Tangier (6 page)

And so I was installed; curtainlesss, and with borrowed linen. The hotel I had stayed at during the interim had been the Rembrandt. There the manager insisted that I borrow anything useful. He would speak to his head porter, Hamadi, who, according to one of his press profiles I was subsequently shown, had known Lloyd George. I elected only to borrow a pair of double-bed sheets, a single pillow-case, and a bath towel. In a suitcase which had been in store I discovered a musty tea-towel. This was the sum total of my linen.

I had approached Hamadi about finding a maid. Previously I had inherited the woman who went with furnished flats, or the long-standing servant of friends, and had sometimes been frankly intimidated by these. To Hamadi I explained that as the flat was small, and as I should want no cooking done, but also could only afford a couple of hours three times a week, the post might suit a young girl. I was thinking both of my pocket and intimidation fears. In the event both precautions proved useless. However tender in years one's Moroccan servants or associates, sooner or later they will come to run you. Without exception this is the Moroccan's unexpressed ambition and express skill. Nevertheless Hamadi said, 'A young girl, Mister Stewart, I understand.' I was quite excited.

The next morning there turned up a fat and rugged little thing of about sixteen, bouncy, determined, and scarcely meek. Hasnah and I began to negotiate wages. We ended by my agreeing to pay twice what I was
paying mature and responsible women in the years to come. I also paid a small sum down in advance, as much out of fear I might spend it myself as from good nature. This proved a mistake. In subsequent months Hasnah affected not to understand why it didn't happen regularly, but it also instigated credit consciousness elsewhere. Hasnah this morning had a tuna sandwich with olives and a bottle of Coca-Cola,' Said, the shopkeeper, would announce when I came, as I did every
evening to settle my account with him. Worse was to come. With the half-loaf of bread she brought up from the shop for me Hasnah one morning delivered a note from Said. 'Would you give me twenty-five dirham for
une
affaire personale SVP
,'
it read. I nearly panicked. This was blackmail. Friends had pointed out that should Hasnah become pregnant by a
Moroccan boyfriend I, as her legal employer, was forbidden to sack her, and might be required to keep the baby for ninety years. The twenty-five dirham proved to be credit she had elicited on her own account from the
Soussi
, who was hoping that I would take over the debt.

Hasnah's punctuality now varied from anything between thirty
to ninety minutes late. But by that time I had in daily attendance a literate young Moroccan I had known for several years, who had been at school in England and who, quite simply, awed her with firm charm as, unchallengeably to a Moroccan girl, with maleness, Hasnah's emergency control was shamelessly delegated to a thirteen-year-old boy. Their conferences, particularly when Norodin chose to deliver a pep-talk about bath-cleaning or drying the cutlery (which, being scarcely silver, was going rusty) were so funny that I would sometimes have to go out on to the terrace to hide my amusement. Norodin remarked to me with some gravity that he had seen Hasnah on the Boulevard at midnight, and that this was a bad, even sinister sign of her frivolity. I didn't inquire what Norodin had been doing abroad himself at that hour.

About Norodin, who elected to call himself my secretary, roundly announcing as much at the reception desk of the Velazquez hotel for instance when returning a typescript to Alec Waugh, more will be said. His only advice its respect of the maid, which I rejected, was that I sack her and let him find me someone else. I knew the suggestion was politically motivated by his own power ambitions,

The desire and ability of Moroccans to discover, buy, and negotiate on one's behalf goes, I believe, far deeper than the small commissions and trader influence these exercises inevitably afford. It is an historical tradition dating from times when the protection of European legations was extended to numerous individual Moroccans, particularly in Tangier, in return for services and loyalties, and which survives today as an almost courtly conception of the personal patron. They are not a dependent people, far less a servile one. Yet the search for 'protection' is there. Religion also plays a part. Its fundamental place in a Moslem's life is often remarked, but is desperately elusive of definition. To a Moroccan the Christian will always be apart. Yet he is accepted as on the whole a more technologically and politically powerful human being. Religion, or more particularly the temperament of Islam, insists that if the Christian be not positively scorned, then that he be tirelessly guyed. He is there to be used; and this in a way that the manipulator both couldn't and wouldn't formulate, and is perhaps scarcely conscious of. The paradox is that while the game goes on all the time under the surface, it does not disrupt personal loyalties. This is the Moroccan's supreme manipulation. He never permits the two totally different worlds and philosophies to intrude upon one another; and that other side, which is really the inner side of one's friends or one's servants, remains a mystery. The few Europeans and Americans I know who have lived a long time in close, and sometimes intimate association. with Moroccans, freely admit that they know little or nothing abbot these individuals' lives. If you press an inquiry you will be met with answers that are less lies than foils. Moreover the foils will alter quite arbitrarily from day to day, even moment to moment, without remotely embarrassing the person questioned by their inconsistency. You've asked a question, and politeness requires an answer. But your answer will be (sometimes delightfully) inconsequential, and comes to you across an unbridgeable gulf. The response is to accept it with appearance of good faith; then forget it, at least as any working hypothesis.

