Tangier (5 page)

The first of these administrative changes happened almost at once, Lord Peterburgh being succeeded. by a Scot, Lord Rutherford, whom Charles made Earl of Teviot upon his appointment,

Teviot's brief year was the most hopeful Tangier was ever to see under the English. The fortifications were strengthened. the garrison increased, and a court of justice introduced. More importantly, Teviot succeeded in establishing something like diplomatic relations with the tribesman, Ghailan; and also in winning the respect of the local population by his personal gallantry and charm. While not averse to the luxuries enjoyed by a seventeenth-century governor, he is said to have favoured sleeping on his feet propped against a musket in times of crisis. Then, with four hundred men, he ventured out of the city and was ambushed by a Berber force numbering many thousands. The outcome of one of the most ferocious engagements in British military history was that the Earl of Teviot and most of his best officers of the Tangier garrison were killed. Just nine English soldiers survived. Despite what on the face of it was unparalleled disaster, Ghailan was never to confront the English in pitched battle again. His own losses numbered over a thousand.

Paradoxically the situation of Tangier eased briefly after Teviot's death. There was a temporary increase in money and provisions from England, the pitiable lack of which bedevils the entire twenty-two-year period. Some of the troops' pay was
two years in arrears; such few shovels as the garrison possessed were found to have vanished, sold, one supposes, by enterprising privates. But a further factor was that Ghailan's own days were now numbered. The Saadien dynasty, ruling the interior of Morocco, scarcely explored, and still less touched by Europeans at this time unless they were building walls as slaves, were ousted by the Filali Sharifs, who came from Telilalet in the country's deep south. Theirs is the same dynasty which, though named Alaouite, rules Morocco today. But meanwhile the first of the Filali sultans, Rashid, was conquering northwards, and Ghailan, and other Berber dissidents, were being systematically eclipsed.

Rashid was succeeded by the most important and bizarre figure in Morocco's history. Moulay Ismael was a ruler of genius, and cementer of the modern empire; but his personal deportment was disgusting in the extreme. He killed arbitrarily as a matter of daily routine. Thus he would disembowel a member of his Black Guard on parade, and decapitate the page holding his stirrup, though whether in the interests of testing his sword's edge, or obviating the need to utter a command, is unclear. Most likely he did not rationalize these, and more organized diversions, at all.

Moulay Ismael's significance for the English in Tangier was his contempt for all Europeans (the rising walls of his great new capital of Meknes were said to be reinforced by the Christian slaves who died on the job being promptly built into them); but also, and paradoxically, his far-sightedness as a statesman. He
dispatched an ambassador to the court of Charles II. For six months the ambassador feasted, ceremoniously visiting both Oxford and Cambridge, while Caroline London gaped, in Hyde Park at magnificent displays put on for its citizens by squadrons of cavalry who had accompanied his Excellency. Eventually a treaty was concluded in respect of Tangier. This was never ratified. Upon his return to Morocco it was discovered that Moulay Ismael had cut off his ambassador's credentials as arbitrarily as if they had had been his personal retainers' heads. One can envisage the expressions on the wigged faces in Whitehall. Tangier, which Charles called 'the brightest jewel of my crown', was a wasting asset; and moreover the government had been made fools of by a despot, about whose terrible idiosyncrasies they had undoubtedly heard. For while the ambassador beguiled society hostesses, and the London populace gasped at the
Lab-el-baroda
,
or 'powder play' of his horsemen, the politic Moulay Ismael had not been idle in consolidating his military power. The Tangier garrison now confronted a force quite as fanatical, and many times stronger than Ghailan's defeated Berbers.

And so the British departed until modern times. The 1912 Treaty of Fes made Morocco a French protectorate, with Spain governing small patches of the country. Tangier was in the anomalous position of being controlled by various European legations. In 1925
the Statute of Tangier formalized international control; the governing powers were Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Sweden, Italy and Belgium. Extraordinarily the system worked, The thirty-three years before Moroccan independence were to see Tangier boom rich, extraordinary, notorious; particularly during the Second World War, when the tiny town was a cloak and dagger spy centre second only perhaps to Lisbon. High living, contraband, brothels, criminal refuge — Tangier carried on well fed beneath bright lights while the holocaust enveloped Europe.

