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LISBON-
MARRAKECH-
BARCELONA
2004
PORTUGAL:
Tides and Tiles
MOROCCO:
Into Interzone
Medina Medina O Let Me Sleep
Like Prozac in the Desert
The Chicken Thieves
1001 Guides through Fès
Chilling in Chaouen
SPAIN:
Ruining of the Bulls
MOROCCO
(video)
color, 4'22"
June/July 04
View/Download:
Quicktime-
240x180, 8.8 MB
[ PHOTO ARCHIVE ]
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Tangier / Morocco
27 - 28 June 2004
Burroughs' Hôtel el-Muniria. Tangier.
I didn't read Paul Bowles' "The Spider's House" before going to Morocco. But I certainly will soon. I had read "The Sheltering Sky" and it moved me, inspired a definite interest in the Arab world. Of course I think it was the Beats, particularly William S. Burroughs that got me interested in Tangier. Just across the stretch of water, the foreboding sounding Strait of Gibraltar, which separates South-Western Europe from Northern Africa. And so it was necessary to start my exploration of Morocco in Tangier, coming across the Strait on a ferry from Spain.
The ferry from Algeciras was intended to only take two odd hours, but after a delayed departure and then waiting at the Tangier dock for an hour, being shuffled from one exit to another before being allowed to leave, it ended up being nearly four hours before I set foot on African soil for the second time in my life. The first time was in Nairobi, Kenya, four years ago, and I hoped this visit though to a vastly different region would be as magical and intense as the first time. The boat's passengers, for all that I could see, were all people of Moroccan or otherwise African descent, without a single other white face like mine. I was surprised, but not upset at the absence of other tourists. But it did seem to contrast with my expectations from what I had read about tourism in Morocco.
Perhaps really there are that many people too afraid to travel, especially to the Arab world, in these days of fear and loathing.
Just as it was by Burrough's literary suggestion that I wanted to see Tangier, so was it that I decided to stay in the same hotel where he wrote 'Naked Lunch'. Unfortunately, his room #9 at the Hôtel el-Muniria was booked out, probably inhabited by a Burroughs-devotee of a degree higher than myself. I was able to get a room just down the stairs, a few doors down the hall.
But wait, I haven't even arrived at the el-Muniria yet, nor found the small, strange dank alley that leads up a secret stair past garbage to the street where the hotel finds itself. I'm still just minutes from departing the ferry and already petit-taxi drivers are anxious to whisk me 'downtown' for 5 euros, okay, okay friend, 3 euros, which sounds very funny to me considering my map indicates it is less than 500 meters. The ATM machine won't dispense money, or at least not from the French interface, perhaps from the Arabic one but I don't trust myself to try. I've got no local currency, and perhaps 30 euros in my pocket. I'm half-convinced the exchange places on the pier have an ATM-disabling deal with the banks, and decide to find a different bank downtown. And so I walk.
It's a pity to start out with such a negative impression of a land, but then again, I wasn't in the country for more than five minutes before people were trying left and right to rip me off. And, yes, my first experience being called 'ALI BABA!' by some touts. But perhaps from my straight-ahead gaze and unaffected pace they could infer that I wasn't worth hustling, just hassling. Time and time again, in any Moroccan city of any size, I ran into fresh punks who got a big kick out of calling me 'ALI BABA'. Beard Man? Something like that. They always gestured to their face, swept four fingers and an opposing thumb down their jawline to the tip of the their chin, as if stroking a pointed beard, beaming a fat smile of ugly teeth when they would say it to me. Waiting for a reaction. Hell, I like growing a beard sometimes when I travel for a long time, and find it especially appropriate in Muslim countries. And if for no other reason it makes me look like perhaps I didn't just get off the boat or the plane, even if, in fact I have. So I wasn't about to race off and shave just to prevent all the Ali-Baba-ing. I decided learning some Arabic insults would be infinitely more clever and amusing. Either that or just call them Ali-Peepee.
