Lonesome Traveler

by Jack Kerouac

  OF COURSE WORLD TRAVEL isn’t as good as it seems, it’s only after you’ve come back from all the heat and horror that you forget to get bugged and remember the weird scenes you saw.— In Morocco I went for a walk one beautiful cool sunny afternoon (with breeze from Gibraltar) and my friend and I walked to the outskirts of the weird Arab town commenting on the architecture, the furniture, the people, the sky which he said would look green at nightfall and the quality of the food in the various restaurants around town, adding, he did, “Besides I’m just a hidden agent from another planet and the trouble is I dont know why they sent me, I’ve forgotten the goddam message dearies” so I says “I’m a messenger from heaven too” and suddenly we saw a herd of goats coming down the road and behind it an Arab shepherd boy of ten who held a little baby lamb in his arms and behind him came the mother lamb bleating and baa haa ing for him to take real good extryspecial care of the babe, which the boy said “Egraya fa y kapata katapatafataya” and spat it out of his throat in the way Semites speak.— I said “Look, a real shepherd boy carrying a baby lamb!” and Bill said: “O well, the little prigs are always rushing around carrying lambs.” Then we walked down the hill to a place where a holy man or that is, a devout Mohammedan, kneeled praying to the setting sun towards Mecca and Bill turned to me and said: “Wouldnt it be wonderful if we were real American tourists and I suddenly rushed up with a camera to snap his picture?”… then added: “By the way, how do we walk around him?”

  “Around his right,” I said anyway.

  We wended our way homeward to the chatty outdoor cafe where all the people gathered at nightfall beneath screaming trees of birds, near the Zoco Grande, and decided to follow the railroad track. It was hot but the breeze was cool from the Mediterranean. We came to an old Arab hobo sitting on the rail of the track recounting the Koran to a bunch of raggedy children listening attentively or at least obediently. Behind them was their mother’s house, a tin hut, there she was in white hanging white and blue and pink wash in front of a pale blue tin hovel in the bright African sun.— I didnt know what the holy man was doing, I said “He’s an idiot of some kind?”—“No,” says Bill, “he’s a wandering Sherifian pilgrim preaching the gospel of Allah to the children—he’s a hombre que rison, a man who prays, they got some hombres que rison in town that wear white robes and go around barefoot in the alleys and dont let no bluejeaned hoodlums start a fight on the street, he just walks up and stares at them and they scat. Besides, the people of Tangiers aint like the people of West Side New York, when there’s a fight starts in the street among the Arab hoods all the men rush up out of mint tea shops and beat the shit out of them. They aint got men in America any more, they just sit there and eat pizzas before the late show, my dear.” This man was William Seward Burroughs, the writer, and we were heading now down the narrow alleys of the Medina (the “Casbah” is only the Fort part of town) to a little bar and restaurant where all the Americans and exiles went. I wanted to tell somebody about the shepherd boy, the holy man and the man on the tracks but no one was interested. The big fat Dutch owner of the bar said “I cant find a good poy in this town” (saying “poy,” not boy, but meaning boy).— Burroughs doubled up in laughter.

  We went from there to the late afternoon cafe where sat all the decayed aristocrats of America and Europe and a few eager enlightened healthy Arabs or near Arabs or diplomats or whatever they were.— I said to Bill: “Where do I get a woman in this town?”

  He said: “There’s a few whores that hang around, you have to know a cabdriver or something, or better than that there’s a cat here in town, from Frisco, Jim, he’ll show you what corner and what to do” so that night me and Jim the painter go out and stand on the corner and sure enough here come two veiled women, with delicate cotton veil over their mouths and halfway up their noses, just their dark eyes you see, and wearing long flowing robes and you see their shoes cuttin through the robes and Jim hailed a cab which was waiting there and off we went to the pad which was a patio affair (mine) with tile patio overlooking the sea arid a Sherifian beacon that turned on and turned on, around and around, flashing in my window every now and again, as, alone with one of the mysterious shrouds, I watched her flip off the shroud and veil and saw standing there a perfect little Mexican (or that is to say Arab) beauty perfect and brown as ye old October grapes and maybe like the wood of Ebon and turned to me with her lips parted in curious “Well what are you doing standing there?” so I lighted a candle on my desk. When she left she went downstairs with me where some of my connections from England and Morocco and U.S.A. were all blasting home made pipes of Opium and singing Cab Calloway’s old tune, “I’m gonna kick the gong around.”—On the street she was very polite when she got into the cab.

  From there I went to Paris later, where nothing much happened except the most beautiful girl in the world who didn’t like my rucksack on my back and had a date anyway with a guy with a small mustache who stands hand in sidepocket with a sneer in the nightclub movies of Paris.