I trudged through the hot mornings and mid-afternoons calling on the smartest and lowliest house agents, wise
only to the fact that the rent of an unfurnished flat was very much a question of negotiation. It was quickly apparent that pleasant places at bedrock rental had become very difficult to find. Although there was now a Rents Tribunal, prices were bound to go up I was assured by the manager of the bank where, rather self-consciously, I opened an account with two five-pound travellers' cheques. I was determined to avoid kind offers of gatehouses or chauffeur's quarters on the Mountain — 'the room where Bill used to do his painting' sort of accommodation,

Then came the breakthrough. Six weeks previously the American writer Harry Atkins and his wife Beth had seen a marvellous penthouse. But it had only one large room, with an ingenious L-shaped bed-alcove. They had sat in it, they told me, willing it to grow fractionally larger. I was at the agent's office early next morning; and moments later dismissing the puzzled concierge who had let me into the flat, explaining I must be alone to think. The flat was an awful mess. One of the glass doors on to the terrace was smashed; and it was filled with rubbish. The venetian blinds sagged, broken, their canvas bands torn and rotten. All electric light fittings had been stripped. There were no curtain rails, But what a flat it was! In addition to the airy, polygonal room with its L-shaped alcove, there was a hallway, a full-sized bath, and a neat kitchen. But the great attraction was the terrace. Wrapped in a full semi-circle about the flat, it measured twenty-two metres long by three deep. It could comfortably lunch fifty while keeping a week's washing out of sight. There were a dozen battered earth boxes filled with parched geraniums and unperturbed cacti. I signed a lease next morning: twenty pounds a month for what was to central Tangier rather as the top floor of Swan and Edgar to Piccadilly Circus.

There was a great deal to do. Not least among complications is that one must in person petition Electricity and Water Companies to inspect your premises and submit a report upon its suitability to consume their products. Something will be wrong. When it is repaired, you petition in person once more for further inspection. If the report is satisfactory, you are offered a contract loaded with deposits. In my case the water was relatively easy. Not so the electricity. I was in the flat when what proved the ultimate inspection was made. Accompanied by a minion, as seems obligatory with officials, the uniformed inspector made straight for the only chair. He opened a huge ledger across his knees and looked preoccupied while the minion tinkered. Passionately I explained that English authors did without refrigerators and electric irons. I showed him my pack of hand-powered razor blades. 'Is everything all right now?,' I ventured tentatively. Officials must be regarded with awe; the inspector wore a red fez,

'Yes,' he announced.

'Then please may I give you some money?'

'No. You must pay at the office.'

'If I pay at the office as soon as it opens this afternoon, can I have electricity tonight? Please.' I had earlier wondered at
the Electricity Company whether they sold candles, and been told with a perfectly straight face, no, that I must buy them in a shop; so I was being careful.

'No,' the inspector said. 'You can have electricity tomorrow.'

I bowed slightly as he left, followed by his minion.

By midday the next morning the electricity had not been switched on; and it was Saturday. The Company offices proved to have shut at 11.30. I went to Cohen, the agent. After protesting that it was impossible now to get the electricity turned on before Monday, he nevertheless succeeded in phoning someone in the Electricity Company. Then Cohen's hand slipped up to cover the mouthpiece. 'How much will you pay'. To have it on this afternoon.'

'Six dirham,' I said unsurprised.

'Should that be enough He considered. 'Yes, if it is one man. Perhaps ten dirham if there are two.'

'There will be two men,' I said,

Cohen spoke briefly, then replaced
the receiver. 'Someone will come,' he said.

Half an hour later there was a knock on my door since Tangier doorbells are wired to the mains; a system convenient if you are being persecuted, since you can turn them off. Sure enough it was two men, They unlocked the box and switched on, taking less than ten seconds. 'Thank you, gentlemen,' I said producing my ten dirham, or the price of a grand restaurant meal.

