Tangier (26 page)

A talent of Paul Bowles has long been for the discovery and encouragement (in some cases one might almost say creation) of indigenous artists. They include the painter Ahmed Jacoubi, Driss ben Hamed Charhadi, pseudonym of a most gentle man emigrated to America, Mohammed Mrabet, whose name is emphatically his own, and Mohamed Choukri.

A very different author, and charming hostess, is Marthe de Chambrun Ruspoli. Equally gracious, David Herbert has
recently published a highly entertaining autobiography. Michael Scott should do the same. Frank Mellor wrote some fine travel books; but for many years has devoted himself to painting. Mohamed Hamri is probably Tangier's best indigenous painter; a man vital and exuberant as his work is exciting and original.

In July 1973 I decided to evacuate my tortoises, Hamid and Laitifa. Tennessee, who in the American parlance had kept 'land turtles', nobly stood by to receive them: should, for instance, their export have suddenly become forbidden; the creatures declared sovereign property of SM King Hassan.

Having simply declared their exit through Customs, I was pounced upon, nursing their travelling box in the departure lounge, by a plainclothes security guard., 'You are behaving suspiciously! Open!' I opened the box. 'Ugh!' he said, with amusement; but also urban horror. Then: 'What do you
want
them for
?' 'They've been with me five years. I love them,' I said.

'
Ouaka
- fine,' he said; baffled, I suppose, by another instance of a
Nesrani
's incomprehensibility.

April 1974 was the coldest anyone could remember in Tangier. I had returned from England after nine months. Nudging letters, and the intercession of friends on the spot, had succeeded in getting the perennially shattering french door repaired. But someone's television aerial had blown off the roof smashing my bathroom window. Replacement seemed superfluous. While draughts blew out the pilot flame of the gas water heater, it could not ignite anyway because the screw on the cold tap had gone and no new one existed. Water poured perpetually into the bath, starving the supply to the gas heater and inevitably operating the automatic cut-out. Happily the bathroom had a different stopcock from the kitchen. When water had to be drawn in the bathroom my maid or myself crawled with equal equanimity into the linen cupboard where the taps were located, presumably for aesthetic reasons. But the question of water was academic anyway. A dry winter had necessitated twelve-hour nightly cuts throughout the city five months earlier in the season than usual; while local pipe repairs accounted for quite arbitrary cuts in the apartment block. Often we had ninety minutes' water in twenty-four hours. Between 6.00 and 7.30 in the morning I am usually asleep. Conscience prevented my retiring with the dry taps fully open. Were there no cut in the morning the life-blood of the city might gush away, even carrying me with it because the overflows were not dependable.

But my first night I gazed proudly at the new glass in my french door. I turned the handle preparatory to stepping on to the terrace beneath the stars and it came
away in my hand. Latch repair had been made with a bent nail. Unsurprised I propped the precious door shut from the outside with the second armchair. At 4.00 a.m. I was awoken by a terrifying crash. High winds had struck the city and the steel chair was careering about the terrace like a berserk dodgem-car. Incredibly the violently clanging door had not shattered. Yet. Racing time, I dug a pit in the wooden chest like a cat about to have diarrhoea—searching for rope. The muezzin's dawn call came in snatches on the wind as I scrabbled: 'Prayer is better than sleep'. The french door was saved.

'Maybe.' said Cohen the agent, 'they didn't repair the catch because they had put the glass in first and were afraid of breaking it?'

I was back in Tangier.

Cohen went on to disclaim any responsibility even for repair to the exterior of the building. Yes, I could require this by law, but the flat could now be let for twice what I was paying for it. He would terminate my lease. I knew this would be difficult, for Tangier has rent and eviction control, but did not remind him as much. Whether purely mercenary motives determined a further attempt to evict me later in the summer the reader can best judge. The first row, two years previously, may have had sonic legitimate basis if only because I could not know just how badly the acquaintance to whom I had lent the fiat, or the Moroccan gentleman to whom he subsequently gave the keys, had actually behaved in respect of neighbours. The incident had happened uncomfortably soon after the farce when the Belgians had succeeded in having me questioned by the police on the pretext that Meti might have had something to do with a break and entry upon yet
other neo-colonials in the building. These failures had puzzled them. Could it be that nearly twenty years after Morocco's Independence they no longer ruled the country?  Tangier is an
Alice in Wonderland
world and large misconceptions not inconceivable. But in April the personal ambush lay eight weeks in the future.

