The Road to McCarthy (9 page)

Next morning
at ten I slip out of a side entrance through the hotel garden and car park and go and hide in the medina a long way from Boulevard Pasteur. It’s a wasted effort, because Mohammed finds me anyway. I’m outside a café watching a woman carrying a goat under her arm and leading a sheep on a rope, and wondering how she settled on these particular priorities, when I realize he’s standing in a doorway across the road watching me, like Harry Lime in
The Third Man
, only scruffier. Slowly, painfully slowly—this guy’s a master of suspense—he comes across to join me. He exudes a colossal sense of wounded pride and hurt and disappointment. “So, Peter. You do not come this morning like you promise.” So I tell him a lie, a pointless lie which gains me nothing. A small amount of money changes hands, and we go our separate ways. In one masterful stroke he has established the basic ground rules: Wherever I go in this city he will find me, I will let him guide me and then I will give him some money. Even if he doesn’t guide me, I’ll have to give him money for finding me. That’s just the way it’s going to be.

It’s lunchtime, and I’m about to enter a promising-looking restaurant on the edge of the casbah when I notice an old man sitting daydreaming in the street. I turn into the doorway and he totters to his feet and goes into what is either a large cupboard or a small office, where he presses an antique bell-push. As I reach the restaurant at the top of a flight of stairs an ancient retainer in green fez and maroon pantaloons has responded to his call and is there to meet me. He shows me into a dazzlingly ornate room with tiled
floors and walls, green and yellow glass skylights, embroidered wall hangings and cushions, marble fireplaces, Islamic arches and hand-made rugs. It’s empty apart from five Berber tribesmen in traditional dress sitting at a table in the center. They’ve probably been bringing animals to market and have popped in for lunch before heading back to the mountains.

I’m congratulating myself on my unerring ability to sniff out the most authentic places when the doors open and a party of about forty tourists in terrifying leisurewear pile in, tooled up to the eyeballs with video and photographic equipment. The authentic tribespeople burst into action, producing an extraordinary selection of nose flutes, radical ukuleles and camel-skin timpani from underneath their seats and robes. The tour party, an uneasy alliance of French and American—though under interrogation I couldn’t rule out the possibility that some of them might be Swiss—burst into action, shooting the shit out of everything that moves with state-of-the-art idiot-proof camcorders. Some of them have those digital stills cameras that display instant pictures, so that now people can take their holiday snaps and bore their friends with them at the same time.

The authentic tribespeople from the mountains, who I now realize are a coach-party cabaret turn from a block of flats up the road, are playing wonderful music, wailing and pounding and drawing haunting, searing melodies from their strange instruments. It’s a thrill to be in the same room as them, a fact that hasn’t been lost on the visitors, who are lining up to use the band as props. They are poking their heads in between the musicians, grinning and gurning as the flashbulbs pop, treating them for all the world as if they’re one of those stick-your-head-through-the-hole-in-the-plywood jobs you see on the pier. As I get up to leave after a gray and greasy chicken tagine, the band are passing the hat round, bowing and smiling at the tourists and repeating over and over again the same Berber word: “Thank you,” perhaps, or possibly “Asshole.”

I spend the afternoon reading and dozing in the hotel garden, where the orange trees are jiggling in a gentle breeze. It’s like a perfect English summer’s day, warm enough to have any self-respecting Brit stripped to the waist drinking a can of Stella in the lottery queue; but officially it is still winter.
Mediterranean etiquette demands that the pool remain closed, and that the Moroccans, Spanish and French who are my fellow guests remain fully kitted out in winter woollies and cashmere coats.

In the hotel bookcase I found a copy of
Tangier: City of the Dream
by Iain Finlayson. It documents the recent history of the city, and bristles with scandalous tales of Burroughs, Paul Bowles and the artistic demimonde. I’m fascinated by his account of Mohammed Mrabet, a storyteller who dictated his tales onto Bowles’s tape recorder and won a reputation as a major figure in modern Arab literature. He was also a wild and crazy guy, a Moroccan Marlon Brando lookalike who became sexually involved with a variety of Western women, men and couples. I’m intrigued by the sound of his book,
Love With a Few Hairs
, published in London in 1967, a tale, according to Finlayson, of “a European being taken for a ride by a young Moroccan man who skillfully plays him for personal advantage.” It sounds like it might shed some light on my situation with my own Mohammed, and I decide to find a copy, even though I haven’t seen a bookshop yet.