With the Water Company there was one fiasco, minor, though proving irreparable. '
Combien
de pièces avez-vous, monsieur
?'
asked the official, anxious to discover what scale of deposit could be extorted. 'Well,' said I, keen to cooperate scrupulously if it might expedite things. 'let me see. There's a bath, a shower. a bidet, a w.c., a hand basin, and then the two taps in the kitchen.' He looked at me a little oddly. '
D'accord, monsieur, Six pièces
.'
And of course when I came to query any huge water deposit with friends I realized I'd claimed a six
room
flat. So be it. Muttering French through grilled and glazed windows in a press of Moroccans is my only excuse for this ruinous stupidity. But I can really let the water flow without fear of its being cut off, When it's short they turn it off anyway.

A man had to be found to erect curtain rails. I seized upon the Moroccan Cohen had employed to repair the glass door. He spent a lot of time contending that his
name became Miguel in Spanish and Michel in French, and inviting me to address him by whichever I chose.

First essentials were a bed and mattress. These I bought without difficulty, but expensively, for no imported goods are cheap in Tangier. Next came a complex of three gas burners which I purchased from the company who installed my bottles of butagas; and basic cooking, eating and drinking utensils. I discovered that in the new town it was impossible to buy a single saucepan: one was expected to settle for a battery of five. The same condition governed the sale of those implements used to scoop fried eggs from the pan. One must perforce have several shapes and a vicious tri-pronged fork for sausage turning and domestic defence into the bargain. I resented this engineering of culinary status, rejected both deals, and bought a single saucepan in the Medina, Egg and sausage manipulation for five years remained the prerogative of an ordinary spoon and fork. The arrival of the large bed, and the wicker chair I bought new at the same time, suggested the solution of another problem. I had bought a couple of tables, bookcase, some lamps and oddments from Henry's wife. These had to be conveyed a couple of miles across the city. Required, I was told, was a man with a hand-cart; the price of hire about five dirham a trip. I accordingly made arrangement with the furniture shop's delivery man to have a cart at the suburban house, previously occupied by my friends, the following evening at six o'clock. At six o'clock the inevitable minion was waiting for me not there but at the flat. We went out in a taxi and loaded the cart, which the man had left earlier in charge of
the house's watchman. I departed, estimating that it would take the man, who was already impressively panting and blowing, about an hour to make the journey. I could see
the snag. My contract had been with the furniture shop's man, who was not on the scene at all. But the minion to whom he had subcontracted the job would expect payment too. As indeed, I realized, and as proved to be the
case,
would the third man enlisted at my end to convey the stuff up the stairs. I already had sufficient experience of Moroccans' passion for subcontracting to know it would be fatal to pay the overall agreed sum to the man who had actually done the work. Inevitably the man with whom I'd made the deal would turn up and demand it over again. The additional tip I gave the two men (and there was agonized grunting as they staggered, in with not particularly heavy stuff) was insufficient in their estimation. There was much ringing of my doorbell over the next couple of days and, of course, impassioned appeal to any third party who happened to be passing on the landing. Feeling rather a worm, I resisted ruthlessly. A bargain had been struck, and the men tipped additionally. The principal minion, who had done most of the carting. was a rather moronic and alarming looking youth, and I nearly gave in simply to be rid of him. But doing so would have escalated the original fee out of all proportion, and no people are more adept at exploiting the faintest sign of a weak will over money than the Moroccans. The matter was finally resolved by my marching the minion to the furniture shop, where the man with whom I had contracted worked, and obtaining a public declaration that payment had been settled in full.

This incident had a touching consequence. The cartload had included a number of books. Presumably Said, the
Soussi
shopkeeper with whom I had by then begun to deal, had seen these arrive, for that evening he drew up several books from beneath his grocery counter. Much as I would liked to have bought even one this was impossible, They were all without exception devoted to Christian teaching, with a bias toward, juvenile readership. But they were indeed books; and I think the Soussi was a little hurt that he could not interest me in them.