Tangier

by Angus Stewart

  I hoped to photograph the young wife of Moroccan who was very well known to an old friend of mine because I had heard she was particularly beautiful. 'He might let you,' my friend said. 'Only for God's sake don't say "wife". Rachid says she's his "sister" now. He says he's not married.'

  'But you went to the wedding!' I hazarded uncertainly.

  'Of course I did,' my friend said. And she's the girl you want. Only he saws now, she's his sister.'

  I never photographed this ambivalent girl.

  When talking with Moroccans the niceties of inconsequence can of course be reversed. Another friend, Christopher Wanklyn, travelling in the south, had his car stopped by a police check, The country policeman regarded his tape recorder with curiosity and considerable suspicion, eventually asking, 'Est ça un piano?'

  'Oui,' Christopher confirmed solemnly, 'c'est un piano.'

  Norodin's spell at a London secondary modern had pleasingly enriched his English vocabulary. He referred to 'the toilet', 'my dinner' (for the midday meal), and to 'my mum'. His exclamation of horror or surprise, frequently uttered, was 'Bleemy-cheeky!' It was some time before it came to me that this was possibly his corruption of 'Blimey! Crikey!' and when it did I didn't correct him. One of his first acts was to pour Coca-Cola over some old British pennies to demonstrate how that beverage polished them up with a few days' soaking. He had first checked the dates of the pennies against a list he carried in his head to ensure they weren't valuable. The Coke never quite Cleaned the coins up to Norodin's expectations; and it must be hastily added the lesson Norodin elicited from the experiment was that Coke was particularly good for cleansing the stomach. He drank it in model quantities thereafter.

  The summer I established my own flat ended with minimal drama. Hasnah, who now spent all her working hour preening herself in my bathroom, announced I was leaving with insufficient notice to herself; and required a bonus. She had begun to bring a much prettier girlfriend to make use of the mild Christian's ablution facilities, and even an unexplained baby, in a push-chair. I swore savagely at her. Norodin backed me up. They might play happily together as children but, even, im the judgement of the Soussi, Hasnah was 'a bad girl'. Hasnah stormed out of the flat. I was doing her over wages, I was a crook, she was going to fetch a policeman. Within three minutes she had done just that. A polite, plainclothes cop appeared, flashed an enamel badge and accidental glimpse of a tiny automatic, and proceeded to arbitrate. I was alarmed until the logical simplicity of on-the-spot arbitration became apparent I was sacking an irresponsible maid at zero notice. So be it. I should compensate her. A figure was named. I halved it. It was upped a quarter. 'Very well,' I said, stiffly, trying to save face, 'but the girl gets no reference from me.'

  Hasnah got her supplement, the instant cop left, indecisive as to whether my visiting card was to be pocketed or a curiosity to be glanced at and returned, and Norodin and I were left staring at each other. He'd interpreted smoothly as a UN secretary when needed. To render the pathos absurd Hasnah, in fierce departure, had smashed the lock. The door hung open.

  'Norodin,' I began carefully, 'that was a policeman. You don't think . . . er, because some of your friends are tourists . . .'

  Norodin looked pained. 'I know this man.!' he said. 'Is good man. Have dinner with my mum.' And Norodin went off to fetch a locksmith.

  5. Food

  If one excepts the French lycée, American and Italian schools, and the Spanish Institute, the remaining legacy of the International Zone is the variety of Tangier's European restaurants. Formal eating out is an alien concept to Moroccans, though the young have begun to do so. Consequently there is little good Moorish eating between a traditional diffa, or attempts at one for the tourist in the Détroit, Hamadi, or a few of the more expensive hotels; and the simple, sometimes better restaurants in the Medina. Raihani's good double restaurant recently opened to fill a needed gap. An exception among the indigenous population who do not eat out in family groups is the Moroccan Jews, and there are two kosher restaurants, of which the El Dorado is simple and cheap. The Jews also make their own excellent red and rosé wines. For unfathomable reasons there is no Indian restaurant in the city; the Orient being represented by the Vietnamese Pagoda, and Saigon.

