Hammond Innes - The Strange Land

The rain came in gusts out of a leaden sky. The flat-topped houses of the old Arab town climbed the hill like a cemetery of close-packed gravestones, window-less, lifeless, their whiteness accentuated by the dusk. There was still light enough for me to see the solitary palm tree above the old Sultan’s Palace thrashing its fronds. It was straight like a flagstaff and black against the fading light of the western sky. Down in the harbour a siren blared, the sound of it cut off abruptly as the wind clutched at it. The wide, open space of the Zocco Grande — the big market — was deserted and runnelled by muddy streams of water. Naked lights already glimmered in the squalid huts, revealing the cracked mud of the walls and the still, wrapped bodies of the men who sat there drinking mint tea and smoking their tiny-bowled pipes of kif. An Arab passed me, carrying his slippers in his hand. His djellaba flapped in the wind and his bare feet were wide and splayed as they scuffed through the mud.

The Air France flight from Paris went over, a dull roar of engines in the murk of low-hung cloud. The plane was over two hours late, delayed by bad weather. Even so, it had left Paris only that morning. A day’s flying and I could be in England. The rain would be soft and gentle there with the smell of things growing and the promise of spring. I hunched my shoulders into my raincoat and tried not to think of England. My home was Enfida now, close under the mountains of the High Atlas looking out across the flat, brown plain of Marrakech.

But Tangier is a restless, transient place. I had already been waiting three days; and all the time I had carefully avoided my old haunts, trying to tell myself that it was a sordid, unreal city, a sort of international Sodom and Gomorrah, and that the past was all done with. After all, it was here that I had made the big decision. It was here in Tangier that I had thought it all out and taken the plunge. It was crazy perhaps, but at least I was doing something real. And I had made some progress in the last five years; the French no longer regarded me with suspicion and the Berbers of the High Atlas accepted me without hostility. When Kavan arrived…

I half shrugged my shoulders. The sooner I got out of Tangier the better. It was an unsettling place and already the old fever, the desire for excitement, for taking a chance, had got hold of me. But Kavan would be in tonight, and tomorrow we should leave for Enfida where the white mountain peaks are seen through the grey mist of the olive trees and there are no planes roaring over to remind one of England.

The arch of the medina loomed ahead, the entrance to the Arab town and Es Siaghines, the street of the money changers. There were lights in some of the shops, but the street itself was deserted, the steep slope of the asphalt shining blackly. The money changers — operators of one of the world’s few free bourses — were gone, and the narrow street was strangely silent. A bundle of rags, propped against a shuttered jeweller’s shop, stirred and extended a brass bowl held in two filthy arm stumps.

The forgotten beggar and the deserted bourse seemed somehow symbolic of the bubble nature of Tangier, and I found myself suddenly loathing the place for what it was — crooked and greedy and shallow, a harlot city in a world at grips with the reality of a cold war.

The Zocco Chico was empty, the tables glistening forlornly in the light from the deserted cafes that surrounded it. The little market place was like an Italian piazza in the rain. I took the alley that leads past the grand mosque and went down the steps. The fronds of the palm trees lining the Avenue d’Espagne were waving wildly and the sea roared white along the sands; the noise of it mingled with the wind, so that the whole front was one continuous murmur of sound. Out in the harbour the lights of the anchored freighters shone on heaving, white-capped water. A plume of smoke rose from above the roof of the railway station and was whipped out across the mole in a long, white streamer. I pitied the poor devil I was waiting for and turned into Jose’s Bar.

After all these years the place smelt the same — a combination of coffee, garlic, sour wine and bad sanitation. Jose was standing behind the bar counter. He looked fatter, greasier, more shifty, and his black hair as grizzled now. ‘Muy buenas, senor.’ And then he stared. ‘Senor Latham!’ His face lit up with a smile, his brown teeth showing a grin that cracked the grey stubble. He wiped his hand on his apron and extended it to me across the counter. ‘It is good to see you, senor. It is a long time — five, six years; I do not remember. Time goes so quick.’

‘You’ve got a good memory, Jose,’ I said.

‘Si, si. A good memory is necessary in my business.’ He turned and reached for a bottle. ‘It is a Fundador, si?’

‘No, Jose. A coffee, that’s all.’

‘Ah, no, no, no.’ He shook his head. ‘I do not forget what you drink, and this is with me.’ He poured two glasses. ‘Salud!’

‘Salud!’ I raised my glass. It was like old times. It seemed a long, long time ago.

‘A terrible night, senor.’

‘Terrible.’ I glanced at my watch. It was nearly six. Youssef was late. But that meant nothing. Time meant nothing in an Arab world. ‘How’s business, Jose?’ I asked. The place was almost empty.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘The season, she is finish now.’ He meant the smuggling season. Not for nothing was Jose’s called the ‘Smuggler’s Bar’. It used to be the haunt of half the riff-raff of the port, probably was still.

But the Mediterranean in December is no place for small boats. The business would be confined now to the bigger boats and the short runs across to Gib and Algeciras.

I turned and glanced round the cafe. It was a dreary little place. Yet there were times I could remember when it had seemed gay and bright and cheerful — but then that had been just after the war, late at night when the boys were in after a successful run and Jose sweating like a bull to keep the glasses filled. Now the piano in the corner was closed and the only music came from the radio, the tinkle of a guitar from some Spanish station. Jose’s wife, Maria, hummed the tune tonelessly as she sat mending a shirt and watching the pots on the battered range. A child sat at her feet, cross-legged like an Arab and sucking a cork. The place had a tired, rundown air. Two sailors sat at a table engrossed in a game of cards and in the far corner, beyond the door, a girl sat alone, toying with a half-empty glass, whilst two tables away one of the currency boys, with long sideboards and a wide-brimmed hat, sat eyeing her speculatively. There was nobody else in the bar.

‘Who’s the girl?’ I asked Jose. It was unusual for a girl to sit drinking alone in a place like Jose’s.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I never see her before, senor. I think she is new in Tangier.’

‘She certainly must be,’ I said. Didn’t she know the sort of place Jose’s was? ‘You ought to have a notice up outside, Jose,’ I said. ‘ “Abandon hope all girls who enter here.” ‘

He frowned. ‘I do not understand, senor.’

‘Oh, yes you do.’

He glared at me angrily, and then he showed his decayed teeth like a bull terrier shirting a snarl to a smirk. Si, si-always you are the joker, senor.’

I turned and glanced at the girl. She had a small, pinched, rather serious face with a finely shaped nose and an attractive mouth. Her skin was pale, accentuating her dark hair, and she had a high, rather bony forehead. She sat with her head a little on one side, staring out of the window, her mouth tightly puckered. There was something of the gamine about her that was appealing, and she wore no make-up, which again was something unusual.