Tangier (15 page)

Meti came in. And for once left again almost instantly, sensing that this time his skin (and perhaps literally) was at stake.

Just what is all this about? I was asking the Belgian couple in their hallway seconds later. Other neo-colonials on the third floor had had their flat broken into. It was known to have been a Moroccan. Naturally, I accompanied the Belgian downstairs to see his friends. We had time to discuss the mystery for only minutes when the lift disgorged a very large and tough-looking plainclothes cop who announced that he and I were going up to my flat. Is this you? he asked, jabbing at the card on my door. Yes. Passport please. Certainly. I'll keep this. And he was gone with my passport requesting that I turn up at the area station near Porte's and ask for him at two o'clock.

When I did so (having put on a collar and tie for self-confidence: I was unused to this sort of thing) I was told the gentleman was at lunch and I must return at five o'clock. The time I filled usefully collecting advice. There were practical details. Spare cigarettes in case I was required to spend the night in an unfamiliar place; a couple of ten-dirham notes in my socks against the possibility of having to buy food. I discovered the Christian name of the current Consul-General. It occurred to me that to be able to ask: 'Might I phone Bernie — I mean the Consul!' could prove useful gamesmanship in an
Alice in Wonderland
world.

The cop who interviewed me, not the one who'd collected my passport, wasn't nice. He also shouted.

'This morning a boy came to your flat!'

'Yes.'

'Who is this boy!'

'I've no idea.'

'We want to speak with this boy!'

'If I see him again, I'll ask him to drop in.'

'No! You will bring the boy here. Until you do we will keep your passport!'

This was unfunny. It was also impracticable. I couldn't see Meti being willingly led to police questioning. I could all too easily see
myself identifying him if they beat me up. The uncomfortable dilemma produced an uncanny physical calm and mental clarity. A miracle intervened. Or it may have been psychological interview technique. My questioner was
called away. I was ushered to a different cop in another office; who promptly handed me my passport. I must report to the main police station.

'When!'

'Now, of course.'

At the main station a principal in tinted glasses questioned me while two subordinates dealt with other business,. smoking, and occasionally offering comment. It all seemed rather elaborate as the neo-colonials had claimed only the theft of a watch, seemed uncertain of that and there had been no visible damage to their door. I couldn't have done it, I explained. emphatically not trying to be funny, but transmuting genuine concern into puzzlement, endeavouring to lead their attention into blind alleys. Surely they could check the signature in southern hotel registers against that in my passport? This I'd surrendered again.

We know you didn't do it.'

'Then what is all this about?'

'Just tell us the name of the boy who carne to the flat?'

'I don't know it.'

'Where does he live?

'But that's easy. Delegate an officer and a car and I'll take you there. More simply, show me a map.' Absurdly they had none. The address was tricky to describe. I explained, truthfully enough, that that morning a Morocco-bound book had been delivered by boy unknown from Tangier's only bookbinder, a personal friend. 'I doubt he's a criminal,' I said. In fact there was no straighter or nicer craftsman struggling for survival in the city, and they would know it. 'He's a
good
man.'

There was muttered discussion.

'This is not a bad man,' said one of the subordinates, unexpectedly airing English.

'I know no bad Moroccans,' I returned equally carefully, The sarcasm of inflexion was there before I could stop it. Of course I couldn't win. And in the end didn't. Blessedly the 'betrayal' of Meti proved of no relevance to the case. He was neither sought nor questioned. I wasn't to know this as my passport was locked up for the night and I was requested to report back at 9.00 a.m., but also to try and remember who my visitor had been. 'Please think,' they said kindly.

Think I did. And take quietly rational advice. It is not a mass paranoid fantasy that police files are kept on all foreigners resident, or semi-resident in Tangier. The chances were the police had facts, as opposed to neo-colonial hysteria, filed about my simple life. The consensus of very different friends' advice was; 'Tell them the truth. They'll know about you anyway.'

At 9.00 a.m. I was punctually back at the glass and concrete structure which is the central police station. My interviewer proved to be an inspector I had supposed a junior the previous evening,

'Have you thought?' he asked as we entered his office, This presumably was euphemism for, 'Are you ready to talk?'

