Published 20 Nov 2016
Algeciras, Spain
To reach Algeciras, my two sons and I flew to Málaga and then took a bus down the coast to this southernmost city of Spain, where my plan was to board a ferry for Tangier, which would be the starting point for a tour of Morocco. We spent the night in a hotel just opposite the port,
View From our Hotel Window
and next day we just crossed the road outside to the ferry terminal.
After negotiating the complex boarding formula inside, we passed outside again into blazing sunshine, dogging the footsteps of our fellow passengers along a railed walkway leading to the broad white hull of the passenger ship IBN BATTOUTA and a narrow, rickety wooden ramp that spanned the gap between the ship and the shore.
The Ibn Battouta
By turns, we crept warily across the narrow chasm, burdened with our baggage, and stepped prudently through a rectangular opening into the dim interior, where an attendant devoutly collected our boarding passes. Then, taking our cue from others, we approached a constricted opening and passed our bags to an elderly fellow dressed in a djellaba and skull cap, who stashed them on a wooden rack behind.
We headed then to the bar-cafeteria to quaff a little liquid refreshment before emerging on deck to watch the casting off, scheduled for 12 noon.
But noon came and went in absence of any sign of movement. From the stern rail the view presented a couple of docked vessels and several dockside cranes with arms raised high into the sky. And in the distance, seemingly moored like an immense crazy-shaped ship itself, rose the faintly grey Rock of Gibraltar.
The Rock of Gibraltar Viewed from Algeciras Harbour
At last the cranes began a dreamy slide in our direction as our ship drifted to the harbour end before us, swerved gently south and headed toward the open sea.
Leaving Harbour
The time was now about one in the afternoon. In the Mediterranean the wind whipped the ship vigorously, so that I had to clutch my sunhat to keep it on my head.
It was stimulating to bathe your senses in the swash of rolling waves, radiant sunshine and a keen wind. On the port side, fringes of white foam flecked the swelling crests, and a misty line of hills wandered along the African coast and then descended into the bright level sea ahead. After a time, the edifices of the city of Tangier appeared.
Tangier
We would be landing soon. What would be in store for us then? And now I succumbed to a rising anxiety about our impending disembarkation at Tangier. My plan was simply to walk into the town from the port, instead of taking a taxi, because I'd decided that just 'walking into Africa' would enhance our sense of adventure.
But my guidebook on Morocco said that anyone venturing on foot from the port gates into the town risked being mobbed by hustlers practised in playing on the gullibility and fears of newly-landed travellers. Surely, though, that was only in high summer, and not in March, as it was now. But why should that be so? I asked myself. Was I in my right mind? Anyway, out here on the open deck, in face of the bright sun and the biting wind and the running waves and these wandering hills - and emboldened by two cans of Heineken - I almost relished the test!
As time passed, the intriguing coastline loomed closer, and then white dwellings could be picked out here and there on a hillside clad with... trees! What? Where were the great ribbed dunes I'd hoped to see? This was North Africa, wasn't it? I learned only later that the vast stretches of sand that set the scene for the classic tank battles of World War II lay far to the east on the other side of the Atlas Mountains.
And then the ship was sailing in a bay where the sea was calm and its colour a delicate shade of green. To the south a strip of sand fringed a seafront of hotels and blocks of flats, while the bleached cubes of the Medina tumbled down a slope to the west. And in between, set in sparkling waters, the sea breakers and the sheds and the offices and the parked trucks and juggernauts in the yards of the harbour of Tangier.
The Harbour of Tangier
The Ibn Battouta berthed at half past three. Disembarking, encumbered with luggage once more, I noted that our first steps on African soil - or more precisely the strip of concrete that served as a jetty here - were taken with the coast of Spain still plainly in sight over the Straits. Inside the terminal a lanky character whose face was framed with hair and beard and who wore a brown djellaba ambled toward us grinning. A hustler already? But a plastic card pinned to his breast displayed his likeness and the words 'Official Guide' (in English), and he asked (in English) if we wanted a taxi. I said no, we wanted a bank, as we had no dirhams - which are unobtainable outside the country. He gestured toward an exit where a second fellow in like attire, short and aged but quick and alert, manifested himself from nowhere and said, "Taxi?"
