Peter Mayne - A Year in Marrakesh

I AM A STRANGER in these parts and Tangier feeds on the flesh of strangers. This is what they say, but no one has yet had so much as a bite out of me because I have sat myself behind carefully-chosen defences from which I shall slip unnoticed and be gone an hour from now.

At the table immediately in front of me are a big Spanish woman, three children and a man with blue-black hair. The children have been elaborately dressed for the occasion and are slapped when they fidget. Ignacio! Concepcin! Toms! To left and right of me are other people at their tables Spaniards, Moors, nondescripts and every one of them is engrossed in the spectacle of the Sunday-evening paseo.

For better or worse, we are all gathered in the Socco Chico which is a plaza in the Moorish part of Tangier. Hundreds of us are immobilized thigh to thigh at caf tables. Hundreds more are pressed still closer together on the little open plaza itself, where under the influence of some cosmic necessity they ebb and flow and sway, like algae in the shallows. Amongst them are creatures that dart about in the manner of fishes and smile with their teeth.

Anyway, here I am. My back is against the wall, or rather against a cast-iron grille which ventilates the interior of the caf. There is a Cinzano on the table beside me and a siphon of aerated water. I am at a loss to know how ants have got into the siphon. Neither the ants themselves nor the people who filled the siphons can have intended this.

Is it not rather warm, people are asking themselves in their various languages, for the time of year? It is spring and it is rather warm.

Sometimes a little breeze springs up and some of it is sucked into the caf through the grille. At such moments the big Spanish woman tweaks at her corsage, and I think I feel cooler also. I have an hour in hand, my luggage is safely deposited at the terminus and I have escaped molestation hitherto, but I begin to fear that there is something behind that grille

As I say, I am sitting in a little barricaded world of my own, here in the second row of caf-terrace tables, and if the Tangier people suppose that I too am admiring them and their Sunday-evening walking-clothes, I would like to tell them that I am doing nothing of the sort. My eyes may be open, they may glint like little chips of coal, but it is not with desire. I have chosen to focus upon infinity, and for me infinity excludes Tangier and the present time and begins tomorrow at Latitude 3140. The Tangier people can look that up in their atlases, and they may sink or swim for all I care; they may send out distress signals or invitations to the valse, but they have no power to melt my heart or fascinate me. My eyes are open but unseeing. My ears are deaf, or nearly deaf but if there really is someone behind that grille, then it is his voice that hums around the edges of my consciousness. I shall take no notice.

I am still sitting behind my defences, and there is now no doubt at all that an ill-wisher has discovered a chink in my back-plates through which he is repeatedly hissing a demand. He refuses to be ignored. He is saying

vous avez du feu, msieur, sil vous plat?

I passed a box of matches backwards over my shoulder without looking round. It was taken softly through the bars as it might be by a well-mannered parrot.

Merci, msieur. Tiens! ce sont des cigarettes anglaises que vous avez l? You are English? If you wish I will try one. I am often glad to accept an English cigarette, pour changer, nest-ce pas?

I made no move. Someone put a handbill on to my table, leaning forward over the Spanish lady to do so. It said: HOY! HOY! TODAY! TONIGHT! LUCHA LIBRE. SO-AND-SO, THE BLACK MARVELLOUS! SO-AND-SO THE LOCAL SPLENDID! COME, COME, COME! My enemy must have paused to read it too.

After a brief interval the voice said, Ah. All-In Wrestle. It paused again. Then, Sir. I have something to say, something you will wish to know. There was another pause and he repeated the last sentence.

I did not look round. Instead I said clearly in French, because it seemed more impersonal, There is nothing that one wishes to know.

I have been watching. Guarding over you, sir, from the intrieur. I have seen all! That girl, for example the girl in the costume aux paillettes. Sir! I implore you!

I said, Leave me in peace.

You do not know! You are strange to Tangier. I know. I have seen the regards exchanged, the balancing of the haunch. Sir, that girl will destroy you in a twink!

I pretended to have heard nothing.

Sir, look at me! Turn and look! You will find that I am a nobleman of Morocco. I love your country England and, as my brothers, I love your countrymen English whose language I have learned so fluent from a Swedish gentleman now dead (rest in peace). You risk to suffer because of your strangeness. This I will not see. If you should be heated, then let me advise and assist.

Had the Swedish gentleman really spoken English like this? I turned slowly and looked at the speaker. He was about twenty-five, brownish and shabby. It was not a bad face round, with big, black, startled eyes, and when he saw me looking at him he smiled socially and said: Let me present myself. I am Moulay Hamed or, as you would say, the Seigneur Hamed. I have the entre into all the houses because of my nobleness. You will kindly tell me your name and business and permit me to lead you to some private place where each of the girls is beautiful and blood-tested by physicians. By diplomad physicians.

The language and the prospect were equally fascinating but I said coldly, If you do not leave me, I shall leave you.

But we have only just met!

The meeting will do no good to either of us.

Listen! You are strange here

I am not in the least strange anywhere. I was quite happy till you came to pester me.

I had turned round on him again and spoke with an indignation that must have shocked him. He seemed crestfallen. He was obviously a very unsuccessful guide. You had only to look at the others with their flashing self-confidence to know that this poor creature was a failure. I even felt sorry for him.

He then said, Please remain seated. I come to sit at your table.

Now you listen, I replied firmly. I am a mad person who does not think it strange to be alone and to know nothing, and within a few minutes I shall be gone from here, and I am praying that where I am going I shall find a world where guides are born with the mark on them, so that

Going? Where? Oh, sir, where? he broke in.

so that they can be identified by their mamas and strangled before

But where are you going, sir? he broke in again, excitedly.

I am going to Marrakesh. By the night train.

InshaAllah, he breathed. Then his face widened into an ecstatic smile. What! To Marrakesh, you say? Sir, I have a cousin in Marrakesh, equally noble as me, with whom it is possible to lodge for he is propritaire of hotel! Very select. Look! I have a photograph of my cousin dressed in Arabic with his friend before the Bureau de Poste of the Place Djemaa el-Fna at Marrakesh. You wish to see?

And suddenly I found myself with his wallet in my hand and Seigneur Hamed no longer behind the grille. I knew then that I had been mistaken, that the Seigneur was after all at the top of his profession.

* * *

Is it a strength or a weakness, not to know when you are beaten? I did not know yet. Instead I temporized. An Arab hotel? It would be an appropriate start. I told myself that I needed just the sort of help in Marrakesh that the Seigneur or his cousin could provide. I saw no point in going there to live the life of a European tourist. I also told myself that I was perfectly capable of defending myself and that the boredom the ineffable boredom! of half an hour with the Seigneur could be turned to account. I allowed him to join me at my table and the first few minutes were spent explaining why I would not take him with me to Marrakesh. I said that this was not just an excursion but but he could not understand the distinction I was trying to make. How then could I hope he would understand the whole truth, that I was on the eve of a personal rebirth at which his presence could serve no purpose? So I didnt speak of this. I merely said that I had barely enough money to support myself, let alone to fill two stomachs. While these facts were taking root in his mind, I allowed him to show me the contents of his little plastic