Mack Reynolds: Equality: In the Year 2000

The airplane from Gibralter was a small craft, seating but twenty-one. When Julian disembarked, he and the other travelers were immediately surrounded by a small crowd of peddlers, hotel solicitors, money changers, and pimps. An old hand, Julian snarled at them in French, and was able to make his way toward the immigration and customs office inside. He could change money in town, at one of the many booths on Pasteur Boulevard; he’d get a better rate than from any of the touts here. Actually, all currencies were legal tender in the International Zone, but the most widely accepted was French francs and you often got better prices using them.

Customs and immigration were the merest of formalities. The immigration man stamped his passport without checking if the photo inside corresponded with Julian’s face.

Two barefooted teenagers, thin and grimy, had scurried up to take his two heavy leather bags as soon as they had been checked. He could have carried the luggage himself. But he didn’t want to go through the hassle of telling them so, and simply followed the urchins out to the parking lot where he located a Chico Cab. They were, he had decided, the smallest taxis in the world: little Fiat 500s from Italy.

He put the bags on the seat next to the driver and climbed into the back.

“El Minzah Hotel,” he said, after giving both of the boys a quarter. They yelled for more, but he ignored them. They would have protested had he given them a dollar—or five dollars, for that matter.

The countryside into town was typical of North Africa from the Atlantic to the Nile: incredibly dusty, worn down, poverty stricken. It seemed impossible that any of the tiny farms could support the rag-clothed families who lived in the little one-room shacks made of tin cans, waste wood, cardboard from cartons. They passed a few scrawny dogs from time to time,, some scrawnier chickens, an occasional burro, a couple of motheaten camels, and a multitude of filthy children.

The driver entered town from the southwest, speeding along the Avenue d’Espana, which paralleled the half-crescent bay around which the city of Tangier is built.

Julian liked the city. It was one of the most exotic in the world. Founded by the Phoenicians several millennia ago, a dozen nations had controlled it since. Its palace-crowned Kabash overlooked the Spanish coast across the way, and in the distance Gibraltar, that most impressive landfall on earth, reared its bulk. It still appeared today much as the Baghdad of Scheherazade’s time must have looked, with its narrow winding streets which allowed for no vehicle, its teeming souks with their produce and handicrafts of all Morocco; filthy, swarming with flies, but overflowing with some of the most beautiful fruit and vegetables to be found, products of the oases to the south.

They were going through the Spanish section of Tangier now. Ahead and to the right, Julian could make out the Port de Peche, a dock and basin supposedly devoted to fishing, but the sleek-looking boats, he knew, were smugglers. Among them were former German E-Boats, French torpedo boats, British anti-submarine craft. Immediately after the Second World War they had become surplus and a drug on the market, using too much fuel to be converted into pleasure craft. Smuggling was legal in Tangier, and they broke no law running cigarettes and such over to Europe.

The boulevard had been circling the bay. Now the driver took a sharp left and started up a rather steep, narrow street, heading for the modern European section of the city. It looked more like the French Riviera, or a California town, not anything you’d expect to find in Morocco.

After a couple of blocks, which were becoming more modern in architecture by the moment, the taxi pulled up before the El Minzah Hotel. There was a huge black standing out front, garbed in what the hotel owners probably thought was the type of clothing once worn by the Sultan’s bodyguard, complete to a golden sash with a vicious-looking scimitar thrust through it.

Two maroon-uniformed bellhops, wearing the fez, scurried forth for his bags. Julian paid the cabby with an American dollar, ignored his protests, and followed his luggage inside.

The El Minzah was the best hotel in Tangier, and he had reserved one of the twin penthouse suites. He invariably stayed here when in the International Zone; the view over the straits was superb. He went through the routine of registering, the fez-hatted manager, oily as ever, bobbing and gushing.

In the suite, Julian didn’t tip the bellhops. In Morocco you didn’t tip until you paid your bill, at which time you left a sizable percent of your tab with the desk clerk who supposedly spread it around to everyone who had served you. Julian suspected that most of it went into the pockets of the manager and clerk.

At the moment, he didn’t bother to unpack, or even to summon a valet to do it for him. He simply tossed his homburg on the bureau and started out again. He felt like a drink or two and then possibly a late lunch; it had been a long time since he had enjoyed a Moroccan cous cous .

The El Minzah was situated just below the Place de France, the center plaza of the European area, and about halfway to the Grand Zocco, the largest of the town’s open souks located on the edge of the native section. Julian headed down in the direction of the zocco, mildly surprised at the number of people on the streets. He came to the Rue America du Sud and turned left. He was headed for Dean’s, in his opinion one of the outstanding bars in the world, comparable to Sloppy Joe’s in Havana, Sheppard’s in Cairo, even Harry’s in Venice, that old standby of Papa Hemingway’s. Such oases, considered Julian, were saloons with souls.

Just as he was about to cross the street, a youngster sidled up to him. He was possibly ten years old, with a beautiful Arab face, light coffee of complexion, dazzling white teeth, and the wide, sad, dark brown eyes of a gazelle.

Julian was initially of the belief that the child was a beggar and reached for his pocket, though ordinarily he refrained.

However, the boy did not hold out his hand. “Fuckee, fuckee—suckee, suckee?”

Julian was horrified. He had been accosted before by both male and female child prostitutes in Tangier, a world-renowned watering place for homosexuals who preferred youth, but never by one so young as this. A wave of renewed contempt for Moslem mores and customs swept over him. He knew, for instance, that by Moslem law a girl could be given in marriage at the age of eight. In theory her husband was not to bed her until she had menstruated—but that was only the theory.

He, shook his head at the boy and crossed the street to Dean’s.

To his surprise, the only occupant of the bar, besides Dean and his two waiters, was an old friend from college days.

“Roy!”

“Jule, for Christ’s sake.”

Roy London was seated at a small table near the door, obviously so that he could watch the passers-by. Now he rose to his feet and they shook hands enthusiastically.

Julian said, “I thought I had heard you were up in London working for Reuters.” He turned: “A couple of those Singapore Slings, Dean. And how are you?”

“Excellent, Mr. West.” Dean never forgot a customer. “How long are you in town for, Mr. West?”

“Search me. Until I finish my business, I suppose.”

He took a seat across from Roy.

Roy called out, “No more for me, Dean. These are working hours. I’ll nurse this one.” To Julian he said, “I was in London. Boring job at a Reuters desk. All copy either from or to the States landed on it. I had to change Britishese into Americanese, and vice versa. You know, like calling gasoline ‘petrol.’ Anyway, it bored the hell out of me and when this hassle in Morocco started, I quit and came down to freelance.”