'Why, yes.' I said,

Inspector X studied my passport like a bone he either might or might not give to a dog. Then pushed it politely across the desk and looked at me expectantly.

My unpopularity with my Belgian neighbours had begun, I explained, when I had lent my flat to an acquaintance who had behaved oddly, not least in giving my keys to a hippie who subsequently changed the locks preparatory to indefinite residence. While this didn't bother me the hippie gentleman had been a Moroccan of carefully wild and revolutionary appearance. To exacerbate matters the Belgian living below me was of a generation and temperament that apparently had not taken cognizance of the fact that Morocco had become independent in 1956. His wife was clinically an hysteric, The net result was an unfortunate mentality which corporately regarded Moroccans as inconsequential yet dangerous
indigènes
, and an Englishman who associated with Moroccans as deeply suspect. I was bored with the bloody Belgians.

The boy who had visited my flat yesterday, and had caused the Belgians to react so impertinently, had been with me for several years, whenever I was in Tangier. He had ceased sleeping at my flat about a year previously, when he had pinched some stuff from myself. Since he was only a child I had taken him by the ear to his father, who was a friend of mine,

'What is this boy's name?' asked X.

I told him.

'How old is he now?'

'Nearly fifteen. The family are
djibala
. His mother doesn't know his exact age,'

At this juncture a slim and efficient-looking gentleman in a light blue suit came into the office, I was introduced to Tangier's Chief of Police; and we shook hands, He looked enquiringly at the inspector, who shook his head. When the Chief left, X said, 'This boy was not the thief. We are looking for a Moroccan in his thirties, well-dressed like you.'

And there the interview effectively ended.

'If there's anything further I can do to help . . . ' I began, disguising relief with vague courtesy.

'Next time you're im England perhaps you'd bring me a woollen tie like yours,' said N.

We discussed ties, about which I know nothing and could not care less, for several minutes. I never fulfilled this typically Moroccan request. If this was unwise another omission was more so. X wondered whether I had ever met the owner, as opposed to Cohen, the agent of my apartment building. Stupidly I didn't write the name down. A Classical Arabic letter
manufactured in Oxford or London might have brought peace to my troubled flat. But the failure of the Belgian's clumsy attempt to frame me was sufficient in itself to keep him out of
my hair for some time.

As postscript to an ugly episode I ran into the huge plainclothes cop who had so mysteriously appeared to confiscate my passport within minutes of Meti's departure. It was a few days later and he was lurking outside the Post Office looking particularly grim. Had they found their man I asked pointedly if pleasantly. He had no idea, he said. 'The case belongs to a lower department.' This had not been my impression. As indicative of the tiny scale of Tangier I was subsequently many times to see all the higher [malice- with the exception of the Chief on the Boulevard, or find myself drinking coffee beside one at the Café de France, where they congregate. I'm told it's bad etiquette to recognize them; and so don't.

Meti still shares
my bread and cheese lunch at no notice, He lives at home in the
haouma
of Suani and has a job which, while paying piteously, affords him a new dignity. Cheeringly he holds all Christians, including myself, in ironic regard. Depressingly, and in common with the majority of prospectless Tangier's illiterate youth, he sees authority, government. law, even his whole country about which he knows virtually nothing, with simple, savage bitterness, modified only occasionally by Islamic pride. It would be comfortable to suppose the syndrome the unchannelled aggression of male adolescence. But it subsists identically in many adults Perhaps the travel brochures are defining this sense or repression when they say that 'In Tangier East exotically meets West.'

Meti bought a second-hand moped with the proceeds of a volume of my verse for which he had made two drawings but was understandably mystified by the publisher's having shrunk his two-foot originals to two inches. He knows no compatriot who can explain the process to him.

One day he asked, 'When you fly to England is it in a white aeroplane with a funny, sagging nose?' I said 'No in a silver one with the red and green bands of Royal Air Maroc; but Meti seemed unconvinced. '
M'zziane
'
he said distantly. 'Marvellous.'

It proved, that an expensive piece of Anglo-French technology called Concorde had broken down and was in hiding at Tangier's airstrip, Boukhalf.