I hoped to photograph the young wife of Moroccan who was very well known to an old friend of mine because I had heard she was particularly beautiful. 'He
might
let you,' my friend said. 'Only for God's sake don't say "wife". Rachid says she's his "sister" now. He says he's not married.'

'But you went to the wedding!' I hazarded uncertainly.

'Of course I did,' my friend said. And she's the girl you want. Only
he
saws now, she's his sister.'

I never photographed this ambivalent girl.

When talking  with Moroccans the niceties of inconsequence can of course be reversed. Another friend, Christopher Wanklyn, travelling in the south, had his car stopped by a police check, The country policeman regarded his tape recorder with curiosity and considerable suspicion, eventually asking, '
Est ça un
piano
?'

'
Oui
,'
Christopher confirmed solemnly,
'c'est un piano
.'

Norodin's spell at a London secondary modern had pleasingly enriched his English vocabulary. He referred to 'the toilet', 'my dinner' (for the midday meal), and to 'my mum'. His exclamation of horror or surprise, frequently uttered, was 'Bleemy-cheeky!' It was some time before it came to me that this was possibly his corruption of 'Blimey! Crikey!' and when it did I didn't correct him. One of his first acts was to pour Coca-Cola over some old British pennies to demonstrate how that beverage polished them up with a few days' soaking. He had first checked the dates of the pennies against a list he carried in his head to ensure they weren't valuable. The Coke never quite Cleaned the coins up to Norodin's expectations; and it must be hastily added the lesson Norodin elicited from the experiment was that Coke was particularly good for
cleansing
the stomach. He drank it in model quantities thereafter.

The summer I established my own flat ended with minimal drama. Hasnah, who now spent all her working hour preening herself in my bathroom, announced I was leaving with insufficient notice to herself; and required a bonus. She had begun to bring a much prettier girlfriend to make use of the mild Christian's ablution facilities, and even an unexplained baby, in a push-chair. I swore savagely at her. Norodin backed me up. They might play happily together as children but, even, im the judgement of the Soussi, Hasnah was 'a bad girl'. Hasnah stormed out of the flat. I was doing her over wages, I was a crook, she was going to fetch a policeman. Within three minutes she had done just that. A polite, plainclothes cop appeared, flashed an enamel badge and accidental glimpse of a tiny automatic, and proceeded to arbitrate. I was alarmed until the logical simplicity of on-the-spot arbitration became apparent I was sacking an irresponsible maid at zero notice. So be it. I should compensate her. A figure was named. I halved it. It was upped a quarter. 'Very well,' I said, stiffly, trying to save face, 'but the girl gets no reference from me.'

Hasnah got her supplement, the instant cop left, indecisive as to whether my visiting card was to be pocketed or a curiosity to be glanced at and returned, and Norodin and I were left staring at each other. He'd interpreted smoothly as a UN secretary when needed. To render the pathos absurd Hasnah, in fierce departure, had smashed the lock. The door hung open.

'Norodin,' I began carefully, 'that was a policeman. You don't think . . . er, because some of your friends are tourists . . .'

Norodin looked pained. 'I know this man.!' he said. 'Is good man. Have dinner with my mum.' And Norodin went off to fetch a locksmith.

If one excepts the French
lycée
, American and Italian schools, and the Spanish Institute, the remaining legacy of the International Zone is the variety of Tangier's European restaurants. Formal eating out is an alien concept to Moroccans, though the young have begun to do so. Consequently there is little good Moorish eating between a traditional
diffa
, or attempts at one for the tourist in the Détroit, Hamadi, or a few of the more expensive hotels; and the simple, sometimes better restaurants in the Medina. Raihani's good double restaurant recently opened to fill a needed gap. An exception among the indigenous population who do not eat out in family groups is the Moroccan Jews, and there are two kosher restaurants, of which the El Dorado is simple and cheap. The Jews also make their own excellent red and rosé wines. For unfathomable reasons there is no Indian restaurant in the city; the Orient being represented by the Vietnamese Pagoda, and Saigon.

