Tangier

by Angus Stewart

  A few days later the Belgian dentist demonstrates how to handle unwanted children, But in the meantime I've 'registered' Thami with the portera, taking him down to the foyer.

  'Do you speak Spanish?' she asks him,

  'No,' says Thami in French. This is his only European language, Spanish hers. Now she must converse with him in Arabic as he intended. 'Do you visit the Englishman for lessons?' she asks him, scribbling on an imaginary textbook: she herself can neither read nor write any language.

  'Yes.' says Thami.

  I usher Thami into the lift, thanking the portera without trace of irony. I explain Thami has in older brother who also has permission to visit my list, who is equally muy correcto. She gives her fond little grandmother smile, which is genuinely charming. Whether this, or its obverse, the Belsen wardress, is the real woman I shall never know, The wardress persona comes into being when she's frightened for her job. This polite little boy is no threat whatever.

  Three days later I am expecting Thami, on my terrace, kitchen window open to hear the doorbell. I only semi-consciously register the sound of a scuffle on the landings: all the neighbours have dogs. A moment later some instinct prompts me to look over the terrace balustrade. Thami is in the street, shrugging with despair. When I get downstairs, he explains the 'bad' Belgian had hit him and driven him out.

  We ride up in the lift, and I ring the Belgian's doorbell. Simultaneously I rap shortly, but so sharply the knuckle is bruised and swollen for two months, caution perhaps against acting instantly upon anger. The Belgian peers round his door, he is pale and frightened only for a few seconds. I could understand why. Five years previously when I'd sacked poor Hasnah, my useless maid, with abuse, but certainly nor violence, she'd been back within minutes with a cop,

  Thami stood beside me. 'I am told,' I said now, using the French impersonal coldly, that you've just struck one of my pupils:

  Too late I realized that my savage rap, the Belgian's momentary shock of fear, must have its inevitable reaction. The assault was more Latin than Belgian. His wife joined him in screaming, gesticulating abuse, Meanwhile, incredibly, he was endeavouring, to take swipes at Thami, the blows becoming potentially more lethal as his hysterical injunctions to the child to clear out of the building had no effect whatsoever. He continued to stand behind my, shoulder, not even wide-eyed, but puzzled clearly by the idiocy of Christians. I would have run.

  None of the Belgian's blows struck home. I gently pushed his hands away. He registered incredulity; then hatred. There was that hiatus in which two human beings, or lower animals of the same species for that matter, confront one another upon the brink of physical violence only to think better of it. In this case flashpoint was reached and defused within seconds. I had not been in the situation since was a child, It is statistically odd that I should find myself in it again, more protractedly, later that night.

  The Belgians' phone was immediately within their hall. Hysterically, the woman was trying to use it. The word 'police' was now being freely used in the stream of abuse, presumably to panic Thami or myself as chargeable with attacking the Belgians. This, I thought in the expressive American phrase. is where the shit hits the fan: But any snap decision casually to ask Thami to leave was blessedly postponed: the Belgian slammed their door.

  Thami and I got into the lift. Did he want coffee, or would he rather go home? 'Coffee.' he said. In my flat, he raised the question whether the Belgians were really calling the police, and why. I told him I didn't know. It was then he said his older brother, Omar, had been similarly assaulted, this time by the wife, a few days previously. I told him what I believed to be the human truth about these particular people. They were an exception, a childless couple, the woman mentally unwell, the man soured, burnt-out. They belonged to a generation which believed that the only Moroccans who should come into the building, not just the one flat in eighteen which was theirs, were maidservants. This I had explained before. Thami departed to reiterate the position to Omar; and with the request to continue impressing upon any other relation or friend that they must not visit me. I hadn't the guts to utter the untruth, more effective friends assured me, that I didn't want to know them and wouldn't let them in.

