaying for a fortnight. He had been in shipping, and his Glaswegian accent was so remorseless that I could sometimes scarcely follow it. Inevitably it became an occasion when the disjunction of my own accent and name made me a suspicious character. But I 'passed' on the three tartans I'm entitled to wear (the subject was not of my raising), and after that we got on swimmingly. Yes, they'd been across to Tangier but had 'no laiked it at a' '. The food was good at the Rif hotel where they'd spent a week, and taken all their meals. But it was full of Americans, and the drinks were 'sae expensive a mon wodna' believe it'. Here Hamish, who was severely suited with a starched collar, signalled for more Gibraltar-priced Fundador with some satisfaction: his wife, who wore a hat, could put it away too.

'But I tell you, Angus, that's a bonny ship. We enjoyed the crossing.'

'Clyde-built,' I confirmed, thinking of the familiar
Mons Calpe
I was due to board the following evening. I asked whether she'd bought anything nice, and the answer was 'only leather'. Canny and wise.

There is something both noble and sad about the
laisser-aller
Portsmouth with its warships, incorrigible Lipton's, its shop-door lounging Indian traders, its Moroccan workforce observing the letter of alien laws, its ambulatory black bundles of Spanish grandmothers in shiny lace-ups, its Marks and Spencer concession beneath another name, its no-pistol British bobbies, its passionate local politics, its beautiful cross-blooded tan women, its vast networks of military tunnelling beneath the soaring limestone, its huge area of near-vertical concrete which catches drinking water from the sky, its limitless supplies of Union Jacks and red, white and blue paint, its schoolgirls in bottle-green tunics and little boys in Persil shirts with striped ties. Over them all there often hangs a greyish pile of cloud currently described as God's proof of the Rock being rightfully British, or more correctly Gibraltarian appropriately blessed, Gibraltar is no paradise. With the Spanish frontier closed its people, particularly adolescents, easily develop claustrophobia. You often see a group, or loner among these naturally bilingual, commodity-spoiled children, gazing wistfully at the physical exits: the civil cum military airstrip; and waterport.

'We have a boat - of sorts,' a Gibraltarian told me. 'Otherwise we'd just go mad. In the old days we used to picnic two or three times a week in the cork forests,' He jerked his head sadly towards Andalucia. I looked up at the towering, barren Rock, rough with olive scrub like the nap on an army blanket, and realized how the loss of cork forests could hit one quite as numbingly as it hit Ferdinand the Bull after the bee had caused his retiring nature to be misinterpreted. The Scots couple had had a good crossing to Tangier. I had never had a bad one myself. This troubled me, because no nineteenth-century traveller appears ever to have had it smooth. Not only was disembarkation at Tangier difficult, there having been no mole since Lord Dartmouth, Admiral of the Fleet, attended by Samuel Pepys as special counsellor, conscientiously blew it up with the British evacuation of 1684, but the departure of steamers from Gibraltar was arbitrarily dependent upon the state of the weather and the sobriety of skippers. De Amicis' crossing was uneventful; but he made his landfall in the classic manner: