Tangier (10 page)

The bar spectrum runs from the Parade, good food, lantern-lit garden, indiscreet parrot, Lilli herself, whose preternatural calm and husky voice proves she was once a lion-tamer; through Trudy's, where Trudy plays the piano as only a Viennese can ; to the Gay, the Spanish, the French, the English. Sorry is the loss of 'Potty' Peter Barstow's Escargot. Peter died in '72 leaving a kitchen half the size of an English council house
bathroom and a collection of
copper and cast-iron pans the Paris Ritz might envy. He bought fruits in season, bottling and preserving with obsessed devotion. The mystery was what happened to these homely foods for he served meals to perhaps two favoured customers a day. He had adopted a Negro child of six in Liberia who, in Tangier, developed schizophrenia as a young man. During the two years I knew him as bar assistant the gentle Negro was sometimes in near-catatonic withdrawal, sometimes coherent and delightful, often muttering to unwanted parts of himself as he went about the simple tasks which, together with drugs, were keeping him out of hospital. But then the mental pain became too much, He took a knife to exteriorized enemies, strangers in the street. I last saw him 'happy' as such a mind can ever be 'balanced' by drugs in a vegetable patch of Tangier's mental hospital at Beni Makada. We talked for a long time. Peter Barstow's stories were invariably scandalous but true. Wit is spontaneous, and Peter had plenty, It was he who remarked of some rival bar's customer whose young mistresses were allegedly skilled at fellatio: 'A case
of
into
the mouths of babes and sucklings.'

Tangier's bar society is so free and easy that nobody is unwelcome in the 'wrong' bar, and can easily find the 'right' one. Most of the bars are within a hundred metres of the westerly (landward) side of the Boulevard, to the saving in shoe-leather justifies visiting a variety. Many bars open only at night, some as late as eight. Convivial drinkers can find each other day long in the bars cum bathing establishments on the beach or cafés in the new town. No alcohol is served officially in the Medina except in one or two European-run, and Moroccan tourist restaurants. By law no Moroccan may drink alcohol in a bar. Plainclothes police making spot checks are
sometimes not averse to a tipple. Often, as is only courteous, this tends to be on the house.

A similar schizophrenia governs contraband spirits. Bottles, with proper government seal, are legally sold at a price rather higher than in Great Britain. Several shops will sell you spirits at less than half that price if they 'know' you. 'Knowing' you need mean only that you're not an unfamiliar Moroccan with intelligent eyes in a dark suit; or that you've previously bought three eggs or a tiny packet of sea salt at the shop. Conversely, 'know' the shopkeeper spontaneously, Place fourteen dirhams on his counter and smile the international words 'Gordons', 'Smirnoff or 'Bacardi'. Your purchase will be genuine, sealed and, in the case of the first a clear glass bottle, export proof into, the bargain. Whiskies cost rather more. The bottles on bar shelves tend courteously to have government seals on them.

The official attitude towards the whole question of contraband, particularly liquor and Virginia cigarettes, is curious. A poor Moslem country has every right to tax a European's indulgence. But officialdom averts its eyes from the importation of contraband spirits as being a subsidy for the indigenous people of Tangier. What industry have they, when tourism dwindles in winter, besides the supplying of hard-drinking Caucasian residents? Like the ruined coast of Spain, unruined Tangier has its share of retired couples, ex-colonial officers, army men: people for whom, after a lifetime's work abroad, return to England would be psychologically crippling and financially difficult. Within days of buying or renting a villa, a discreet Moroccan will call to discuss one's wholesale, contraband liquor needs. Humiliatingly, I'd been five years on and off in my final flat, before this honour was accorded me. The simply dressed, rather muscular gentleman, glanced about the empty landing before lifting leaf-wrapped cheeses from the top of a basket containing an astonishing variety of bottles. These were strictly samples. I was leaving for England within a couple of days, didn't discover how to contact him, and must go on paying a middleman shopkeeper as a result. I realize Mina (my then maid) must have tipped this man off. Previous maids, while equally devoted, can only have been more careless of this particular Christian vice. She had been, as she phrased it,
chef de cuisine
in a good European restaurant; and from the serving hatch behind the bar must have witnessed some pretty hard drinking. Had I bought from the smuggler, Mina's cut would have been tiny. But she was tough, as I discovered when tragedy struck one of her children, and her rake-off would have been optimum.

The contraband spirits and cigarette legally enter Ceuta, the anachronistic Spanish possession in northern Morocco, fifty miles north-east of Tangier. The degree of 'illegality' with which consignments leave the tiny Spanish enclave depends upon the policy or whim of provincial governors. Tales of mule trains plodding over mountains by moonlight laden with scotch are romantic, It may be resorted to arbitrarily, suddenly at a switch of governors. The only time I witnessed contraband entering independent Morocco from Spanish Ceuta the frontier process couldn't have been simpler. At least for the truck. I had taken a bus to Ceuta; bought a cheaper ride back in the cab of a lorry. Incurious lifting of the rear of the truck's canvas canopy took five seconds; examination of myself and passport ninety, Rumbling away from the check, the driver shrugged and smiled. We were carrying fifty crates of Gordons gin and thousands of cigarettes. He insisted on dropping me at the door of my apartment block. I neither knew nor asked how, where or to whom in Tangier his cargo was unloaded.

I arrive in the
haouma
ol Suani as
bidden, 'when the sun sets'. The huge mongrel tethered in the courtyard bares its teeth and snarls. There's a standard procedure when threatened by Tangier's dogs (the lacerated calf of a European who ran from one crippled him for life). Fix the creature with your eyes, pick up a rock and hurl it. If there are no rocks a feint usually suffices. Such behaviour is unbecoming in a guest. It's politer than requiring that the police shoot, decapitate the animal, and have the Institut Pasteur explore its brain for rabies. The dog my
djibala
hosts have brought with them from the hills is probably unlicensed, uninoculated and illicit. There are virtually no dogs loose in Tangier. I'm projecting will-power and love at the creature, rather than any missile, when my host appears and curses it into submission. I kick off my shoes on the threshold within centimetres of the now whimpering muzzle,

The single room was crowded with bedding, two small children already asleep, prematurely lit by its single electric bulb while rectangles of gold coloured a wall and the floor-matting, paling each minute proportionately with the darkening shadows of dusk.

The eldest daughter brought a bucket of water across the yard. Her mother squatted over an earthenware vessel, cooking
tajine
on a
mishma
fired with charcoal beyond the threshold. My host served mint tea to myself and two of  his sons; ascertained it was sufficiently sweet for me, then dropped a further large chip of expensive sugar into the pot. This was a party.

The youngest children were nudged awake to eat. Mother and daughters joined us too. The fish of the
tajine
was mackerel; the flat loaves of bread, still warm, had been baked by my host only metres away. Swaying gently in the draught, the proud 20-watt light bulb had long since replaced the sun. We washed our fingers again. When I left the youngest children were once more sleeping, fully clothed on the floor. The dog licked my shoes affectionately as I slipped into them, Evidently I was accepted.

I never registered with the British Consulate; though whether through lethargy or some aloofness mechanism in me I don't know. Consequently I never received an invitation to celebrate Her Britannic Majesty's official birthday. One year I went. It was the only party I've ever gatecrashed in my life. For moral support I took a Cambridge graduate, a US citizen, but educated and resident in England since the age of two. I'm not particularly proud of the achievement, There proved to be some hundred and fifty invited guests.

We looked hideously respectable. Even Beardsly found a jacket and tie for the gravity of the occasion. A liveried Moroccan at the iron gates asked for my invitation. 'But your
invitation
, sir?' he repeated as I vaguely produced my card, and similarly introduced my guest. 'I think we are possibly expected.' It was the nearest one could decently lie to an employee of the Crown. (Indeed I had long entertained the belief that British subjects resident abroad were entitled to a free drink on this annual occasion: they are not.) There was consultation with a minion. 'Please wait, sirs,' we were told. And the liveried porter made off towards the house with my visiting card. 'March — but
casually
,' I hissed at: Beardsly, who was even more scared than I. The humbler Moroccan hadn't the nerve to stop us. We made it to the receiving line while the porter still hovered unheeded behind the Consul-General's wife holding my card. Firm handshake, jolly grunt, and we were through the Consulate into the crowded garden. They wouldn't throw us out now Unseemly is un-British. To be on the safe side I made straight for a knight and Arabist to wham Jan Morris had previously given me an introduction.

