Leaving Tangier

Notes

page 1

Tangier is the main link between Europe and Africa, and the legendary Café Hafa perches on a rocky promontory with an unbeatable view of the Straits of Gibraltar. With its original décor seemingly unchanged since 1921, the café has fallen on harder times, but its terraces — later re-colonized in the Stoned Seventies by rock stars — were long frequented by le beau monde and writers such as Jane and Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, William Burroughs (who called Tangier ‘Interzone’), Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Truman Capote, some of whom helped make Tangier a well-known gay resort, which it remains — to a lesser degree — today.

The two most prestigious districts in Tangier are La Marshan, a historic residential neighbourhood west of the kasbah, and La Montagne, ‘The Mountain,’ a district of grand villas and gardens favoured by artists.

page 4

A djellaba is a loose-fitting hooded robe worn by both men and women in North Africa; in the Near East, a caftan is a full-length women’s tunic with long sleeves and a sash at the waist, and is decorated with embroidery.

page 5

The Rif is a mainly mountainous region along the northeast coast of Morocco. Populated by Berbers and Arabs, the terrain of the Rif Mountains is often inhospitable, and Riffians are considered a tough, hardened people. The major cities of the Rif include Tangier, Al-Hoceima, Chefchaouen, Nador, Tétouan, Ceuta, and Melilla. Portugal invaded Ceuta in 1415, Spain invaded Melilla in 1490, and although Morocco lays claim to both cities, they remain to this day the only two European territories in mainland Africa.

page 6

One of the five pillars of Islam is the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca every good Muslim should make at least once in this life, after which he or she is entitled to use the honorific title hajji or hajja.

page 24

Once banned in the West, Sir Richard Burton’s 1886 translation of The Perfumed Garden by Sheik Nefzaoui has been called the Arabic Kama Sutra. The chapter titles for this Islamic sex manual reveal a focus on — among other things — both admirable and contemptible behaviour by men and women; matters that either favour or impede coition; various causes of enjoyment, sterility, or impotence; the ‘Sundry Names’ given to the sexual parts of men and women; and ‘Prescriptions for Increasing the Dimensions of Small Members and for Making Them Splendid.’

page 29

Lined with cafés and bazaars, the lively rue Siaghine is the main street of the medina (the ‘old city’). At its northeastern end lies the Petit Socco, the heart of the medina; socco is Spanish for souk, the traditional Middle Eastern marketplace or shopping quarter, and the ‘little souk’ occupies the site of the city’s ancient Roman forum. Heading southwest, the rue Siaghine links the medina to the Ville Nouvelle (the ‘new city’) through the main market of Tangier, the Grand Socco, famous for the colourful ambiance provided by peasant women in picturesque native dress selling their fresh produce from the fields and farms of the Rif.

page 47

Lighter than the djellaba, the gandoura is an ample, almost sleeveless robe that sometimes serves as an undergarment in East Africa; babouches are Turkish slippers.

page 61

This is sura 2, verse 255, the Ayat al-Kursî, the celebrated Verse of the Throne:

Allah! There is no god but Him, the Living, the Eternal. Neither slumber nor sleep overtakes Him. To Him belongs all that is in the Heavens and the earth. Who can intercede with him except by His permission? He knows what is before them and what lies behind them, and they can grasp only that part of His knowledge which He will. His Throne embraces the Heavens and the earth, and it tires Him not to uphold them both. He is the All-high, the All-glorious.

page 69

The hajj takes place from the eighth day to the twelfth day of the twelfth month of the Muslim lunar calendar, and the end of the pilgrimage is the three-day worldwide celebration of Aïd el-Kebir, ‘the great festival,’ also known as Aïd el-Adha, ‘the festival of sacrifice,’ during which an animal is slaughtered to commemorate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his eldest son at God’s command.

page 70

The tarboosh is a red cloth or felt cap, a kind of fez, usually sporting a blue silk tassel and sometimes worn as the inner part of a turban.

page 78

Islamic invaders began occupying and settling large areas of southern Spain in the early eighth century, and modern travellers in Andalusia still marvel at the surviving wonders of their civilization. By the fourteenth century, however, the reconquista — the wars of reconquest waged by the Catholic monarchy — had reclaimed almost all of Muslim Spain from los moros — the Moors. In 1492, the year Columbus planted the flag of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon in the New World, his patrons drove Mohammed XI, the last sultan of Granada, from his besieged city, ending Moorish rule in Spain. As he fled to Morocco, the sultan bade farewell to Granada at a spot now known as the Moor’s Last Sigh.

