“Upon arrival in Tangier, most travel guides advise you to make immediate plans to leave, if you haven’t already. They are right: Tangier is a first-degree shithole.”
A book called 101 places not to visit catches my eye in the library of Pärnu, according to its cover “your essential guide to the world’s most miserable, ugly, boring and inbred destinations.” The book promises to teach you how to spot biological hazards and radioactivity and how to avoid marriage to locals desperate to escape.
Because we haven’t returned from Morocco very long ago, I quickly browse to the pages about Africa. In addition to the above sentence, this anti-travel guide knows that Tangier is “culturally as interesting as a service station, minus the handy plastic and the kitchen roll dispensers.”
“The only fun thing to do”, concludes 101 places not to visit, “is to watch how fresh loads of tourists are being stripped of their earthly possessions. At least if you’re not too busy getting scammed yourself.”
(The quotes have been translated from English to Dutch and back again, so apologies if they’re not 100% accurate.)
Taxi falls apart
Alas, I have not read that book when we arrive at the Tangier train station in the evening. We’ve spent a long day on the train from Marrakesh, with a transfer in Casablanca. In the second part of the journey, we had to tolerate plumbing that would make a festival toilet look like the bathroom of a palace.
In other words: we can’t wait to crash into a bed, in a familiar riad in the medina. The experience of the previous day, however, still lingers in our memory. We waddled for hours through the Marrakesh souks and adjacent streets in search of our accommodation. The ragamuffins that followed us around and offered their unsolicited guiding services had slowly driven us nuts. When we finally took a rest on a rooftop terrace, for refreshments and wifi, it turned out – of course! – that we were just five minutes from our riad, a little further down the same street.
No, we don’t want to experience that again in this dog-tired condition. We jump in a bright blue petit taxi. When we slam the door shut, car parts come off. This is exactly like we imagined Tangier.
Bloody dangerous pensioners
Mister taxi driver knows neither street nor hotel, but no panic: Gino jumps into the car.
“Are you guys looking for a nice hotel near the beach? I know the very best!” hoots Gino, a Moroccan with the phiz of a crook if I’ve ever seen one, who nevertheless introduces himself as ‘helper of tourists’.
That’s Standard Moroccan for ‘tout, cheat, scammer and one-stop-shop for mind-altering substances’. After a week and a half in the country, we recognise the type from afar. And of course we know that it is better to ask advice from local shop owners, who cannot leave their business to show us the way for some change. All red flags are out, all warning signs that something is not right.
But we’re too tired to fight and let Gino lead us quickly through the narrow streets of the medina. All the while, he’s putting on his show.
***
“During the day, this place is completely fine. But after sunset, you have to be careful here. Then the loutish types come out. In the evening, it’s very dangerous here and it is full of scum”, Gino hisses. He points towards a few seniors with walking sticks. “Look at them there — dangerous! But with me, you have nothing to fear. Or those guys over there…” – a few youngsters smoke cigarettes while staring at smartphones – “Bloody dangerous!! But fear not, I’ll give you my phone number. Then you can reach me when you need me, for example if you want to go out in the evening. Don’t walk into a restaurant just like that. They’ll rip you off! No, I’d rather make a few suggestions myself.”
We have long realised that the only danger in the medina is the ugly buffoon who voluntarily carries Anete’s camera bag, with her wallet inside of it. That becomes even more apparent when he reveals his fee a little later: 100 dirham or 10 times the usual tip for such quick guiding service. “Enough for a coffee and a pack of cigarettes”, says Gino.
In New York perhaps, we want to reply. And also: over our dead body. But we’re too slow and Anete, terrified, has already handed him a banknote. Now you all know who’s wearing the pants in this relationship.
Tangier or New York?
And that was the story of our first hour in Tangier.
Author Paul Bowles wrote about the city that it is “more New York than New York. (…) The life revolves wholly about the making of money. Practically everyone is dishonest. In New York you have Wall Street, here you have the Bourse… In New York you have the slick financiers, here the money changers. In New York you have your racketeers. Here you have your smugglers. And you have every nationality and no civic pride.”
Bowles probably knows. He lived for half a century in Tangier, in this city that belongs to two continents and to the water. The Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea merge here, Tangier is the hinge. To say it with a cliché the size of a continent, Tangier is a melting pot. More than in other Moroccan cities, there is a European ambiance here, although the city does not renounce the African chaos.