I said no, we wanted a bank. At that, he herded us outside, ushered us down some steps and led us round a corner to a hut with a sign over a window-hatch reading 'Bureau de Change'. I knew that was no good. It was travellers' cheques I wanted to change, not our pesetas, which we needed for the journey home. These places only ever changed cash. The man in the window shook his head when I waved my travellers' cheque book at him, and I then detached us from our chaperon, who plainly wished still to do us some service, despite the fact that our pockets were empty of Moroccan money, and we then struggled off loaded down with our luggage towards the town.
Our precise destination was the Hertz Rentals office, where I had arranged to collect a car at three in the afternoon, and the route to it was embedded in my head - traced out weeks before at home with the help of my Rough Guide plan of the town. We would pass out of the port gates and continue to the right of the beach on the Avenue d'Espagne to the Rue Marco Polo in the 'Ville Nouvelle', or New Town. Here we would turn right and head southwest to the Boulevard Mohammed V, where Hertz had their office.
This distance was about a kilometre and a half I guessed. That should take us about twenty minutes. But first we had to plod for maybe 500 meters along the port access road beside a railway line, saying, "No, merci" to the occasional driver who had stopped his taxi and peered out at us interrogatively. When the port entry came into view, I saw that just one or two figures stirred in the vicinity. I was palpably relieved. Easter probably was too early in the year for hustlers.
And now the pillars of the gates loomed... The cross member crept overhead... We were out of the port now and into the outer precincts of the town, when:
"Hello!" a voice called.
A fellow in a blue tee-shirt had sprung from nowhere. He asked if we wanted a hotel. Now what was the advice my Rough Guide gave about how to handle hustlers? Yes: be polite but firm.
"No, no thank-you, we don't."
"You want a taxi?"
"No."
"No? You want a bus, maybe?"
"No, thanks."
We did not stop, just kept moving. But this pest kept abreast of me. Not only that, a chum of his suddenly arose from nowhere and hovered nearby. The pair of them, like flies circling in the sun, harried us as though we were pack animals along the Avenue d'Espagne.
"But where are you going?" persisted he of the blue tee-shirt.
"To the Hertz office in the town to pick up a car."
"But you will get lost." He knew some English, this one. The other said nothing.
"No, we won't. We have a town plan."
"But there are others in Tangier, very bad, not like us. Why you not let us help you?"
This went on for some time and then I halted on the pavement. All five of us halted. We had been walking alongside a tall sun-bright wall we could not see over. There was no one else about. How were we to get rid of these leeches?
"Look," I said. "We know where we are going. We don't need any help."
The eyes in the brown face above the blue tee-shirt flickered down to the plastic shopping bag suspended from my hand. "I have a big family," he said. "You could give me a little present?"
I sighed. Maybe a packet of biscuits would rid us of him and his henchman forever. Thinking that if it did, it would be well worth while, I rummaged in my bag and drew out a cylindrical shape and placed it in his outstretched palm.
"And for me?" said his associate, proffering his paw, too.
I swore inwardly. This was plain extortion. But I drew a deep breath. Okay, I thought, it would be worth even two packets of biscuits to be rid of them for good. After this second presentation had been made our two tormentors shook hands with us and then walked off. The tension in our limbs ebbed a bit now as we paced the sunlit pavement by ourselves once more. Several moments passed before a sudden noise caused me to look behind. A figure in filthy garments closely dogged our steps. It had shaggy hair falling from under a crumpled cap and an animal-like face. No human sound escaped its scowling mouth. It almost seemed unfit for human speech. It menaced only.
And now I realised what a mistake I had made in choosing this method of reaching the town. The wall on our left effectively isolated us from the beach, and along the centre of the Avenue d'Espagne there ran a stone wall that buttressed the opposite carriageway - which was elevated some six feet or so above the nearer one - and beyond that there ran another wall buttressing the bottom terrace of the town, so that we were cut off from the town too!
