Into the Sandstorm

Four Days in Havana

william1 — Mon, 9 Oct 2017 03:54:00 GMT

I was talked into sharing a taxi to Havana with two Russians. The drive, from the beach town of Varadero, took two hours; the Afro-Cuban driver never spoke, except to sing softly along with the booming reggaeton on the stereo, or to exchange a shouted ‘¡Buena’!’ with a colleague. We travelled along the diamond sea, and through the island’s sun-baked interior, which resembles Italy: hills and sweeping valleys, strewn with shrubs and browned by the sun.

Havana announced itself with a revolutionary mural surely not long for this world (‘We Will Never Let Our Guard Down!’). We entered a tunnel, and emerged to a burst of colour; the Spanish houses and the 50s cars glowed bright red, lime green, pastel blue, pink, orange in the sun. The driver dropped the Russians on a street which was essentially a pothole, and then took me to the cheap hostel I had booked.

This was far from central Havana. The streets were dusty and broken, the brightly-coloured houses faded and mouldering. A man saw me wandering in the grimy corridor and showed me in. I had made the reservation on an obscure website, as Cuba is not covered by Hostelworld or other mainstream portals. They had no record of my reservation or deposit. There was not so much as a plug in the room, and I was the only guest. Quietly I resolved to get out of here and find somewhere better as soon as possible.

I stepped out and walked up a main road, thick with traffic and people driven outside by the heat, sprawling outside grimy shops and workshops and rickshaw parks with broken gates. Once or twice someone approached me, the only foreigner, with those awful words, ‘hello my fren! Where you are from?’ I looked in vain for somewhere to sit down and eat, and found only grubby places where people ate standing. Eventually, the white cupola of the iconic Capitolio heralded my arrival in Habana Vieja. I slumped among busts of revolutionary heroes in the shade of a sun-scorched park, and then kept walking until I found a good cafe: the mercifully cool, Tripadvisor-recommended Art Pub, where I stopped to eat and rest.

In the evening, concerned at the rate at which my laboriously acquired ‘Cooks’ (Cuban Convertible Pesos, the tourist currency tied to the US dollar) were disappearing, I thought I would try to walk back to the hostel rather than spend money on a cab, even though I didn’t know the way exactly. Thus I struck out into the gathering darkness, and, inevitably, I was soon lost in the murky, menacing, broken streets. I had to walk all the way back to the Capitolio to get a taxi. The two Afro-Cuban drivers didn’t know where my street was. Thus we ended up circling a huge, backlit portrait of Che Guevara, stopping everywhere to ask for directions and communicating with difficulty, I speaking terrible Castilian and they strange Cuban Spanish, swallowing the s.

When I finally got back, I found two other guests had arrived. They offered me rum and a puff on a Cuban cigar. I asked the receptionist if there was any tea in the building. He sent his irritating colleague, who spoke only rapid, thickly-accented Spanish, out to look for some.

‘He’s English! He drinks tea every day at home!’

‘He’s not at home, he should learn to go without...’, I heard.

A bag of green tea was eventually acquired, and prepared in a chipped mug. After the day I had had, it tasted like manna from heaven.

I spent the following three days wandering around the city. I would wake up early, sticky in that airless room, sometimes woken by the receptionist turning on the light with an unwelcome ‘¡Hola!’, and step out.

My abiding memory is the heat – the pounding, tropical heat. A hot sewer wind blew down the mouldering streets and recalled Marseille. I had to mop my brow every minute; I could never walk far before I had to collapse under a tree and rest. I learned my way around; I learned to save money by going to backstreet places – cramped, humid caverns where Cubans ate and drank – and paying in moneda nacional, the local currency,instead of Cooks.

I walked. Under the shade of colonnades, where there was any, along the Havana streets – usually cracked, often piled with rubble, sometimes with refuse. Past the grand, mould-blackened windows and cornices of the colonial houses, past the ruins. Havana is a white-hot, elegant snake-pit, a colourful wreck.

I found a Russian church with golden onion domes, a Chinese archway with a flared roof and hanzi calligraphy, and a sculpture of two men embracing, one in a long robe and headdress: a ‘Monument to the Arab Immigrants’ who 'sowed their dreams and hopes into the soil of the Nation and helped to forge a free, independent, and sovereign Homeland’.

