Read Online Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah by Tim Mackintosh-Smith - Free Book Online
Authors: Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Ads: Link
voices as a group of Spanish tourists entered the courtyard. They thudded across the
zillij
floor on grape-pressing feet and ran their fingers across the stucco. A teenaged boy leaned against a pillar with one commando-soled boot cocked back against the tiles, staring into the sky with a look of transcendent boredom. I remembered that Andalucia, al-Andalus, the lost paradise of the Maghrib, gets its name from the people from whom the Arabs took it: the Vandals. The invasion lasted no more than five minutes; but the spell of the place was broken.
I stopped a taxi to take me back to the Residence. ‘Avenue Bou Regreg, please. Just off the
jawlah
, the roundabout.’
‘The what?’
I had used a Yemeni word. ‘Sorry. I mean the
dawar
.’
‘The
what
?’
I searched unsuccessfully for another synonym. ‘You know, the place where the roads meet and the cars go round in a circle.’
‘Oh, you mean the
rond-point
.’
‘That’s it. So what do you call it in Moroccan Arabic?’
The driver looked at me curiously. ‘
Al-rond-point
.’
*
On the train back to Tangier, I had a longer Franco-Arabic conversation – the French was all hers – with a girl from the south, of Mauritanian origin. She conformed to no image of Islamic womanhood that I had ever encountered: she wore black denim and high army boots, and she was travelling with a large military-style rucksack which she swung with a grunt on to the luggage rack. Her appearance, and her views – some of which raised eyebrows among our fellow-passengers – had me wondering whether she came from the City of Women, that Amazon-like colony located by eastern geographers in the Maghribi desert.
Everything went well until she asked if I was married. ‘Only to my books,’ I said, giving my stock answer. She looked sceptical. ‘The thing about books’, I went on, ‘is that they don’t answer back, they don’t need to be bought clothes. You know what the poet said: “A man’s best friend is his library.”’ The two other men in the compartment grinned; my friend looked hurt. I’d meant it lightheartedly, and now felt a cad.
‘
Some
women are not as you imagine,’ she said in a low voice.
She left the train at the next station; but before she did so she reached into her pocket and, without comment, handed me a newspaper cutting. It bore a photograph showing her in what appeared to be pyjamas, and the headline: ‘Only Woman in Southern Morocco with Karate Black Belt’.
Back in Tangier, the Hôtel Ibn Batouta was full, but the receptionist told me that the place across the road had vacancies. In the lobby of the other hotel I rang a bell and waited, wondering how to take a prominently displayed notice: ‘Absolutely No Guests to be Entertained in Bedrooms’. Was it simply a euphemism? Or did it mean that only conversations of a tedious nature were permitted? In a stay of one night, I would probably not be given the chance to find out.
The boy who answered the bell looked like a youthful Boris Karloff. As we climbed the stairs I told him I was writing a book about IB.
‘Many famous writers have stayed here,’ he said.
‘Really? Who?’ Remembering the photograph of IB across the road, I half expected them to include Ibn Khaldun and Sir John Mandeville.
‘William Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg … Jack Kerouac.’ He opened a firestation red door to a room that looked as if it might hardly have changed since the days of the Beats. The floor was laid with tiles in pomegranate pink, the heavy, dark oak bedsteads had brown velvet counterpanes, and green gingham covered a rickety table. A bidet squatted behind a curtain that flapped in the breeze from an open window . The room was loomed over by a very large wardrobe, painted glossy black. Surrounded by these potential metamorphs, I wrote up my notes warily. I did not open the wardrobe. It was certainly a setting to inspire, with a little metaphysic and a lot of drugs,
Naked Lunch
. (Further research
zillij
floor on grape-pressing feet and ran their fingers across the stucco. A teenaged boy leaned against a pillar with one commando-soled boot cocked back against the tiles, staring into the sky with a look of transcendent boredom. I remembered that Andalucia, al-Andalus, the lost paradise of the Maghrib, gets its name from the people from whom the Arabs took it: the Vandals. The invasion lasted no more than five minutes; but the spell of the place was broken.
I stopped a taxi to take me back to the Residence. ‘Avenue Bou Regreg, please. Just off the
jawlah
, the roundabout.’
‘The what?’
I had used a Yemeni word. ‘Sorry. I mean the
dawar
.’
‘The
what
?’
I searched unsuccessfully for another synonym. ‘You know, the place where the roads meet and the cars go round in a circle.’
‘Oh, you mean the
rond-point
.’
‘That’s it. So what do you call it in Moroccan Arabic?’
The driver looked at me curiously. ‘
Al-rond-point
.’
*
On the train back to Tangier, I had a longer Franco-Arabic conversation – the French was all hers – with a girl from the south, of Mauritanian origin. She conformed to no image of Islamic womanhood that I had ever encountered: she wore black denim and high army boots, and she was travelling with a large military-style rucksack which she swung with a grunt on to the luggage rack. Her appearance, and her views – some of which raised eyebrows among our fellow-passengers – had me wondering whether she came from the City of Women, that Amazon-like colony located by eastern geographers in the Maghribi desert.
Everything went well until she asked if I was married. ‘Only to my books,’ I said, giving my stock answer. She looked sceptical. ‘The thing about books’, I went on, ‘is that they don’t answer back, they don’t need to be bought clothes. You know what the poet said: “A man’s best friend is his library.”’ The two other men in the compartment grinned; my friend looked hurt. I’d meant it lightheartedly, and now felt a cad.
‘
Some
women are not as you imagine,’ she said in a low voice.
She left the train at the next station; but before she did so she reached into her pocket and, without comment, handed me a newspaper cutting. It bore a photograph showing her in what appeared to be pyjamas, and the headline: ‘Only Woman in Southern Morocco with Karate Black Belt’.
Back in Tangier, the Hôtel Ibn Batouta was full, but the receptionist told me that the place across the road had vacancies. In the lobby of the other hotel I rang a bell and waited, wondering how to take a prominently displayed notice: ‘Absolutely No Guests to be Entertained in Bedrooms’. Was it simply a euphemism? Or did it mean that only conversations of a tedious nature were permitted? In a stay of one night, I would probably not be given the chance to find out.
The boy who answered the bell looked like a youthful Boris Karloff. As we climbed the stairs I told him I was writing a book about IB.
‘Many famous writers have stayed here,’ he said.
‘Really? Who?’ Remembering the photograph of IB across the road, I half expected them to include Ibn Khaldun and Sir John Mandeville.
‘William Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg … Jack Kerouac.’ He opened a firestation red door to a room that looked as if it might hardly have changed since the days of the Beats. The floor was laid with tiles in pomegranate pink, the heavy, dark oak bedsteads had brown velvet counterpanes, and green gingham covered a rickety table. A bidet squatted behind a curtain that flapped in the breeze from an open window . The room was loomed over by a very large wardrobe, painted glossy black. Surrounded by these potential metamorphs, I wrote up my notes warily. I did not open the wardrobe. It was certainly a setting to inspire, with a little metaphysic and a lot of drugs,
Naked Lunch
. (Further research
Similar Books