***
The atmosphere is more aggressive than elsewhere in Morocco – it’s a port city after all. We hear Spanish on every street corner. And we’re never sure if the elders with their classic hats, who shuffle over the pavement with a walking cane, are Spanish or Moroccan. The people are stylish, like in film from the 50s. You notice that especially when you walk into the Grand Café de Paris, where the wooden interior and the gigantic mirrors on the walls instantly remind you of a far-flung past. The clientèle seems to have stepped straight out of Casablanca – old-fashioned suits, sweater vests, flat caps and so on.
It’s not hard to imagine William S. Burroughs in his tailor-made suit, slurping from a glass of sweet mint tea.
Everything is allowed but murder
For Burroughs, Tangier in the 50s was a free port to which he could flee. He had felt chased in America for a while now. Not a surprise: after all, he did shoot his own wife in a drunken game of William Tell. In Tangier, Burroughs discovered that the Moroccan environment fitted well with his temperament. And, not unimportant, there was enough drugs available to satisfy even a notorious junkie like him.
Burroughs believed that everything was possible in Tangier, as long as you didn’t kill anyone. That freedom came from the special status of the northern Moroccan city – not under French or Spanish rule, but an ‘international zone’. As a consequence, Tangier became something of a congregation of naughty men running from the law, women of loose morals, scum, secret agents, flamboyant millionaires, and gamblers.
Tangier is a hilly city. Anyone who climbs from the seafront boulevard, along Rue Magellan and past the building of Hotel Magellan, the hotel from which that damn Gino recruited customers, will find the Hotel El Muniria. Burroughs wrote The Naked Lunch in this backstreet. You can almost smell it in the air that shady things happened here. In other words: the ideal breeding ground for Burroughs’ perverted spirit.
Hashish diarrhoea
Driven by his own glorious experiences, Burroughs invited his beat generation buddies. Although he needed a lot of persuasion to convince the ever-conservative Kerouac about the safety of Tangier. When Kerouac finally arrived, he initially considered staying in the city for a while. He had just sold the British rights of On the Road and wanted to use that money to rent a place in El Muniria, where a room cost $30 a month.
During his stay, Kerouac rowed on the bay, took long walks with Burroughs in the surrounding countryside, and indulged in three-dollar hookers. But alas, despite those worldly pleasures, Kerouac was not the biggest fan of Tangier. Maybe it was the opium that he couldn’t savour. Or the hashish, which gave him severe diarrhoea. Nevertheless, Tangier’s reputation as a city for rebels was made – with the Rolling Stones as other exponents.
Welcome clean air
The question remains whether that reputation persists. A Moroccan author from Tangier describes the city as an older lady who was once beautiful, but now no longer dares to come out without makeup.
The city underwent major changes. The port has moved. Where in the days of Burroughs, it was bang smack in the middle of the city, only yachts and ferries from Tarifa moor in that location nowadays. The freight port, one of the busiest in Africa, now lies 35 kilometres outside the city. This has a positive effect on the air quality and the quality of life in Tangier, without eliminating the desired dose of dinginess.
Because the seedy clubs and cabarets on the pier might be nailed up, but the old hippies on the beach still have hashish on offer – and don’t make a secret about it.
And when you sit down on the terrace of The Grand Café or Café Tingis, you’ll witness the same scenes that Bowles described in 1958, “besieged by shoeshine boys, beggars, lottery-ticket sellers and wisecracking Moroccan youths trying to force you to by toothbrushes, toys, fountain pens, fans, razor blades and rayon scarves.” Nothing has changed at all. There was no need for change. Already back then, Bowles wrote that in Tangier there was “nothing left to spoil.”
(Practical information below the tiled pictures)
Practical information about Tangier
- Onwards to Marrakesh: by train, with a transfer in Casablanca. Prepare for a long day on the train. Especially busy between Rabat and Casablanca. Bring enough snacks! Book tickets online or at the train station.
- Onwards to Chefchaouen: by bus or grand taxi (70 dirham per person when full). From the bus station, a couple of companies make the journey. We paid around 40 dirham.
- Accommodation. We stayed two nights at Dar Bargach and one night at Dar Tanger Medina. Both are excellent budget options that serve delicious traditional Morrocan breakfast.
First published in Dutch on Tom’s blog.