I found a book market, much of which was taken up by the works of Fidel and Che. A man showed me a history of Cuba. I opened it at random and read ‘during the eleven months of English occupation from March 1762 to February 1763, Havana became a thriving mercantile centre as the island was opened to the trade of North America and the West Indies. Thousands of slaves were brought by the English from West Africa to develop the sugar plantations...’ The booksellers fought over me to sell a bootlegged copy of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, full of printing errors and with a discoloured, photocopied front cover. On the back I read the words, ‘...he worked for four years as sub-editor on The Times... He undertook work for the Foreign Office and was stationed in Sierra Leone...’ , like just-discernible snatches of a familiar song in a strange place.

I walked on. Fidel and Che still stare fixedly out at Cuba, from revolutionary murals to which no-one pays the slightest attention (‘¡Hasta la victoria siempre!’, ‘Che, we are loyal to your courage and your ideas!’, ‘My dreams know no borders!’), from the walls of government buildings where men in green uniforms slumped idly with the doors thrown open in the heat, and – supreme, cruel irony of Cuba – from the banknotes clutched by beggars, often legless Afro-Cubans who, perhaps, left their limbs in Angola for the Struggle.

Practically, travelling here is difficult. Cash machines are few and far between. To exchange or withdraw money I had to join the long queue outside the CADECA, the bureau de change, and once had to wait more than an hour as they shut for lunch just as I was getting close to the front of the line. To get internet access I had to go into one of the upmarket hotels – all marble and vast staircases – and pay six Cooks for an hour's connection.

I kept walking. I found the port, built to resemble Cadiz, and walked along it to the lighthouse and the harbour mouth. On the other side of the bay were the blazing chimneys of a factory, and a stark Spanish fortress. I found the Museum of the Revolution, and outside it, the tank from which Castro had fired on the American ships at the Bay of Pigs.

I took a taxi to Old Havana in the evenings. With the window down, coasting the Malecón - the famous promenade – and the glittering blue sea, I felt good. Sometimes the driver would point out the landmarks – the grand old Hotel Naciónal, and Hemingway’s old haunt, the Floridita – and often would offer me a prostitute. Old Havana in the evening glows many colours in the waning sun; dimly lit, still hot, and bumping with the music of a hundred bars.

The people sprawl under the Spanish colonnades, do backflips off cars, dive into the glaring sea from the Malecón. They wear t-shirts picked up from God knows where, with incongruous slogans: ‘Kalifornia’, ‘UK Soccer Aid. Inspire™’, ‘I fancy a latte’, ‘Bitch Please’. I glimpsed into the tiny, blackened stairwells of their apartment blocks, overheard snatches of their talk:

‘¡Mamí!’

‘¡¿Quééééée?!’

To me, as to Greene’s Wormold, they called out ‘Taxi’ on every corner. They heard my high-school Castilian and took me for Spanish: ‘¡Viva España!’one man cried when I lisped the c in gracias. As I walked down the Malecón a man offered me a swig from his bottle of rum. Girls called out ‘¡Amigo!’ and made kissing noises. One followed me and asked me to her house for a drink. Another stretched out her legs beside me where I sat looking out to sea, and asked forthrightly ‘¿desidiera’ una chica?’

Walking near the port I fell into conversation with two middle-aged Afro-Cubans, John and Marcel. John spoke good English, which he had learned from his brother – one of a group of Cuban and Nicaraguan students who, under Thatcher, were sent to Nottingham on scholarships. He painted a bleak picture of Cuba between puffs on a cigar. He was a physics teacher, and had to work two jobs to make ends meet. He’d never left Cuba, never even left Havana; hotels and transport were too expensive. No-one believed in the revolution today. Forget the propaganda, Cuba was racist; if I saw an Afro-Cuban with a good job it was only because he had connections. I was surprised. Weren’t there some benefits to the regime though, I asked? Free education, free healthcare?

He laughed mirthlessly: ‘William! Don’t talk about things you don’t know.’ Yes healthcare was free, but half of Havana only ate once a day. Yes, university was free, but only the rich went; the poor had to work and support their families. He gestured to some teenagers nearby. Half the boys, he said, would be skipping school to scrounge plastic bottles and sell them to the government, half the girls selling themselves to tourists. He hoped the blockade would be lifted as soon as possible. ‘Cubans need money’, he said bluntly. ‘Castro opened one door, he needs to open the other’. As for the regime, he was unequivocal: ‘Cuba is a jail’.