It is often said that Islam is fatalistic: the word means 'submission', which is something very different. Allah is the first mover, Himself immovable. The Moslem (or 'submissive') worships Him., he does not petition, or pray for favours. Mohammed was purely human and, while venerated as God's prophet, first receiver (for he was illiterate) of his dictation which became the Koran, and subsequently law interpreter, has no part in the single deity, The prophet is neither prayed to, nor is his aegis invoked. Only God can help men. The word 'Mohammedan' insults Moslems as suggesting idolatry of the prophet.

The tenets of Islam are Mercy and Compassion. The Moslem is enjoined to live his life with constant regard for both, but also with humility, and generosity towards his fellow men, because these qualities are the nature of Allah who, eventually and individually, will judge him. Heaven and Hell (there are seven categories of each) are conceived of in practical, sensual, even sensuous terms, The advantage of locally comprehensible images in any teaching is obvious. But the Moslem is invited to take the
sura
, or chapters of the Koran, both metaphorically and literally.

. . . by their side shall sit bashful, dark-eyed virgins, as chaste as the sheltered eggs of  ostriches.

. . . We have prepared fetters and chains, and a blazing Fire.

. . . They shall be served with silver dishes, and beakers as large as goblets; silver goblets, which they themselves shall measure; and cups brim-full with ginger-flavoured water from the Fount of Selsabil. They shall he attended by boys graced with eternal youth, who to the beholder's eyes will seem like scattered pearls,

. . . let him tie a rope to the ceiling of his house and hang himself.

There is a suggestion in the Koran that Hell is not eternal.

The seeming fatalism of, for instance, the fifth commandment is again powerful rhetoric. It also best defines the nature of Islam:

Attribute everything to God, because everything comes from Him. Let your resignation be such that if Good and Bad Luck were transformed into two horses and you were offered your choice of a mount, you would leap unhesitatingly on to the back of that which was nearest, without seeking to know which it was. Since both Good and Bad Luck are sent by God, it is not for you to make a choice.

Sensibly the only Sexual sin fiercely jumped on is adultery. The virginity of brides is more a commercial asset than a
religious injunction. The Koran enjoins the enjoyment of sex
per se
.

Perhaps it's naive to call a monolith beautiful, Stanley Kubrick raises one out of the desert among pre-man apes and early tigers with luminous eyes to present Arthur Clarke's thesis in visual terms: a supreme wisdom exists; it seeks to guide; and has been doing so through millennia. Its visible form (in fact both a studying and teaching machine) is a rectangular monolith, which appears in the desert to those ape-dressed special effects men and tiger skins with quartz-iodine eyes. Islam is conceived by its followers as just such a monolith. I refer of course not to the
Ka'ba
, the cuboid shrine at Mecca built by Abraham about a stone fallen from Heaven and pantheistically worshipped before the prophet's lifetime, which is the most venerated in Islam, but to the spiritual and psychological solidarity of Moslem,

This sense of communion is why a Tangier flower-seller has fellowship with a Saudi prince. A businessman from Birmingham visiting Ethiopia tends not to think, 'Thank God I'm among Coptic Christians'. Or it's unlikely to be his first thought. A Cairo merchant holidaying in Tangier may not consciously remind himself he is among fellow Moslems. But that will be because he doesn't need to.

The principal claim of Moslems is direct knowledge of Allah, who is the same God as glimpsed less fully by Abraham and Jesus Christ. Christ was not crucified and, while of virgin birth, was emphatically not God's Son. It is this direct knowledge of God which makes Islam the fastest expanding religion today, particularly in Black Africa; while paradoxically the simple monolith is threatened by science, if only as being less coolly flexible than the older Christianity. But youth (to take human analogy) tends towards inflexibility only to evolve change more ingeniously.

Islam's refusal to compromise upon the premise that God controls all things conflicts with modern science - for instance the laws of cause and effect. A great discomfort was man's landing on the moon. Ironically the achievement would not have been possible perhaps without Islam's major practical legacy to the west; our Arabic numerals (though these derive from India), and simplification of arithmetic. Try a long-division sum with Roman numerals.