The indignant west spoke of 'the fuel crisis'. Moroccans, suffering nearly doubled petrol prices, were philosophical. Though the Arabs had been routed months previously, and a ceasefire
now obtained, yet in spirit, and perhaps as a result of their having made only their customary token gesture in the Middle East conflict, Morocco was at war. To plenty of
Tanjaouine
the increased price of locally produced eggs was somehow helping their brothers behind a ceasefire line thousands of miles away. Fantasy is irrational. Where Islam is the soil, pan-Arabism the compost and propaganda the watering-can delightful flowers grow.

The rush broom for sweeping butt-ends off my terrace had been pinched, presumably by the
portera
's maid in my absence.

'Why' I asked Said, questioning the tripled price of a replacement.

'The war,' he said sadly.

Having known Said five years I felt it ill-mannered to conjure the acreage of rushes in the Nile valley, wonder whether the thin sands of Sinai must be patiently swept with brushes to facilitate the advance of tanks. The only response to solemn mystery was to say, 'Ah!'

Subsidy had held the city bus fares at twenty-five francs to go anywhere. Cheap taxi tariffs were gone for ever. If one telephoned for a cab the driver switched on his meter as he left
base in the Grand Socco, rather than when he collected his passenger. It had taken a taxi strike to achieve this right and logical revolution. For me it meant walking, better wind and alerted senses. Mugging in Tangier is a myth promoted by group tour couriers and hotel managers. Having pre-paid all meals in the hotel, souvenir money can then be spent in the hotel's own gift shop; or by the group's being conducted in crocodile to a bazaar — selected by courier, apparently incidentally recommended by hotel management: the two disinterested parties subsequently splitting commission.

It's with joy that one glimpses breakaways, often families with infants perhaps, eating in a restaurant. And delight must be their reward, The integrity of Tangier's restaurateurs and waiters is high: that of the bazaar and souvenir shopkeepers distinctly less so. The anomaly arises simply because restaurants display priced menus; and the tourist is the bazaar-keeper's sole source of income. A
Tanjaoui
once said to me: 'God created Christians for
us Moslems to live off.' And many are the sales of pouffes, handbags, toy camels at nearly double the identical article imported by London shops. Falling rapidly are the sales of dramatic curved daggers, and thin, machine-pressed brass platters, which tend to have camels on them. Dubious are the giant amber beads, strung often on genuine, but cheap silver chains. It takes a laboratory, rather than any expert eye, to distinguish between amber and plastic technology of today. I was once had myself, even on the rim of the Sahara; which is a sad distance for ingenious mass-produced trivia to have reached.

There had been an increase of housebreaking. The police ascribed the most successful incidents to a professional gang from Casablanca. Two acquaintances of mine had been burgled: a woman, unknown to me, had been struck, her bag snatched as she entered her block of flats; and another had been brutally attacked within her home, and was in hospital, Two homosexuals, flamboyant in jewellery rather than demeanour, had had chains snatched from neck and wrists at knife-point, and also their watches, at night on the Avenue d'Espagne. All these victims were Europeans or Americans. Covering three months, this net total of incidents hardly amounted to a crime wave. The city police had been reinforced again with soldiers, armed only with metre-long truncheons, who wandered about in pairs. This was as much to impress locals with the strength of central government at to inhibit petty crime. But when minor royalty arrived (which happened on Good Friday) rifles were issued to the men who stood casually in doorways up the length of the Boulevard. Some claim the automatics of the regular police are not loaded. Certainly they could not be quickly fired; their butts, just discernible in their white holsters, reveal the weapons as protectively wrapped in heavy polythene. It is, incidentally, impossible to get the simplest street directions from a Tangier policeman. On the other hand courtesy necessitates that he direct the inquirer somewhere. Moroccans and Europeans alike are accorded a snappy salute: upon the criteria of visible wealth or physical bearing. I collected one emerging from a cinema and momentarily imagining myself Monty. The police are dangerous when they have a down on a particular taxi driver, suddenly whistling him to stop. An innocent, I once commenced a journey correctly in the rear seat and ended it, in the middle of the Place de France, beside my driver.

