At the ramparts of the Kasbah

Morocco, Tangier

During a few decades, especially the 1970's and 1980's, you might as well have asked for a ticket to Novosibirsk.

People would ask: "Where did you say you were going? Where"??

Somewhere around 2004 that changed - and how.

Movies such as The Living Daylights and The Bourne Ultimatum, together with the almost succesful bid for the Expo 2012 have put Tangier back on the map. And we would almost forget TanJazz, the annual jazz festival in the Spring.

Still it is mainly a city for businesspeople or day trippers coming for a day of shopping, while the real charms of Tangier lay elsewhere. In its history and culture.

Aficionados of living history or romantic singles will have a field day here.

One thing... it needs to rain. Globalisation is very busy organising a great big stamp on Tangier, but when it rains, the tourists are gone, and the city is just the way it ever was.

 

Quoi faire on a rainy day?

You're lucky. It rains. An old fashioned good shower, with winds coming in from the Atlantic.

You are arriving and Tangier looks like just another depressing port town anywhere in the world, almost as bad as Algeciras.

Wrong! Port Towns are wonderful. Especially this one, that up to a few years ago, on a good grey winter day, still felt like having walked out of a novel of Jean Genet (who sojourned in Tangier, of course).

And on a hot summer day out of a novel of Paul Bowles (who lived here), but that's another matter.

Tangier in the rain, that is heading to the souks. The large groups of tourists have gone, and you can finally go for walkabout, in most shops being the only visitor, and finally have a real chat with people, as in the days of Henri Matisse of Eugene Delacroix (who both sojourned here).

It is sipping a tea in a half deserted tearoom in the nouvelle ville, thinking about Burroughs, Ira Cohen, Jack Kerouac, Ginsberg (who all...).

Perhaps take a taxi uphill and upmarket, remembering the days when Tangier was the first cosmopolitan city of the world, forever linked with the names of Barbara Hutton and also Malcolm Forbes, who up to the beginning of the 1990's still celebrated his birthdays here, bringing celebrities such as Elizabeth Taylor over by helicopter.

It is right on these days that Tangier sometimes still has that extra Zing, which attracted so many artists and culture lovers up to the beginning of the 21st century.

Today, it is Zanka Flow city, gangsta rap from Tangier.

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