By evening I need a walk but I’m worried that Mohammed will nab me again as soon as I leave the hotel. I edge out into the street and scan the likely doorways and alcoves, but there’s no sign of him. He’s brilliant. As soon as you think you know how he operates, he changes the pattern to keep you guessing. Wait a minute—is that him over there?

No.

It’s just after dark when I find myself a seat on the outside terrace of a run-down café just outside the medina, where three tiny pedestrian streets packed with shops and market stalls converge. There’s a cassette stall with loud Islamic music distorting from speakers that aren’t big enough to cope. Closest to me is an increasingly desperate-looking man who keeps arranging and rearranging stonewashed jeans and denim handbags on a blanket on the ground. He hasn’t made a sale in the hour I’ve been here. I’ve been watching life come and go and reflecting on the beautiful energetic confusion of it all, thinking how redistribution of the West’s wealth is probably a jolly good thing, when a guy comes and sits too close to me. It’s clear that he’s going to try and strike up a conversation and scam me in some way, so I’m ready for him.

“Hello, my friend.”

“Hello.”

“You know me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I see you earlier, in hotel? Remember? I change my clothes now.”

It seems unlikely. I can’t think of a hotel in the world that would let him through the door, let alone offer him a job. He looks like a particularly unscrupulous pirate, or the kind of assassin you’d be forced to hire if you were on a very limited budget, yet even as I’m thinking this I’m chiding myself for making such a glib and superficial judgment. Why think the worst of the guy? All right, so he’s another poor Moroccan, but that doesn’t give me the right to condemn him. Yes, it’s unlikely he works at my hotel, but what’s so special about a fancy hotel? Who the hell do I think I am anyway?

“My name is Mustafa.”

He offers me his hand and I shake it.

“What is your name?”

In an instant I consider a plethora of misleading pseudonyms, noms de plume and aliases to throw him off the scent. I know I mustn’t give anything away. After all, I’ve already told Mohammed my name and it would be foolish to repeat the mistake.

“Peter.”

It doesn’t matter, though, because he’s so stoned he forgets it immediately. Do I have a guide? Did he take me to the casbah? He’s not a very good guide then, says Mustafa, because tomorrow is Friday, Muslim holy day. Casbah will be closed. I tell him I know. Ah, yes, he says, but also closed Saturday, Sunday and Monday. For festival.

“What festival?”

“We kill sheep. So maybe you visit casbah now, see snake charmers, acrobats, fire.”

He pauses, then goes for it.

“And camels.”

“Camels?”

“Yes, William. Camels. Come. I show you.”

I know he isn’t government approved, and probably doesn’t subscribe
to any professional code of conduct in the way that real estate agents and contract killers do; but I think I’d feel a bit of a Charlie if the casbah stayed closed for the duration of whatever this festival is and I had to go home and tell people I hadn’t even seen the wretched place, but I’d managed a pizza and a few beers in the hotel bar instead. It’s not very adventurous, is it? I know he’s probably a bit dodgy, but the dope seems to have made him quite mellow, and I’m actually starting to feel like I know my way around. After all, what can happen really?

Actually, on second thoughts, a lot might happen. Don’t bother. It isn’t worth the risk. Just say No.

“Okay.”

This is crazy. I’ve already got Mohammed. At this rate I’m going to end up with more guides than Lonely Planet. Whatever happens now I have to give this guy some money as well. I’m beginning to realize that I’m not very good at this.

We stand to leave, and Mustafa insists on several clenched-fist handshakes.

“What is your name?”

“Still Peter.”

“Peter. You. Me. We are like brother.”

We head off into the medina, heading up the hill to the casbah, the fortress within a fortress, maze within a maze, where once no outsider was permitted to tread. Soon we’re climbing steps and the buzz of the nighttime market is falling away behind us. I’m aware of our footsteps, and the sound of my heart racing.

“Here are Jewish houses. Later I show you film-star house. What is your name? Ah, where you from? I know English people. Not rich like American film star. Jean-Claude Van Damme, he make movie in this house. You are afraid? Do not be afraid. No one hurt you here, William. You are with me. Like brother. See there? They sell knives. To kill sheep. For festival.”

