Mustapha Chergui and Mary Evans are not really off the same menu. She is quintessentially English, pronounces lost ‘lorst’ and, very much in the tradition of Tangier travellers, is just back from Syria and Jordan.
The congregation begins to assemble. Only a smattering of the 150-strong British community comes to church, one of them being an engaging Australian-born journalist called Jonathan Dawson.
Thanks to him, I soon know all the dramatis personae, that Mrs Evans, the churchwarden, married ‘one of the few straight chaplains the church ever had’ and that by far the greater proportion of the congregation are Nigerians involved in getting themselves and others across the Strait of Gibraltar.
So here we all are: the British upper-class ladies, the Nigerian migrants, Mustapha the sexton and myself, all leafing through our books to find Hymn Number One Hundred and Forty-Four and in our own ways, and often our own keys, giving voice to ‘Glorious Things Of Thee Are Spoken’.
The Nigerians treat the service as a moveable feast, coming and going according to the demands of their mobile phones, which go off frequently, often in the middle of prayers. (Jonathan tells me that the Christmas service was constantly interrupted by mobiles playing ‘Jingle Bells’.) No-one seems to mind them nipping out to do business during Matins. Their attendance rate today is impressive, if variable, rising from eight before the collection to twenty-five afterwards.
At the end, when we’ve filed out and the chaplain has shaken hands with everyone, I ask him about the Nigerians. He says life is precarious for them here. The Moroccans arrest them and then dump them back at the Algerian border. The chaplain introduces me to a young man called Regis, a Catholic with a plastic rosary around his neck. He has just walked back from the border by foot. It took him four days, but he didn’t dare take public transport in case he was arrested again. Once again, I find myself wondering what it is about their own country that makes these young men risk arrest, beatings, drownings and the Sahara Desert.
Then something reminds me I’m still in Wonderland.
Hobbling out behind Regis is a tiny Englishwoman with a fierce stare. Her name is Lady Baird. She must be well into her eighties and yet has come to live here relatively recently. When I ask her what brought her to Tangier, she replies crisply, ‘A garden! The most beautiful garden in Morocco.’
I’m about to ask her whether this wasn’t a lot to take on at such a late age, when, on seeing Jonathan Dawson pass by, Lady Baird indignantly indicates her right leg.
‘You see that?’ she cries. ‘Birdie did that!’
‘Birdie?’
‘His bird. Bit me on the leg.’
Birdie, it transpires, is a cockerel who lives in Jonathan’s apartment.
He doesn’t attempt to deny it.
‘Bit a great hole in her leg,’ he confirms.
I said he was lucky not to be sued. Jonathan looks uncharacteristically sheepish.
‘Well, he did bite a very distinguished American woman and she thought it was rather funny, but after three courses of antibiotics and massive doctor’s bills, I’m afraid it was a bit of a strain on the friendship.’
We walk down the path away from the church. Through the trees, across the road, I can see a facade with the faded lettering, ‘Grand Hotel Villa De France’. Green louvered shutters swing in the wind. It was from one of those rooms, Room 35, that Matisse looked out and painted this unique Anglo-Arab church and the trees and the sea beyond, as it all looked ninety years ago.
‘He is a misogynist, I’m afraid,’ says Jonathan, by way of explanation. ‘Only ever bites women.’
I don’t think he meant Matisse. But who knows.
The day ends on twin notes of anticlimax, both football related. Roger wants to film activity on the town beach, the public playing fields of Tangier. To integrate me in this happy recreational scene he has persuaded a local team to let me have a kick around with them. Considering their average age is about sixteen and there are distinct language problems, they do everything to make it easy for the elderly Englishman thrust into their midst, and I’m eager to show that, despite being two years short of sixty, I still know a few tricks.
One of these is the sliding tackle, which, together with the hefty up-field boot, was the basic essential of football as I was taught it. I win the ball, but, this being sand and not the Wembley turf I’m used to, I’m unable to move it, and as one of my legs sprints off the other one stays firmly beneath the ball. As my groin is prised apart I have no option but to fall flat on my back. I see the camera crew chuckling away on the touchline. Good old Michael, really entering into the spirit. This gives me fatal encouragement to get up and race off after the action. One more kick and something goes twang internally, and I hobble around, cursing. More laughter from the camera crew, and it’s several minutes before they realise that this is not an Equity performance, but for real.
To have so recklessly disabled myself so early in the journey could pose all sorts of problems, but at least I satisfied the first rule of filming - if you’re going to get hurt, get hurt on camera.
Day Four
TANGIER TO CHEFCHAOUEN
Woken again by the intensity of the fresh-risen sun, a glare so fierce I think there might be a blaze outside my window. But it’s bright rather than hot, and in the shaded street outside the hotel I can understand why the men are wearing thick jackets and have the hoods of their burnouses pulled up.
‘Morocco is a cold country with a hot sun.’ Jonathan Dawson squints into the light. ‘That’s what someone told me when I came here. If you’re sitting in the shade over there you might be freezing your tits off, but when you’re sitting out here it’s hot, you know.’
We’re on the terrace of the Cafe Tingis in the Petit Socco, a square once renowned for all sorts of naughtiness. Jonathan, with his piercing blue eyes, swept-back silvery hair and air of languid amusement, seems to thrive on Tangier. He came here in 1992 to do a piece for the Evening Standard and stayed.
He sighs a little regretfully as his cafe au lait arrives.
‘They used to sell booze, all these caffs.’ In 1956, after Morocco won independence, liquor was banned from the medina and the party, if not over, at least went underground.
‘So Tangier is a shadow of its former racy self?’
Jonathan rakes the square with a half-smile. ‘Everything is here if you want it. You can have boys, girls, cockerels or anything you want …’
‘Drugs?’
‘It’s not, er … legal, but it’s sort of slightly not illegal. I don’t encourage it,’ he says, before adding cheerfully, ‘I’ve got a great friend coming to stay. She’s a dope-smoking grandmother. You should be interviewing her.’
For Jonathan, Tangier remains a tolerant place, where you can be what you want to be. He likes the sea and the beaches and the freshness of the food, the fact that it can get cold enough for open fires and, of course, the prices.
‘You can buy a villa here for less than the cost of a London basement.’
We finish our coffees. The noise levels in the square are rising. Laughter, argument, the booming of a television set from the darkened interior of a cafe opposite. It’s time for us to move on south, but Jonathan won’t let us go just yet.
‘I’ve got some lovely wine. Come back for a quick gargle.’
Jonathan lives not in a villa but in a top-floor apartment crowded with books, paintings and fine furniture. Across this fine furniture struts Birdie, the confident comb-tossing, lady-pecking cockerel with whom Jonathan lives.
Jonathan shouts at him frequently, but Birdie takes very little notice.