William Cook

Tangier: Hidden treasure

<em>William Cook</em> finds magic in the alleys of the medina

(c) Bruno Morandi

‘I remember you from last time,’ said the young man on the promenade. It was my first night back in Tangier. I was alone and tired and lonely. I liked the idea of meeting someone who knew me, if only from a brief encounter a few years before. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, though I didn’t recognise him. In his cheap suit he seemed anonymous, like a policeman in plain clothes. It was nearly midnight, but the esplanade was still crowded. On the beach below, shrieking children were sprinting across the sand. Out to sea, over the Strait of Gibraltar, the bright lights of Tarifa were winking in the darkness. The Spanish coast seemed very close, yet a long way out of reach. We’d been talking for several minutes before I realised I’d never met this man before. Was he trying to sell me something? Or was this the start of something worse? ‘I don’t know you,’ I said, and walked away, a lot more slowly than I wanted to. He didn’t follow me. He didn’t need to. There’d be another mug along soon enough, another wide-eyed traveller seduced by the tawdry glamour of Tangier.

I’ve only been to Tangier twice but it’s become embedded in my mind’s eye. I’ve been back to Morocco since, to Essaouira and Marrakesh, but neither has stayed with me in quite the same way. William Burroughs called it the Interzone. Like a lot of ports and border towns, it feels like a limbo between two worlds. It’s an intimidating place, but it has a strange -demonic energy. Maybe that’s why so many writers (and bullshitters) wind up here.

Look up Tangier in any atlas and you can see what makes it special. It’s the crossroads of the ancient world, where Orient and Occident collide.

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