I was recently back in Tangier after about 20 years absence. Big mistake not to return, because despite being warned about how sleazy it had become, I found it totally beguiling, partly due to its exotic grittiness. Tangier is certainly not in your face, like Marrakech or Fez, as its sprawling topography spills over hills encircling a bay then stretches far along the coast.
The central core is the kasbah and the French quarter of avenues and villas. Beneath the surface simmers an unmistakable and seductive whiff of intrigue and covert dealings. You never quite know what will happen as you turn a shadowy corner of the kasbah. This was what drew a trail of kif-smoking artists and writers to its sunny shores. Above all Tangier frames the Atlantic and the Med β what a combination, what views, what fish! I loved wandering through the twisting backstreets of the medina with their splashes of intense colour, steps, viewpoints and blind alleys.
There are plenty of other dives like this in Tangier, living on an idiosyncratic, cosmopolitan past which, if you know just a little about it, makes them pulse-beating β and part of living history. Some places have undergone facelifts like the lovely old Hotel Continental above down on the port, which appeared in the film, The Sheltering Sky.
I remember a noisy parrot holding forth here 20 years ago; today iit may be gone, but the vintage piano in the foyer is said to be one and the same that Humphrey Bogart tinkled on in Casablanca incidentally a film based on Tangier during its international years. The Grand Socco below is rather more stately. Fresh blood is part of it. Other creative French expats run new guest-houses in the kasbah while Spanish restaurateurs and even Andalucian musicians are finding their place in this amazingly cosmopolitan town.
Some things remain, like discreet gay cruising in the background and hordes of day-trippers from Spain who flood the overpriced shops of the souk. Cons, or rather clever marketing, are part and parcel of it.