  Wow—and in London what do I see but a beautiful, a heavenly beautiful blonde standing against a wall in Soho calling out to welldressed men. Lots of makeup, with blue eye shadow, the most beautiful women in the world are definitely English… unless like me you like em dark.

  BUT THERE WAS MORE TO MOROCCO than walks with Burroughs and whores in my room, I took long hikes by myself, sipped Cinzano at sidewalk cafes solitaire, sat on the beach …

  There was a railroad track on the beach that brought the train from Casablanca—I used to sit in the sand watching the weird Arab brakemen and their funny little CI’m Railroad (Central Ferrocarril Morocco).— The cars had thin spoked wheels, just bumpers instead of couplings, double cylindrical bumpers each side, and the cars were tied on by means of a simple chain.— The tagman signalled with ordinary stophand and go-ahead goose and had a thin piercing whistle and screamed in Arabic spitting-from-the-throat to the rear man.— The cars had no handbrakes and no rung ladders.— Weird Arab bums sat in coal hoppers being switched up and down the sandy seashore, expecting to go to Tetuan …

  One brakeman wore a fez and balloon pantaloons—I could just picture the dispatcher in a full Jalaba robe sitting with his pipe of hasheesh by the phone.— But they had a good Diesel switch engine with a fezzed hoghead inside at the throttle and a sign on the side of the engine that said DANGER A MORT (danger unto death).— Instead of handbrakes they ran rushing in flowing robes and released a horizontal bar that braked the wheels with brake shoes—it was insane—they were miraculous railroad men.— The tagman ran yelling “Thea! Thea! Mohammed! Thea!”—Mohammed was the head man, he stood up at the far end of the sand gazing sadly.— Meanwhile veiled Arab women in long Jesus robes walked around picking up bits of coal by the tracks—for the night’s fish, the night’s heat.— But the sand, the rails, the grass, was as universal as old Southern Pacific—White robes by the blue sea railroad bird sand …

  I had a very nice room as I say on the roof, with a patio, the stars at night, the sea, the silence, the French landlady, the Chinese housekeeper—the six foot seven Hollander pederast who lived next door and brought Arab boys up every night.— Nobody bothered me.

  The ferry boat from Tangier to Algeciras was very sad because it was all lit up so gayly for the terrible business of going to the other shore.—

  In the Medina I found a hidden Spanish restaurant serving the following menu for 35 cents: one glass red wine, shrimp soup with little noodles, pork with red tomato sauce, bread, one egg fried, one orange on a saucer and one black espresso coffee: I swear on my arm.—

  For the business of writing and sleeping and thinking I went to the local cool drugstore and bought Sym-patina for excitement, Diosan for the codeine dream, and Soneryl for sleep.— Meanwhile Burroughs and I also got some opium from a guy in a red fez in the Zoco Chico and made some home made pipes with old olive oil cans and smoked singing “Willie the Moocher” and the next day mixed hash and kif with honey and spices and made big “Majoun”
cakes and ate them, chewing, with hot tea, and went on long prophetic walks to the fields of little white flowers.— One afternoon high on hasheesh I meditated on my sun roof thinking “All things that move are God, and all things that dont move are God” and at this re-utterance of the ancient secret all things that moved and made noise in the Tangier afternoon seemed to suddenly rejoice, and all things that didnt move seemed pleased …

  Tangier is a charming, cool, nice city, full of marvelous Continental restaurants like El Paname and UEscargot with mouth-watering cuisine, sweet sleeps, sunshine, and galleries of holy Catholic priests near where I lived who prayed to the seaward every evening.— Let there be orisons everywhere! —

  Meanwhile mad genius Burroughs sat typing wild-haired in his garden apartment the following words:—“Motel Motel Motel loneliness moans across the continent like fog over still oily water tidal rivers...” (meaning America.) (America’s always rememberable in exile.)

  On Moroccan Independence Day my big 50-year-old sexy Arab Negress maid cleaned my room and folded my filthy unwashed T-shirt neatly on a chair…

  And yet sometimes Tangier was unutterably dull, no vibrations, so I’d walk two miles along the beach among the ancient rhythmic fishermen who hauled nets in singing gangs with some ancient song along the surf, leaving the fish slopping in sea-eye sand, and sometimes I’m watch the terrific soccer games being played by mad Arab boys in the sand some of them throwing in scores with backward tosses of their heads to applause of galleries of children.—

  And I’d walk the Maghreb Land of huts which is as lovely as the land of old Mexico with all those green hills, burros, old trees, gardens.—

  One afternoon I sat in a riverbottom that fed into the sea and watched the high tide swelling in higher than my head and a sudden rainstorm got me to running back along the beach to town like a trotting track star, soaked, then suddenly on the boulevard of cafes and hotels the sun came out and illuminated the wet palm trees and it gave me an old feeling—I had that old feeling—I thought of everybody.

