"You know there aren't many women onboard," Janie continued with a snuffle. "Certain... people... want to keep the few white girls for themselves. Tell me that's not true!"
The chief only replied with a desultory, "Come on, let's go."
"Janie works for me," I interrupted. "Why was I not notified of this?"
"You'll have to take that up with the hotel director," the chief said. "Ship security takes precedence over everything else. Come on."
I watched them depart, then high-tailed it to Francois' office.
"There's nothing I can do," Francois said minutes later. The sunlight streamed into his office, making his too-black curls glisten. His posture was relaxed, his expression unreadable, his hands clasped upon the desk.
"But she's my employee!" I protested. "Why was I not involved in this? I want to see the proof."
"She is my employee," Francois corrected calmly. "Your company owns the stock and rents the space. The staff is grandfathered in for the duration of their contracts—natural expiration or otherwise. At that time Sundance is free to bring on whomever they hire. That is why you were not notified."
"I see," I said slowly. Francois was one of the most professional and impressive men I had worked with. There was no way in hell I could outmaneuver him. If he had been behind this highly suspect firing, I would never know. In a much more subdued manner I asked, "Have you seen the proof?"
"I'm not at liberty to share any of the details," Francois said. "As far as you are concerned, you will continue in your honorary role overseeing the operations. Melanie will be taking over for the duration of her contract."
I didn't say anything for awhile. Francois did not seem pressed to fill the silence. Only after several minutes had passed did he say gently, "Situations like this are hard on everybody. I'm sorry."
I didn't believe for one second that Janie had actually been stealing cartons of cigarettes. Something else was going on, and I agreed that most likely somebody had pushed her out for unprofessional reasons. Whether that was because she slept with Asians was merely Janie's interpretation. But her reasoning was not outside the realm of possibility. Most cruise ships not only tolerated interracial couples, they were in fact the norm. She and I were both used to that from working the big ships.
But this wasn't one of the big ships. Wind Surf was just a small town floating in the middle of nowhere. Everybody in charge on Wind Surf was European, and they had no universal claim of 'all men are created equal'. Taken as a whole, Europeans were heavily ethnocentric and just as racially prejudiced as Americans. I couldn't fathom anyone having any other issue with Janie. The numbers her gift shop put up were above board, if below expectation. I knew it well because I was tasked with double checking the damn thing every cruise. Further, she went above and beyond to keep her staff motivated and involved with shipboard activities. Down to her very core, Janie was a cheerleader. And every man wanted a cheerleader.
Was the culprit Francois, Barney, or Emmet? Only those three had the authority to fire Janie, other than the captain himself, who seemed above such things. My first thought was that Francois didn't particularly like Janie because she wasn't making her goals. But to falsely accuse her of theft seemed back-handed and insidious. That was not his style. He was a pit bull. Further, Janie had specifically accused the officers general of having ulterior motives. That led me to think of Barney. He was the young, handsome man who seemed to have his eye on the women. Emmet's only lady was obviously Wind Surf. I liked Barney a lot and it seemed odd that he would conspire to fire a fellow Canadian. None of it added up. But one thing was clear.
Something was rotten on Wind Surf.
Chapter 14. Tangiers, Morocco
1
Ahh... Morocco! Gateway into Africa and the fabled sands of the Sahara; land of spices and carpets, of sweet tajines and orange-rubbed couscous; a multi-cultural land, conquered and reclaimed and conquered again. Yes, everybody wanted Morocco. And I wanted it, too: date palms, camels, and kasbahs. I wanted to see one of the most exotic spots on Earth.
Tangiers was the northernmost city of all of Africa. Want the Atlantic? On your left. Lookin' for hot Mediterranean nights? Look right. Straight across rose the Rock, a scant seven miles across the Strait of Gibraltar. The amount of terror that has passed through that stretch defies imagination, from Nazi U-boat wolf packs to Napoleon's dread fleet, the Barbary pirates to the Spanish Armada.
