Tangier Blues by Kapka Kassabova

Petit Socco is Tangier’s most notorious meeting place. Transactions of all kinds used to be made here: from intellectual discussions to European pedophiles hunting for juicy young flesh. The fin-de-siècle façades enclosing this small square hint at past glamour. What used to be Tangier’s most glitzy hotel is now the positively seedy Pension Fuentes. On one of its ornamental, crumbling balconies, a man in dark glasses and the traditional Moroccan hooded cloak is doing some dodgy deal with a black African. We sit next to an old man in a red fez outside our favourite Café Tingis. He leans towards me and says ‘Bonjour’, then continues in Spanish:
‘The Spanish have a saying: to eat well, you must work well.’
‘Do you eat well?’ I ask.
‘I eat, you eat, he eats, we eat, they eat,’ he conjugates in French and grins toothlessly. ‘Excuse me, I must go.’

He gets up and gives a coin to the desiccated waiter who looks like an extra in a Bertolucci film. His teeth are like the ruins of a kasbah village, and his white jacket has greasy stains. The fezzed man disappears into the doorway of another seedy pension which doubles up as a brothel. Still, I appreciate being talked to. Women aren’t part of café society here, their place is at home. Even European-style cafés, like the vast Café de Paris in the new town’s Place de France, are filled with homogeneous male crowds. They drink tea, watch TV, gossip and observe the world go by. Only Western women dare share this social space, and their loose ways are tolerated – but only just. In another café round the corner, a Europhile gentleman in a cashmere scarf gets talking in Spanish to my male companion, ignoring me completely. This time, I feel invisible, which is the idea.

I thought Tangier would be different from other, more traditional cities of Morocco, because of its history. But fifty years have gone by since it was North Africa’s party central. A thriving international capital of vice and pleasure, it was dubbed the Interzone by cult-writer William Burroughs. In the 50s Burroughs liked to sit over there, in the Café Central, and size up young boys, because this was pedophilia central too. He wrote The Naked Lunch in Hotel el-Muniria where we spend our first night. The hotel is dingy as they come, and I swear the rusty radiators haven’t been used since Moroccan independence in 1956. Our roof-top room has wind-swept views to a moody Strait of Gibraltar, and the cold wind blows straight from Spain.

But right now, a portly man in a black cloak and black beanie is sitting in Café Central, two men fawning around him. He stands out in this dejected square because of his well-fed, don’t-mess-with-me look. Men of this chubby variety pop out of Tangier’s lanes every now and again and strut past the ordinary folk. The ordinary folk peddle their petty wares, shine shoes by kneeling at the client’s feet, hustle tourists with their ‘guide’ services, in short get by any way they can in a country with 40 per cent unemployment. Here are men selling hotties off the pavement; cheap tea-pots for the national drink of mint-tea; cigarettes by the joint; chocolate-bars by the square; and most wretched of all, inflatable Father Christmases, on Boxing Day, in a Muslim country. But at least they’re doing something, unlike the women who, once dumped or widowed, are at the mercy of their families. In a country where 62 per cent of women are illiterate, begging or illegal prostitution remain the destitute woman’s main options.

Meanwhile, I wonder what Beanie’s trade is. At this point Ahmed, the ubiquitous busy-body of Tangier’s medina, pops out of a side-lane like a djinn. His grin, dark-glasses and yellow cloak are headed straight for our table. Initially, Ahmed followed us around town, but realising we weren’t going to visit his ‘natural remedy’ shop and give him lots of money, gave up.
‘This guy,’ Ahmed says, ‘he’s big boss. If you want to go to Spain, you pay 800 euro, he get you across. But never talk to him directly. You talk to someone else first.’
‘Someone like you?’
‘Yes. And if you write about him, don’t show his picture. He will find you and kill you, wherever you are.’

Ahmed is not kidding. Illegal people-smuggling is a deadly business.
‘What about the police?’ I say, betraying my naivety. ‘Can you report him to the police?’
He flashes a golden tooth of mirth.
‘The Moroccan police, they don’t do nothing. If I report him, he make me disappear and nobody see me again.’ He glances at Beanie, who is looking at us with glacial calm. ‘Excuse me, I must go.’ Ahmed consults his fake Rolex, and is gone like a puff of smoke.

People-smuggling is Tangier’s most profitable trade. Black Africans travel the continent at great peril to attempt the crossing into Spain. Often they fail, some even lose their lives in boat accidents. In the 1990s, around 3000 people are estimated to have perished in the Strait of Gibraltar. The misery of these desperadoes fattens entrepreneurs like Beanie. Things are supposedly changing under pressure from Spain and the EU, but countless black Africans, mostly young men in fake brand trainers and baseball caps, still hang around Tangier, with the shivery look of passengers in transit.

The police must be too busy cracking down on another profitable trade – drugs, or kif, as marijuana is known here. While driving to Tangier through the spectacular northern region of Ketama in the Rif mountains, we got chased by a four-wheel drive. It was operated by two guys in dark glasses who made smoking gestures at us. So did everyone else on that road – because this is one of the world’s largest kif regions. Barely rid of the kif sellers, we were stopped by police. They gave us mint tea, recorded our mothers’ names, and searched the car. Just as well we hadn’t bought any.

Back in Tangier, we meet Khaled. We’re walking through Tangier’s most decrepit neighbourhood, perched up above the blue, windy space where the Strait of Gibraltar meets the Atlantic. The dilapidated houses are falling into the sea, together with the open garbage dump spilling down the rocks. The city council can’t afford – or can’t be bothered - to salvage this district.

‘In two years’ time,’ Khaled says, ‘people will have to move out.’ Khaled has a nasty scar across his face, and speaks reasonably broken Spanish.
‘I’m not a bad person,’ he talks breathlessly, relishing the distraction we provide, ‘I get this in road accident, in Spain. I live in Spain for two years, you know. Without papers, doing odd jobs.’

Khaled didn’t have the 800 euros for the illegal crossing, so he just snuck onto the boats while carrying others’ bags.
‘Then me and my friend, we crash. I spend two months in hospital, the police see my passport, and send me back to Tangier. I arrive last week.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ I ask.
‘I can’t work yet, my back is damaged. But when I’m good, I’ll go to France, somehow. There’s nothing here. No jobs. Our house is falling in the sea. I have seven brothers and sisters, there isn’t no money. Europe is better, even if they hate us. I don’t speak no French, but I learn it like I learn Spanish, I’m still young...’

He takes us to a look-out point near a Roman excavation site. The former Roman graves carved out of the cliff-surface are full of water and garbage. While we admire the view over Tangier, Khaled looks out to the windy Strait of Gibraltar and the invisible coast of Spain. He then follows us back down to the medina where we part. In a few seconds, we lose him in the crowded lanes.

Back in Petit Socco, Beanie was gone, but the ancient Bertolucci waiter is still there wiping tables with a dirty rag, tired and even tinier than this morning. And suddenly, it is time for evening prayer. All the muezzins of the medina begin the call to prayer in their mosques’ microphones. Their wails crowd the darkness like sorrowful ship-horns.