Of course he asked me for money (‘for my children?’), and I couldn’t refuse him. Marcel, a sculptor, gave me a chip of black African wood, which he said would bring me good luck.

On my last night in Havana, I walked back along the Malecón in the merciful breeze from the cool, silver sea, past ‘the pockmarked, eroded Spanish buildings’. The sky over the Straits of Florida was clouded; there were flashes of lightning and a few flecks of rain. There was no relief, though, from the paralysing heat. The deluge did not come. Not yet.

Photos: Che it Ain't So: Travels in Changing Cuba

william1 — Sun, 9 Apr 2017 05:24:00 GMT

Second World Problems

william1 — Sun, 9 Apr 2017 05:22:00 GMT

Departures from airports are almost always inauspicious. In my case, the trip I had been longing to make began with a bad-tempered New Zealander at the check-in desk at Gatwick, who asked gruffly for my passport and visa; an unpleasant cup of stryrofoam tea, and a bottle of water that leaked on the notebook and books in my bag. At length I boarded a plane full of families and old couples. Destination: Cuba.

This had long been a priority destination for me. It had been a year already since the country began to normalise relations with the United States. It took me that long to save up the money to get there. I wanted to go, to see the extraordinary place before the deluge.

Perhaps, though, I was already too late. I took my seat on a Thompson Holidays flight to the resort town of Varadero, a new route that had only just opened. I was only able to afford to go as they had leftover seats on their package holiday flight, and were selling them cheap. It was a sign of where the country was heading.

The flight was interminable - at 9 hours it was the longest I have ever been on - but comfortable. They brought food and alcohol and tea as I read and watched the flight map, unheard-of towns passing by below. We reached Newfoundland and headed all the way down the East Coast of the United States to Miami and the Florida Keys, all invisible: I was on an aisle seat, next to an ageing couple from the north who set out on a determined effort to drink the plane dry of alcohol.

We began our descent - I watched as the island came nearer, and, to my dismay, the temperature rose into the 30s. And there it was - I saw scorched fields below, my first glimpse of Cuba. After a long wait we stepped off into a searing glass corridor, under a white-hot tropical sky. Into a biege terminal and an interminable queue for customs. Repeated announcements called for Ahmed Farrah to present himself at the information desk, and reminded us that rum cannot be carried in hand lugage - a problem I suppose they often face.

My first contact with a Cuban was with the grey border guard in a uniform with stars on the shoulders, sitting in his tiny cabin. "You go to Africa last month?", he asked me.

"Er... Morocco in February", I answered, confused. It only struck me later that they were probably screening for Ebola. I passed through, and stepped out of the terminal into the hot sun.

"Can I help you sir??", a holiday representative pounced on me. I told him the name of my hotel, and he directed me to a bus with Chinese writing on the side. A large Afro-Cuban woman told me that this bus did not go there. The rep came over. There was an obscure exchange; they shook hands. The woman turned to me: yes, this bus did go to my hotel after all. $15. I was suspicious, but having no alternative, paid and got on board. They sold me two cans of beer for a further $5. A British rep boarded, and extended first an ungrammatical welcome to Cuba, and then an invitation to a 'What's On' meeting the next day. Is this where Cuba is headed?

We set off. Within five minutes I had seen a donkey cart and several American cars from the 50s on the roads. Under the strong sun we passed rows of palm trees and scorched fields; low, unkempt woodlands and red dirt tracks; a sun-browned concrete village where topless, perspiring boys carried buckets of water from a well. And the sea - such a brilliant blue as I had never seen, breaking on the rocks to my left.

We pulled up outside a blocky hotel, the Mar del Sur, that flew the Cuban, French, Russian and Canadian flags. I had to finish the second can of Cerveza Cristal that I had unwisely opened, so I sat for a while, drinking in the steamy courtyard. Consequently I was tipsy enough to attempt to speak Spanish to the woman on reception when I went in. "Buenos tardes! Tengo una reserva acqui."

"Bienvenido! El pasaporte, por favor?", was about as far as that went before I had to ask her to switch to English.

The downside of the bargain flight was that it did not go to Havana, but only as far as the beach resort of Varadero. Reasoning, as the flight arrived quite late in the afternoon, that it would be better not to risk missing the last bus to Havana, I had arranged to stay in Varadero for the first night. Thus I had to fork out £40 for the rather dank room to which I was shown, with defeaning air conditioning and an ancient TV on which, in the absence of the BBC, I watched a fuzzy Canadian channel. It was, however, all-inclusive. So, until the restaurant opened, I went to the free bar, where the waitress took me for Spanish, the TV was Quebecois French, and the only other patrons were two Russians, and drank a beer in the warm breeze.

