McCarthy's Casbah - Part IV

Well.. I would like the record to show here that I admit that I have never been so wrong about anything in my entire adult life as I was about Tangier. On the bus from the ferry port, I first noticed that my expectations were a bit off. I had envisioned Morocco to be a dry empty desert with cities thrown in at random intervals. What I saw here, on my 40 minute bus trip to the city, was completely different.  The country side consisted mainly of small villages, made up of relatively modern houses, that were dotted on the sides of medium height hills. The roads were lined with low shrubs while the hills themselves were mostly overgrown with blue and purple-ish plants and flowers. People were tending to plants in their gardens. It didn’t look like a desert at all. It was more a sort of Scotland-in-the-sun than the hot, arid Sahara environment that I had in mind.

                                         
                                                      No desert here           



I got off the bus at Tangier’s central bus station and within 3 seconds had a grubby looking Moroccan man walking alongside me and asking me questions. Where was I going? Where was I from? Did I want to see his cousin’s shop? What hotel was I staying in? Would I like to buy a rug? Or hash?
I told him I wasn’t interested and expected him to leave.
He didn’t.
After informing him in increasingly stern tones that I knew perfectly well where I was going, he just seemed to relish in the fact that he was being a good guide. ‘My friend has taxi, he’ll bring you to hotel! Where is your hotel? My friend take you there!’ He just wouldn’t give up. I told him again and again that I didn’t need his services but he stuck to me like velcro. The problem was, I had no idea where I was going, but I couldn’t stop to consult my guidebook either as that would give away that I had no idea where I was going, which confirmed that I needed him as a guide. After a couple of minutes, we approached what was the Moroccan equivalent of a taxi rank, so I figured that this would be the end of his pursuit. As luck would have it, he tripped over a loose pavement tile and fell flat on his face. Excellent, I thought; good riddance. I hopped in a taxi and told the driver to go to the Continental Hotel. Just as he was about to drive off, the back door of the taxi swung open and my self-appointed guide jumped in the back seat. ‘Where are we going my friend?’ he said, meanwhile nursing a bleeding elbow- the result of his fall.
Great. Now I was in a city where I knew nothing, in a small car with 2 man I couldn’t understand, one of them probably pissed off at me for trying to ditch him when he fell and hurt himself. ‘The Medina is not far!’ my guide called out and pointed ahead over my shoulder. I would imagine the taxi driver had this knowledge himself, but it didn’t seem to disturb him. This probably happens all the time.
The Medina was, in fact, not far so I got out of my taxi 5 minutes later. The Continental was not, as I had expected, a tall modern American hotel but a large, sagging heap of sandstone along the cliffs. It was grand and majestic in its own way, but not at all as I had expected. It looked more like they had added to the original building as needed over the decades and created an extension to an extension to an extension. The car park was a half paved plot of sand, about 8 yards wide and 20 yards long. A hand full of dirty cars were parked at irregular angles while children played inbetween them. Okay, I had found the car park as instructed, but the rest of the directions were now useless. The only way out of the car park was into the medina, where the whole concept of left, right and crossing the street went out the window straight away. I had another good look at my map to make sure I didn’t get lost but couldn’t even be sure which direction was supposed to be right, as there were 3 alleyways, all going more or less to the right. I took a few tentative steps into the labyrinth and looked at my map again, not sure what to do next. I decided to have a look at the whole scene again from the car park and turned around to start again. To my surprise, I couldn’t find the car park anymore.
Brilliant.
3 steps, 5 seconds, and I was lost. Even for my standards this was below par.

I turned around again and decided to press forward on my own but it again looked different from what had been there before. This was getting ridiculous.
“You are going to Melting Pot hostel?” a voice sounded from around a corner. I looked to see who was there and found that it was my friend from the bus station again. This guy was starting to spook me. I gave in to his offer of guiding me to my hostel and prepared to get fleeced when I got there. He took me on a fast paced walk around part of the medina, turning left here, right there and seemingly back from where we had come earlier, though it may have been a short cut. After some 3 minutes, true to his word,  he did deliver me at the front door of the hostel I was staying in, albeit with a bit of a detour, I was sure.
Now came the awkward part; he was going to ask for money. I gave him all the change I had gotten on the bus, about 3 Euros in Moroccan money. Not a bad deal for a homeless pauper with nothing better to do. He wouldn’t have it. “Denny! You insult me!” he exclaimed raising his hands in the air in disbelief. (when he had asked my name, I got the great idea to give him a fake name. It would have been a great idea if I had actually given him a fake name and not one that is almost identical to my real name)
“Coins? NO!” he continued. “I have 3 children, they are hungry! Please!”

