Sahara (2002)

by Michael Palin

  The town is compact. Narrow streets rise and fall around low hills and their damp cobbles catch the morning sun. The buildings look more French than Spanish, with red roofs and white-plastered walls, sooty and streaked by the rain, from which sprouts a canopy of television aerials and satellite dishes. The sharp clarity of the light is softened by the drowsy mix of early-morning sounds - dogs barking, doves cooing, a fishing-boat engine springing to life.

  I’m excited. I know there’s a way to go before we reach the Sahara but I’m on the starting grid. Tangier, where Europe clings onto Africa and Africa clings onto Europe, has a fine record for great departures. Among my birthday presents from the crew, piled up beside a bottle of duty-free champagne (empty), are two books about Ibn Battuta, one of the greatest travellers of all time and a Tangerine, born in this town in 1304. At the age of twenty-one, he set out on the first stage of a 75,000-mile adventure through most of the known world, across the Sahara to Timbuktu, up to Spain and through Europe to Persia, Arabia, Sumatra, India and China, returning home thirty years later to write a book about it.

  Not a bad role model.

  The El Minzah Hotel opens onto a busy street leading up from the port and the market. There are cars, but they’re well outnumbered by human traffic. Berber women, tough, pugnacious and wide, plod up the hill as if wearing all the clothes they own at the same time. Their low centres of gravity allow them to carry virtually anything. I wouldn’t be surprised to see one of them with a small car on her back. The men, by contrast, don’t carry, they push. Covered from head to foot in thick woollen burnouses (the wind that’s keeping the clouds away is brisk and chilly), they steer rubber-wheeled handcarts full of bits of this and that up the centre of the road. Amongst the crowd are men in sharp suits doing nothing but standing and looking around. The admirable Alan, our fixer, tells me they’re probably policemen. At dinner last night a local man went out of his way to deny that Morocco was a police state.

  ‘Not at all,’ he insisted, ‘it is a well-policed state.’

  There’s an Anglican church near by which was painted by Matisse, one of a number of artists, from Delacroix to Francis Bacon, drawn to Tangier by the quality of light and the tolerant hedonistic atmosphere, which also attracted writers like Bowles and Joe Orton and William Burroughs. Putting thoughts of hedonism aside for an hour or two, I fish out my only tie and walk over there for Sunday Service. My parents would have been proud of me.

  Walking to church in Sheffield was never like this. The entrance to St Andrew’s, Tangier is virtually obscured this morning by a Berber street market. Doughty ladies from the mountains have taken over the pavement, spreading in front of them a fragrant assortment of fresh cheeses, onions, carrots, thick sheaves of mint, coriander, sage and rosemary.

  Somewhere behind the piles of food I locate two white gateposts, which mark the way into the churchyard. Once inside, I feel like Alice in Wonderland. Nothing is quite what you expect it to be.

  Down by the gatepost, squeezed into a corner of the wall, is a makeshift wooden construction that I take to be a kennel, but which, on closer examination, proves to contain a bearded old man, who glares back at me. A moment later an attractive Arab woman pops in through the gate, squats down and begins to dictate a letter to him.

  Leaving the boxed scribe behind, I walk up the shaded path. On either side of me is a thick, entangled, but artfully managed secret garden of cypress, gum and false pepper trees, jacaranda and creepers and assorted thick bushes, in the recesses of which I can dimly make out graves and headstones. On closer inspection most of these bear the names of people from the Scottish Highlands. Curiouser and curiouser.

  Then there is the church itself. It emerges from all this greenery looking like something out of the Cotswolds, except that the tower from which the blue cross of St Andrew flies is decorated with Moorish tiles. The church porch has an Islamic horseshoe arch and inside is a chancel arch, around which the Lord’s Prayer is picked out in Arabic.

  I’m warmly welcomed by a manic garrulous Moroccan, in white djellaba and black astrakhan hat, given to fits of giggling, lunging kisses and a curious staccato English punctuated regularly by the phrase ‘thank you very much’. He introduces himself as Mustapha Chergui, the church caretaker. Thank you very much. For thirty- eight years, thank you very much. In between pointing out such features as the coffered chancel ceiling, carved from cedar wood by master craftsmen from Fez, and the display of arum lilies, which he fetches every Sunday from the market, he has to rush away to help Mary Evans, one of the churchwardens, prepare the hymn books.