Thence to the free restaurant, which would perhaps be better described as the Fly-blown Buffet of Questionable Meats. I realised at this point that the Mar del Sur was actually pretty terrible.

After dinner I sneaked out of the resort, into the vast, livid Caribbean sunset, starred with the tall, cold streetlights. I ran across three wide lanes of dusty highway, dodging the 50s cars, to stand in the cacophany of insects and the hot wind by the tranquil Straits of Florida, and take the photo above.

I came back, covered in insect bites, just as the night's poolside 'entertainment' was kicking off (as far as I could decipher, this was a woman talking over songs). Tomorrow, Havana; I have no idea how...

Into the Sandstorm

william1 — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 00:10:00 GMT

It was still raining the next morning. The blue and white town piled into the fog-blackened mountains, and reminded me of a Himalayan hill station. I walked to the square and ordered breakfast from a hilariously inaccurate menu that offered, for example, 'toust and fried egys'.

I took a last look at the bright blue Medina and set off for the bus station. I quickly got lost, and found myself wandering around the concrete outskirts, looking down into the green valleys of the Rif, and panicking. Eventually I got there, saved only by locals who pointed me in the right direction in garbled Spanish, French and English. I then had to find a cash machine, which necessitated rushing 75% back the way I came. It was humid, the air was full of the smell of grilling meat, and I was approached at least 17 times with, for example,

"¡Hola amigo!"

"My fren, where you are from?"

"You want buy marijuana?"

I had decided to move on, to somewhere where there would by no tourists, no touts. Thus I bought a ticket to Meknes. When I got back to the bus station, the drivers on the forecourt told me that there was no 1pm bus to Meknes. It left at 12.30, I'd better hurry. Confused, I went to see the man who had sold me the ticket.

"My fren! This is ticket to Fes! There no are busses direct to Meknes..."

Furious, I bought a ticket from another company, and, just in time, jumped on the 12.30 bus.

As I caught my breath we rolled out of the town into the lush, sweeping valleys. A swarm of traders got on at the roadside. There wasn't room for them; they crammed themselves onto the back bench and crouched on the floor. The conductor came and wrangled money out of them as we corckscrewed along mountain roads.

Past dry rivers and scrubby hillsides. A faraway mosque, a dirt track where stooping women carried heavy loads on their backs. Through Ouezzane, another sprawling concrete town that spilled up the hillside like a splash of grey paint. Most of the traders got off here, but more people got on. The middle-aged man next to me chivalrously ceded his place to a young woman in a headscarf. She wore a red skirt and black leather trousers, and never removed her thick coat, even when the sun came out and it became hot. She was a little older than me. A strand of black hair escaped from her veil. She talked into her iPhone for most of the journey; I understood 'WhatsApp message'.

The landscape became flatter, drier, stonier. I squinted in the strong sun. Someone behind me was playing kebab-shop music. We drew up in a dust-coloured town on the plain; the driver called out a guttural place-name. I asked him how long we would be here. 15 minutes, he told me. I ordered mint tea in a smoky roadside cafe, and drank it quickly. "Pas encore le temps... un pétit-déjeuner ici", the waiter said to me in non-sensical French as I made to rush back to the bus. In the end it was more than 45 minutes before we were back on the road.

Through dry, hilly wastes. So hot. The woman leant over me, said something in Arabic, and drew the curtains. The bright disc of the sun glared through the thin blue fabric. I saw irrigated rows of plants (what grows here?), and squat, sun-faded buildings. A mosque, a crowd standing idly on a brown, dusty flat. I jotted down one word: 'Africa'.

Another low concrete town rose in shades of red out of the black plain. I heard shouts of 'Meknes', so I got off. The woman moved and spoke her only words to me: "vas-y."

I was directed onto another bus (thanking the heavens as I did so that I had learned French. Here in the Moroccan Atlas it saved my bacon). Into shady valleys, where sprase green plants clung to red hillsides. We wound in the setting sun through this golden and red Islamic landscape, slowly filling with shadow.