I told him that was all the Moroccan money I had, but he simply wouldn’t take it. What was more annoying, he was blocking the door to the hostel. I looked in my wallet and saw I had only 20 euro notes and told him that no matter what, I was not going to give him 20 euro for 5 minutes work. He then told me that I could change in a shop somewhere else in the Medina so I could pay him, but I told him I would not go on a walkaround with him again because I was tired and hot and wanted to sit down. He dragged me around the corner to a small shop where he told the owner to give me change for 20 euro, but ofcourse he only had 100 Dirham notes, of which he gave me 2. This was in fact a good exchange rate, so I was not ripped off on this. Ofcourse, now only having 100 Dirham notes, my guide expected to give him one which was a ridiculous reward but I was just happy to have reached my hostel and wanted him to go away. I handed him a note and made for the hostel door. He then told me to hurry up so he could show me the rest of the city.
Was this guy kidding? Did he really think I was going to give him even more money for doing nothing? I told him I he was wasting his time, as I was going to take a long cold shower and then sit in the sun on the roof, so he would lose money-making opportunities just standing around here. This seemed to make him realise that  I was serious so he stood on a corner, while I made for the door.
Due to all this messing around, I just wanted to get checked in and have a cold beer. What I failed to see when I entered the hostel, is that the cast iron door was only 5’6” high, while I am 5’8”, so I crashed my head into the upper part of the door frame with a loud bang.
With a pulsing head and silver dots dancing in front of my eyes, I entered the hostel.
Tangier was not scoring a lot of points so far.

                                    
                                     



                                         I show you city, M'kay?

This improved instantly when I was inside the hostel. The building, though the outside had the same worn out, dusty appearance of the others around it, was unbelievably beautiful on the inside. The floors and ceilings were laid in with genuine mosaic tiles, all windows had colorful stained glass designs and the reception desk was situated in an atrium that went all the way to a large skylight in the roof. I presented myself at reception and was welcomed by one of the cheeriest girls I have ever met. Her name was Maria and she made a living running the hostel. She ran through a short list of points of attention and then took me on a tour of the building. My room was on the first floor and, like the other rooms, looked amazing. The door was shaped like those onion top mosque minarets and the walls were painted in pastel colors. Arab art was on the walls and the light came from a dimmed lamp on the distant ceiling, giving the whole room a rather Moorish feeling. The tour continued to the kitchen on the second floor, which also had original tiling and Moroccan furniture to offset the large fridge and 21^st century kitchen appliances, and ended at the rooftop bar which itself had 2 levels and, to my joy, a large fridge full of ice cold beer. It was definitely the most beautiful hostel I had ever stayed in. This was more like it!


                                   
                             

                                      Awesome hostel

I sat down in the shade with Maria and ordered a beer. It was a brand called Flag, which I had never heard of, but it tasted superb in the Moroccan heat. Maria told me that she had a Moroccan father and a Basque mother. She had spent most of her life at various locations in Spain, but her family had decided to move to Morocco a couple of years ago and she had gone with them. When I asked her what felt more like home, she fell quiet for the first time since I had entered the building. She looked at a point in the middle distance and said that she really didn’t know. It must be difficult to decide on something like this. Hell, after 8 years, even I have difficulty deciding where to call home, Ireland or Holland, and I don’t even have a blood connection to Ireland. Maria went back to the business of running the hostel, after she gave me another cold beer, and I sat down in the sunshine on the roof. The medina looked much more peaceful from up here.
It really is the strangest place. The buildings are so close together that even at this modest elevation (I was only 3 floors up, really) it was nearly impossible to see the streets below. Balconies are often nearly touching across the streets and since most of them are full of laundry, plants or other assorted debris,  it becomes impossible to see down from here. If you don’t believe me, set Google Maps to satellite view and zoom in on the Tangier medina. You won’t see a thing.
The only thing that was visible was the small square in front of the hostel where my guide was still hanging around, in the idle hope of giving me another tour of the place. I had to smile at his belief that he could out-wait me and a Large Fridge full of Cold Beer. Challenge Accepted, motherfucker! Half an hour later, he was gone.

