Epilogue Tangier 1988
Epilogue
Last Word
Take a pony of dry gin, three quarters of a pony of Chartreuse Verte, three quarters of a pony of Maraschino liqueur and the same of fresh lime. Shake well with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. A drink to cleanse the palate, when the day is done.
Le Mal de Tanger.
Tangier Sickness, it’s the excuse people give, the reason why they remain in this city. I already had it bad, back then. Now I’m incurable. I’m a true Tangerine, like the best and the worst of them.
Of course, Tangier – my Tangier – is gone. It changed around me, even as I walked the streets, just as it had for Ale, for Hilde, for Arthur Langham.
Still, I see that lost city every day. To live in Tangier is to live in a dozen versions of the same place, to walk with one eye filled with ghosts.
I see it in the faded advertisements on the medina walls.
I see it in Abdelhamid’s shop, which hasn’t changed a bit.
I see it in the old, flamboyant characters, clasping their fraying masks to their faces, taking the same seats in the Café Central that they did fifty years ago, sullenly sipping tea where once they drank down Fundador.
I see it every time I walk past the Bab al-Bahr, and the white walls of Dar Portuna rise up before me. A few times, I have almost forgotten myself and turned the corner, almost raised a hand to brush aside a fall of jasmine that is no longer there.
Dar Portuna doesn’t belong to me, any more.
It really never did. Zahrah chose to sell, just after we were married.
The authorities didn’t like that – they were still turning up every so often, looking for Ale – but they couldn’t do a thing.
Ale’s will was watertight. So we had our wedding there, a final party attended by our friends in the city: by Abdelhamid and Mouad and their families, by Bet and the crew from The Hold, who had known all along that I would never leave, by my bemused parents and siblings and a few people we later found out were never invited at all.
For one last evening, champagne flowed and music tangled in the old fig tree and I’m sure the lights could be seen from the darkness of the strait.
Then, Bet helped us sell the place to a contact of hers, a foreign gentleman investor whose name I never quite caught.
Zahrah used the money to start her own business.
We had a future to build, not a past to languish in.
Dar Portuna is a hotel now, an exclusive one, where they serve cocktails on the terrace and cook English-style breakfasts for those that want them.
It seems fitting. Sometimes, Zahrah and I joke that we’ll spend the night there for our anniversary, but we never have.
We live in the new town, in a flat that overlooks the strait with its eerie blue colour, its constant mix of two waters, tumbling together.
My writing desk is by the window, and on good days, after a coffee at the Gran Café de Paris, I stare out at the smudge of Spain on the horizon and hack out a few chapters, before picking up the girls from school.
Zahrah often works until late. Her business – imports and exports – is going from strength to strength.
Sometimes I think about the envelope that Ale left, addressed to her: thick with papers that she has never let me read, surely containing more than a simple will.
Sometimes, I ask if I can help. But my wife only smiles at me, and says I wouldn’t like all of the details.
These days her personalized briefcase is full of papers in English, Spanish, French, even Russian.
As for me, it took two years to knock that first, scrappy manuscript into shape, another year to find an agent in London willing to take a punt, and another before I was finally holding a finished copy of the book in my hands.
Last Drink in Tangiers. It did OK, for a debut.
Sure, there were some critics who said it was far-fetched, but my editor told me to ignore them; she said that as long as there are readers, there will always be appetite for a good story.
I guess she’s right, because my books have sold pretty well since then. They’re crime novels mostly, tales of smuggling and glamour and adventure, all set in a past age. Bet helps me when I’m stuck for ideas, says she has more tall tales than she knows what to do with.
But recently I’ve been thinking of writing something different, a particular story that has been nagging at me for a long time.
I know how it begins. I was reminded of it just the other day, when my daily walk took me past the ragged old Hotel Continental.
When I glanced up at the terrace, I swear I saw two elderly gentlemen sitting there, wearing beautiful white flannel suits.
They stuck in my mind, so I decided to turn around, to take a closer look.
By the time I jogged up the steps, they were gone, leaving nothing but a pair of empty cocktail glasses. I asked the waiter if the old men were lodging at the hotel, but he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.
Of course, I could have tried to find them.
I could have tracked them down and asked where they had come from, where they were heading, Marrakech, Paris, Shanghai?
I could have asked whether they were old friends who had previously lost touch, but who now, in their autumn years, saw each other clearly for the first time.
I could have told them they reminded me of people in a story I once heard. I could have asked whether that drink on the terrace of the Hotel Continental was the first or the last of many …
I could have, but I didn’t. Instead, I went home, sat down at my desk, and began to write.