Tales from the Eternal Café by Janet Hamill

Author:Janet Hamill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Three Rooms Press

Tangiers Dejoun

IT WAS GETTING ON LUNCHTIME, SO we started heading downhill towards the Grand Succo—the large plaza and marketplace at the entrance to the medina. We took a roundabout route to the Grand Succo so I could see the Teatro Cervantes one last time. It was the place in Tangiers I’d developed the most affection for. Set back from a narrow street, labeled in blue and white Spanish tile, Calle Esperanza, the theatre was a carryover from the days when Tangiers and other parts of Morocco were under Spanish rule. For the last time I looked through the wrought-iron gate at the abandoned tile and stucco building and imagined a play in progress inside—shades of Spanish actors eternally performing Lope de Vega and Calderón.

It was a short walk up from the Teatro Cervantes up Rue Salah Eddine to the Grand Succo. During the late morning to early afternoon, the Grand Succo was the only place in the city that was continuously active. I was hungry from all the walking through the ville nouvelle and ready to buy something for lunch to bring back to the Pension Madrid. We still had quite of few dirham to spend before we left for Spain in the morning. Richard really wanted to use some of it to score kif for our last night. One of the best places for doing that was an outside table at the Café Grand Succo, so we ordered tea and waited for someone to approach with something to sell.

When the mint tea arrived, Richard took out the ferry schedule to Algeciras and I opened my trip book to the last entry, written on the morning we’d left Rabat.

May 6. Bus to Tangiers. Blaring Arab radio. Heavily bandaged arm on a man in a djellaba. Man in a suit with a tambourine and flute. Nervous Spanish man, looking after two young aristocratic-looking boys, keeps getting up and down. Spectacular view of ultramarine Atlantic on the left. Field after field with row upon row of olive trees. Little white huts.

I PUT PEN TO PAPER, BUT nothing would come. I lit another cigarette. Still nothing. It had been that way for six days. What the hell was wrong? I had so many impressions of Tangiers. Why couldn’t I record them? After a few minutes, it was obvious that I wasn’t going to write anything. I put the pen down and let my eyes wander over the crowd.

The Grand Succo wasn’t nearly as big as the Djemaa El Fna in Marrakesh, and the makeup of the people was different. Here it was very rare to see an American or European. Other than our friend Carlton from the Yugoslavian freighter we’d taken from New York to Casablanca, and a few Europeans at the pension—we seemed to be the only visitors to the city.

I watched the comings and goings of the prosperous merchants in white djellabas and turbans, headed to midday prayers, the country women from the mountains with their striped aprons and wide-brimmed straw hats, the vendors at the stalls, and the young men in pairs, in secondhand Western clothes.

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