Tangier, Morocco.
I’ve been reading Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, his 1869 account of the first group of American tourists to cruise to the Mediterranean:
‘Tangier! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry us ashore on their backs …’
Sadly - or perhaps fortunately - I am not transported to land atop a local. But then, Maasdam is moored (ha! ha!) at a dock.
Escaping - as last autumn - worryingly eager, would-be guides, I scoot past the Hotel Continental (former guests: Degas, Delacroix, Matisse and Jack Kerouac) and am soon satisfyingly disoriented in the kasbah.
I stress that most, if not all, of those I photograph don’t realize their picture’s being taken. I’m using a small point-and-shoot, often with the camera at my waist. I know that the best pictures are unposed and I also know that you don’t needlessly thrust a camera in people’s faces. On the other hand, simply because I am an old reporter, I perhaps feel less compunction about discreetly taking shots than many might.
‘Tangier is one of the few places left in the world where, so long as you don’t proceed to robbery, violence, or some form of crude, antisocial behavior, you can do exactly what you want.’ (William Burroughs)
I’ve never been one for robbery or violence and, although sometimes antisocial, try not to be (too) crude. There’s no question that Tangier must have been a lot more exciting when Kerouac and Burroughs, Jean Genet, Andre Gide, Cecil Beaton, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles and Tennessee Williams were here.
What fun to have frequented the louche Café Fuentes in the Twenties …
… or the Ciné Alcazar in the 1950s and revel in celluloid pleasures forbidden by the Ontario Censor Board. Now I must content myself with the usual tourist wanderings.
I do, however, manage to find and pay homage at the possible tomb of Ibn Battutah, an extraordinary 14th Century Arab explorer of whom we in the West know shamefully little. Three decades of travel took him to the borders of China, to Sumatra and far south in Africa.
And I leave a flag with an Canadian airman whose grave I found last year.
I have since found that Peter MacIntyre, although in the RCAF, was part of an RAF Wellington bomber crew flying out of Gibraltar. 179 Squadron was conducting maritime patrol and anti-submarine duties. He was from Winnipeg and only 22.
Sunset on a Muslim city surmounted by steeple and minaret. Last night’s death toll in Paris has risen to about 130. I gather some aboard did not go into town because of concerns about security. What a pity.
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Tangier 2014:
http://trainsandboatsandplanesandtheoddbus.blogspot.ca/2014/11/mediterranean-2014-part-six.html