  Weird town. I sat in the Zoco Chico at a cafe table watching the types go by: A weird Sunday in Fellaheen Arabland with you’d expect mystery white windows and ladies throwing daggers and do see but by God the woman up there I saw in a white veil sitting and peering by a Red Cross above a little sign that said:—“Practicantes, Sanio Permanente, TF No. 9766” the cross being red—right over a tobacco shop with luggage and pictures, where a little barelegged boy leaned on a counter with a family of wristwatched Spaniards.— Meanwhile English sailors from the submarines passed trying to get drunker and drunker on Malaga yet quiet and lost in home regret.— Two little Arab hepcats had a brief musical confab (boys of ten) and then parted with a push of arms and wheeling of arms, one boy had a yellow skullcap and a blue zoot suit.— The black and white tiles of the outdoor cafe where I sat were soiled by lonely Tangier time—a little baldcropped boy walked by, went to a man at a table near me, said “Yo” and the waiter rushed up and scatted him off shouting “Yig.”—A brown ragged robe priest sat with me at a table (an hombre que rison) but looked off with hands on lap at brilliant red fez and red girl sweater and red boy shirt green scene… Dreaming of Sufi…

  Oh the poems that a Catholic will get in an Islam Land:—“Holy Sherifian Mother blinking by the black sea… did you save the Phoenicians drowning three thousand years ago? … O soft queen of the midnight horses—bless the Marocaine rough lands!” …

  For they were suren hell rough lands and I found out one day by climbing way up into the back hills.— First I went down the coast, in the sand, where the seagulls all together in a group by the sea were like having a refection at table, a shiny table—at first I thought they were praying—the head gull said grace.— Sitting in the sea side sand I wondered if the microscopic red bugs in it ever met and mated.— I tried to count a pinch of sand knowing there are as many worlds as the sands in all the oceans.— O honored of the worlds! for just then an old robed Bodhisattva, an old robed bearded realizer of the greatness of wisdom came walking by with a staff and a shapeless skin bag and a cotton pack and a basket on his back, with white cloth around his hoary brown brow.— I saw him coming from miles away down the beach—the shrouded Arab by the sea.— We didnt even nod to each other—it was too much, we’d known each other too long ago —

  After that I climbed inland and reached a mountain overlooking all Tangier Bay and came to a quiet shepherd slope, ah the honk of asses and maaaa of sheep up there rejoicing in Vales, and the silly happy trills of crazybirds goofing in the solitude of rocks and brush swept by sun heat swept by sea wind, and all the warm ululations shimmering.— Quiet brush-and-twig huts looking like Upper Nepal.— Fierce looking Arab shepherds went by scowling at me, dark, bearded, robed, bare knee’d.— To the South were the distant African mountains.— Below me on the steep slope where I sat were quiet powder blue villages.— Crickets, sea roar.— Peaceful mountain Berber Villages or farm settlements, women with huge bundles of twigs on their backs going down the hill—little girls among browsing bulls.— Dry arroyos in the fat green meadowland.—And the Carthaginians have disappeared?

  When I went down back to the beach in front of Tangier White City it was night and I looked at the hill where I lived all be-sparkled, and thought, “And I live up there full of imaginary conceptions?”

  The Arabs were having their Saturday night parade with bagpipes, drums and trumpets: it put me in the mind of a Haiku: —

  Walking along the night beach

  — Military music

  On the boulevard.

  SUDDENLY ONE NIGHT IN TANGIER where as I say I’d been somewhat bored, a lovely flute began to blow around three o’clock in the morning, and muffled drums beat somewhere in the depths of the Medina.— I could hear the sounds from my sea-facing room in the Spanish quarter, but when I went out on my tiled terrace there was nothing there but a sleeping Spanish dog.— The sounds came from blocks away, toward the markets, under the Mohammedan stars.— It was the beginning of Ramadan, the month-long fast. How sad: because Mohammed had fasted from sunrise to sundown, a whole world would too because of belief under these stars.— Out on the other crook of the bay the beacon turned and sent its shaft into my terrace (twenty dollars a month), swung around and swept the Berber hills where weirder flutes and stranger deeper drums were blowing, and out into the mouth of the Hesperides in the softing dark that leads to the dawn off the coast of Africa.— I suddenly felt sorry that I had already bought my boat ticket to Marseille and was leaving Tangier.