The worst thing about getting lost in the twisty turny identical lanes of the medina is having to walk past the same group of giggling 20-something boys each time you backtrack. I feel defeated and frustrated. And I'd thought I was so prepared for Morocco! Having survived India when I was a wee young slip of a thing and with my iron constitution. More to the point, I've read The Sheltering Sky three times and seen Hideous Kinky twice. But I still had no sense of direction.
Tangier is a city in the thrall of Laughing Cow cheese. A "La vache qui rit" logo hangs from every shop doorway. The streets are the domain of men; men deprived the company of women for too long. I am in my H&M burka today, hair firmly covered, so the heckling is disappointing. The next day, I experiment with briefer attire, and the results are no different. Only tagging along with Xavier, a brooding Frenchman, and Jake, a young American puppy with an entertaining line in logo t-shirts, render me invisible.
We ransack the market for lunch. Coriander in the air and fish heads in the gutter. It's not all beautiful. Tripe hangs from windows. A row of cow heads, skin peeled all over bar the furry nose. It must be picnic time. We climb a grassy knoll and pool our spoils: a beautiful sour goat's cheese, wrapped in plaited leaves, baby plum tomatoes, a crusty wheel of bread and olives from the pick n mix stall. This is washed down with Hawaii, a product of the Coca-Cola company, doubtless banned by European health authorities because of the twelve E numbers needed to create its authentic fizzy coconut-passion fruit-orange kick. It's delicious.
Night shopping in the souks is great fun. Hostel Man cooks up our purchases then drives us down to the ice cream shop he co-owns to feast on the day's leftovers: almond, caramel, nougat and chocolate. It is all right to take sweets from strange men in Morocco, apparently.
Next day, the beach. We're joined by the love child of Julian Assange (a Dane named 'Mads') and South African Steve, a fellow English teacher living in Granada. Hitch hiking back, I can hardly believe that this is only Day Three. Of seventy four. It's nice, but a tad over indulgent, surely?
Fried sardines for lunch and tagine in the evening. Freshly squizzed orange juice and a little mouthful of sugared-pistachio-filo-pastried-delight. I go to bed each night uncomfortably full. In Seville, I grazed four or five times a day on little insubstantials. Now I'm presented with a wheelbarrow of couscous three times a day and expected to enjoy it.
Scant sights to see in Tangier, but after three days, I'm no longer surprised that Paul Bowles spent his 52 years here. I will be back.
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