  Mustapha Chergui and Mary Evans are not really off the same menu. She is quintessentially English, pronounces lost ‘lorst’ and, very much in the tradition of Tangier travellers, is just back from Syria and Jordan.

  The congregation begins to assemble. Only a smattering of the 150-strong British community comes to church, one of them being an engaging Australian-born journalist called Jonathan Dawson.

  Thanks to him, I soon know all the dramatis personae, that Mrs Evans, the churchwarden, married ‘one of the few straight chaplains the church ever had’ and that by far the greater proportion of the congregation are Nigerians involved in getting themselves and others across the Strait of Gibraltar.

  So here we all are: the British upper-class ladies, the Nigerian migrants, Mustapha the sexton and myself, all leafing through our books to find Hymn Number One Hundred and Forty-Four and in our own ways, and often our own keys, giving voice to ‘Glorious Things Of Thee Are Spoken’.

  The Nigerians treat the service as a moveable feast, coming and going according to the demands of their mobile phones, which go off frequently, often in the middle of prayers. (Jonathan tells me that the Christmas service was constantly interrupted by mobiles playing ‘Jingle Bells’.) No-one seems to mind them nipping out to do business during Matins. Their attendance rate today is impressive, if variable, rising from eight before the collection to twenty-five afterwards.

  At the end, when we’ve filed out and the chaplain has shaken hands with everyone, I ask him about the Nigerians. He says life is precarious for them here. The Moroccans arrest them and then dump them back at the Algerian border. The chaplain introduces me to a young man called Regis, a Catholic with a plastic rosary around his neck. He has just walked back from the border by foot. It took him four days, but he didn’t dare take public transport in case he was arrested again. Once again, I find myself wondering what it is about their own country that makes these young men risk arrest, beatings, drownings and the Sahara Desert.

  Then something reminds me I’m still in Wonderland.

  Hobbling out behind Regis is a tiny Englishwoman with a fierce stare. Her name is Lady Baird. She must be well into her eighties and yet has come to live here relatively recently. When I ask her what brought her to Tangier, she replies crisply, ‘A garden! The most beautiful garden in Morocco.’

  I’m about to ask her whether this wasn’t a lot to take on at such a late age, when, on seeing Jonathan Dawson pass by, Lady Baird indignantly indicates her right leg.

  ‘You see that?’ she cries. ‘Birdie did that!’

  ‘Birdie?’

  ‘His bird. Bit me on the leg.’

  Birdie, it transpires, is a cockerel who lives in Jonathan’s apartment.

  He doesn’t attempt to deny it.

  ‘Bit a great hole in her leg,’ he confirms.

  I said he was lucky not to be sued. Jonathan looks uncharacteristically sheepish.

  ‘Well, he did bite a very distinguished American woman and she thought it was rather funny, but after three courses of antibiotics and massive doctor’s bills, I’m afraid it was a bit of a strain on the friendship.’

  We walk down the path away from the church. Through the trees, across the road, I can see a facade with the faded lettering, ‘Grand Hotel Villa De France’. Green louvered shutters swing in the wind. It was from one of those rooms, Room 35, that Matisse looked out and painted this unique Anglo-Arab
church and the trees and the sea beyond, as it all looked ninety years ago.

  ‘He is a misogynist, I’m afraid,’ says Jonathan, by way of explanation. ‘Only ever bites women.’

  I don’t think he meant Matisse. But who knows.

  The day ends on twin notes of anticlimax, both football related. Roger wants to film activity on the town beach, the public playing fields of Tangier. To integrate me in this happy recreational scene he has persuaded a local team to let me have a kick around with them. Considering their average age is about sixteen and there are distinct language problems, they do everything to make it easy for the elderly Englishman thrust into their midst, and I’m eager to show that, despite being two years short of sixty, I still know a few tricks.

