by Paul Bowles
There are probably few accessible places on the face of the globe where one can get less comfort for his money than the Sahara. It is still possible to find something flat to lie down on, several turnips and sand, noodles and jam, and a few tendons of something euphemistically called chicken to eat, and the stub of a candle to undress by at night. Inasmuch as it is necessary to carry one’s own food and stove, it sometimes seems scarcely worth while to bother with the “meals” provided by the hotels. But if one depends entirely on tinned goods, they give out too quickly. Everything disappears eventually – coffee, tea, sugar, cigarettes – and the traveler settles down to a life devoid of these superfluities, using a pile of soiled clothing as a pillow for his head at night and a burnous as blanket.
Perhaps the logical question to ask at this point is: Why go? The answer is that when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude he can’t help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast, luminous, silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, no other surroundings can provide the supremely satisfying sensation of existing in the midst of something that is absolute. He will go back, whatever the cost in comfort and money, for the absolute has no price.
Letter from Tangier
London Magazine, July 1954
THIS CITY HAS CHANGED to such an extent since I first settled here in 1931 that if my strongest memories from that period were not inextricably connected with its climate and weather, I should no longer recognize it as the same place. The air and the wind are really about all that is left. Tangier’s strange warm air with the pockets of coolness in it even under the searing sun! One day the air is crystalline, so that the mountains of Spain stand out as if they were across the street; the next day it is like a luminous gas, so that even the freighters in the harbor below are made equivocal by its white glare. And the wind is present – ech cherqi - the impossible levante that rushes in from the Mediterranean between the Pillars of Hercules with the force of a gale, and can keep blowing day after day without respite. These things are still here. Practically everything else is gone with the boom, that period of frenzied activity that started shortly before the war of 1939 and continued until the Riots of 1952. Even in the Casbah there is scarcely an alley that has not undergone a change: the Moslems of Tangier, no less than anyone else, have a passion for building and remodelling.
It was not so long ago when the Place de France was at the edge of town, and you could stand there at noon and hear the cicadas screaming from the eucalyptus trees. The Zoco de Fuera was, among other things, a grove of trees that provided shade for the performances of cobras, acrobats and dusty little apes from the mountains. To go to Sidi Amar, instead of a municipal bus, you took a carriage with a torn beige canopy, drawn by two horses laden with jangling bells. Instead of the rasp of radios and the noise of traffic you heard the shrill sound of rhaitas being played, and there were torchlight processions in the Medina where the bride was carried to her new abode doubled up in an almería on the back of a donkey. Now she goes in a taxi like any Christian or Jew.
‘Tous les agréments de Tangier ont disparu’, people are fond of saying. There is nowhere to walk, unless you like shops and motor traffic. The automobile has taken over; Tangier has become a city, a miniature one if you like, but still a city. It seems to me that the principal difference between a town and a city is that while one can generally get out of a town by walking on one’s two legs, to escape from a city requires the use of some other means of locomotion. If it weren’t for a few corners of the Casbah, the Old Mountain, the beaches and the nearby Spanish Zone, there wouldn’t really be much reason for people who have no business interests here to bother coming, in spite of the lack of cold weather, the absence of government, and other peculiarities, most of them of a negative character, which are normally considered to be advantages.
It is true that there is no levying of taxes and no official interference in financial matters. You can pay for what you buy in whatever currency you choose. No visa is needed to enter the Zone, and once you are here you can stay on indefinitely without ever being annoyed by thoughts of permis de séjour and visits to the police. All this is, I suppose, as near to freedom as one can get in the world of 1954. In the past six or seven years the cost of living has risen considerably, but not in proportion to what it has done in most parts of the world. A maid-servant who can cook costs about a pound a week, food (with the exception of good meat) is cheap in the market, charming little Arab houses can be rented for anything from two to eight pounds a month, depending on their size, location and sanitary facilities, and petrol sells for only a shilling and eightpence a gallon, in contrast to the astronomical sums one has to pay for it on the Continent. In the past year all prices have dropped, and there are indications that they will continue to do so, at least in the immediate future. This would all be very fine for the foreign resident with leisure on his hands, if it were not an indication of the direction that life here is taking. The sad truth is that the city has gone into a serious slump. The riots of March 1952, although they were carried out by urchins at the instigation of a few paid agitators, set people to thinking, an activity which is often fatal to faith. The result was that gold began to leave Tangier, bankers moved their businesses to South America, and real-estate hit an air-pocket. From boom town to ghost town can be a short way; the unceasing campaign of the Nationalists to disrupt the life of French Morocco (via the bomb and the hand grenade) certain does nothing to calm the fears of investors here. Equally discouraging is the news that labor organizers have arrived in the International Zone, intent upon forming unions to raise the level of wages. The very concept of organized labor, if disseminated, would spell death to the present economy. So there is no cause for celebration on the part of foreign residents in this precarious little paradise.