  The police didn't come. Almost certainly they had not been called. I half wished they had. Bitterness at the Belgians had set my mind in a very cold and calculating frame indeed. I wrote a brief letter at once to the man, Its burden was simple to grasp. He had now twice made vicious physical assault upon the young sons of a Moroccan friend of mine. I very much hoped, for his sake, that the children did not tell their father about the incident. There was nothing clumsy in my not mentioning the Belgian's wife. Of my using 'father' rather than 'parents' in respect of the boys. A Moroccan would not mention women in this sort of circumstance. I wrote in English in the hope that the sad dentist must either have a temporizing colleague translate the letter; or at worst spend a sleepless night -with a dictionary. The fact that I had never met the father of Thami and Omar struck me as irrelevant. This was war, instigated by the Belgian by physical attack upon children with no rational reason whatsoever. He and his wife had bluffed me unintelligently by pretending to call the police. I would bluff them - with more thought. My ace was the man's incredible stupidity in striking two Moroccan. children in any, never mind the obtaining, political climate.. He would realize this without being told. Should he not, the translating colleague or some friend might advise caution. I added to my note only that I was protesting that night to Cohen.

  The gamble worked. The Belgian left me alone for the rest of the summer. Thami and Omar left me for only three weeks. These were lonely. It was like losing one's pet tiger, manuscript, magnetic compass, wife, D.Phil. thesis notes, radar beacon.

  It was a Sunday. I dined as usual with a friend in an inexpensive restaurant. A telephone directory revealed Sam's home address as only a few blocks away.

  Daniel said he would wait outside the apartment building. It was as well he did so. Although it was only nine o'clock, in the evening the foyer door was already locked. An impoverished Moroccan, whom I took to be the azzaz, or watchman, rang the portera's bell; and she let myself and a stranger into the building. The stranger told me Sam's flat was on the third floor; then disappeared.

  A maid opened Sam's door and I stepped smartly into his hall. A large blonde woman bustled forward. I apologized for the intrusion (something Sam was nor wont to do when calling on me) and asked whether I might have a word with her husband. Sam came out of the dining room. where two fair-haired little girls were finishing, a meal, and led me to a corner of the drawing room. Very quietly I told him of his Belgian tenant's incredible attack, expressed doubts as to the couple's sanity, let alone wisdom, and again said I hoped the children would not tell their father about the assault for the Belgian's sake. Sam, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin, declined to speak to the Belgian, evasively suggesting it was a matter not for him but for the police. Indeed it might be, I said; apologized again for disturbing him at home, and left. The visit had lasted perhaps four minutes.

  As soon as Sam's door closed the Moroccan came at me out of the shadows on the landing. My first thought was that Sam retained a strong-arm man to beat up unwanted visitors. If the motive was robbery it failed. As terrorization it worked admirably. I was scared stiff: so bodily and mentally paralysed for a moment as to be unable either to move or think. The man had me by the lapels and was glaring into my eyes insanely. Why had I visited Cohen? he demanded, No, I wasn't getting into the lift: he intended I go down three flights of deserted marble stairs - precipitously, I suddenly sensed, if he could launch a kick from behind.

  Somehow I got into the lift. So did he. The doors were automatic. I managed to touch the button and to keep his hands off the emergency stop. His hands were more alarmingly occupied anyway: one now held me by the tie; the first two fingers of the other were spread in a V, threatening to gouge my eyes. This is almost ritual to Moroccan fighting. I had previously only experienced i
t in jest. The man's splayed fingers made feints an inch from my spectacle lenses like the fangs of a snake tensely poised before striking. It was unpleasant. Meanwhile he glared madly into my eyes: One reads that a man's eyes give warning of a violent blow or move a fraction of a second before it's made. There was no conscious preparation about my holding this man's stare now; it was instinctive.

