One of the appointments I have to cancel in order to dash off to Morocco is with an ADHD specialist, to see if I might have Attention Deficit Disorder. So I miss it due to being distracted.
Back in Highgate, up at 6am to watch the world coming to life and force myself into a writing discipline once again. This time, it’s the coming back that energises, rather than the holiday itself. Tangier Mark Two was more restless and stressful, with me worrying about money, Shane’s health, my health, being bothered by hustlers (I wasn’t really, after we’d escaped the port), being mugged at night (not at all). A complete bag of nerves. Shane offers me some kif (the local dope) to calm me down, and even valium, and I give it a go. But of course, it isn’t really me. Though the problem IS me. I don’t think I’ve ever calmed down in my life. I don’t know how to.
As part of this general restlessness, I do a bit of hotel hopping in the week I’m there, with Shane’s permission. I go from the £105 a night five-star Minzah to the £9 a night Hotel El Muniria in Rue Du Magellan. This is Tangier’s Beat Hotel, or their equivalent of the Chelsea Hotel, compared to the Minzah’s Ritz. Also known as the Villa Muniria or the Villa Delirium, it’s where Burroughs installed himself for much of his Tangier days, holding druggy parties with his naughty chums: Ginsberg, Kerouac, Francis Bacon, and so on.
The actual room where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch, No 9, is now ‘privee’. The owner, a tall mustachioed gentleman, now lives there. I meet him in the bar below, the Tanger Inn, when Shane & I go there one night. These days the Muniria is a family-run pension. Clean enough, and the wardrobes and beds themselves are agreeable, but most rooms have to share toilets or bathrooms across the corridors, and many of the doors are so stiff, it’s impossible to go to the toilet without summoning the strength of Hercules and making an almighty slamming sound. All those Beat types must have been pretty butch. Well, compared to me. Need I even make that observation?
I am shown what used to be Jack Kerouac’s room, with a fantastic view of the sea and the city from the rooftop terrace, but turn it down because it means sharing a toilet. There’s my life for you in a single sentence.
Early February appears to be Tangier’s coldest, wettest time of year, and the Muniria has no heating. So getting up at night to go to the loo is even more of an ordeal. There’s the freezing cold, the having to nip across the public corridor to the shared lav, and the ridiculously stiff doors to wrench noisily open and slam deafeningly close at every stage. Add to that the danger of being caught by a some fellow guest – inevitably a badly dressed backpacker spending a night here on their way to Fez – in one’s night clothes. The shame of it.
The lady in charge of the Muniria kindly lets me switch rooms for one night. I go from No 3 to No 6, which does have its very own toilet, shower and writing desk, at no extra cost. You’d have thought this would make me happier, but then I dwell on the cold, the fact there’s only hot water in the morning and evenings, that I left my umbrella in the first taxi we took, and that the Rue Du Magellan outside is a pretty dodgy street, particularly at night. It’s on a steep slope, and some sections are steps only, so cars can’t come here. No street lights, though there’s a safer stretch of road halfway along which one can take as a diversion. Twice the time to reach the main streets, but half the fear. One evening I look up the steps of the shorter, steeper route and note there’s one light in the darkness. It’s from the cigarette of a man standing alone in a bricked-up doorway. And I wonder what it’s liked to be mugged at a 45 degree angle.
I consider this place is ideal in the summer, but not for early February. After two nights at the Muniria, I up sticks and move to the Hotel Rembrandt around the corner. £28 a night, three star, heating and en suite bathroom and toilet, on the main high street (Boulevard Pasteur), built in the 1950s in a kind of mock Art Deco style, and yet another relic from the Interzone years. It’s the Tangier equivalent of the New Piccadilly Cafe, and suits me to a tee. Not too much, not too little.
When I get home, I discover that the Rembrandt was the hotel of choice for one particular visitor to Tangier, who went there regularly. Someone who I therefore have more in common with than the Beats, whether I like it or not.
Kenneth Williams.