It would be hard to find a city the size of Tangier where the inhabitants have less civic pride, or where there is such an utter dearth of cultural life. An important reason for this is that very few of those who came here during the great influx had any firm intention of remaining. Tangier was the new El Dorado; one would arrive, find a way to make one’s killing, and get out as fast as possible. But as in Hollywood, where the soda-jerkers and shopgirls all seem to be vedettes manquées who can’t bear to go back to their farms and factories, the people somehow have not made that quick million, and have stayed on anyway, loath to abandon hope or to admit defeat. Besides, life for the unsuccessful prospector is no more unpleasant here than it would be anywhere else. He can sit on the terrasse of one of the cafés on the Place de France until half past eight, join the vast parade of Spaniards taking their night paseo along the Boulevard Pasteur until nine or so, have dinner and go to the cinema at half past ten, quite as if he were back in Marseille or Madrid or Rome, instead of a quarter of a mile from the dim fondouks of the Souk ez Zra, where the Berbers from the mountains lie wrapped in their djellabas among the donkeys. And, in the summer, which is Tangier’s season (despite the English and American tourists who insist on coming here in January and then do nothing but complain of the rain) the beaches are frequented, but fortunately never crowded, and there are Sunday afternoon corridas in the bull-ring. I doubt that the absence of cultural life is noticed by many Tangerines, since most of them were not conscious of the presence of any such thing in the places from which they came.
Ahmed Yacoubi in Fez, 1955; Yacoubi became a protegé and close friend of Bowles and accompanied him on trips to Europe, Turkey and Ceylon (PB)
What may be a sign of an awakening interest in art is the opening last week of Tangier’s first art gallery. The inaugural exhibit was devoted to the work of the leader of young Moroccan painters, Ahmed El Yacoubi. This twenty-three-year-old Moslem artist is the son of a religious healer of Fez, which may have something to do with the fact that his work, which at first glance would seem to be a rather formalized and primitive surrealism, deals largely with the subject-matter of magic. Thus, what looks like arbitrary f
antasy proves on closer inspection to be an illustration of a popular legend or an interpretation of a regional belief. Magic, incantations, the casting of spells, love-potions and even death-potions, are still a very important part of the fabric of Tangier’s life, and it is not surprising that the young Moroccan artists (who, although they still believe implicitly in the efficacy of such medicine, are by virtue of their non-Islamic profession sufficiently exterior to it to observe it with a certain detachment), should draw upon this facet of the indigenous culture for their inspiration. It remains to be seen whether Tangier is large enough and cultured enough to support such an institution as the new Galería Provensa.
What is really extraordinary is that all the fantastic amount of expensive construction which has gone on here has served only to make the city look more improvised, chaotic and shabby. There was a certain ramshackle unity in the architectural style twenty years ago; now there is none. The place is frankly hideous. It is like a piece of jewellery whose setting far outshines its stone. The blue sky, the blue sea and the blue mountains are still here, but the town, not blue now save for the houses of a few recalcitrant Moors, no longer complements their combined charm. Instead, like most things of today, it rises in unlovely defiance of the laws of nature and beauty.
Yet if one lives here, one is bound to be ambivalent in one’s feelings about the place. Its character, too strong to be overlooked, is like that of the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. One is convinced that it is good to be in No Country, to feel, in this world of swiftly increasing social organization and hypertrophied governments, that anarchy is still a possibility. There is a spiritual healthiness in the absence of patriotic emotion, indifference to tribal loyalties, and even rampant opportunism. It is a pleasant thing to be in a place where one can at least have the illusion that the individual still has charge. The delight in freedom from bureaucratic intervention, deeper than the desire for gain, no doubt explains the fact that even when the possibilities for making a sudden fortune are gone, people are continuing to stay on.
I, who have always been an interested, if not totally involved, spectator of Tangier’s evolution, shall stay on because the place has a strange and only partially explained fascination for me. I think it appeals particularly to those with a strong residue of infantilism in their character. There is an element of make-believe in the native life as seen from without (which is the only viewpoint from which we can ever see it, no matter how many years we may remain). It is a toy cosmos whose costumed inhabitants are playing an eternal game of buying and selling. The Casbah and the Medina below are a great pile of child’s building blocks strewn carelessly over the side hill; when you huddle or recline inside the miniature rooms of the homes you are immediately back in early childhood, playing house, an illusion which is not dispelled by the tiny tables and tea glasses, the gaudy cushions and the lack of other furniture. The beggars come by and sing outside the door, each one with his own little song, and the forgotten but suddenly familiar sensation of being far inside is complete.
Certainly it’s not that the Moslems of Morocco are more clever or charming than the people of any other country. In their own devious way they can be as difficult to live with as anyone else, and one can be just as ambivalent about them as about Tangier. I am not quick to see group characteristics. It has taken me more than two decades, for instance, to realize that the Moslem’s incredible aptitude for putting mechanical things out of order was due to something other than simple failure to understand the principles of physics, or that his disinclination to think in any way of the future was other than the result of a childlike preoccupation with the present moment, combined with an unusually carefree nature. But of course I was quite mistaken. If Ali disables a machine ten seconds after touching it, it is because deep in his subconscious he wants to break it, the proper condition for all mechanical instruments is: not working. When some gadget that should function refuses to do so, you see the suppressed glee on every face. It is written in the Koran that man’s inventions are falsehoods and must one day cease to be of use. Or if Mustapha regularly neglects to buy sufficient sugar for the morrow when he knows that more will be needed before the bacals are open, it is not because he is frivolous or conscious only of the existing instant as it passes: it is because he refuses to tempt Allah, who may strike at him for his pre-sumptuousness in assuming that he will live to see tomorrow. For all he knows, the Supreme Being has other plans, and it would be inviting disaster to display any sense of security in life, even if he felt one, which he is not likely to do. The true Moslem attitude demands that one act always as though death loomed immediately ahead.