  One of these is the sliding tackle, which, together with the hefty up-field boot, was the basic essential of football as I was taught it. I win the ball, but, this being sand and not the Wembley turf I’m used to, I’m unable to move it, and as one of my legs sprints off the other one stays firmly beneath the ball. As my groin is prised apart I have no option but to fall flat on my back. I see the camera crew chuckling away on the touchline. Good old Michael, really entering into the spirit. This gives me fatal encouragement to get up and race off after the action. One more kick and something goes twang internally, and I hobble around, cursing. More laughter from the camera crew, and it’s several minutes before they realise that this is not an Equity performance, but for real.

  To have so recklessly disabled myself so early in the journey could pose all sorts of problems, but at least I satisfied the first rule of filming - if you’re going to get hurt, get hurt on camera.

  Day Four

  TANGIER TO CHEFCHAOUEN

  Woken again by the intensity of the fresh-risen sun, a glare so fierce I think there might be a blaze outside my window. But it’s bright rather than hot, and in the shaded street outside the hotel I can understand why the men are wearing thick jackets and have the hoods of their burnouses pulled up.

  ‘Morocco is a cold country with a hot sun.’ Jonathan Dawson squints into the light. ‘That’s what someone told me when I came here. If you’re sitting in the shade over there you might be freezing your tits off, but when you’re sitting out here it’s hot, you know.’

  We’re on the terrace of the Cafe Tingis in the Petit Socco, a square once renowned for all sorts of naughtiness. Jonathan, with his piercing blue eyes, swept-back silvery hair and air of languid amusement, seems to thrive on Tangier. He came here in 1992 to do a piece for the Evening Standard and stayed.

  He sighs a little regretfully as his cafe au lait arrives.

  ‘They used to sell booze, all these caffs.’ In 1956, after Morocco won independence, liquor was banned from the medina and the party, if not over, at least went underground.

  ‘So Tangier is a shadow of its former racy self?’

  Jonathan rakes the square with a half-smile. ‘Everything is here if you want it. You can have boys, girls, cockerels or anything you want …’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘It’s not, er … legal, but it’s sort of slightly not illegal. I don’t encourage it,’ he says, before adding cheerfully, ‘I’ve got a great friend coming to stay. She’s a dope-smoking grandmother. You should be interviewing her.’

  For Jonathan, Tangier remains a tolerant place, where you can be what you want to be. He likes the sea and the beaches and the freshness of the food, the fact that it can get cold enough for open fires and, of course, the prices.

  ‘You can buy a villa here for less than the cost of a London basement.’

  We finish our coffees. The noise levels in the square are rising. Laughter, argument, the booming of a television set from the darkened interior of a cafe opposite. It’s time for us to move on south, but Jonathan won’t let us go just yet.

  ‘I’ve got some lovely wine. Come back for a quick gargle.’

  Jonathan lives not in a villa but in a top-floor apartment crowded with books, paintings and fine furniture. Across this fine furniture struts Birdie, the confident comb-tossing, lady-pecking cockerel with whom Jonathan lives.

  Jonathan shouts at him frequently, but Birdie takes very little notice.

  ‘He’s not an egg-laying bird. He’s not house-trained. He’s a liability.’

  ‘So why do you keep him?’

  ‘Oh well, I’m alone and he’s alone and we keep each other company, I suppose. He likes a bit of telly actually. He likes a cup of tea and a bit of telly.’

  ‘Does he like a gargle?’

  ‘Well, he used to have a bit of wine with porridge, but I stopped that. He got a bit fond of it.’

  At this point Jonathan notices my empty glass and shouts towards the kitchen.

  ‘Mr Lassan!’

  Mr Lassan, the third member of this menage, is Jonathan’s manservant and a compulsive kleptomaniac.

  ‘I had a remote control bell for Mr Lassan, but he sold it when I was in Marrakesh.’

  Mr Lassan turns out to be a middle-aged Moroccan with a curious lopsided leer, which Jonathan puts down to the fact that he has a new set of teeth.

  ‘He can’t stop smiling because they won’t close.’

  Apparently, Mr Lassan keeps losing his teeth. He says they go missing when he takes them out in the hammam, the public baths, but Jonathan suspects him of selling them. ‘I mean what sort of man takes his teeth out at the hammam?’