What also stood out from up on the roof, was that most of the other buildings, some almost within touching distance, were unfinished. Most roofs had piles of unused bricks, bags of cement and other building materials strewn across them, while walls, doorways and floors were left unfinished. You can ofcourse ask yourself why they would build a place this way, with all the houses built so close that it is nearly impossible to navigate. The reason for this is just that- to MAKE it impossible to navigate. In the old days, the medina was the most important part of the city, indeed WAS the city. The idea of building it like this comes from the frequent attacks by pirates or other merauders who, upon entering the city, found themselves suddenly lost in a maze of narrow alleyways and corners that were impossible to look beyond, giving the locals a considerable advantage when it came to outsmarting the intruders, mostly by killing them from unexpected angles.  I finished my beer and considered having another one. I also considered that I wanted to see something of the city today and decided that if I had another beer on the roof here, that would be the first of many so I went downstairs and went to the reception desk to discuss what I wanted to see. I explained Maria that I had had some problems finding the hostel, and pulled out my guide book map. She looked at me with a smile that said ‘Aah, you silly western boy and your map’ before explaining to me that it was nearly impossible to draw an accurate map of the place.
                          
                                 This is as close as you'll get


She picked up a map from her desk and explained that she had drawn it herself but, even after years of walking around the place on a daily basis, she still wasn’t quite sure of the exact lay out of the place. She drew the way to the exit of the medina, which was really just 2 straight lines, so that shouldn’t prove too difficult.  I thanked Maria for the instructions and walked out the door, confident that I would now breeze through the streets and be outside in no time. Let’s see who’s the smartest now, Medina!


After about 12 seconds, I had to concede that the score was now Medina 2 - Lennard 0.
I had followed the route on the map, but after taking 1 (one) turn, I again had completely lost any sense of where I was. This was becoming embarrassing.
At this rate, I would not see anything of the city and spend my days here walking the street in front of my hostel. I went back to the front door of the hostel and tried again but it was no use, I just couldn’t walk in the right direction in this place. It was as if I was sober but my sense of direction was drunk. I headed back inside and walked to the reception desk.  Maria started to apologise for not giving clear instructions but I clarified that the problem did not lay in the quality of her instructions but in my understanding of ancient Arab cities. She then understood that I would probably never get it unless she showed me herself so she offered to walk me to the exit of the medina and back. I happily took this offer, and 3 minutes later I was standing on the Petit Soco, next to the gate to the rest of the city. I had taken notes of where to go left, right or straight ahead so, now armed with an idiot proof 12 step programme, I felt like I could do it on my own.
No, you’re wrong- it actually worked. I walked back to the hostel on my own, and then back to Petit Soco without any problems. As Pete McCarthy correctly noticed in his book, the Petit Soco, or small square, does not really stand out as a square because it is so small. It is only when you walk past it a couple of times that you realise that none of the other places could possibly qualify as a square, so the one you just passed must be it. There are a couple of cafés, peanut vendors and about a dozen shops selling everything from rugs, tea sets and other Moroccan staples to sunglasses and replica football jerseys. Obviously, most of the Big Brand stuff is fake, but it does add a lot of color to the scene. I crossed the square and, as a white European, immediately attracted the attention of every vendor who was open for business and awake. I was offered leather jackets, Rolex watches, carpets and about 20 cups of tea. As I don’t drink tea, and can’t be bothered with wearing a watch, I politely declined all the offers, but did consider buying a football jersey. Unfortunately, all the jerseys were for big European teams like Barcelona, Liverpool and AC Milan, and no jerseys of local teams were available.  I emerged from the Medina into the Grand Soco, or Big Square, and found myself back in a world I recognized. It was still very different from what you know from European cities, but at least this part had the structure you expect. That, and the possibility to look more than 5 yards ahead.