Relaxation, and the quite childish sense of having got away with something: access to free
food. After all one did pay income tax in those freak years when earnings made one eligible for that privilege. There was a further fillip to a dubious triumph when, inquiring of the Xs whether the Ys were present. I was told no, the British 'colony' was now so large that invitations were extended in rotation. Nevertheless there were the perennial faces of other more private English parties, other gardens, It was a beautiful evening, with sunshine warming the trees and flowering shrubs, and unlimited scotch and canapés to vitalize the insides,

Now the solemn moment came in the peace of the Consulate garden, A sash window on the first floor was raised. The gramophone played 'God Save the Queen' faultlessly. Did I only imagine the machine had a curling sound trumpet which projected through the window? The toast to Her Majesty. I stood stiff and grateful, unmovably upright being stuffed with her food and inflexibly liquored. Propriety suggested that the two gatecrashers leave courteously early. Was there dryness? whimsy? in the Consul-General's wife's 'Goodnight. Mr Stewart' as I thanked her: I'm unused to diplomatic innuendo; and guilt can play tricks on the ears.

But no need to buy dinner! Even Beardsly's guests were on
time We went straight, at
least as far as the taxi could penetrate the Medina, to the indescribable  oddity of his house; and he pre-arranged party, account of which would be inappropriate, coming as it did alter an occasion of state.

The Americans are proverbially generous; open-handed, if not always open-minded. In Tangier they have a political stake. Money is pumped into their Consulate, Library, 'cultural' projects, the American School and so on, because the State Department defines
Morocco as 'third world'. A positive result of this is that there are intelligent and imaginative young Americans in the city out of proportion to their English or European equivalents, The British, with some few exceptions, tend to be in Tangier because a Foreign Service pension goes further, there are servants, sunshine, exciting horticultural possibilities; because Bath or Cheltenham would be foreign and cold after a lifetime's service in Africa or India; and these people are too wise
to settle for the concrete inanity which is the speculative development of the Spanish 'costas'. The few English young in Tangier tend to be commercially engaged or unemployed; the Americans, with the exception of a strong hippie contingent, thoughtful, zealous and salaried. One doesn't take a job - as opposed to a business niche - in a foreign country unless one is interested in the place. As incidental consequence I've always known more Americans in Tangier than English people. There may be subjective bias here, I didn't go to Tangier to
clique with school ties or mutual universities. In the askance-glancing, innately suspicious manner of the British, after the formal introductions and entertainings, we each knew the others were there. Often that was enough.

One American Fourth of July party I committed an unfortunate gaffe. Idly remarking that the US Embassy in London must be the most discreetly impregnable example of castle-building in history, I discovered bourbon was warming my imagination. The fellow was attentive, which was gratifying. He was also serious, which was irresistible. The US Consulate in which we stood, I explained, could be taken in ninety seconds by six men with the aid of a two-inch mortar on the roof of the nearby apartment building e. here I happened then to be living. 'And what do you do?' I asked when conversation flagged. 'I'm the Consulate's security officer,' came the dry character's answer. He did not smile.

I slunk away, remembering another story. The lady tourist cannot have been British. They are insufficiently intense. Motor-cycle police are everywhere designed from goggles to chromium exhausts to impress. This must be why the lady stopped one in Tangier's Place de France.

'You look responsible –
responsable
,' she began.

The result was that immediately the goggles came down about the throat as the right hand went leisurely up to the helmet in salute.

'
Bon
!
Responsable
!'
the lady repeated.

The elite cop smiled, which is unusual. But with an elegant turn of the wrist he silenced his bubbling machine completely, which is more than unusual.

'Now I want to know when –
à quelle heure
,'
the lady asked, 'the next
bus leaves for Jerusalem.'