  Recommendations are any time at risk. At the present moment, with the government implementing a policy of 50 per cent Moroccan ownership of all businesses, a number of Tangier's restaurants are subtly changing their character, and some closing down. French restaurants predominate. Among them are Le Claridge, Paname, and the English-run La Grenouille, whose proprietor sometimes imports Walls' sausages from Gibraltar as a nostalgic curiosity. Chez Gagarine will produce Russian dishes to order. The Nautilus is Swedish-run; the Viking, formerly Swedish, is now English-Moroccan-run. With the closure of Fagiano, whose reputation was better than its expensive food, and also of the packed and inexpensive Florian, Nino's has the Italian monopoly. Le Provencal and Alhambra are more French 'provincial' restaurants, with very concerned Mesdames. Spanish cooking, while influencing Moroccan (and vice versa) tends to reflect the 'poor white' status of the Spaniards remaining in the city. It is difficult to find a bowl of gazpacho in Tangier, and a more purely Spanish restaurant, the Negresco, is best only relied on for its fish, which are essentially larger portions of tapas. In 1974 the best value for money was the delightfully Spanish-run Las Mimosas.

  Tangier's hotels are now so numerous that any assessment of their restaurants' potential is impossible. The tendency of old-established and ultra-modern alike is to serve both Moroccan and European fare, often in different dining rooms, Roughly the rule is the more expensive the hotel the better its food while, undemocratically, one should avoid those catering for mass tourism. As residents and semi-residents tend only to enter hotels as some temporary visitor's guest, my experience of them is limited. The restaurants of the Velazquez. the Dutch-run Villa de France, the old-established Minzah, and the ultra-modern Almohades are all excellent.

  The divisions of French, Spanish and Moroccan are most overtly apparent from their several breads and cakes. French and Spanish loaves are on sale beside the flat, round Moroccan khoubs. Madame Porte's celebrated establishment produces square bread for English toasters. The Espagnola is the Spanish equivalent of this Frenchwoman's Salon de Thé. Moroccans have their unique pastries and sweetmeats, described later. An English grocery, stocked from Gibraltar, closed with the introduction of high import tariffs; a German cakeshop on the death of its proprietor. The late Madame Porte's Salon de Thé is less a teashop than a peculiar empire. It has the cleanest public lavatory in town. The telephone is hawkishly watched, its use charged for, by the number one trustee at the take-away till. Large cakes, pâtisseries and petits fours are inferior to Floris' or Fortnum's, undistinguished ice-creams are perhaps clean but not cheap, the martinis keep price parity with Manhattan, and the vastly expensive chocolates are boiled sweets dipped in cocoa paste. It is said that small boxes of these were dispatched to favoured German generals on the Russian front, and moreover without charge. Conditions about Stalingrad may well have been the best in which to appreciate them. Madame Porte was pro-Vichy, and more. An English contemporary of my own, David Pryce-Jones, trapped in Tangier by the war as a young child, recalls being forbidden to enter the shop, or even to let his eye be caught by the glittering windows. Some Tangier residents still maintain a boycott. Madame Porte sat, small, unsmiling, steel-spectacled, overseeing her empire. She is recorded as once having spoken. As befits the civic conscience of a major businesswoman the remark was definitive. Canvassed by Jane Bowles, in what proved a vain effort to prevent the trees in the Grand Socco from being cut clown. Madame Porte said: 'Je n'ai pas un opinion', Nevertheless trade prospers. To the near monopolies of fresh milk and square bread has been added the total monopoly of Lapsang tea, and with it a 200 per cent plus profit. This is a pity because the black, Indian dust sold by the bacals of the Souassa is undrinkable without milk, and then too heavy for the climate. The better-off Spa
nish gather at Porte's to display their Sunday finery. Numerous other residents and tourists find it pleasantly unhectic for morning coffee or afternoon tea. It's a good place to read a book. The premises are coolly palatial and the waitresses courteously dumb.