My first impression of the city proper was that, by the look of it, the population of Tangier must be around 10 million and all of them were out in the city centre today. Half of them were walking around while the other half were trying to sell them stuff. Apart from all the shops, cafés and restaurants, half the pavement was covered with blankets and card tables from which people were selling anything and everything you could imagine. At the centre of the square (which really was round) was a big open space with benches. People were sitting on them and the open space was, again, taken up by vendors selling mirrors, carpets, bags and too much other stuff to list here. What occurred to me next, was that conventional traffic rules were non-existent in Tangier. In the whole city, I can’t remember seeing a single traffic light. Crossing the road basically meant waking onto the road and hoping that you didn’t get hit by a car, or one of the hundreds of blue taxis.  I couldn’t even tell you what side of the road they drive on here because the cars just jumped into any available space, regardless of driving direction, all the while honking their horns because that will make other people go out of the way. I had read that Tangier had major issues with poverty and I could see that clearly here. What little space was left between the restaurant tables and the vendors, was mostly taken up by beggars and homeless people who were all keen to attract attention from either the well off populace or, as I found now, rich westerners on vacation. I could seriously have spent the rest of my days walking around Tangier in the company of a guide if I had taken even 10% of them up on their offer.  Everybody wanted to show me to the cinema (which was 40 yards away and towering over the square) the nice shops (the street next to the cinema) or the kasbah (further out but still visible from where I was. What none of them could tell me, though, was where to find a liquor store. 
Going to a muslim country, I did ofcourse understand that booze wouldn’t be as abundant as in, say, Dublin or Glasgow or Munich. I did not expect the situation to be this dire though. I walked around, looking for likely places but every time I came by a promising shop, it turned out to only sell soft drinks, vegetables and other items that didn’t feature on my shopping list. After about half an hour of drawing blanks, I changed my strategy. Rather than walking around and hoping to get lucky, I decided to ask people in shops. I first started out in locally owned businesses but soon found that nobody there spoke English or French, so I moved on to places that sold clothes from international brands or fancy looking beauty products in the assumption that they would speak English or French. This approach worked better in that I now came across people who understood what I was looking for, but still didn’t yield much result on the front of acquiring alcohol. By now, I was also starting to get hungry, and the sun was starting to go down, so I decided to get a bite to eat, hopefully locate a liquor store and then make my way back to the hostel. Despite my recently acquired medina-navigating skills, I still did not want to wander around it at night so time was a bit of a factor. I entered a kebab shop and ordered. The guy behind the counter was clearly hoping to practice his English, so I had a chat with him while I waited for my food and when my food was ready, I asked the big question: Do you know a liquor store nearby? He looked uncertain at first, but when I made the international sign for drinking by tilting my head back and bringing my hand to my mouth, he understood and pointed to a side street.

                                        This sign always works

The instructions involved another side street on the side street, but at least I was on track now. I followed the instructions and ended up in a street with some more kebab shops, a hair salon and a travel agency. No liquor store though, apparently. I looked around  but simply could not see any shop that looked like one. I walked up and down the street again and was about to give up, when an unmarked door in a premises with blacked out windows opened up. A man carrying a black plastic bag walked out and just before the door closed, I noticed a Budweiser logo inside.
That must be it then.
I walked in, and found myself in a tiny room about the size of a pantry. The floor space was mostly taken up by  2 large fridges of the type you find in eateries where you can help yourself to soft drinks. Inbetween an improvised wooden counter and 3 shelves with bottles of gin and whisky sat a man with a grave expression on his face. He looked as if he felt somehow duped by the circumstances that had put him behind the counter of a shop that didn’t do anything illegal per sé, but didn’t quite sit well with his conscience either. I emptied a shelf of one of his fridges onto the counter and he proceeded to pack all the cans carefully. He individually packed each can in a sheet of newspaper, then rolled the cans in black plastic bags, 2 to each bag, and then put all the small black bags in a bigger black plastic bag. I felt as if I was preparing for a big heroin smuggling run. Though it was strange and unnatural having to hide alcohol from view, I didn’t care much. I had a big bag full of cold beer and a large kebab, so I was set for the night.
As the sun was now sinking towards the horizon, I headed back to the hostel and again found it without getting lost in the Medina. I managed to pick up some freshly roasted cashew nuts for a late night snack and even made a friend.
Across from the entrance to the Continental car park was a tea shop, which had a couple of benches outside. A group of men resided there more or less permananently and one of them was called Moses. Moses ‘worked’ as the car park attendant for the Continental but, as very little was happening in the car park, he spent most of his time hanging around the tea shop too. He started a conversation with me in a cockney accent that you could have mistaken for the real thing. He told me that he was the only one of the group who had a job and therefore did not need to act as a guide or get commission from shop owners for bringing in tourists. After about half a minute he decided that I was from Ireland even though, really, I’m not, but I was happy enough with this characterisation. He really was a nice guy and never bothered me other than trying to strike up a conversation. I returned to the Melting Pot, stuck my food and booze in the fridge and headed up to the roof. A dozen others were there, nationalities distributed across the regular hostel crowd composition of Australians, North Americans and Western Europeans.  Some of them had plans to go out, some of them were tired and most of them were new to Morocco and, like me, opted to take it easy in the hostel.  Maria joined us after she had checked in her last guests and everyone had a great time. Most people had, unlike me, availed of the dozens of hash offers on the streets of the medina so the air was thick with smoke and conversation. I didn’t have drugs. I had cold beer. I was happy.