page 86

A jabador is an embroidered vest once favoured by the Arab aristocrats of Andalusia; saroual are baggy, calf-length trousers fastened at the knees and worn under the djellaba.

page 96

The khamsa (from the Arabic word for ‘five’) is a symbol or design depicting an inverted hand. Called the Hand of Fatima by Muslims and the Hand of Miriam by Jews, this ancient talisman is often placed at the front door of a dwelling to ward off the evil eye.

page 98

Near the Grand Socco rises the brilliantly colored minaret of the Sidi Bou Abid Mosque, set off by the luxurious Mendoubia gardens with their eight-hundred-year-old trees and the former palace and offices of the Mendoub, the sultan’s representative during the international administration of Tangier, which lasted from the Treaty of Algeciras in 1906 to Moroccan independence in 1956.

page 100

The first sura of the Koran is the Fatiha, ‘the Opening’:

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe,

The Merciful, the Compassionate,

Sovereign of the Day of Judgement!

You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help.

Guide us to the straight path,

The path of those whom You have favoured,

Not of those who have incurred Your wrath,

Nor of those who have gone astray.

page 115

In Tahar Ben Jelloun’s 1978 novel, Moha the Mad, Moha the Wise, Moha is a holy fool, a voice from the crowd who speaks like a traditional North African Arab storyteller: he recounts the country, its mistakes, hopes, and dreams. Moha is the voice of exclusion. Here is a sampling of texts that illuminate Moha’s role in Leaving Tangier.

Moha took the path of the tree. To love the tree. […] It’s a dwelling for silence, a little palace where death bites its own tail. My special place for absence. […] The forest! But the forest is gone. There is neither forest nor desert, only a plain planted with zinc and broken mirrors. Ever since it grew rich, the city has spewed out poor men who wash up on the outskirts of life. They are my children. […] If you meet my children, don’t run away. Let them rob you just a little. It’s in a worthy cause. Then laugh along with them. […] You will thus deserve my blessing and perhaps a piece of the tree, a bit of paradise. […] I bear within me a rage of the utmost purity ever since the French wounded our land almost a century and a half ago. […] Me, I’m a hundred and forty years old. I’ve seen everything, known everything. I’m only passing through. […] Why does death sail away with us to the horizon? […] Even when they lock me up, I press on. […] Anyway, I’m not dead. How can one die when one has never existed? I have no name. I am hypothetical. I’m from nowhere. From a hill. A plain. The vague horizon and the mint of time. That’s what they’ve decided! Moha has never existed! What a lovely mirage for their pale desert. It’s true, I have no identity papers … and how could I have any? No, I’m not talking about corruption, but I don’t intend to fill in any blanks; I cannot write anything on the dotted lines… Neither date nor place of birth. I have three hundred and fifty-two names, one name for each moon. My date is written in the sky. Go read in the labyrinth…

page 124

General Mohammed Oufkir, Morocco’s much-feared chief of police, tried to seize power in 1972 by having King Hassan II’s plane shot down. After the coup failed, Oufkir was liquidated and his wife and six children — one of whom was only three years old — were imprisoned under appalling conditions. In 1987 several of the children escaped and managed to contact French journalists before being rearrested. The family was finally freed in 1991.

page 130

Nâzim Hikmet (1902–1963) remains Turkey’s most famous and revered poet at home and abroad, acclaimed for the modern stylistic innovations he brought to Turkish literature as well as for the lyrical power of the novels, plays, and poetry through which he mounted an impassioned crusade against injustice and oppression in Turkey and throughout the world. Persecuted for decades by the Republic of Turkey for his Marxist-Leninist convictions, he spent nearly two-thirds of his adult life in prison or in exile, finally dying of a heart attack in Moscow after long years of separation from his beloved country and family.