  The- flashpoint where all-out violence could have occurred between myself and the Belgian that afternoon had come and gone within two seconds. This was different. We scuffled for more than five minutes and the flash-point was present all the time. I did not dare slug the man for fear of being worsted in what must ensue. He didn't lash out at me until he realized I was about to escape. Throughout this protracted hiatus fears secondary to those of bodily injury were constantly present: for my glasses and, ridiculously, for the lightweight jacket I had put on in order to feel more blimpishly British when confronting Sam. Had flashpoint been reached these fears must instantly have been forgotten.

  We struggled across the foyer and I had got the door open when he launched a kick intended for stomach or groin. It missed. Now he dived at me and we rolled across the pavement into the gutter. This absurd spectacle was my re-emergence as it greeted the waiting Daniel. And thank God he was waiting! My mysterious assailant disengaged himself.

  'Oh, was that your house agent, the friendly Mr Cohen?' Daniel asked with mock incredulity. The joke eased the tension.

  Motive for the attack remains obscure. Failure to swipe once, hard, and snatch seemed to preclude robbery; as did the man's attitude, which was one of quivering hatred. It was interesting that friends who smoked kif said he must have been drunk; those who drank that he must have been kiffed. I suspect it was neither. The most charitable explanation seemed to be that he was someone embittered by Cohen; or else, ironically, by something he supposed Cohen and myself mutually to represent.

  For me the attraction of the schoolboys was that I had had little contact with this age group of the educated class. I am a romantic. They were tomorrow's Moroccans. I had helped raise Niñ towards marriage and emigration. Meti, the similarly illiterate peasant, into a period of confused, repressed adolescence. I realized well enough that Thami, Omar and their friends represented a haven, which need only be a change, for my own mind. One could not leave a written note for Med. For four years we talked in pidgin Moghrebi. There had been mutual happiness, on my part sometimes blessed self-forgetfulness. in our attempts to accommodate even to the most basic facts about each other's worlds.

  'D'you know someone called Angus Stewart?' the twelve-year-old Thami asked in French with quizzical cock of eyebrow, the first time a contemporary brought him to call.

  'He's me, as you know, having just read it on the door.' In western countries, used to a degree of literacy, the simple delight inherent in this achievement is perhaps difficult to understand. It's as though a Swindon kitten were to thank the pensioner in Russian for its meal.

  I was sitting on a goatpath where the land falls steeply from the Kasbah to the sea. Elizabeth Longford's biography of Wellington lay on the grass while I sought comfort from the discovery that the acid baths prescribed for the Iron Duke's skin affliction had burnt his towels. My towels were burnt too. Similarly afflicted I'd been ruthlessly soaking my hands in potassium permanganate and they were the colour of kippers. but also resembled kippers split by boiling. Over my shoulder a voice read haltingly: 'The Years of the Sw . . . Sw . . .' 'Sword,' I said, looking round; and pointing to one on the book's cover explained that the 'w' was unpronounced rather like the 'k' in Boukhalf, Tangier's airport, or the girl's name Khemo.

  The student proved to be Bachir, a thoughtful boy of fourteen. A taxi took us to my flat, where we made coffee. When Bachir left we arranged no further date. But about 1.00 p.m. next day there was a tapping on my door. 'These,' announced Bachir, 'are my schoolfriends, Larbi, and Thami.'

  All were neatly dressed. Thami carried a briefcase: it proved to be the school lunch break. They had evidently elected to use seven flights of stairs rather than the lift, and were to continue to do so. The westerner in me metaphorically closed his eyes and groaned: the natural man automatically asked the boys in. I had no illusions about how my neighbours would regard the visit. When Thami began bringing his mystic and beautiful older brother, Omar; Bachir, a blue-eyed Spanish half-caste, Badruddin, extrovert and pretty as the sun; Thami and Omar their cousin, Abdeltif; Bachir, again, a Soussi with a genius for conjuring tricks . . . even the boys themselves began to suspect tabus were being violated. There was sadness about this loss of innocence. It is a truth of life that while a man may have a single mistress, lover, wife or perhaps merely friend, half a dozen or more of a species can arouse deep animosity in his fellows. This law is exacerbated where the man's neighbours are a childless colonial couple and the species indigenous but, horror, pinky-brown small boys.