McCarthy's Casbah- Part III

Algeciras is one of those curious places that seem to exist only because ferry companies need to have a destination to put on their tickets.
If you have ever been to Holyhead, you will know what I’m talking about. Holyhead is a bleak, dire, soulless outcrop of human habitation on the western tip of Wales. Holyhead is just there for the purpose of accomodating ferries to and from Dublin. Perhaps the most depressing thing of all is that there is not even a choice of destinations, which would lend some sort of diversity to the whole operation. No. Just Dublin. Over and over and over again.

                                                             and over..


I once arrived there on said ferry from Dublin and found to my consternation that the onward train had departed about 10 minutes earlier, which left me with the unappealling prospect of having to entertain myself in Holyhead for over an hour. Why ferry companies and local railways don’t co-ordinate their schedules so that the train to civilisation leaves 10 minutes AFTER everybody gets off the boat, rather than 10 minutes before, is a mystery to me, but it would be too depressing to discuss this in depth right now. I walked around Holyhead looking for even the slightest diversion, but could not find any. My usual safe card in these situations is to buy a local paper and sit in a pub for the duration but, as it was only mid-morning, I noticed to my alarm that the pubs were closed. Outside the ferry terminal was a bridge to a short main street and some residential blocks, likely housing the poor people that work for the ferry industry (I can not come up with any other reason for settling in Holyhead) and a park that looked as miserable as the rest of the town. In the end, I entertained myself by confusing the staff of a local Boots pharmacy with complicated questions about non-existing products. When, after about 10 minutes, I had the full attention of the entire staff up to and including the branche manager (who was just about to contact the regional sales rep about all those things I wanted to buy but she could not provide) I made off with the excuse of having to catch a train and walked out of the door. Such is life in places like Holyhead. The advent of a customer from elsewhere is the highlight of the day, and for entertainment you have to go into a pharmacy and discuss mouthwash. I’ve never been in Fishguard but I imagine it’s much the same.

Apart from the obvious observation that Algeciras has much nicer weather than Holyhead, the impression I got from it was almost identical, in that the place was just there to feed the ferry port. I walked towards it from the bus station and, some restaurants and a number of appartment blocks with the paint peeling off aside, saw only businesses that dealt with ferry tickets or other ferry-related things. Ofcourse, these days people buy ferry tickets from websites rather than from colorful port-side offices so, with yet another romantic aspect of travel gone forever, most of these offices were either boarded up or had one Very Bored employee sitting on a chair outside, waiting for business that would never materialise.
                            
                                    Say his name 3 times if you want a ticket



At the ferry port, I found that Algeciras has one major advantage over Holyhead: it has 2 destinations. Tangier was were I was going, but you can also take a ferry to Ceuta which is a place I had never heard of. With time to kill, I installed myself in a cafe and looked up what the hell Ceuta might be. It turned out to be a lot more interesting than I could ever have imagined.