Recommendations are any time at risk. At the present moment, with the government implementing a policy of 50 per cent Moroccan ownership of all businesses, a number of Tangier's restaurants are subtly changing their character, and some closing down. French restaurants predominate. Among them are Le Claridge, Paname, and the English-run La Grenouille, whose proprietor sometimes imports Walls' sausages from Gibraltar as a nostalgic curiosity. Chez Gagarine will produce Russian dishes to order. The Nautilus is Swedish-run; the Viking, formerly Swedish, is now English-Moroccan-run. With the closure of Fagiano, whose reputation was better than its expensive food, and also of the packed and inexpensive Florian, Nino's has the Italian monopoly. Le Provencal and Alhambra are more French 'provincial' restaurants, with very concerned
Mesdames
. Spanish cooking, while influencing Moroccan (and
vice versa
)
tends to reflect the 'poor white' status of the Spaniards remaining in the city. It is difficult to find a bowl of
gazpacho
in Tangier, and a more purely Spanish restaurant, the Negresco, is best only relied on for its fish, which are essentially larger portions of tapas. In 1974 the best value for money was the delightfully Spanish-run Las Mimosas.

Tangier's hotels are now so numerous that any assessment of their restaurants' potential is impossible. The tendency of old-established and ultra-modern alike is to serve both Moroccan and European fare, often in different dining rooms, Roughly the rule is the more expensive the hotel the better its food while, undemocratically, one should avoid those catering for mass tourism. As residents and semi-residents tend only to enter hotels as some temporary visitor's guest, my experience of them is limited. The restaurants of the Velazquez. the Dutch-run Villa de France, the old-established Minzah, and the ultra-modern Almohades are all excellent.

The divisions of French, Spanish and Moroccan are most overtly apparent from their several breads and cakes. French and Spanish loaves are on sale beside the flat, round Moroccan khoubs. Madame Porte's celebrated establishment produces square bread for English toasters. The Espagnola is the Spanish equivalent of this Frenchwoman's
Salon
de
Thé
. Moroccans have their unique pastries and sweetmeats, described later. An English grocery, stocked from Gibraltar, closed with the introduction of high import tariffs; a German cakeshop on the death of its proprietor. The late Madame Porte's
Salon
de
Thé
is less a teashop than a peculiar empire. It has the cleanest public lavatory in town. The telephone is hawkishly watched, its use charged for, by the number one trustee at the take-away till. Large cakes,
pâtisseries
and
petits fours
are
inferior to Floris' or Fortnum's, undistinguished ice-creams are perhaps clean but not cheap, the martinis keep price parity with Manhattan, and the vastly expensive chocolates are boiled sweets dipped in cocoa paste. It is said that small boxes of these were dispatched to favoured German generals on the Russian front, and moreover without charge. Conditions about Stalingrad may well have been the best in which to appreciate them. Madame Porte was pro-Vichy, and more. An English contemporary of my own, David Pryce-Jones, trapped in Tangier by the war as a young child, recalls being forbidden to enter the shop, or even to let his eye be caught by the glittering windows. Some Tangier residents still maintain a boycott. Madame Porte sat, small, unsmiling, steel-spectacled, overseeing her empire. She is recorded as once having spoken. As befits the civic conscience of a major businesswoman the remark was definitive. Canvassed by Jane Bowles, in what proved a vain effort to prevent the trees in the Grand Socco from being cut clown. Madame Porte said: '
Je
n'ai pas un opinion
',
Nevertheless trade prospers. To the near monopolies of fresh milk and square bread has been added the total monopoly of Lapsang tea, and with it a 200 per cent plus profit. This is a pity because the black, Indian dust sold by the
bacals
of the Souassa is undrinkable without milk, and then too heavy for the climate. The better-off Spanish gather at Porte's to display their Sunday finery. Numerous other residents and tourists find it pleasantly unhectic for morning coffee or afternoon tea. It's a good place to read a book. The premises are coolly palatial and the waitresses courteously dumb.