We sailed again shortly after midnight, which means we’ll be late getting into Gibraltar, maybe we won’t arrive till after dark. Now we’re going through the fuss and nuisance of tipping—who shall get how much? No land in sight, but quite a lot of tankers and fishing boats.
October 28. Here we are, on board a boat called the Monte Calpe, crossing the straits from Gilbraltar to Tangier. We only left the Saturnia last night at 7:00, but already we seem completely transplanted from a first-class to a second- or third-class world.
Leaving the Saturnia was, of course, interminable. We packed, stood around, were told to wait upstairs, downstairs, upstairs again. Don was angelic—as he has been throughout this voyage—and did all the tipping himself.
We found we couldn’t get a room in the good hotel “The Rock,” nor in the middling hotel “The Bristol,” so we had to be content with “The Grand,” which isn’t. But the manager was one of the most charming and helpful hotelkeepers I have ever met. And the food wasn’t bad.
We went into a bar called the Café Universal which was crowded with sailors, British and Australian, as well as a few Latin-looking civilians, some of whom may have been pimps. As we drank our warm whiskey, a man beside me crashed over on to the floor and lay there. He seemed drunk, but Don noticed that the mouths of his two friends were twitching as if from dope. Many of the sailors were staggering drunk. A few camped, hugged each other, mouthed kisses and executed hula dances. All this in spite of shore patrol and M.P.s outside. A bunch of sturdy, horse- or pig-faced little whores executed Spanish dances with great goodwill and were deafeningly applauded. Huge photographs of [Queen] Elizabeth and [Prince] Philip looked down on the scene. They were both facing toward the left—which made it look as if Philip had made an off-color remark and Elizabeth had turned away from him in disgust.
Our bedroom was of the interior Spanish kind, with windows opening on to a staircase. Every sound made by anybody in any of the rooms was clearly aubible. The man and woman going to bed next door might just as well have been going to bed with us. On top of this, my cough came back, together with grave suspicions that I have crabs—God knows how. However, we got to sleep somehow, and I dreamed, quite sympathetically, of Peggy.
The breakfast tea and the mealy sausages were as British as the uniformed father of three giggling transparent-skinned charming skinny little children at the next table. And yet the Grand Hotel is pure Moorish, and Spanish seems to be spoken far more frequently than English in this town. It would be fascinating to stay here for several weeks and study the cultural tangle—the dark Spanish faces under the helmets of London bobbies—one of them wished us “all the best” as we were leaving.
Amazing to think that I visited this place with Heinz—twenty-one years ago?
October 30. I can’t hope to record more than the tiniest fraction of what has happened to us since we got here. So I’ll take for granted Tangier itself—the Casbah; the veiled women and baggy-pant men, the Minzah hotel where we’re staying—although this alone is absorbing and quite as good or better than I remembered from our visit to Ceuta and Tetuán: the mélange here is richer and more exciting.
We met Herbert List by accident outside the British post office, where we’d gone to contact Paul Bowles. Herbert is traveling with a German boy named Robert Furst240, a pretty, fluffy-haired blond with spots and a tendency to sulk. More of this later. The point is that we did meet Paul, and he invited us to his apartment—a very grand penthouse at the top of a big building—and there we ate majoon and smoked kif. That was the night before last, and already the full sharpness of the experience is fading. I’ll note down as much as I can.
The drug was prepared by Ahmed [Yacoubi], Paul’s Arab friend, who is a painter. He is a curiously powerful person—his father and grandfather were healers and Paul says that Ahmed is one of the best doctors he has ever met. Whether his power is used entirely for good—that’s the question.
Also present with Paul, Ahmed, Don and myself were two Americans, who have both taken this stuff fairly often. A special room is dedicated to the smoking—with black mattresses and pillows (very hard ones) on the floor, and brightly colored Arab hangings around the lower part of the walls—purple, orange and green.
Ahmed showed us a wonderful kif pipe, hung with all sorts of charms and amulets of gold, silver and cowrie shell. Ahmed had long coveted this pipe, which belonged to an old Negro who wouldn’t sell it. Then, a few days ago, the Negro suddenly let him have it, quite cheap. And the next morning he died, while saying his prayers in the mosque.