  Between consideration of Tangier's European and Moroccan food belong two irreverences. The Zip chocolate bar, a favourite gift to girlfriends, and enjoying an astonishing sales boom, fractionally misses In pronunciation the Moghrebi Arabic word for penis. It's as though Messrs Mars of Slough were thoughtfully to market a product called Cock. And, accidentally this time, the Moghrebi generic word for meat, Lham, needs only a minute mispronunciation of vowel to become female genitalia. One can in advertently ask the butcher for a kilo of cunt.

  The secret of Moroccan cooking is time and the ingenious blending of innumerable spices. It is exclusively the preserve of women. A man will cook only the three varieties of skewered meats where the process is publicly visible, as in a small restaurant, bus station or street Stall. This is a basic, popular cookery, done over a charcoal brazier. Its success depends upon the original tenderness of the pieces of meat, threaded between each of which is a bit of fat. In Tangier the French term brochettes, and the Spanish pinchitos, are used generically. Specifically, a kebab is skewered pieces of lamb or fillet of beef; boulfaf livers, usually flavoured with cummin; and kefta spiced ground beef, moulded into small, skinless sausages. Boulfaf and kefta is the best bet from an unknown vendor because the meat of a kebab is often so tough as to be beyond any tenderizing. The meat is stripped from the skewer and laid between a piece of khoubs or kesra, the round, flat bread which, as on other occasions, is torn, never cut.

  The staple Meats of Tangier are mutton, poultry, beef and goat. There is also an enormous variety of both Atlantic and Mediterranean fish from fresh sardines and mackerel through rather dull mullet and whiting to a solid, expensive slab of espardon, or swordfish, and sole which is largely bought up by European restaurateurs. Freshwater fish from the streams of the Rif and jebilet sometimes find their way into the markets of Tangier.

  Obviously there is a large gap between the daily subsistence of a poor Moroccan and the successive dishes of a diffa, or formal banquet. But there is no dish except perhaps b'stila beyond the abilities, and occasional accomplishment, of the poorest family. At every economic level religious and national feasts are taken very seriously, The basic dishes are harira, a richly elaborate soup served nightly to break the fast during Ramadan, and often throughout rugged winters; touajen stews of almost limitless variety, but never casual composition; mechoni, which is coming to mean a roast side or leg of mutton, though traditionally it is a whole sheep; and the freshly made, granular pasta, Keskesir (which the French corrupted to the two-syllable cous-cous, rather as elsewhere, though this time for the benefit of the natives' not the masters' pronunciation abilities, the colonial British encouraged the contraction 'whisky-soda'). Cous-cous (so as not to be pedantic) bears no relationship to semolina, Its manufacture (to be literal) requires a hand, hot sunshine, and time. A packet can be bought in Harrods but not Tangier. The woman sits on her threshold or roof terrace with a board on her knee, a bowl of ground flour, and a shallower one of water. The palm is touched against the surface of the water, the flattened mound of flour, and then rubbed upon the sun-warmed board. How this process results in tiny granules the size of shot blasted into small game in England, I don't know, It didn't work when I tried it. The cous-cous is subsequently steamed.

  Cous-cous is a food bed for various touajen. Stewed meats, their juices, and those of vegetables, are reduced through boiling with herbs; almonds and raisins are added, and the mixture finally placed atop the conical mound of pasta granules. The meat and vegetable cookery have their independent timing and critical moment of conjunction. The addition of nuts and fruit is similarly expert, for the finished dish is never mushy. The mountain cone has been tinted yellow with saffron, and its dry sides are ribbed ochre with cinnamon, sometimes alternating with sugar. The liquors of the meat and vegetables are served in one bowl; a thin, piquant sauce in another. These liquors permit the moulding of mouthfuls of the granules between the first three fingers of the right hand. A cous-cous is lighter food than it looks. Its subtlety derives from the contrast between the rich butter and oil-cooked meat and the bland, dry granules. Neither water, nor any drink, is served with cous-cous as liquids are said to swell the grain within the stomach. Mint tea is invariably served afterwards.