Water hides its scars. Not so, the land: the successive waves of conquerors all left their mark. The sight of men wearing beards and turbans begat false ideas of Islamic isolationism. Morocco was a shockingly multi-cultural nation. In fact, when famed author George Orwell visited Tangiers in 1938, he noted post offices representing four distinctly different governments; he even bought British stamps using French coins.
The city started all messy, too. It was founded by none other than the son of Greek gods Poseidon and Earth. His name was Antaeus, but nobody cares about that. Of more interest is that he was killed by Hercules—by suffocation, no less. How one can suffocate the son of gods is logistically problematic, but stuff like that never bothered Hercules. He then proceeded to separate Africa and Europe—with a single blow, no less. The result of all this machismo was that Hercules took the city Antaeus founded. He also took the daughter he sired. But Hercules was a busy man, too busy even to enjoy such booty—pun intended—so he gave the woman to his son for a bride. Her name, Tinge, became the name Tangiers. All the best stories involved Greek gods and demigods. Or at least togas.
But for those who prefer a more secular history, know then that Phoenicians founded the place. After Carthage fell, Tingis—as it was then called—became a Roman outpost. Various rulers came and went after that, until the fateful year of 711. That's when Tarik ibn Zayid took his armies through Tangiers to conquer Spain. It took over 750 years to get them out. That's right: they remained undefeated for three times longer than the entire history of the United States.
So Tangiers was an old, old city with a surprising past. Some parts were strikingly modern, others not. Its high-rise buildings did not particularly interest me. Its three-millennia-old kasbah did. But if there was anything I had learned about travel, it was that you don't know what you don't know. That applies to everything in life, but particularly so in travel. I did not know what Tangiers, or Morocco itself, had to offer. I wanted to learn. Thus I hosted forty passengers from Wind Surf on a tour to find out.
It was hot outside. I figured it would be because we were, like, in the Sahara Desert. You know, the world's largest and most famous desert? Seeing nothing but sand and palms and Arabs was also a clue. Apparently such a supposition was not so obvious, based upon the gripes. Fortunately we were outfitted with a huge, modern bus with an effective air conditioner.
While the last passengers squeezed their collectively complaining bulk into the wide, cushy seats, I waited beside the guide. Hassan was a man who stood out in a crowd. He was tall and robustly chested, his skin dark, mustache wide, and face extremely handsome. His wardrobe was equally enchanting, with a floor-length jellaba flaunting grey and black vertical stripes, fez to match. His rich baritone voice fluently spoke five languages. I looked forward to hearing what this man had to share about his unique and world-famous home.
I was the only one. For within fifteen seconds of sitting down—almost as fast as Natalie gets bored in a train—the entire front three rows of passengers began spewing racial slurs at our guide.
A few of the jokes were only light barbs, such as 'never trust a man in a dress.' Tacky and rude, to be sure, but not particularly hurtful. Those were the exception. The rule was downright evil. Only Osama bin Laden himself deserved such hate. Of course Hassan had done nothing to these middle-aged Americans of above average income and above average waistline. Through the lash of insults he sat quietly, eyes straight ahead. Hassan took each blow with tremendous dignity, only flinching when someone shouted, "Your mother fucks camels!"
Someone started singing
"Proud to be an American." Others joined in. Funny how at that moment I felt exactly opposite.
Our first stop was a nearby town called Tetouan: a creamy smear of white-washed cottages filling a valley of eucalyptus, cypress, and orange trees. It claimed the distinction of having been so over-run with corsairs that, in 1399, King Henry III of Spain said "screw it" and razed the entire city to the ground. It remained scorched earth for another two hundred years. Only when the Jews and Muslims together fled the Spanish Inquisition did it get rebuilt by the refugees.
Americans love pirate stories. Some of us are attracted by the ultimate expression of personal freedom. Who doesn't want to hack apart their cubicle with a cutlass, or punch the face of an irrational guest? That hell-may-care attitude lurks within us all. Yet America has little enough pirate history of our own. Hassan shared Morocco's, narrating the romantic tales of derring-do with a thundering voice. I thought it was fascinating to hear about real pirates and see real pirate coves. Alas, nobody else heard anything after Hassan said the 'I' word.
Inquisition.