  Mr Lassan tops up our glasses, turns on his heel and leaves with a slow, insolent swagger. Jonathan looks after his retreating figure and sighs heavily.

  ‘He’s a terrible tosser, but I’m afraid I’m fond of him.’

  He pauses and breaks into a smile.

  ‘He’s like Tangier. He’s an addiction.’

  Heading south and east out of the city, on the road to Tetouan, my guidebook notes what could be a good omen for the journey. Outside the football stadium we shall pass the only memorial to the great traveller, Ibn Battuta, which stands on a plinth beside it. The plinth is there but unfortunately the statue is gone. Our driver thinks it was stolen some time ago.

  He doesn’t know why.

  Skirting the city of Tetouan, we follow the road up a broad rising valley. The green and wooded landscape with flocks of sheep and cattle could be Wales or Scotland save for the red-capped French kilometre posts by the side of the road and the occasional vivid glimpse of Berber shepherdesses in scarlet hats, white tops, boots and bright-red knickerbocker leggings.

  Late in the day we come to a town spread dramatically across the steep sides of a jagged limestone ridge. It’s called Chefchaouen. As in Tangier, there is an old and new town. The French never attempted to fuse the two together, so the old town, the medina, remains pretty much as it must have been when it was founded at the end of the fifteenth century as a mountain retreat for those Moors and Jews expelled from Spain by the Catholic Monarchs.

  It is said that up until 1920 only three Christians had ever found their way into Chefchaouen, and until 1937 slaves were openly traded in its market.

  Now it’s on the tourist trail as a picturesque mountain town and the hippie trail as a fine place to enjoy the much sought-after local marijuana, known as kif. Or as the rock and roll bands used to call it, Moroccan Red.

  Around the long rectangular central space, the Plaza Uta El Hammam, are grouped an elegantly harmonious cluster of old buildings: the mosque with its delicately beautiful six-sided minaret of brick and plaster, the low white walls and fine doorway of the medersa, the Koranic school, and the crumbly, toffee-coloured walls of the casbah, the old castle, from whose gardens rise palms and cypress trees.

  At one end of the square is a funduq, or caravanserai. These were originally intended to be stopovers for those coming into the town to buy and sell goods. Around a whitewashed courtyard two arcaded storeys provide room for unloading and quartering of the animals, with sleeping accommodation for their masters above. This funduq has not yet been tarted up for the tourists. A bed frame, painted silver, s
its in the middle of the yard, mangy cats slope around bales of straw, a chicken, one leg tied by a string, is at the end of its tether, pecking at the ground. Robed men from out of town recline on plastic chairs, arms behind their heads, doing nothing much. The place smells, not unappealingly, of skins and leather and horse dung.

  We are not allowed to film anything in Chefchaouen until we have a police escort, so we kill time in the Plaza eating minced lamb and sipping non-alcoholic drinks. The mint tea is good but dangerous, as it immediately attracts a crowd of bees. These are apparently a serious nuisance, especially in the warmer months, when special covers are provided for the tea, but the honey they make up here is much sought after. General Franco had his private supply of it airlifted to Spain.

  A man in wrap-around dark glasses, straight-line moustache and a black suit approaches. The sort of man who could only be one of two things, a policeman or a pimp. He turns out to be our official escort. Throwing himself into the job with gusto, he shoos away anyone within a hundred-yard radius of the camera, creating the impression that the town has been hurriedly evacuated.

  Despite protestations that my hamstring is getting better, Roger is keen for me to attend the public baths tomorrow and have it massaged. I have to buy something to wear. My guidebook advises shorts for men, knickers for women. Walk into the souk, down whitewashed alleyways, past buildings painted an almost fluorescent, swimming-pool blue, an effect created by mixing lime and water with the paint. Blue, in many striking variations, is the predominant colour of old Chefchaouen. Apparently it’s good for keeping evil spirits at bay.

  Find a shop with a comprehensive display of shorts. The shopkeeper is obliging, and I pass a complimentary remark on the popularity of the place.

  ‘Many people here. Many people in your town.’

  He smiles thinly.