Tangier (22 page)

This was the position when Meti began to change from an attractive and generally accepted small boy into a rather surly adolescent, restless, broody, increasingly conscious of his lack of privilege. Overtly the state was expressed by little more than a tendency to glower upon all Europeans except (sometimes) myself and a few close friends. No doubt the neighbours regarded the sullen presence in the lift as threatening the virginity of their daughters and maidservants. The prognosis for my lease looked bleak. Sometimes I thought with envy of other flats. There are two or three apartment blocks in the city controlled, even exclusively and ingeniously renamed by liberal-minded and mutually relaxed people. And here was I in a block inhabited largely by French, and four of them neo-colonial schoolmasters become soured by history (the fact, not subject). Yet I loved my pad: tiny, with the lift motor reverberating above my bed whenever anyone touched a button on any of the floors beneath, dead central, and with its huge semi-circular roof terrace. Even were there sufficient deposit remaining to lay down against a new lease, rents everywhere were increasing with the tourist boom. Either I stayed where I was or left Tangier for good. That might not be a bad thing. Yet few who have ever lived any length of time in the city achieve a complete break. It's a drug more subtly compounded than with the obvious ingredients of sun, sea, superb temperate summers, the friendliness of Moroccans, guilt-free Mediterranean sex, cheap wine, and
kif
too if one's an inveterate gambler with both liver and mind. Things happen. One doesn't even have to
look for them. Tangier is a shrine of inconsequence. I think of the veiled but undisguisably beautiful girl flowing (since female movement
in the modern
Djellaba
progresses with awesome fluidity) along the pavement beneath my terrace. Over her shoulder the girl carried a fully-erected television aerial, It mutt have been twenty feet long, Or, one day, the pair of house-painters slung in a bosun's chair six storeys up on the building opposite. At first incredulously I thought they were making obscene gestures as I dozed over Norman Douglas in the one cane chair which commutes daily between bare flat and bare terrace, as my more provident contemporaries in complex environments do between Beckenham and Waterloo. Not a bit. The painters in the sky wanted a key from me for their lunchtime tin of sardines. Knotted in a handkerchief the opener soared unerringly across the chasm. As
accurately it came back. We settled to our identical meals. And with mutual courtesies returned to our different concerns.

The backbone of a European in Tangier is his Moroccan maidservant. Even I afford one for a couple of hours thrice weekly.. The race is unique and formidable as the city's
porteras
.
But there resemblance ends. They are exuberant, relentlessly cheerful people. Traditionally Arab servants are members of the household rather than menials. They retain something of the privilege of the Elizabethan court fool; and like him are invaluable counsellors. The wise, particularly bachelor, resident involves his maid in consultation and discussion; but also practical games. Two of mine made splendid cricketers. Personally useful is the fact that a Moslem will never throw away paper with writing on it - other than newspapers. The reason is in case the script should include the name of Allah, who is not mentioned in newspapers.

The generic term for a maid, a 'fatimah', is of colonial derivation. It equates with the British in Black Africa calling a manservant 'boy'; but is worse, since it is from one daughter of Mohammed, Fatimah, that those claiming direct lineage from the prophet descend. Consequently the first step upon appointing a maid is to discover her real name and use it. Among numerous others, this may in fact be either Fatimah or Fatomah, both common girls' names. Old-timers, and some of the young refer to 'my fatimah.' The well-mannered don't.

I've never engaged a young and pretty maid. Being a part-time employer, rather than a bachelor, has proved the limiting factor: but also the young are increasingly reluctant to work for Christians. When I did employ a young girl, upon first acquiring my own flat, she was neither pretty nor remotely tolerable as a servant, as recorded earlier. Since that experience I've opted for the staid and middle-aged, usually making contact through the charming, French-speaking maid of my pleasanter French neighbours; and have never been let down.

