Crossing Over

There are ways between worlds on this earth. You would never know that the port of Algeciras is one of them. From the minute I arrived at dusk in that southern tip of Spain crumpled and hungover after a wasteful blast of train travel that had started earlier that day in Barcelona when I was without doubt still drunk, I heard only hard clattering labour. I was braced for a grand voyage, a stately transit between continents, a throwback to an oceanic age of travel, but even the next morning when I didn’t want to cry there was nothing of a portal about the town - just the salty tang of impermanence.

I wanted to arrive into Tangier proper, not the industrial dockyard many miles outside where you land if you sail straight from Algeciras, and stroll up into the kasbah in the gentle November sunlight. This boat sails from Tarifa, and the ferry line lays on a transfer. I was waiting for a bus bedecked with the same bold scarlet logo as my ticket, so I sat twiddling my thumbs while a single dirty old coach revved in plain view, packed with passengers. Someone’s got to be last.

Embarkation was as smooth a process as ferry boarding ever can be when there are families pulsating with hunger and strife waiting to get on. Once we’d crowded into the queasy pink lounge with smeared maritime windows and screwed-down furniture, they staked out territory and prowled in packs. Squads of children were dispatched to have passports stamped and buy the crisps and muffins that are baked to endure the ricochet between shores.

The ambient chatter was multilingual: I heard strains of English, French, Spanish, and many strands of Arabic within single families. Languages rarely matched declared nationalities. There are no borders on the water, and the grandeur of nations fell away like foam. This crossing is powered by people reaching out to each other in trade, migration, marriage, travel. As I stood at the back of the boat and watched Europe dissolve in the wash, I felt part of something as ancient, deep, and unstoppable as the sea itself.

Beset at random by that British ethic of just cracking on, it had been fits and starts all the way through Europe and I had a low opinion of my ability to make a great journey or a new discovery in my cocoon of ease and speed. But anyone can do it: find a way between worlds and trust it, find a true crossing and make it. Travel is a state of mind, and in that single blazing hour, with blue above and below, in the air of a dream, I found it.