Then I heard a voice shouting something indistinct. Looking over my right shoulder I saw a figure streaking along the pavement on the far side of the road. It was the fellow in the blue tee-shirt. He raced across the higher lane screeching - and flourishing his packet of biscuits - and then levered himself off the top of the buttress wall and dropped down to the roadway below. Now he shot across to our pavement and fell in step beside the animal tramping after us.
"You no good man! You go way!" he blustered at this Neanderthal, and more abuse of a similar sort, all the while waving his packet of biscuits in the air. What a farce it all was, since the ‘no good man’ would not understand some of his own language, never mind English!
"Go way or I..." And here he aimed an imaginary rifle (albeit partly composed of a packet of biscuits) at the shaggy head and pulled an imaginary trigger. No sound was made by the brute that dogged our heels and no swerve was made in his stride. He just stuck to us dumbly. However, when this mangy biped still kept dumb under another torrent of abuse I began to smell a rat - or rather three of them. These three rogues were working together! The orangutan in the crumpled cap was intended to intimidate us, while the other two tricksters had cast themselves in the role of saviours! And they had us all to themselves!
Well, we were intimidated all right. God! How would we get out of this terrible snare! Just ahead now, a road ran down from the town to a junction on the opposite side of the Avenue d'Espagne. Was that the Rue Marco Polo? If we could just make it to a street with people in it maybe these human fleas would at last leave us in peace. Rue Marco Polo or no, we would go up that way. It was a bit of luck for us now that the two carriageways became level with each other, so that the central stone wall petered out. We shot across the road then to the one that mounted toward the town, but when we got abreast of its entrance I saw that the terrace wall continued across it in an unbroken line. We were effectively shut out of the town!
There was nothing to do now but just keep going. Would this farce ever end? And then I perceived ahead a place where the wall was broken by a set of stone steps...
"He has eight boys," menaced our devil-protector, nodding at the Neanderthal, "and they come..."
He made gestures signifying violence.
Ridiculous! I did not believe it! But who could tell what this triad of vagabonds might do on their own? Like robots we made straight for the steps, our sole hope of escape, and I winced at each new menace made by the chief actor in this fantastic drama. We seemed no longer to have command of our fate, but to be compelled to play unwanted parts as helpless victims in a grotesque piece of street theatre whose climax we could not foresee. If only we could find the Hertz office! Once inside that we would surely be free of these ridiculous villains!
But reaching the steps, we began the upward trudge with our luggage, despairing of ever escaping the morbid embrace of these snakes. At the top we doubled back to the Rue Marco Polo. Again: was it the Rue Marco Polo? This appeared to be a country with no road signs. In any case, it was completely empty of people.
We halted, while I sought some sign of where we were, our tormentors flocking about us like vultures, and then I found myself looking straight into the face of the second member of this trio. He had thin teeth and his feral eyes darted this way and that rapidly. When they flickered briefly on the spectacles protruding from my shirt pocket, I had the feeling he could hardly resist an urge to make a grab at them. But we were less at their mercy if we kept moving, so we took to the left hand pavement of this street, whatever its name.
The ape in the crumpled cap now took itself off to the right hand pavement, but he kept to the pace we were setting and loped along parallel with the rest of us, a move no doubt calculated to impress us with the efficacy of the protective guard mounted by his two handlers. The principal tormentor now restricted his abuse to the odd shake of a fist at the defeated enemy, and in the interest of winning our trust, adopted a cheery tone. What was my name? he wanted to know. His name was Ali. What were the boys' names? He was helping us, he said, because he was born in Morocco and didn't want it to have a bad name. I replied in kind, but kept my mind firmly on the goal of reaching the Hertz office.
It was clear that a crafty intelligence twinkled in Ali's brain. By his shrewdness alone all three of these beings were animated. He could have been, it struck me later, a kind of modern version of the 'gentleman Jones' in Joseph Conrad's novel, Victory, while he of the thin teeth and cat-like glance could have been Ricardo. The anthropoid swinging its arms over the road could have been Pedro, too, save that he was not heavy like the original. One critic said of the book that the idea of a 'unit of evil' was ludicrous. But he had never been to Tangier, much less the far east where Conrad had set his story. Here, it seemed to me, in the flesh, was a convincing example of a triad made up of 'evil intelligence', 'instinctive savagery' and 'brute force'.