  Complaint once more spread from the Belgians to the Spanish portera to that much harassed businessman, Sam, agent of absentee landlords. Their common interest was the 'respectability' of the building. It was being invaded, By natives. The fact that the alien species was half a dozen quiet and (I shudder to use the word) respectful children visiting upon rightful occasion was immaterial, Among higher animals, as lower, threat to territorial sovereignty results in confrontation. Had we been lower animals, either the neighbours or myself must have cleared out; with little, probably no bloodshed. But humans, in theory, can defuse such explosive situations with intelligence. And often with humour.

  'Cohen?' (I said to Sam on the phone) 'This building is obscurely numbered, and no street plaque exists.'

  'Yes.'

  'May I put up a brass plate below the chiropodist's reading: "Number—; Rue—; dogs, but no Moroccan children admitted"? (I'd had a trouser-leg raped by a resident poodle a couple of days previously.)

  'Mr Stewart, I do not understand.'

  He did. The response reflected Sam's politic evasion, rather than grasp of irony.

  I thinned the ranks of Thami and Omar's schoolfriends rather brutally. Although two years younger. Thami was the leader of the brothers. 'You and Omar can come for coffee,' I said. 'Do not bring your friends and relations. I don't bring my Christian friends uninvited to visit your father's house.'

  Bachir and some of his other friends compromised themselves extraordinarily. The incident made toughness easier for mc; but would have been a legitimate cause for the Belgians to complain had they not happened to be out, 'M. and Madame are at the cinema’, the note on their door read. At 10.15 one night Bachir and two companions commenced a shrill whistling in the street below. The downstairs door was by then locked; and as we emphatically had no appointment for that hour I ignored such a summons, turning out the lights. The whistles went on to be succeeded some twenty minutes later by peals of my doorbell. Suspecting the portera, and by now thoroughly paranoid, I hid under the bedclothes; idiotically not realizing that only Moroccans have the patience to ring an unanswered bell for half an hour. Tiptoeing to the door, I opened it smartly. There, totally unabashed, were Bachir and his two companions. It was no time to ask them who had let them into the locked building. Angry and incredulous as any Moroccan would have been in the situation (precisely the folly I'd committed myself in the oasis at Tiznit), I told them to get the hell out. A couple of days later I ran into Bachir on the Boulevard and told him he had behaved insanely and knew it. He was not to visit my flat again: the ban was on his friends as well.

  This was sad, but had to be done. Thami and Omar, temperamentally incapable of such idiocy, continued to visit. Meanwhile there had been happier times for the whole crowd. On a couple of days a week my flat became a free coffee bar during the two-and-a-half-hour school lunch break. Songs were unself-consciously recorded and played back. Cricket, with seasoned French loaf and ping-pong ball, was reintroduced on the terrace. Thami and Omar's father owned a substantial confectionery business, cousin Abdeltif’s father was 'a captain of police', Bachir's
a real-estate agent, Badruddin's a postman, and the Soussi's, naturally enough, a shopkeeper.

  Omar's introduction was delightful. He was bashfully persuaded to pull from about his neck a Koranic text worked in enamel and silver. 'Omar loves God very much,' his friends solemnly explained. Omar blushed deeply; then curled up on the mtarrba with his face in his hands. He spoke little, and was awarded a ballpoint impressively stamped The Sunday Times, as a result of having absent-mindedly borrowed it and equally absent-mindedly returned it. Bachir absent-mindedly borrowed a 'superball' of high-density plastic, sometime property of Meti, and allegedly gave it to his little sister. He and Thami had previously bought me three loose finger plasters so the unusual trading ethics were not usefully to be remarked upon. The Soussi sold me a murderously sprung bird gin for a dirham; then threw in the explanation of a conjuring trick as a bonus.