Book 1:5 - Tangiers 1

Destination of My Dreams

POSTCARD FROM TANGIERS

 Dearest Mama,

Surprise! I’m travelling in Morocco. Now don’t worry, I’m with Tom, a surfer friend.  Left B with K on Formentera. We have to sort out a few problems, so I’m having a couple of weeks away. Thinking time.

Now in fabled Tangiers, can hardly believe it. 1,001 Nights come to life!

Staying in the perfect riad in roof pavilion – all Moorish tiles, stained glass, filigree brass lanterns & inlaid tables. A fountain in the palmy courtyard. Views over Straits to Gibraltar. Clean and airy. You’d love it too.

I’m dancing again, it’s been too long since I was able.

Off to Marrakesh in a few days & then we plan to walk with a donkey down the Atlantic coast from Essouira looking for waves.  
How I miss good surf. .

Think of you often.

Love A.

Twirling, leaping, spinning round & round in my new silky caftan bending, stretching, reaching, hair flying, pirouetting in shafts of sunlight rainbow streaked and dappled blue, yellow, green and red from stained glass chemmasiat. Dancing again. It had been too long since I’d been able to unleash my inner Isadora. Tom’s seductive flute driving the rhythm, letting my voice loose in soto dolce gentle intonations as I circled the splashing fountain, trailing my fingers in the water, sending a whoosh of diamond shards to catch the light. At last I was free again. Free to sing, dance, celebrating my love of life in sheer ecstatic bodily expression. The dance of the butterfly.

Morocco ignited my latent sleeping muse, firing up whole new regions of my imagination, helping to ease the pain of leaving my family with an overlay of sensory intensity. A country can be many things, how each of us experiences it is an individual thing. Here some might remember the heat, flies, sand, others might have had a gastronomic affair with the food, or, not. For me the first impacts were the colours, the infusions of light, the intensity of the dyes, the beads. The lilac sunsets and indigo night skies. The sounds of the music. The pace of life. 

Old City

 Camels and donkeys, the soft shuffle of babouch-clad feet in narrow dusty lanes, the muezzin calling to prayer. A street musician strumming the stringed lotar to a gentle soft drum. Loose clothes that let the body move freely. The wind moaning in the crenulations of the turrets and towers and snaking, rustling, down the narrow alleyways. Mint tea in a hole-in-the-wall 4-seat shop. A brief glimpse of hooded figures at end of a tunnel alley disappearing under an arch – gone in a flash. All this created a magic. I was entranced.

However beyond the inviting exterior I saw there were aspects of this culture, as all cultures, I needed to understand better. The way men and women related, religions, manners, class and caste, how the money worked, the treatment of animals – all these were embedded and part of the whole and if I was to move in this country I needed to be aware and have respect for customs or suffer consequences, some of which I knew could be horrific if I got it wrong. Communication was the key - time to brush up my rusty French and learn Arabic.

Tangier was beyond my expectations. I hadn’t really much idea of what it would be like, just knew it was an exotic destination that had attracted a lot of creative people over the years. Anton’s retinue had given it the thumbs up with “cool baby, it’s the scene, go meet Brion Gysin, Bowles, the Gettys, such FABulous people there now” Hmm. I had my own agenda, but Tom’s interest was spiked at the mention of scenes and names. I also knew Tangiers, by reputation, had a seamy side and I’d have to be careful. But what I found over the next days was wowowow outa sight!

We walked up from the ferry into the Medina and immediately fell under the spell of all things Moroccan. Suddenly I was in a land where everything around me inspired and ignited my imagination. I felt travel-worn and dirty, confined in my clothes, longing to be in something loose and free inspired by what I saw the people wearing and of course Tom’s free Indian cottons. Emotionally exhausted I felt a deep need to just stop moving and sit quietly, away from other people in a secluded place where I could unwind and contemplate the last week.  I didn’t want to stay with Tom’s friends again, nor get a hostel room. I wanted to cocoon and self-nourish in my own time, then to emerge, really immerse myself in the Moroccan ethos. Anton had given us directions for a riad he said would answer all expectations at the top of the Medina. He'd even rung ahead and booked us in. Fingers crossed he had it right. But first we flopped down in a tea shop stop for a first taste of mint tea. Then we shouldered our baskets and headed up the hill into the Medina’s maze of narrow streets & alleyways, taking it all in with an ever-increasing sense of wonder. Somewhere in all this Paul and Jane Bowles held court with other literary legends and wrote their hearts out. But those kinds of expat Beat Generation influences that had initially attracted me here no longer seemed important. Tangiers itself was now my muse.

As we passed one hole-in-the-wall shop I saw a beautiful simple white caftan wafting on its hanger in the sun, screaming “Buy me, I’m yours”. I bought two and another in the men’s style for Tom.  The storekeeper brought out a dramatic burnt red hooded burnoose  and I saw how useful it would be, not having a warm coat. Tom wanted one as well, in black, so we left the shop with very satisfying booty. 

Me & my burnoose setting out in Tangiers '68 - gotta larf

Then we entered the labyrinth that is the Medina, leading to the Kasbah up the hill. Narrow twisting high-walled lanes with doors that gave little away as to what lay beyond.