Majoon looks and tastes rather like Christmas pudding.241 Kif smells like cut grass in the catcher of a lawn mower. (I notice that, as I now begin the description of the intoxication, I feel an extreme unwillingness to continue—a slight fear, even.) The majoon is eaten from a tiny coffee spoon. The kif is smoked. I ate only two spoonfuls of majoon and took a few puffs from the pipe—being careful to inhale very little.
Symptoms began for me about an hour later—around 10:00 p.m. From the first, they were unpleasant. Dizziness. Claustrophobia. Acute nervous tension. I had to get up, leave the little room, go outside on the balcony. I was aware that part of me was fighting the action of the drug, but I couldn’t let myself go with it. Paul played music on the phonograph, and this I hated. I hated also the gossip of the two Americans, who were bitching everybody in Tangier. I wanted silence, or some talk about God. And, at the same time, I was critical of myself—thinking that I was playing the part of a “pure soul” who feels defilement from contact with the impure.
Now the room became distorted—sometimes it opened out one way, sometimes another. The wall behind my head seemed immensely tall or perhaps nonexistent. All kinds of objects and thoughts were experienced discontinuously, like pieces in a kaleidoscope. However, there was no change in color perception, the patterns on the wall did not increase in significance, and I had no special perceptions about the people I was with—as described by the mescaline takers.
Only—and this brings me to the most important feature—a sense of the relative intensities of relationships was very strong. Don seemed very much more present—even more distinct and larger—than anyone else in the room. I didn’t mind Paul’s being there—though he seemed a bit futile. But I really resented the other two, with their trivial chatter. Ahmed came in and out, like a male nurse, bringing soup and other food. He was indefatigable. He had changed into Moorish clothes, bag-trousers and an open sleeveless jacket, which showed his brown, beautifully made body. He smiled with rather mocking amusement at my intoxication. I don’t think he took much himself.
I’m fairly certain that, if I had taken this stuff among real friends, the effect would have been quite different. As it was, I saw myself now as a pretty wretched creature, scared, claustrophobic, utterly insecure. I was afraid they would leave me alone. I was afraid of what lay outside our circle. I was aware that I was terrified of being on my own. Yet I was able to speak of this to Paul—in the intervals when I could talk lucidly. The rest of the time, the words wouldn’t come out, or were hindered by a huge disinclination to say anything.
Ahmed played an Arab flute—beautifully. So, later, did Paul. But none of that was really to the point, for me. And when Paul made dopey aesthetic remarks to the others, I was merely irritated. (I should remark that the two Americans appeared to be placidly enjoying themselves. They even drank gin while they smoked.) Then Paul and one of the Americans talked Arabic. This bothered me because I kept trying to understand it—to relate it to some language I knew: oddly enough, it often sounded like Yiddish. Throughout this experience, it was peculiarly unpleasant to feel my mind racing so fast. It made me horribly tired. And now it became more and more noticeable how slowly time was moving. I kept looking at my watch and checking this.
I told Paul and Ahmed I was scared—though Don says I seemed quite calm and even relaxed. Ahmed offered to get me out of the intoxication—which you can do, he says, by drinking a mixture of lemon, sugar, h
ot water and salt. But I refused, several times. I’m very glad, now that I did.
All this while, Don had said that he felt absolutely no reactions. So they gave him more majoon—four spoons in all—and several puffs of kif, both in the pipe and in cigarettes where it was mixed with tobacco. My feeling toward Don became my one reassurance; but it was selfish of me to tell him I was scared, because naturally he began to dread the moment when the drug would take effect on him.
Then, shortly before midnight, it did.
He began to be very disturbed, almost at once. And soon he told me we must go home—immediately. He was scared. They were plotting against us. Ahmed was a witch. At the same time, he was horrified because he was aware that these feelings might be entirely subjective—which would mean that he was going insane, like Ted.