Ceuta is a small trade zone on the North African coast. Apart from its Meditterranean coast, it is surrounded entirely by Moroccan soil, but is part of Spain. As a Spanish exclave, it is part of the Eurozone but has a tax free status. Despite their small population of around 75.000, they have their own government, lead by the Mayor-President. Morocco and Spain have been in conflict over the territory for some time now, but when Morocco officially demanded Spain cease the territory to them, the people of Ceuta were up in arms and 87% of the population expressed the sentiment that they considered themselves Spanish and part of the Kingdom of Spain.
Does this start to sound familiar yet?
I couldn’t have made it up. Spain has its own Gibraltar, and it is an outcrop of land on the North African coast. Reading this, I might actually have included it in my trip because it would have been quite funny to go to Spain and be in Britain, and after that go to Morocco and find yourself in Spain. As it was, I had not known about Ceuta when I planned my trip and now there was no time so it would have to wait until later.
Setting foot on a new continent is not something you do very often in your life. Most of us are born on one, so unless you’re from Indonesia, Japan or The Philippines that most likely leaves you with just 5 additional ones to go to.  Having already set foot in North America, Australia and Asia, and not expecting ever to get to Antarctica, Africa was my second last so it was with some excitement that I boarded the ferry to Tangier.  The ferry wasn’t exactly packed, so I easily made my way to the bar. I ordered a Cruzcampo and was asked if this is was my first time going to Morocco. I confirmed that it was and was told by the bartender that I should go to the Border Patrol officer at once, otherwise I would be spending most of the trip in the queue. I thanked him for his advice and went in search of an official looking guy in a uniform but could not find one. I walked around the deck and when I returned to the bar, the barman pointed at a picknick table that had been set up in the bar and was manned by an Arab guy in his mid twenties, dressed in shorts, flip flops and a blue Nike t-shirt. He was armed with a laptop and a rubber stamp and when I gave him my passport he, again, asked if this was my first time in Morocco. When I said yes, he had a brief look through my passport and stamped it without questions. When he returned it he asked me how Holland was these days with a smile on his face that betrayed a certain fondness for the country.

 
                            Welcome to Morocco

This brings me to a short interlude in the story, which I will use to point out the special relation between Holland and Morocco. Unlike the links left over from colonial history, which explain the large numbers of Indians in Britain, Algerians in France and Indonesians in Holland, Morocco was never connected to the Netherlands in any way. It was, in fact, a French colony until as late as 1956.
From the mid 1960s, however, large numbers of Moroccans moved to the Netherlands to take up the jobs that they could not find at home and that Dutch people were unwilling to do. Most of them expected to work in the Netherlands for a couple of years until the economic situation in Morocco got better, so they could return to their homeland and families with a nice fat bank account, certainly for local standards. Because of this outlook, many of them didn’t put a lot of effort into things like learning the language or integrating fully into Dutch society, which proved to be a bit of a problem when it emerged that the employment situation in Morocco was not going to improve any time soon and a lot of them stayed. In the late 70s and early 80s, under a bilateral agreement between the two countries, a family reunification scheme was developed which allowed the labourers to bring over their families. At the moment, the Moroccan community in the Netherlands is the 3^rd biggest, after Turks and migrants from the former colonies in the Carribean like the Dutch Antilles and Surinam, numbering about 400.000 people, or 2.3% of the population.

Because of the large Moroccan population, the Dutch government has allowed a significant exception to their passport regulations. For reasons unclear to me, the Dutch government does not allow its citizens to have double passports. I found this out recently when I enquired about the possibilities of getting an Irish passport. Inspired by friends who are now Polish-Irish, Australian-Irish, Polish-Australian and so on, I thought it would be nice to have an Irish passport to express my loyalty to the country, as I have been living here for nearly a decade now and have no intention of leaving any time soon. Imagine my surprise, then, especially in the light of the ease with which my friends acquired additional passports as if they were fridge magnets, when I raised questions about this with the Dutch embassy and was informed in no uncertain terms that if I considered applying for an Irish passport, they would withdraw my Dutch citizenship at once and I would henceforth be considered a foreigner in the country where I was born.                              

                                                    Welcome to Holland


Not being intimidated by a faceless burocracy, I pressed the matter further and eventually found that there is a provision that allows me to get an Irish passport and still keep my Dutch nationality, but I would have to get married to an Irish woman. So, unless you plan to marry a foreigner, you can only have a Dutch passport as a Dutch citizen.