Meanwhile the city was gearing itself for its high tourist season: prime, often sole source of income for small traders, registered guides, hotel staff, the beach bars. On the beach itself gear-change was literal and audible. Caterpillar bulldozers were busy levelling, each operator holding idiosyncratic views about how the section he was responsible for should look. When the Levanter blew a fine haze of sand across the two-foot wall protecting the promenade which fronts the beach bars, simpler technology took over. Some few score of workmen in tattered
djellabas
and straw hats shovelled the encroaching sand into trucks. One of these had a leaking tailboard. While noticing this, the particular gang was quite unperturbed. It was as though the top of a stout-waisted hourglass were being filled while its lower globe leaked. (Time and motion study would be incomprehensible to Moroccans,) My favourite beach bar was being repainted. But this year the proprietor had elected to employ a responsible professional rather than his random choice of small boy. There was more paint upon the changing cabins, café tables and chairs as intended, than indelibly splashed on the ground; nor indeed did patrons stick to their chairs as a result of over-enthusiasm in its application,

In the town, café  and bar prices had leapt 15, 20, even 50 per cent. A glass of chemical beer (similar to the French: untouched by hops) had always cost 20 per cent less in Rabat than in Tangier. Now Tangier was edging towards the status and prices of Cannes. The part of one that thinks (in conflict with that which has to live) wondered, why not? Beaches and weather are better than on the Riviera, the town more interesting than Monte Carlo, if with smaller motor cars, and presumably less cash in the Casino. Risen too were the most anomalous of Tangier's prices those of spirits in bars. I doubt if there's a single bar or restaurant which doesn't avail itself of the contraband spirits and liqueurs entering Tangier Via Ceuta: they simply refill the expensive government-sealed bottle on the bar shelf from a contraband one, As bottles of contraband spirits cost less than half the price of legitimately imported ones, and less than one-third of those taxed in Britain, it seems a pity that Tangier's bar prices are higher than those in London's West End. Of course this isn't the whole story. Tangier's bars are tiny, turnover small, and presumably their proprietors must maintain the pretence that they've paid duty on their spirits. The prices even astonish sailors, the last people to bother about booze costs with perhaps only six hours' shore leave, ' 'Effing 'ell!' a rating off a slinky frigate in the harbour said as he paid for a large scotch. 'If they think this is Biarritz or Acapulco where are the actionable girls!' I told him. He felt their discovery too intricate, as indeed it is. I explained where wine could be bought at twenty pence a litre, but surreptitious consumption on a street corner isn't the point of an evening ashore.

The early troubles of 'Moroccanization' were
showing themselves, In effect the policy, due to be complete by midsummer, stated that 30 per cent of businesses must be Moroccan owned or controlled. That such a law should only be enacted nineteen years after the ending of colonial rule was not so extraordinary, because organizations as different as French big business and the CIA helped keep an absolute monarch on his throne, a monied caste in control. On the other hand there had been no tumbling into mayhem in those years
since Independence. Morocco retains all the evils, but also human community advantages of a medieval kingdom. The maldistribution of national wealth is odious; but bloodshed, until the rising among the Berbers in the deep south over the last
two years, has remained small,

One suspects Moroccanization was brought in as a sop. Rural land was given to the peasantry. French vintners, citrus fruit farmers became at least 50 per cent dispossessed. Many left the country; their European planter psychology being unable or unwilling to adapt. The sop did not impress intellectuals and students. They wanted, and want, a republic.

Hundreds of Spanish had left the country over the last nine months. The result was a paucity of technicians: plumbers, electricians, garage mechanics. My
portera
had not emigrated. Might she do so when her son, a plumber aspired to his own business? Probably the economic advantages of a free flat precluded the possibility. She would die with her carpet slippers on, endeavouring to protect her building from my guests.