And to judge from the way things look at the moment, sudden death may lie ahead for a good many Moroccans. They are just beginning to awaken to the fact that the difference between their world and the world outside is not one in kind, but in time. It is a dangerous discovery, because they are going to disregard many vital things in their haste to catch up. As long as the discrepancies could be counted a matter of taste, everything was all right; there were two coexistent worlds with distinctive aims. But now that they have decided to go in our direction they are dismayed to see how far behind us they come in the procession. Not knowing where we are trying to go or why we want to go there, being merely determined to go along with us, they imagine that they can do so merely by ignoring the historical distance that separates our two cultures. But sheer insistence is not enough. Democracy is an empty word to the average Moroccan; indeed, by his temperament and conditions he is more inclined to totalitarianism. For this reason anti-Soviet arguments, which are generally based on humanitarian considerations, mean very little to them, while the most thinly disguised Communist propaganda is often warmly received. At every turn one hears intimations of the basic 1954 line: America is to blame. If Moroccans are dying in Indo-China, if it rains too much or not enough, if there is no work, if one’s wife is sick and penicillin is expensive, or if the French are still in Morocco, it is all the fault of America. She could change everything if she chose, but she does nothing because she does not love the Moslems.
So far, the mounting rebellion in the French Zone has not touched Tangier directly. There have been a few murders, but only policemen and natives known to be informers for the French. And there has been none of the indiscriminate throwing of bombs that characterizes the daily life of Casablanca. But as the Moslems say: “There is fire in the Costa, and you can feel the heat here”. At the moment a concerted effort is being made, and with success, by unofficial individuals to stop the native populace from smoking, because tobacco is distributed by the French. If a man is seen with a cigarette, he may be approached by a pair or a group, who will ask him politely what his religion is. If he answers “Moslem”, they will upbraid him and suggest that henceforth he refrain from smoking. This is a warning. If they catch him again he will probably come away from the second confrontation with his face slashed. Then his troubles begin, since if he reports the incident to the police, he runs the risk of a more serious, perhaps fatal, attack as a result. However, if he does not report it, and the police discover it, he will certainly be jailed as a suspected Nationalist sympathizer. Participation in this little war is not a matter of personal option.
In spite of these shadows cast by coming events, the character of the city is one so intimate that it is somehow difficult to consider them seriously. “We’ll probably all be murdered in our beds”, people say smiling: and nobody believes it for a minute.
There is a leering little Arabic ditty of questionable political intentions which comes over the radio from time to time. To make it chic they have given it a recurrent French refrain, which goes:
“Il y a une chose magnifique;
C’est la bombe atomique.
Ca vient de l’Amérique.
Ca arrête le trafic.
C’est leur bombe pacifique!”
Windows on the Past
Holiday, January 1955
ONE
DAY IN LATE July, 1955, a young man with a paperbound book under his arm will step out of the glare of Seville’s Plaza de la Falange Española into the shade of the Calle Sierpes, walk along under the canvas tenting stretched high above the street, and turn into the Restaurant Los Corrales. Once inside, he will order a gazpacho andaluz, the best cold soup in the world, and then he will open his book, which he will have bought only an hour earlier, and begin to slit its pages with the butter knife. Romancero Gitano, the title page will say, and although he knows quite well who Garcia Lorca was, having seen productions of two of his plays in college, he finds a particular thrill in opening one of his books and seeing the neat verses in Spanish for the first time. He is so completely engrossed that the gypsy girl peering at him through the window that gives onto the back street has to hiss three times before he notices her. She is holding a pack of Pall Malls in the thin brown hand she has squeezed through the grillwork. He will in all likelihood smile at her, hold up his own pack of Chesterfields and return to his book.
The young man is doing something that is very important to him. He is not reading the book, since he understands only about half the words used in it. His mind is filled with confused images of the things he has seen in the past few days: the golden splendor of the great retablo in the Cathedral, the patio of orange trees viewed from the parapet of the Giralda, the gypsy who danced for him in a little café across the river in Triana, the greenness of the gardens behind the Alcázar. The book is not much more than a point of departure, a catalyzing agent. But like the fortune teller’s crystal globe, it serves to focus the attention and induce the almost trancelike state he needs in order to feel that he is participating in the cultural life of the place. He wants to know this strange flat city of gardens and burning sunlight, make a part of it his own, and take it back with him to the United States. The place may not be Seville – it may be Florence or Lausanne or Killarney or Avignon or one of a thousand others in Europe where Americans will be – but the desire and the experience will be the same. The American will be seeking to capture something he feels he needs, and when he returns home it will be intangible trophies of this sort which he will prize above all his others.