I now realized what I should have known from the start—that I ought never to have let Don take the stuff. Because the whole Ted problem now came up to the surface. And yet, in another way, it was good that he did take it, because he passed through the experience and to some degree overcame it.
Well, Don said we must go and that Paul mustn’t come down with us in the elevator—“I want to be alone with Chris.” So Paul had to wait until we’d reached the ground floor and then get the elevator up and come down with it. While we were waiting for him was one of the very worst moments, because I thought Don would begin screaming if he couldn’t get outside. And I knew that if he began screaming I would probably scream too. That was what was so awful about the next two hours—I had to reassure Don while I myself was at the height of my intoxication.
We walked quite some distance and then saw a cop in the distance. Don was talking very loud about the conspiracy, but when I warned him to talk more quietly he did so immediately—one isn’t irresponsible the same way as when drunk on alcohol. Then a taxi came and we took it to the hotel. I had a moment of terrified suspicion (these suspicions are said to be symptomatic) that maybe the taxi driver was an agent of Paul’s and would take us back to his apartment. I know if I’d told Don this he would have jumped out of the taxi.
The final phase, in our hotel room, was the worst and yet the most reassuring—because I saw that the relationship between two people can be a rock to which they cling in the midst of chaos. Don kept getting the horrors—and I kept telling him, and he kept repeating: “We went to Paul Bowles’s and got high on hashish—that’s all—we’re high on hashish.” Don was terrified, however, that this, like all the rest of his experiences, was illusory. He hadn’t taken hashish, wasn’t in Tangier, was in fact still back in California, and insane. And I, while trying to keep him calm—several times I thought he’d rush screaming and crying into the passage and maybe out into the street—was having the most alarming time illusions. Once, after a long conversation, I looked at my watch and found it hadn’t moved at all. Then I thought, I really am insane, and I began sweating and trembling. But I couldn’t tell Don this. I still can’t imagine how the time illusion works, because I’m certain the conversation really did take place.
We got back to the hotel around midnight, and the intoxication continued until 2:30 approximately. Toward the end of this time, I was fairly continuously conscious that I had taken hashish and that my experiences were subjective, but I was afraid, almost to the end, of putting out the electric light. We slept about eight hours and woke without a hangover of any kind. But I felt tired all yesterday and a little dizzy. I feel that a new and very strong bond exists between Don and myself. This is a tremendous experience we’ve shared. And I must say that Don showed willpower of really heroic proportions. He fought the horrors all the way. No doubt this isn’t the best way to deal with them—but it was still very courageous and touching.
November 1. On board the Andrea Doria. We embarked from Gilbraltar last night. Tomorrow afternoon, we’re scheduled to disembark in Naples.
At present, our reactions to this ship—or at least the first class—are extremely negative. It is far grander and even stuffier than the Saturnia. Being relatively modern, its decor is inspired by Picasso, Miro and [Eugene] Berman, rather than art nouveau. The swimming pool is surrounded by abstract shapes. Perhaps the best thing that can be said for this ship is that the second and third classes seem quite grand too, in their degrees—both have swimming pools. Also, the library includes a copy of Prater Violet! Oh yes—and Ramon Novarro242 is among the passengers. Don spotted him at once.
Oddly enough, the boat, in these supposedly sheltered waters, is rolling quite heavily.
But I must try to set down a few more impressions of Tangier.
Saturday the 29th, we spent mostly in resting up from the hashish experience. In the afternoon, Herbert List and Robert drove us out in their Volkswagen to the Caves of Hercules. It’s a magnificent wild spot facing out to the Atlantic. Down in one of the caves there is a great hole full of foam suds from the waves that kept bursting in through the entrance. Arabs crouch in the darkness with home made lamps to guide you, and clamor for pesetas. Herbert thinks the caves were once sacred to a cult of Hercules.
During this, and our other outings, Herbert and Robert bickered spasmodically. Robert is pretty pleased with himself and plays the spoilt darling. Herbert consistently strikes the wrong note. He is indulgent when he should be quite brutal or indifferent.
We had supper that night with a Frenchman who told us about wonderful places in the Sahara—an oasis where there’s a camel market, and you see white camels, driven in from all quarters of the desert.