Except, that is, if you are of Moroccan descent. Before people start screaming about Moroccans getting away with everything, calm down. There is a good reason for this. When, like me, you migrate permanently, you most likely leave behind a good number of friends and family members and you will miss them. Because of this, you will want to make regular visits to your home country to catch up and say hi and so on. Moroccan people in Holland found themselves caught in a corner. If they did not get naturalisation to the status of Dutch citizen, there would be all kinds of administrative problems with them applying for things, registering for government related programmes etc etc. The problem is though, that by becoming Dutch citizens, they would lose their Moroccan passport, which is something that the Moroccan government sees as treason. I have heard many stories over the years about newly naturalised Dutch Moroccans who arrived in their cars at the very port I was leaving from now, only to be either refused entry into Morocco or have their cars and all their luggage confiscated, on the grounds that they were deemed a threat to the state or something similarly anarchistic, because they had renounced their Moroccan citizenship. To save the situation, the Dutch government created this one exception, allowing Moroccans to have 2 passports so they can visit their family without spending half their holiday in a trench war with the Moroccan border patrol.
With the coveted stamp that guaranteed entry into Morocco, I made my way to the deck to catch some sunshine. We were about to leave the port and the combination of sunshine, sea breeze and excitement made me feel great. I looked over my shoulder to see the ferry port slowly receding behind me and then looked ahead. That was Europe. That is Africa.
Standing on the deck of a ferry in 30 degree heat is a very special sensation. Where ferries in my part of the world are generally hit by sharp and cold gusts of wind coming from the North Atlantic, a ferry across the Mediterranean exposes you to a gentle and warm breeze. I loved it. I walked back inside for a new beer and made my way to the front of the boat. Spain was well behind us now and Africa was not quite visible yet, leaving us in limbo between continents. It was the third time I had passed an international border by boat, but the first time I had actually had my passport checked on the boat itself and ofcourse the first time I had moved between continents by way of water. It all made for a very special boat trip. It was made even better when I noticed a large pod of dolphins swimming alongside the ship. Who needs a special dolphin spotting trip when you can see them from a regular ferry? It was pretty cool to see the dolphins from relatively close by and they seemed to have a good time as well, jumping up from the water and bumping into each other. After looking at the dolphins for a while, I got bored of it and decided to focus on spotting Africa again.
No, I didn’t know either that a group of dolphins is called a pod, I looked it up on dolphinsworld.com.

                                                       Here be dolphins

After another stop at the bar, where I had an enjoyable conversation with 2 English guys who were living in Spain and could not quite understand why the people of Gibraltar were so desperately clinging on to their status of being British, I made my way back to the front deck and now noticed that Africa was appearing in the distance, beyond some hazy fog that lay over the water. I could clearly make out mountains but no further details like towns or ports. One of the things I had only found out when I was in Gibraltar, was that Tangier has 2 ferry ports. The regular one, which is right in the city itself, is these days reserved for cruise ships, probably because cruise ship passengers have limited time but a lot of money so the authorities would not want to cut their valuable spending time by having them arrive in Tangier Med, which is 40 kilometers up the coast or 45 minutes on the bus. So Tangier Med port is where we were heading. Not that I had any idea where to look, or what for, ofcourse.

As we approached the Moroccan coast, things started to become more clear. I could make out a settlement here, a fishing port there and the occasional lone building on top of a hill. When it started to become clear that our port wasn’t too far off, I noticed a massive piece of graffiti on the side of a mountain. Well, it wasn’t graffiti in the traditional sense of the word, but some phrase in Arabic was plastered across the side of the mountain in letters the size of houses. I figured it must be some sort of government announcement, or otherwise the Moroccan counterpart of Banksy has really turned it up a notch.
I approached a Moroccan girl who was taking pictures of the coast and asked her if she knew what it was for. She confirmed in perfect English that it was  in fact a message from the government and that it read “FOR GOD, KING AND COUNTRY”. We had a chat and she informed me that she worked in Spain but usually went home to Tangier for the weekend. As there was no work in Tangier, apart from working in a shop or as a waitress in a restaurant, she had decided to move to Spain. This, however, was only a temporary solution, she informed me, as she was just living in Spain until the situation in Morocco got better. She could never settle permanently in Spain and leave Morocco behind. It reminded me of the story of the Moroccans in Holland who moved all those years ago, and were planning to be back home after 5 or 6 years.