A walled city appeared on a sandy cliff, both flushed red. By the time we had wound our way up to it, the desert below was sinking into purple. I stepped off on a ringroad, as the city began to light up, and green pinpricks of light appeared in the lavender gloom below. I approached the wall of the old city, and stepped through a Moorish gate...

Into Mughal India. I skirted the wall, under archway after archway, down rough stone alleys dimly lit with orange lanterns, many covered with a roof so low I could barely pass. To the side, pitch dark defiles, mosques, again that rising and falling Qu'ranic song. A crush of people at a shop, everywhere glittering tiles and swirling Arabic engravings.

I found my hotel at length. Inside it was silent, and grander than the others. The woman didn't seem to be expecting me, though I had a reservation. She showed me a seat in French, and made a series of phone calls. I heard her stumbling over my name. After she showed me to my room I stepped back out in search of food.

Now it was Afghanistan: winding, dusty and dim. Here, deep in the sand, tradition's hold was stronger. I saw the first niqabs of my trip. There were so many madrassas, no restaurants... No 'my fren, where you are from' here, though I was eyed with curiosity, as the only European in the streets. A passing youth tried out his French on me: "Je m'appelle!"

I was soon lost. An old man asked if he could help me. He was a French teacher, he said. On his way to evening prayer he showed me to a place on a main street where I was able to find sustenance, and he didn't ask for any money. Singlehandedly he sent my opinion of Morocco skyrocketing.

Obviously I got lost again on the way back. I found men playing music in doorways, a pack horse struggling down an alley, a vast square bounded by stark white fortifications where the remains of the day's market stood, wailing music blasting from a cassette stall.

Eventually I found my way back to the quiet, elegant hotel. I showered, read, and went to bed early, and then some ear-splitting American tourists arrived and broke the spell.

Breakfast was some strawberries, bread, and strange cake in a corner of the central courtyard. I left and wandered around the town for a while. In daylight I could see the desert colours of the streets, and the caverns where men wove, chiselled, grilled meat. The smoky, potholed, impenetrable market and the beggars. It was humid; I sensed a storm brewing. The people were far kinder here: no-one harassed me, only asked if I was lost. Admittedly I was shepherded into a carpet emporium at one point, though seasoned as I now am, I managed to talk my way out within a few minutes. As I left, I saw, with not inconsiderable schadenfreude, some of the loud Americans from the hotel being led in...

I tried to locate the tomb of Moulay Ismail - a great, cruel king who kept the country free from the expanding Ottoman Empire, and drove the Europeans from all Morocco except Ceuta and Melilla. He remained elusive, however. I would not have been allowed to enter anyway, infidel as I am.

Time was running short now. I made my way to the station and boarded a train to Rabat, homewards.

The train boiled for a couple of hours through the green and barren chessboard of the Atlas. We stopped at Kénitra; as we idled I watched a small boy scale the station wall with the help of his friends, and an old man stop to admonish them. Two very beautiful women got on and sat opposite me. Here, in the sea breeze, tradition's grip had lessened again - their hair was uncovered and they wore pink lipstick. I couldn't take my eyes off them.

The sea, though, remained invisible. We passed Salé and crossed the Bou Regreg, faintly Mohammedan Blue.

It was overcast when I stepped off. I had only a glimpse of a white, humid city, and a still further glimpse of sea.

Rabat.

The Stronghold in the Rif

william1 — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 12:03:00 GMT

I was woken at dawn, by the eerie sound of discordant muezzins calling to prayer.

When I left it was pouring with rain. The alleys of Tangier were rivers, waterfalls. I managed to find my way out of the labyrinthine Medina to the 'ville nouvelle', and get to the city's bus station, but by the time I arrived I was thoroughly soaked. Inside it was as grimy and damp as a subway station on a wet day. A portrait of Morocco's king looked swarthily down on the dirt and the shouting men. I bought a ticket to Chefchaouen, a city in the Rif mountains that I had read about. After drinking a coffee in the dank and smoky bar and embarassingly smashing the glass with my suitcase, I boarded a bus that was half full, mostly of other foreigners, and sat down, still damp. We rolled down to the port and idled by the water, beneath the sodden Medina which piled up the hillside. A Moroccan man, who spoke no English or French, got on and gave me to understand, in Spanish which we could both barely speak, that I was in his seat. I got up and moved to the back seat of the bus, next to a plump German girl.

Thus we left Tangier, and entered a region of green hills. I had no idea Morocco looked like this - on a wet day like today it could have been Britain.