The bus shook with righteous fury as all the men and women cheered and jeered. Oh, how proud they were of the Inquisition for torturing and slaughtering Muslims. The fact that the church did it almost entirely to Christians—whose property they intended to steal—didn't faze the crowd in the least. They were gleeful to be reminded of the good ol' days when Christianity scared the bejesus out of everyone, especially Christians. And now that it was 2005, by God, it was America's time to start it all over again. Booyah!
Hassan urged the bus driver to escape the hate by skirting the beautiful Bay of Tangiers. The blue waters did, indeed, calm the rhetoric. But the busload of Ugly Americans had become impatient. They were hot and they were hungry and they were thirsty. They were bored of the desert and bored of the ocean and bored of the history. They wanted a shopping mall. Hassan ordered the driver to return to the city.
We passed a school and Hassan explained that in Morocco students were required to learn three languages. Nobody cared because "American is the only language that matters." We passed the lush Mendoubia Gardens, but nobody cared because it was "just a big park." We toured the Spanish-built Grand Socco marketplace, but nobody cared because it "looked Mexican." Exasperated, Hassan asked me what the guests actually wanted to see. Before I could answer, a man shouted "anything but rag-heads playing big city."
Finally Hassan dumped everybody off at the medina. Here was something utterly unlike anything the crowd had back home. Here, crowded within walls 3,000 years old, were spice traders and rug merchants; here were fire eaters, snake charmers, and belly dancers. "Come with me to the kasbah," ran the famous line. Though originally used as a trailer for the film Algiers—which itself prompted the making of Casablanca—the line was arguably more famous for being used by the cartoon skunk Pepé le Pew. This was all pretty exotic stuff, but apparently it was a lot more fun to mock the lack of Western-style infrastructure.
"Oh, the Walmart is around the corner, I'm sure. Ha ha!"
"How dumb these people are! Who cares how many languages you know if you haven't heard of Krispy Kreme!"
We labored through streets labyrinthine and narrow, through cramped stairwells, and through thick crowds. The streets were intentionally not wide, not straight, and not on a grid. Hassan explained that this was because they were designed by Phoenicians—a thousand years before Christ—in an effort to protect against invaders. The Ugly Americans had a much simpler explanation: "Before Jesus, people were so stupid."
Everyone complained bitterly and viciously about the lack of elevators and escalators. Though the tour was advertised as 'extremely strenuous,' over a dozen from the group were incapable of walking up a single flight of steps because they were so overweight. They complained loudly the whole time about how "foreign countries just don't understand American needs." In their creative efforts to avoid even a handful of steps, people became separated from the group. I had extreme difficulty keeping them together. Fortunately their bitching was loud enough to stand out in the crowd.
A boy of about twelve, barefoot and shirtless but clean, tried selling a bottle of Coca Cola for a dollar. He presented it to a forty-something woman of monstrous proportions and monstrous demeanor. And how did this American lady react to the boy's entrepreneurship? As if he was deaf, she literally shouted at him, "Why can't you speak English, like the rest of the world? I don't care if you speak three languages! You want our money or not? America has more money then Spain or France... learn English!"
Eventually the loathsome tourists were returned to the ship. They jostled and shoved their way out the front of the bus. The final guest contemptuously complained about the lack of acceptable souvenirs: "Not a single T-shirt shop!"
Hassan remained on the bus. He sat in the front row, hands resting gently in his lap, staring straight ahead. To the window he spoke, as if in a daze, "Nobody even looked out the windows. We drove past the summer home of the King of Saudi Arabia. So many beautiful buildings. Nobody wanted to see the new soccer stadium or the university that features seven different languages. Not one person tried the food."
Finally he looked up at me, and asked, "Why did they come here? All they will remember is the old, dirty kasbah, which hasn't changed in 3,000 years. They will think this is all Morocco is. They will claim to know, but they don't know. They had a chance to learn. I just don't understand why they came here."