Kasbah canyons

  After a few wrong turns and asking directions we found Anton’s favourite place, a riad owned by friends of his. Through an arched old door leading off the narrow lane we left one world and entered a piece of Paradise, so unexpected that I gasped. We were in an elegant sahn courtyard, open to the sky above, surrounded by an upper riwaq balcony. White walls reflecting the light, geometric zellij tiles spreading in from floor up walls, everywhere. Columns supporting a surrounding upper balcony, potted cumquats and palms, a large central hexagonal sparkling fountain that refreshed the air and gave a tinkling sound that merged with the soft drone of Arabic music coming from one of the chambers set back under the balcony. Once the private palace of an old Moroccan family it was all Anton had promised and so much more.  Luxurious, clean and with beauty everywhere I looked. A world away from any hotel or pension I’d ever stayed in. I decided that even if I had to sleep on the side of the road from now on, I had to have this one experience of this kind of luxury. I had the money, for now. It was to be my treat for us both and to show my gratitude for Tom’s care of me in Spain.

Pockets of Paradise

similar styles to the riad we stayed in

We were given a pavilion on the roof which had views out over the hazy Medina to the distant port and the intensity of blue sky over the Mediterranean. Through French windows and  voile curtains wafting in the sea breeze, the long cool white room was a shady cave, foiling the heat and glare of the hot mid-day sun outside.  Geometric tiled floor, bright Berber carpets and a curtained divan set in a filigreed arched wall niche. Brass lanterns and tiny tables. At the far end through a low arch I could see a white bed strewn with jewel-coloured silky embroidered cushions under a canopy of white lacy netting. Heaven! At last I could come to rest where I could think, assess what I had done and was doing in a safe place, away from all the people and the pressing needs of the road.

I ordered lunch then took myself to a nearby hamam . I felt filthy after all the travelling and no real baths. I stripped off my dusty old clothes and immersed myself for an hour, letting the steam and delicious waters deep-cleanse my body and soul. After a massage I slipped into my new white silky caftan and emerged a new being. Tom was playing his Indian flute near the fountain as, light as a feather I almost floated back to our suite, the music sending me twirling and spinning, the houri unleashed. It had been nearly three years since I had danced in this way and the release as I found this neglected part of my being was like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon and I flew, laughing, singing, in my re-found freedom pursued by my Pan god, up the stairs to our piece of Heaven.

Over a late terrace lunch, lazing back on huge cushions under the shade of a billowing cream silk parachute canopy, we took in the view infused with an hazy apricot late afternoon light, feasting on vegetable tagine, khobz bread and fresh fruit. Tom was in good form, raving on about a tea shop he’s found. 

It's still there- the Cliff Cafe is a Tangier Legend that has survived!

 While I’d been in the hamam he’d gone out exploring, following the twisting canyons of the Kasbah maze lanes right up to the cliff edge where Café Hafa was perched on a series of terraces that dropped off sheer from the cliff. Not many people there, he said, and mainly young Moroccan men but also other travellers and a few foreign expats. He’d clicked with a Swedish couple, Ute and Sven, musos with a band based in Majorca but living in Tangiers in a rented riad for a month or so to sorb the Moroccan vibes. They’d been touring in California, had been in Haight Ashbury for the Summer of Love and had just been participating in a seminar on Tao and Nature with Allan Watts, Gary Snyder and other spiritual gurus of the new age at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur . Authentic Self was the lesson learned apparently. They’d arranged to meet up with us tonight to play music at a café called 1,001 Nights. Of course it was! What else!

I looked at my amazing man, this crazy exuberant wild hippy preacher, eyes afire with enthusiasm, his blond hair bouncing and the motor-mouthed beard trying to charm me, high as and all ready to rock n roll…..and I wilted. Exhaustion had set in. These sounded like great people to meet and sure, tomorrow, but all my Authentic Self wanted was to veg out. To doze and drift and maybe catch up with my diary notes of the last few days on the road.  This idyllic eyrie was too beautiful to leave and I wanted to watch the light changing as sunset swept across the city and the Straits from nowhere else but the bed, or one of the terrace cushions with a long cool drink to sweeten it all. No way was I going anywhere.  So I let him down gently and told him to go, to enjoy, to get in the groove, find what he would find and tell me about it all later….much much later.  He probably needed a bit of time out from me anyway. Never a slow man he understood, scooped me up, carried me to the bed, stroking me, saying all the things I could ever want to hear from an ardent caring lover, pulled a silky sheet over me, lowered the net curtains around the bed and blew me kisses as he shouldered his basket with its drums and flutes, threw on his burnoose and flitted down the stairs into the Kasbah twilight.  Within minutes I had dropped into oblivion.  Dawn was streaking the sky when he crawled in beside me, nuzzling me into wakefulness, whispering that he had so much to tell me, later, snuggling in close and sexy, spooning his long lean body around me, then dropping instantly asleep like a cat.

I slipped out of the bed and wrapping myself in my new burnouse, called down to the kitchen for coffee while I had a quick wash. Tom was dead to the world and going to be that way for hours I figured, so when the coffee arrived I took it out onto the terrace to watch the sunrise. I may have missed the sunset but now I was fully charged and was not going to miss a second of this next day in Tangiers, starting with a spectacular unforgettable light show over the Straits. Somewhere far away I heard the Fajr dawn prayer being called. Wriggling in sheer delight I started unwinding my body with yoga and some basic dance exercises then, as it rose though the haze to the east, did the Salute to the Sun.