In the numerous flats I had inhabited for short periods prior to getting my own, a maid was usually already engaged. These ranged from faithful family retainers with prerogatives like coffee and croissants to the meanly-paid slaves appointed by the owners of quick turnover tourist accommodation. Extraordinarily these last were never cynical, which was remarkable in view of the oddity of some of the even weekly-changing clients with whom they had to cope. They would whine for little extras, sometimes attempt the straight swindle, but rarely steal. Their jobs were too precious and the European landlords ruthlessly unsentimental. A favourite trick was the butagas switch. The cylinders, Tangier's principal energy source, hold 13 kg of liquid gas, and cost £1.50 to exchange when empty. All the
Souassas' baccals
keep a stock; and a
cylinder will last many months. In one notorious apartment block particularly, the tourist arriving for a fortnight would invariably find an empty cylinder in both kitchen and bathroom and be faced with an immediate expense of three pounds. Even then he was likely to be supplied with cylinders with only a few hours' gas in them, for the shop of course was in on the racket. The wise resident orders direct from one of the producing companies. Their delivery services are perhaps the only thing in Tangier which function with flawless precision and punctuality.

A curiosity of the freelance 'fatimahs' is their rigid hierarchy. A young and bossy one will often have a veritable great-grandmother, wrinkled and doubled, to do the really dirty work. Lowliest of all is the woman hired by a
portera
to clean her apartment block's foyer, landings and stairs. The area of marble and shiny tiles to be washed daily is considerable in a six-storey building. Alarming to the western eye is that a Moroccan woman never kneels to wash floors but bends double from the waist, legs straight and parted, both hands grasping the cloth and making pendulum motions. I can perform the exercise for almost seven seconds, covering three nine-inch tiles. How the often enormously stout women deal with acres while smiling and chattering I can't conceive. It is the hallway woman who initially cleans my flat when I've been away for any length of time. For organizing the operation the
portera
charges me six dirham, of which the worker, I fortuitously discovered, got one and a half. I took to giving her a small biannual tip after my own maid had dropped a piece of lemon peel on the landing and the lunatic Belgian woman below had had the nerve to ring my bell and point hysterically at what
le petit
(by whom she meant Meti) had done.

Perhaps it's time to explain why I uncharitably define this neighbour as lunatic. There had been, and continued numerous manifestations of mild hysteria. But the prize incident occurred early in my tenancy. She rang my bell after midnight wearing a scanty nightgown. I assumed she was proposing adultery. Heaven knew enough marital rows were evidenced beneath my floors. But no. Had any Moroccans passed through my flat? she demanded. My threshold gives an unbroken view into the
salon
.
I indicated
le petit
fast asleep on his
mtarrba
and said certainly not. It transpired that she had been reclining in the bath when human feet materialized on the skylight above it. Obviously I had imported an intruder and lowered him on to her roof from my terrace to persecute her in this unseemly way. Her husband now appeared behind her, He literally carried a wrought-iron poker. I could produce no weapon, but the obliging Blimp act easily. It seemed a good opportunity to achieve
détente
through the heroic gesture. The grizzled Belgian had a key which unlocked the door from the landing to the roof. Together we looked for the phantom among the television aerials. The search proved vain. 'My wife,' grumbled the dentist, 'is a little - nervous.' I remained silent.

The number of maids that I've had in my own flat owes nothing to disatisfaction of either party but everything to my employing only part-time and being away for months at a stretch. By accepting the recommendation of the saner French family's maid I've invariably had an honest and reliable woman, but one with a modicum of the French language as well. The majority of maids, as with all Tangier's simpler classes of adult generation, speak only Spanish.

Habiba was built like a Russian shot-putter. Rather than disturb me at my work table when washing the floor she would simply lift the chair in which I was sitting and deposit me gently a few feet away. That this critically altered the juxtaposition between myself and the blank paper at which I was staring was sensibly not her concern. She could wring out a double-bed sheet, having pounded it in cold water and detergent in the bath, as easily as I might a handkerchief, She was the cricketer whose hooking the ping-pong ball to leg with the seasoned loaf of French bread neither varied nor failed; and she mothered Meti and myself with genuine affection. If the reader suspects I discovered in my maids the ideal nanny (ideal because the charge, myself, theoretically was boss) this often occurred to me too.