Mark Twain famously said, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people sorely need it on these accounts." But when you've already made up your mind, it doesn't matter where you are: you see what you expect to see. I had seen Ugly Americans before, but not like this. This wasn't ethnocentrism: this was hate for another way of life. America was at war with 'terror'—a vague phrase intentionally never clarified. But everybody knew an Arab man hurt us on 9/11, thus Arab men were the enemy. It was really that simple. Most Americans were too ignorant to know that a turban does not an Arab make, any more than a beard does.
And that's what really had me fuming. Not just the blatant rudeness and belligerence, but the sheer stupidity.
We had the greatest volume of wealth on the planet Earth... so why were we so embarrassingly stupid? We had no excuse for such ignorance. These 'rag-heads playing big city' required their students to be fluent in three languages to graduate. 20% of American high school graduates can't even read—English or otherwise. In fact, nearly 1 in 4 Americans can only read at a childish 5th grade level. Our math skills rank 21 out of 23. That's not a slip from the top: that's a plummet. That's a pathetic display of effort.
Our forefathers worked their butts off to give us more opportunity than they had. After scratching out a meager existence during the entire decade of the Great Depression, they went on to win the greatest war in the history of all humankind. And their children, raised fat and happy in houses two and a half times bigger—and with access to computers—can't handle four lousy years of college? When I graduated in 1995, America ranked 2nd on the planet for college graduation. Twelve short years later we dropped to 13th.
People like to blame politicians, blame corporations. I blame reality TV. We are all wrong. The dumbing down of America rests squarely upon the shoulders of those who demand nothing of themselves and even less of their children. Who to blame stares us in the mirror every day. Effort became passé, comfort became king. These Ugly Americans displayed the arrogance of spoiled children gloating over the accomplishments of their forefathers. I would argue that the privileged mocking the unprivileged is not an American virtue. But as has been so clearly demonstrated, I am wrong.
2
Terrorism struck the ship that day. Security wasn't technically breached because there was none. I can't fathom why that was. Usually a few security officers wander the pier to prevent any illicit boardings. Usually. But not today! I can imagine them letting security slide in, say, Monte Carlo... but in a third world Arabic port? That's a curious om
ission. But forget security they did, and into the ship someone got.
Emmet was the first to see the culprit. He'd been hanging over the side of the ship, painting the hull. Most ports did not allow the painting of moored vessels due to environmental concerns—dripping paint and whatnot—but Tangiers was not exactly enlightened. Thus Emmet was out in his boiler suit all day, paint dribbles streaking across his pretty face like Jackson Pollock touching up Mona Lisa.
From his vantage on high, Emmet caught sight of someone shimmying up a mooring line to squeeze through a porthole. No, it wasn't Captain Turner. Security caught the man within minutes, of course, hiding in the dining room. He was not an Islamic jihadist baby-killing devil, but just a desperate local boy willing to take a risk for a better life. For a young Mr. Turner, it was an admirable feat. For this young man, it was a deplorable overreach. He was escorted off without any hassles or reprisals.
Because security—or lack thereof—had been breached, a full security sweep was warranted. I was ordered to complete a thorough check of everything under my jurisdiction, which meant searching for bombs in my art lockers, the gift shop, and all our storage. That didn't take long. Searching under all the animal hats in my cabin took forever. Interestingly, Eddie was asked to dive with Emmet to check the hull for explosives. Certainly Eddie was happy to undertake the task, knowing how good it would look on his application as diver for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Having the full faith of a senior officer in searching out bomb threats in foreign ports was nothing to sneeze at. They didn't find any bombs, of course.
Unfortunately for Eddie, that full faith didn't help when the hammer fell.
3
Mt. Capanne is the tallest mountain in all of Livorno province, Tuscany. At the top one is toe to toe with the gods. This may seem a bold claim for a peak standing only 3,343 feet (1,019 meters), but it is not one made blithely. I'd climbed dozens of mountains on multiple continents and never before felt so much like a Greek god atop Mt. Olympus—not even when I was atop Mt. Olympus! Part of the charm is that Mt. Capanne is not on the mainland, but actually rises from the Isle of Elba. The sea punctuates the experience, with islets dotting the I's and peninsulas crossing the T's. Perhaps the real reason for feeling so divine is how you get to the top: you fly.
High Seas Drifter (Cruise Confidential 4) Page 21