On Sunday, we had lunch with Jane and Paul Bowles, and Ahmed, who no longer seemed the least sinister. Jane took us to her house in the Casbah—formerly occupied by Paul. As in many of them (I imagine) the staircase was so narrow that you could barely squeeze up it, and most of the rooms would barely hold three people. But when you got up on to the tiny rooftop, it was wonderful—you looked all over the harbor and the hills, and down into the maze of alleys, beautified, with wonderful haphazard beauty, by touches of blue standing out amidst the prevailing orange-yellow. I think if you got the horrors in that house you’d really go crazy.
Jane Bowles is such a strange little person, full of fears and yet somehow sly and even a little mocking. There was much discussion as to whether she could spend a night alone in the house. Her servant was away, but still she couldn’t leave her Siamese cat. Paul was very patient and concerned about all of this, and we felt that he really is fond of her.
One of the things Jane was afraid about was the Arabs. This was the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, but their excitement is due to the return of the sultan who defied the French.243 All through the weekend, there were demonstrations in his favor—mostly by quite young people, who were being quite visibly urged on by agitators amongst the crowd. In each procession, the sultan’s picture was carried by a girl, riding on a boy’s shoulders. Don got a good movie picture of some of them as they passed our hotel window. A little boy threatened to throw a stone at him, but didn’t. Finally, on the Sunday evening, the police got alarmed and exploded two tear-gas bombs on the square. They made a terrific detonation, and one of them blew open a window of the hotel bar where we were sitting, listening to a man named George Grieves telling us how Gerald Hamilton had been run out of Tangier for passing bad checks. Up on the square, the police had fire carts with hoses, to disperse the crowd—a rather meaningless threat, since most people must have been wet through from the constant heavy showers that fell throughout the weekend. Actually, I don’t believe that the demonstrations were at all dangerous, anyway.
One of our greatest experiences in Tangier was a visit to the Thousand and One restaurant. This is an old Arab house, beautifully decorated by a painter named Brion Gysin.244 They serve genuine Arab food—couscous and so forth. We went there on Sunday night with Herbert and Robert. There is an orchestra and they have two dancing boys—they are trained to perform at weddings. The boys were very interesting to watch—their negligent grace, their vague yet exact gestures, their de
licately mocking salutes when you gave them money, which they placed in their turbans. Their hip movements and flirtatious play with their scarves is exquisitely campy and yet essentially masculine: this is in no sense a drag show. In the most beautiful of the dances, the boy carries a whole tray of glasses and lights on his head. Later the boys sang with one of the musicians, and I felt they were really enjoying themselves. There were also two tumblers, a man and a boy.
Later we met Jamie Caffery,245 who is living here with David Herbert.246 Jamie looks shockingly older. He was very friendly, and saw us off on the boat yesterday, back to Gibraltar.
All of the people we met in Tangier had taken hashish at one time or another—and I was surprised, when I described our unpleasant symptoms—to find that they had had them too. Only Jane said she wouldn’t take it again. I seemed to detect, in the attitude of the others, a certain disapproval of my weakness and cowardice in being ready to give up. Herbert actually wanted us to smoke kif on Sunday night, and Paul half-seriously offered to give us some majoon to take with us.
I think there is a definite association in my mind, now, of the majoon experience with Arab culture. Because I find myself now regarding the Arab culture as sinister and rather frightening. Its rigidity and extreme formalism scare me, and I can imagine myself mentally trapped within the patterns of its arabesques. Like the drug, it makes me feel claustrophobic.
November 6. Now we’re well and truly in the midst of our travels—at the moment on board a steamer, going to Capri. And, as usual, when one is doing the sights, there’s hardly anything to write.
We disembarked at Naples on the 2nd, in pouring rain, and felt miserable. But since then the weather has been fine, though misty. The next day we went over to Ischia and saw Chester [Kallman]. Wystan’s new house is even more squalid and unattractive than I’d expected.247 Chester was very nice—over anxious, perhaps, to be pleasant—since, as he confessed, he still feels I’m critical of him after all these years.
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 81