The touts all hang out in clusters at the Tangier port. Picking their teeth and eyeing up the new arrivals. They hop to their feet and shadow you for a few swift paces. Try out clumsy French or English on you: 'What country? What hotel? Smoke, Smoke? Good stuff, man.' The most I'll do is smile at them, idiotically, or perhaps answer them in German. They give up, go away quickly. In Tangier that is.
Oranges In the Medina. Tangier.
Sultan's Mill. Tangier.
Dusty store-front display. Tangier.
It's hot. Not that hot, but the back of my shirt is soaked with sweat and I'm thrilled to take off my pack, strip, and climb under the cold water of my tiled shower. I open the windows and lay on the bed. Children playing in the alley, street cats calling. The odd car or motorbike going by. There is a palm swaying outside my window. It's peaceful, but I'm getting hungry, and I want to experience my first Medina and Kasbah.
Back down the hill, around the bend, past the garbage that collects in the crumbling concrete passages. Out to the main street. A boulevard runs along the shoreline. Shouts, calls, beckoning at every block, every moment. Finally see a place that looks like a safe first Moroccan meal. It's dim and cool inside. I collect my wits, eat some pizza-like creation, drink a cold drink, and study the map.
Tangier was not much more for me than just wandering streets, day or night, feeling out the scene, taking in the sounds and smells and sights. The Medina there was not so impressive but I was sure the Medina in Fés would blow it away. The Kasbah was also somehow less than I imagined. Time and time again I would find myself getting to a place, a sight, a location I sought out, and wondering if I had yet arrived. Was I seeing what I was intending to see, or did it lurk yet around a corner, down an alley? Some places are strange like that. You never really know if you are 'there'... but conversely sometimes it hits you like a ton of bricks. You come around that corner and are standing in front of the Real Deal. Not always a landmark or something in a book or a map. And sometimes it's not part of a search, it just happens.
A tense street quarrel, or five old men sitting silently on a bench, or a few wrinkled fellows crouched on a rug playing cards and drinking mint tea. A large storefront with Arabic writing and piles of sweets or trinkets. Or one after another boys walking around with a portable shoe-shine station. Or a cluster of veiled, concealed women meandering down a marketplace alley. Traveling, or at least adventure tourism in my mind, is the constant effort to maintain this kind of awareness. Otherwise your location is irrelevant. It's not affecting you, and you might as well be home, or asleep. But when I am somewhere and I am amazed, or at least with a heightened sense of awareness that I am not home, that is the real thrill, the real meaning and purpose for me. It is the opposite of homesickness, it is the desire and the want to see something new, be somewhere else. It is what the Germans call Fernweh-- the longing to be far away, to go away, to not be home. Not really only for escape, but for experience. Insight.
Down colorful hill. Tangier.
After a night in Tangier, and then breakfast somewhere on the edge of the Ville Nouvelle (New City) at a quasi-Parisian café, I pack my bag and head to the train station. I don't know what the schedule is, I'm not even sure where I will go. This kind of non-restraint, freedom, fills me with a sense of happiness. Of course, it means I could end up sitting at the train station drinking overpriced coffee and chewing crappy cheese sandwiches for the next three or four hours, or just turning around and coming back to the downtown if there really are no good trains for a while, but what the hell. I've got a book. I'm alone. No one is waiting for me, and conversely, I might run into someone interesting at the train station.
I end up on a train to Rabat. The train compartment is almost full at the start, after a few stops it, like all the other compartments is pretty much full. Spoken Arabic all around me. Luggage packed above head and below foot, blocking doors and floor. Thirty minutes into the ride the air-conditioning doesn't seem to be doing anything.
It starts getting really hot in there.
A teenage girl and her sisters offer me their paper fan to use, accompanied by a smile. I decline but then after their insistence do take it and fan myself a bit, fanning warm sweaty air onto my damp face. I have to change trains in Sidi Kacem, and when I get out of the train it feels like I have stepped into an oven. There is not a cloud in the sky, the earth is dry, orange, cracking. I pray Rabat is not this unbelievably hot.
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