We’re inside the casbah walls now—“bottom half Phoenician, top Portuguese”—and in a maze of medieval alleyways, all sense of direction long since lost. He’s pointing out a selection of interesting doors.

“Here German. Swiss here. This lady has art gallery. Where you from?
Ah, here English film star. Tony Williams. You know him? Here other Englishman. We call him Eric. Skinhead.”

We seem to be getting nearer the center, where the acrobats and camels and snake charmers must be. Here’s the women’s mosque, full of children singing and chanting verses from the Koran. Round the corner and—no, it’s dark again, and I’m very uneasy now. If I reach out I can touch the walls on either side. But now there are some small children in a doorway playing, and a woman in traditional dress with a baby, a biblical image that’s immediately superseded by a businessman with an expensive blouson and briefcase making his way home. The alley opens out and we stop briefly to admire the great mosque, or at least as much of it as you can see in the dark, before moving on and stopping outside a house with gates. Mustafa looks proud. This is clearly a highlight of the tour.

“Here Barbara Hutton house. Come.”

He shakes and rattles the gate till it opens. I take a couple of paces back.

“Come. Now!”

He makes me walk ahead of him up the path, a sensible precaution on his part in case there’s a Doberman that’s been trained to leap from a first-floor window and rip out a man’s throat before he hits the ground.

“Swiss man live here now. When he here carpet”—he gestures—“all way to gate. Come. You like to see port?”

He climbs over a wall onto the cliff edge and points to the lights of the ferry port far below us. He wants me to follow him to the brink of the abyss, but years of living near one of the world’s top suicide spots have sullied the charms of sea-pounded cliffs, and I decline with as much manly nonchalance as I can muster. A few feet away I see the orange glow of a cigarette, and realize a man is sitting on the wall watching me. An undercover member of the tourist police looking after my interests, perhaps; or maybe an international trafficker in human organs who is running low on stock.

We emerge into what seems to be a central square, though there’s no sign of any festival. An elderly couple in traditional dress are sitting outside their house, which I find strangely comforting, but then we plunge into the dark maze again and Mustafa starts reassuring me about money. He says he knows I am not an American film star and it won’t cost too much. There are
some heavy-looking guys kicking a football around in a courtyard. We walk through. Someone says something and everyone laughs. If anything goes wrong now I wouldn’t have a clue how to get out of here. I knew this was stupid. Why did I do it? And
where are the bloody camels and snake charmers then?
Now he’s saying we must go into a quiet place—how much quieter can it get?—somewhere private where I can pay him for the tour, not here in public where the chancers and lowlifes and bad guys might see us. He slinks into the most sinister and threatening alleyway I’ve ever seen in my life and I realize I have to make a stand. No, I say, let’s go back so that I know where I am.

He pauses. This could go either way.

“Okay. We go back now, William.”

“Not William. Peter.”

“Yes, Peter. How many sons you have?”

He’s got three, all under the age of two, he says, and all very hungry. We’re returning to the comfort of crowded streets.

“This coffee bar. Rolling Stones make film here one time. You afraid?”

Well, I can’t deny I’m sweating, though whether from fear or walking too fast up too many hills or wearing too many clothes, I really couldn’t say. We approach two women standing chatting at a pump. They go silent as we pass.

“Free water. Good drink. You like to wash maybe?”

There’s water cascading down the steps as we descend. I’m reminded of something I read today about how in heavy rain the casbah steps get very slippy. Apparently a woman fell on her arse and got washed away down the hill in a storm. Popped out dead in Tangier Bay a day or two later.
There aren’t going to be any camels, are there?
How would you get the bloody things up here anyway? It’d be a nightmare. He’s still giving a running spiel—this door knob, these doors, that roof, those tiles—as we enter one more dark place, and I’m sure he’s going to confront me, or his accomplice will be there with gleaming teeth and a sheep-killing knife. And then we pop out into the street with steps we’d been up earlier, and probably for the only time in my life I’m relieved to find myself outside Jean-Claude Van Damme’s house. We’re only a couple of hundred yards from Grand Socco,
so I don’t feel uneasy about stepping into a doorway with him. From what I’ve seen so far, twenty dirhams seems to be the going rate. I’ll give him thirty.