Our road opened now on a wide thoroughfare that just had to be the Boulevard Mohammed V, also empty of people, as well as street signs, and here we turned right as I had planned to do. But our 'Ricardo' was already on the opposite corner taking the lead. "This way," he shouted, out of his tiny stock of English words. A few paces further on the Hertz office came into site on the corner of a side street. At last! A few moments more and we would be free of these leeches forever. We crossed to the opposite pavement still trailing this human swarm and surged up to the door of Hertz Rentals, Tangier. But Ali took hold of the handle first, opened the door and ushered us in. Would he and his accomplices leave us at last?
The boys and I went in one after another and then, to my profound shock, Ali and his fine-toothed companion came in too! The office was about twelve feet square with vinyl cushioned seats along one side and a counter at the far end where a man in a dark suit busied himself with papers. Ali told us to sit down and then coolly stepped up to the fellow to make arrangements for the hire of a car!
'We already have a car hired!' I said in a disgusted tone intended to signal to the official behind the desk that we did not want these scoundrels in here.
But he seemed quite oblivious to what was happening. These objectionable hustlers from the port were hounding his clients right in front of his nose, but this bona fide representative of a world-wide trading organisation had nothing whatever to say about that! Wasn't there anyone who could help us? Through the window of the office I saw the dirty third component of this trio pacing back and forth like an animal in a glass cage. But it was the boys and I who were in a cage, a cage with two ferrets in it and an indifferent cage-keeper. But at last it sank into Ali's skull that we had indeed already made arrangements for the hire of a car, that consequently we were in no need whatever of his services, and that there was nothing left for him and his dutiful lackey to do but leave.
And now he wanted money. Three thousand pesetas, he said. I asked him how much that was to play for time and he said it was fifteen pounds. I said no, they hadn't done anything for us.
"We bring you here," he said.
"No, you didn't. We brought ourselves here. We knew where we were going the whole time."
"Okay, two towsan."
"No, you didn't do anything for us! We didn't want anything from you."
"One towsan, nen," he persisted.
"One towsan two hundret," spat the thin teeth.
"No! Nothing! You did nothing for us!"
I looked over the counter in mute appeal for help, but the Hertz agent was sitting with his elbows on his desk and his face in his hands, shaking his head slowly from side to side. There was no help there. In God's name, how could I get rid of these parasites?
Then I thought I might do it for the price of the change in my pocket. The left hand pocket of my trousers contained some thousands of pesetas, all of the Spanish money we had, in fact, but in my right hand pocket there was, I knew, only about three hundred pesetas. I dragged the coins out.
"This is all I have," I said, holding them out to Ali.
In a flash he was prodding the coins about in my hand with his finger, counting. Then he raked them into his own hand.
"And for me?" said his confederate.
I told him it was all I had. Now they asked the boys for money, but they answered truthfully that they had none. I was carrying all the money. And then, quite suddenly, these sewer rats were gone out of our lives as quickly as they had entered them.
I turned to the fellow behind the counter. He raised his head but was still shaking it with eyes shut.
"Where you meet these...?" He left the sentence in the air, but gave a little shudder of disgust.
"At the port," I replied.
A heavy sigh from him, his head still moving slowly from side to side. And then, his voice rising towards the end: "Why you no take a taxi?"
"We like to walk," I said with conviction.
I didn't say that it was not our behaviour that ought to be questioned here but his. First he lets the dregs of the street contaminate his place of work, and then he takes to lecturing his clients for the consequences! Peculiar place, this Tangier. It was a good thing we'd be leaving it shortly.
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A note on the setting of this story:
On scouring around the Web in search of a picture of the location where these events took place, I came up with this one:
Avenue Mohammed VI
This is the road we paced from the port, which you can just see with its cranes in the background. In 1997 it was called the Avenue d'Espagne. Now it is the Avenue Mohammed VI. But it has changed utterly. Then, it looked immensely undeveloped and old-fashioned. Now, it looks modern and fashionable. There are still two lanes, one going each way, but both are now at the same level, and, most importantly, the walls have all gone, so that anyone walking along its pavements is not cut off from both the town and the beach.
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