The windows misted up. We wound into mountains - now lush and foggy, now starker, redder, like the south of Spain. Sprawling at their feet was a white concrete town - Tetouan, once the capital of Spanish Morocco. From there it was another hour - past ocassional, very Spanish, clusters of white houses, mosques tiled in turqouise, dirt tracks where I glimpsed men on donkeys, murky rivers and dry river beds, and crumbling red soil - to the drizzly outskirts of Chefchaouen.

I barged past the taxi drivers at the bus station and made my way uphill, towards the old town.

"What hotel you are looking for? I show you! Chefchaouen verygoodmyfren!" Heart sinking I found myself following a tout, and his friend who attached himself to us, into the steep and narrow defiles of another Medina, all painted blue - to repel mosquitos, they told me. We reached the hostel. "My fren, now you give me money and no problem. Just 300 dirhams. Then we go smoke hashish..."

But I had worked out how to deal with these people. I shoved 20 dirhams into his hand and strode inside. "Hey! You want make problem??" they shouted after me, and I slammed the door in their faces.

It seemed that the place I had booked was full, so I was shown to another a few alleys away, the Mauritania. A kindly man showed me in - another opulent Moorish place with central courtyard, all tiled in blue like the streets. I left my suitcase (into which, I found to my dismay, the rain had soaked), and walked up to the town's central square. There stood a mosque and a stark, ancient fortress. Chefchaouen sits among mountains, but today these were lost in fog. I went to a restaurant and ate a large, steaming bowl of couscous, and then walked through the souk, far calmer than Tangier's.

A century ago, before the Spanish conquest, only three Westerners had ever visited Chefchaouen, and only two had made it out to tell the tale. It was 'a city in which it was considered an utter impossibilty for a European to enter', wrote the remarkable Times journalist Walter Harris, who was one of those two. Not so today, alas. Even at this time of year tourists abound. "I might buy just a little bit of opium", I heard an American voice say.

That night I went out again, into the blue streets - some all blue, some only to the height of a man, and white or gold from there up - near empty, and brightly lit, at far intervals, with white lanterns. Sometimes through an archway you glimpsed into a mosque where men were praying, or into a cafe where they smoked shisha pipes. Pinpricks of light climbed halfway up the mountains, just about visible in the gloom, though fog still shrouded their peaks. A crescent moon hung overhead, mirroring the minarets. The song of the Qu'ran rose and fell softly in the alleys.

Back at the blue-tiled hostel it was freezing, and the rain that had got inside my suitcase had dampened by pyjamas. I passed a very cold night.

Across al-Madiq

william1 — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 14:25:00 GMT

I sat crammed in the back of an ancient Mercedes, listening to the guttural radio and the rain drumming heavily on the roof. How often, on childhood holidays, had I stood on Andaluz beaches and gazed at the lights just visible across the sea, wondering what lay on the other side? I looked at the mist and the damp concrete towers, and was unimpressed.

The taxi pulled up at the top of a narrow defile, opposite a grimy old fortification. "Here - Kasbah!", the driver squawked in pidgin English. "Hotel - this way!' And he led us downwards.

It has been written that to cross the Straits of Gibraltar into Tangier is to step into another world. Following that taxi driver down ever-narrower, ever-steeper alleys into the ancient walled city, I could see why. Such a sudden barrage of otherness I have never known. Islamic archways the shape of lit candles; women in bright shawls, men in long robes and skullcaps; yellow and blue, white and red and purple alleys; swirling Arabic murals; vendors calling to us from their caverns, which burst with silk, overflowed with spices, billowed with smoke from grilling meat, all flashed before my eyes before I had time to take them in. All the while the rain blew in my face.

We reached the hostel on Rue Ibn Battouta. A tall building, winding upwards in Moorish style around a central courtyard, richly decorated in glittering tiles and stained glass. The friendly host showed us up to the roof terrace, looking out over the tumbling rooftops to the sea, lost to the February fog. He pointed out the supposed tomb of Ibn Battuta, perhaps the greatest traveller who ever lived, just next door: "People say he never saw the Pyramids, because he said they were round. I think he saw them in a mirage in the distance... I don't know how the hell he got by in China. No-one spoke Arabic there. No Google Translate in those days!"

I went out for lunch, tried to find my way back, and got lost in about 7 seconds.

"My fren, the Medina is this way."