Naïma sometimes brought two pretty teenage daughters. One had an ankle-length kaftan; the other, extraordinarily a flouncy miniskirt. The anomaly was explained when I discovered the kaftan concealed a leg-iron. But, as can happen, my infatuation wavered equally between both. Perhaps this is why Islam permits four wives. Naïma, alas, was strictly temporary. Inexplicably the
portera
disapproved of her. I think she suspected Naïma of trying to arrange marriage between one of
her
tenants and a
Moroccan
. Horror! Looking back, I realize this was what Naïma was trying to do. About the conflict between chaperonage and mother's lengthy disappearances to the
baccal
to buy an unnecessary packet of Tide while daughters remained huge-eyed, French murmuring, and all mine, was a calculation cautious, beautifully un-western and, to use a difficult word only once, exotic. Poor woman. How could she know that a Christian apparently able to read and with a suit in the wardrobe was living on about £600 a year And while I fantasized and wavered Naïma and her visionary daughters were gone, Or did I perhaps leave town? That I don't clearly remember is the measure of any impact on me. The
portera
's
relief was clear. Her satisfied sigh was visible.

To this account of maidservants (as of infatuation) belongs a
pathetic story. It is of a girl who worked for a stranger — and I don't doubt another man would have been more enterprising than I. I behaved about as boldly as a fifteen-year-old. Perhaps this was because Sudiah could not have been older, and may well have been younger, than that herself.

In Said's shop one morning was a very beautiful girl. I goggled. Emboldened, I craned my neck sideways, peering round the headscarf from profile to full face. Swallowed. When young Berber girls are good-looking they are very good-looking indeed. I suspect one has to have carved in pale boxwood to understand the fineness, fragility of feature. Besides the headscarf, she was wearing a gauzy kaftan and green plastic sandals. The palms of her hands were dyed orange with henna. Such beauties are usually only glimpsed at the twice-weekly markets, or in the hills. But here was the daughter of a maidservant in the neighbouring apartment block. Her purchases suggested as much. What Berber smokes Dunhills? The girl herself was as likely to smoke as be a whore.

'Good morning, Sir Angus!' cried Said (with the anomaly earlier explained). Numbly I asked for my half loaf of French bread and 200 grammes of cheese.

That evening I caught Said alone, just before he closed shop.

'Eh . . . what is the name of that girl who was in here this morning?'

Said affected vagueness. I pressed him, with disinterest ill-geared to the awe he couldn't have missed when the girl was in the shop.

'Sudiah.' he said,

I'd never heard the pretty name (which is her real one) before. It fed the flame in my skull like an injection of liquid oxygen.

Three days I brooded. A tryst. But how? What, or who, the go-between? The quadrilingual, distinctly worldly-wise child Norodin proved out of town. Expatriate advisers would groan - or, worse, laugh, A letter! Politely requesting that Sudiah
and
her mother
take tea with me. This cautious device clashed with standing counsel: 'Never write to Moroccans: from any written word they'll prove you've bequeathed them your house and every penny in your pocket.' To hell with such cynics, But the letter was never written. Could it be that where morale-disintegrating infatuation (as opposed to simpler bodily satisfaction, though heaven knew even that took years to come by) was concerned I was still the schoolboy who discovered that by putting sellotape over the postage stamp the Valentine arrived at that secret schoolgirl with its town of origin unfranked! I knew damn well it was. And the knowledge made for brooding. From my terrace, on the Boulevard, I watched the sex objects of a fairly liberal town parade as invitingly as tin robots. Worse, of course, they were unmistakably soiled flesh.

I went into an Indian's boutique and bought a silk head. scarf, 'Please,' I said stiffly, handing the wrapped gift to Said my shopkeeper. 'would you give this to Sudiah.' And there the story ends. Straight reportage has its anti-climaxes. Whether a sense of outraged propriety caused the diplomatic
Soussi
to give the gift to his own womenfolk or whether Sudiah in fact received it I don't know. I glimpsed her only once more. She was not wearing my scarf. If I see Sudiah again I shall march her to her father and offer such bride price as I can raise on my camera and watch without preliminary nonsense. Only, would I?