While imprisoned, Hikmet wrote a massive work intended to be his masterpiece: Human Landscapes, an extraordinary depiction of his homeland and the turmoil of the twentieth century, and although the Turkish government cruelly suppressed his poetry for nearly half his career, this collection of poems is today considered to be one of the greatest patriotic literary treasures of the Turkish people.

page 179

A marabout is a Muslim hermit, holy man, or the leader of a sect, especially among the Berbers and Moors in Northern Africa.

page 191

Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) was the founder of Wahhabism, a branch of Sunni Islam that seeks to restore the supposed theological purity of the Muslim faith during the first three generations of Islam, a purity grounded solely upon the Koran and the Hadith (a kind of appendix to the Koran containing traditions related to Mohammed). Ibn al-Wahhab reintroduced Sharia — Islamic law — to what is now Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism has become the dominant theology. Heeding their teacher’s call for jihad against ‘polytheistic’ Islam, modern-day Wahhabis violently oppose what they call perversion, superstition, and heresy in the Muslim faith.

page 198

A Turkish singer of Kurdish and Arab descent, Ibrahim Tatlises (1952–) is one of Turkey’s most prolific recording artists. He has his own television show, has appeared in numerous movies, and has recently enjoyed increasing international success.

page 202

Farid al-Atrash (1915–1974) was one of the idols of twentieth-century Arab popular music. A Syrian composer, singer, and musician, he specialized in romantic love songs and composed the songs and instrumental music for more than thirty Egyptian musical films in which he starred.

More than thirty years after the death of Oum Kalsoum (1904–1975), the ‘Star of the East,’ there is still no one to rival the phenomenal impact and artistry of this Egyptian singer. She began singing at an early age, and through her artistic dedication and the canny management of her career, she turned her truly extraordinary voice into one of the wonders of the Arab world. She sang of the joys and sorrows of love and loss in bravura performances that might last for as long as six hours. During these performances two or three songs would become the means through which, improvising in response to her public’s ecstatic energy, she would create an intense bond with her audience, who repaid her tremendous outpouring of emotion with their undying love.

page 206

In the West, a jinn is usually thought of as a ‘genie in a bottle,’ but in pre-Islamic Arabian mythology and in Islamic culture, the Jinn are a race of supernatural creatures, lower than angels, capable of assuming human or animal form and influencing mankind for good or evil. The Koran says that the Jinn were created by Allah, ‘from the fire of a scorching wind,’ from ‘fire free of smoke’; one connotation of the word jinn is invisibility, and jinns are invisible to humans unless they choose to be seen by them. The Jinn live in their own societies like humans (they eat, marry, and while they may live for hundreds of years, they do die), but, like angels, they have no substance: whole communities can live comfortably on the head of a pin or cozily in a vast desert waste. In the sura devoted to them, ‘El-Jinn,’ a company of jinns listens to the Koran and pledges allegiance to Allah, but some dark jinns, called Ifrit, will work black magic upon people when summoned by a magician or human evildoer.

page 213

Sufism is a wide-ranging tradition of Islamic mysticism practised by many different Sufi orders, all dedicated, through differing practices and beliefs, to the individual experience of divine love through religious ecstasy: by seeking truth and self-knowledge, the human heart strives to heal itself and turn only towards God. Sufism is perhaps most familiar in the West in the person of Jalal ad-Din Mohammed Rumi, the great thirteenth-century Persian Muslim poet, jurist, and theologian, whose poetry speaks of the universal longing to reunite with the lost beloved. After his death, Rumi’s followers founded the Mevlevi Order, long known for worshipping through dance and music as the Whirling Dervishes.

page 215

An estimated two million people now converge on Mecca from around the world to perform the rituals of the hajj, which have become closely scripted to safely shepherd massive crowds through these rites. Each pilgrim must circle the Kaaba counterclockwise seven times; ‘kiss’ (point at) the Black Stone; run between the hills of Safa and Marwah; drink from the Zamzam well; stand vigil on the plains of Mount Arafat; gather pebbles at Muzdalifah; and throw them at walls (‘the devil’) in Mina. Manuals go into minute detail about every aspect of the hajj, noting even the prescribed size of the pebbles for the ‘stoning of the devil’ (1–1½ cm). This lapidation reenacts Abraham’s pilgrimage to Mecca, during which the devil appeared to him at three different heaps of stones; each time, at the Archangel Gabriel’s urging, the patriarch pelted the devil with seven stones until he vanished. The defeat of the devil’s attempts to stop the sacrifice of Ishmael also represents the humbling of each pilgrim’s ‘internal despot,’ or selfhood, which allows the worshipper to draw closer to Allah.