A middle-aged man approached.

"My name is Noumi. You are welcome in Morocco. Let me show you how we treat guests. Where you are from? ...I have fren in Liverpool!"

He not only led me back to the Medina, he showed me around the souks, down alleys so narrow I had to walk sideways, brimming over with vegetables, spices, books (I wanted to look but my host sped me on), and tools, old guns, brilliant pots and plates, silver and gold, so many treasures I stopped noticing them. The sun had come out now, it was hot; I tripped over stray cats; flies swarmed around batteries of chickens. In a back street he led me up into a crumbling Moorish building, in whose recesses men wove dresses on ancient looms. He showed me a great red mosque, and another, white, that turned out to be an Anglican church, with English names on the gravestones. He pointed out writers' houses: "Paul Bowles live there!"

I can't believe I fell for it.

Before I knew what was happening, he had ushered me into his friend's carpet shop, and I was being served mint tea while carpet after magnificent carpet was spread before me. "These are from the Atlas mountains!", the salesman enthused. "These are from the Tuareg country in the Sahara... No, don't worry if you can't fit it in your suitcase, we deliver all over the world! We take euros dollars pounds Australian Canadian New Zealand dollars, we even take plastic fantastic money! Shall we say 275 euros?"

To cut a long and embarassing story short, I told him I only had 200 dirhams (about 20 euros). He brought out the smallest sample he had - a yellow item which I suspect may be a prayer rug - and I bought it just to get out of there. "You buy another one for mum? 150?", he called after me as I left.

"Now I take you to Berber pharmacy", said my faux guide, as the muezzins called out for afternoon prayer.

"Aren't you going to pray?", I tried to shake him off.

"Yes I am go to pray, but first I take you to Berber pharmacy, and then I take you to..."

"Just take me back to the al-Andalusi." I snapped, hopelessly lost as I was.

"Is just up here."

"Take me to the door."

"My fren, why you think I lie to you..."

"TAKE ME TO THE DOOR."

"...My fren, you give me money", he implored when we arrived. I gave him 50 dirhams to sod off, and went inside, furious with myself.

Soon afterwards I set out for the old American Legation, where I had agreed to meet my fellow traveller.

Another middle-aged man attached himself to me. "I saw you with that man earlier," he said. "I'm sorry about that. Not all Moroccans are like him. He is just trying to make a living. I will show you to the Legation." I thanked him, and we corkscrewed up some more brightly painted alleys.

"Where you are from? ...My brother lives in Sheffield! Which city you are from? ...You are cockney? Lovely jubbly!" I laughed. Suddenly my good Samaritan whipped a lump of greyish resin from his coat. "You want buy hashish? 50 dirham."

"No."

"20?"

"Absolutely not."

We reached the Legation, where my companion was waiting. "My fren, you give me money! I am not like the other man, any money is fine, even 1 dirham..."

I gave him half a dirham and went inside, still more furious with myself and with Morocco.

The Old American Legation, though, was my kind of place. A tranquil oasis in this chatoic city of tight alleys and rain and touts; in another Moorish building built around a peaceful central coutryard; full of old maps and arcane history. Here I learned that Morocco was the first country to recognise the nascent United States, and that Tangier was once briefly held by England - part of the dowry of Charles II's Portuguese bride, along with Bombay.

We sought out some mint tea nearby, as darkness fell, early, on the Medina. Afterwards we set off in search of somewhere to eat. I wound up alley after ghoulish alley, under archway after Islamic archway, as tout after tout attached themselves to us, trying to sell us hashish, telling my fellow traveller she must wear a headscarf if she goes to southern Morocco, telling me I should really wear the djellaba (a hooded robe worn by Moroccan men) as, after all, he wore jeans when he went to France, and his brother just happened to sell them, just over here...

There was no escape. "You Danish?" they approached my companion, who is tall and blonde. "You Spanish?" they said to me, as we walked down to the cranes by the sea, still locked in fog and drizzle still blowing in our faces, as the muezzins wailed for evening prayer and the neon crescent moons flashed green atop the mosques.

Soon my fellow traveller left to catch a night train to Marrakech. I'm writing on the roof terrace, looking out over Tangier at night - the heap of lights and shadows, pierced by minarets. Is that old Andalusia I can see, flickering on the horizon, beyond the smoky haze of the port..?

Thus my introduction to Morocco, half magnificent and half unbearable...