                     
                                             Royal graffiti


While I was preparing for this trip, I had read a lot about Tangier, and not just in the McCarthy book.
Tangier is a very old city. I don’t mean that the city as it is now can do with some maintenance; it was a city more than 2000 years ago, when most of today’s major European cities were nothing but marshlands or patches of country side. Over the centuries, Tangier has always been a wanted possession for any empire, mainly due to its strategic position at the entrance and exit of the Mediterranean, thereby giving it the power to decide who could and could not enter. Though it was an indepent city-state for most of its existence, it had been occupied by both the Holy Roman Empire and the East Roman Empire, before coming under Arab control in the 8^th century.
After a period of relative calm, several colonial powers tried their hand at it; first Portugal, who conquered the city of Ceuta we discussed earlier, with the clear intention of using it as a launch pad for the conquest of Tangier. It was then taken over by the British who had planned on teaming it up with Gibraltar so that no one could enter or depart the Mediterranean without their permission. As these things tend to go, the local people revolted and the British decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle, especially when the sultan of Morocco launched an attack in an attempt to incorporate Tangier into his country. As a parting shot, the British set off all of their explosives and then set fire to what was left before retreating to places where they were safe from Arabs baying for their blood.
After a period of decline, (the population was as low as 5000 by 1810) Tangier was revived from an unexpected angle when the newly independent United States of America opened their first overseas consulate in Tangier in 1820. Due to its geographical position, Tangier became a hotspot for European embassies in Africa. After another century of fighting, bombing and colonial tug-of-war between Britain, Spain and France, Tangier became a seperate international trade zone in 1923, while Morocco was cut up between Spain and France. After the second world war, Morocco finally became independent from France in 1956 and was joined in this by the city of Tangier, where I was now about to get off the ferry. Clearly, this was a city with a fascinating history.

The modern city, too, had plenty of interesting stories to tell. During the cold war, Tangier was a hotspot for international espionage and smuggling, most likely because it was away from the main centres of power with the convenient addition of lax law enforcement personnel who were easily convinced to look the other way with a small bribe.
I had also spoken to other people who had been there and read through a couple of guide books. Apart from the ubiquitous beggars and petty thieves, the one thing you were supposed to look out for were the ‘guides’, of whom there are plenty according to every source I consulted. Due to the crippling poverty in Tangier, and the absence of  employment opportunities for anyone who isn’t connected to the owner of a shop or restaurant, lots of men try to make some money by showing you around the city for a fee. This may sound like a decent proposal for the average traveller who doesn’t know the way around this chaotic city, but stories abound of this not going as people think it might. A lot of people, not used to having to pay for directions, find themselves confronted by angry guides who demand money. Even when a price has been negotiated, guides often ask for more for services that have allegedly been provided, such as tips on where to go next, or where to eat. Then there are the people who want to see the medina or the kasbah, and are taken into this confusing maze of alleyways and then asked for extortionate amounts in order to be guided back to the city proper. Finally, the vilest trick that is played on tourists is that they are being shown somewhere by a guide and, while the guide is pointing out a feature, or has gone inside a tea shop to negotiate a good price, are mugged. When the guide returns, he insists on pursuing the bad guys to get back your possessions, runs off and is then never seen again, arguably because he is splitting the loot with his buddies who robbed you in the first place.

While I thought this over on the bus, I couldn’t imagine a seasoned traveller like me being all too phazed by this. I’ve been around and seen my share of persistent beggars, homeless people and other con men, so it would take a lot more to fool me. On top of that, I had clear instructions from the hostel on how to get there: From the bus station, take a taxi to the car park of the Continental Hotel, cross the street, take the first right, then the first left and then right again. The Continental sounded like a an American hotel chain, so I would probably be looking for a 15 or 20 story hotel tower, with a car park the size of a football pitch. I would cross the car park, go right, left and right again and arrive at the hostel, probably situated above a shop or office, where a nice cold beer would be waiting for me.
Easy, Right?