  Touajen are prepared and eaten as dishes in their own right, and are the more complicated as a result. The meat of a tajine may be mutton, beef, chicken, goat or fish; and depends obviously upon availability and the grandeur of the occasion on which the tajine is to be served. Besides numerous herbs and vegetables, including peppers, tomatoes and pimentoes, various touajen commonly incorporate nuts, dates, roots, prunes and olives. Touajen are cooked very slowly over low heat, ideally on a mishma, or earthenware brazier,

  Harira is a meal in itself. Once again recipes for the soup are many, but an average one like that served very cheaply in the Fuentes hotel in the Petit Socco, includes chopped mutton, chicken livers, rice, chickpeas, tomatoes, onion, egg, coriander and ginger, to note only some of the ingredients that were obvious. The hotel, or rather its balcony restaurant with its precarious chairs and uncertain light fixtures, became for a time the favourite eating place of myself and a few friends as affording both cheap food and a good view of the constantly fascinating night-time Socco. Meat was more often tender than not. Wine had to be imported, uncorked, in a brown paper bag and, while scarred tumblers were provided from which to drink it, our waiter preferred the bottle to remain under the table. We removed it with equal discretion when we left, as much from courtesy as to collect the deposit. Alcohol is forbidden in all save a few restaurants in the Medina.

  A b'stila is a pie of finely chopped pigeon meat and almonds, bonded with egg, and wrapped in literally dozens of layers of the thinnest flake pastry. Sugar, onion, coriander, saffron and ginger in minutely judged proportions have seasoned the stuffing, and the finished confection is decorated with cinnamon and icing sugar. Traditionally b'stila is the starting dish of a diffa. Preparing one for a company as few as ten will occupy a woman, with assistants, for up to fifteen hours. The preparation and cooking of the pastry take up most of this time. Globules of dough are thrown on to a flat, heated baking tray, where they spread and coalesce. The resultant flaky layer of pastry is removed. and the process repeated some hundreds of times, The elaborate stuffing, subtly blending savoury and sweet as do many Moroccan dishes, is also cooked on a baking tray. Not surprisingly, few restaurants tackle the dish, and some that do produce sorry apologies. By definition the dish is a light one. The best I ever tasted at the Palais Jamai in Fes, where slices were cut from a b'stila the size, though not thickness, and the very antithesis in resilience of a lorry tyre,

  The Moroccans have a passion for sweetmeats. Ideally these are based on wild honey and chopped almonds. Tangier street vendors sell a sweeter, indigenous version of crème caramel, the custard being baked firm. sliced and sold to order. Coconut macaroons look deceptively dull. They have been injected with wild honey. and the brittle exterior disguises a soft centre with a subtle tang. Kab el ghzal, a gazelle's horn, is a crescent-shaped pastry filled with ground almonds mixed with cinnamon, sugar and butter, and dusted on the outside with icing sugar. Majoum may be an innocent cross between toffee and jam (its literal meaning) eaten in pellets or chunks, the basis of which again is most often honey and nuts; but more frequently the term suggests the same mixture infused with the exudates of cannabis. As such it is an ideal digestive, gentle hypnotic, or mild hallucinogen (depending upon the quantity and strength of the confection consumed and the subjective receptivity and mental state of the person consuming it).

  The universal drink is atai benatna, mint tea: invariably served after meals, and on frequent other occasions. In private households its preparation can properly be called a ritu
al, because this is done exclusively by the head of the family, and beneath the eyes of everyone who is going to drink the tea. Green tea is placed in the warmed pot, boiling water poured over it, sugar added, and then a bunch of fresh mint. After a few moments' infusion the host pours a little into his own glass, takes a sip. Invariably finds it unsatisfactory, and pours the tea back into the pot. More sugar is added. The tasting and rejecting may happen several times, Finally the host fills small, brittle glasses, pouring expertly from a height above them. The sugar is preferably broken from a solid cone some six inches in base diameter and eighteen inches tall, looking like an artillery shell or, more innocently, an expensive firework, for it comes wrapped in blue paper. Chunks of a size that will fit the neck of the tea pot have been chipped from the cone and placed in a box before the equipment is brought into the room. In wealthier households these may then be further broken with a special hammer, which is no polite toy. Cone sugar is hard as granite. Consequently decorum is best maintained where the chips have been previously prepared in a variety of sizes offstage.