The Moroccan hotel manager looks concerned.

‘Votre ami: il est malade? Vous voulez un docteur?’

‘Non, merci. Il est bien. Vraiment. Il est souvent comme ca. C’est de rien. Alors, c’est de rien pour lui.’

**********

An internet cafe, Blvd Pasteur, Tangier, December 2005.

This is going to take some getting used to, the fake-blond man thinks. And some time to type.

The fake-blond man, feeling like the world’s most naive Englishman, which he very possibly is, struggles slowly with the unfamiliar computer keyboard. Where’s the button for the full-stop? Oh, up there, press and hold SHIFT plus the semi-colon key. Must be less used here. The temptation to just type away as one would on a – he stops himself saying ‘normal’ – British keyboard is overwhelming. He types his own name without looking at his fingers:

Dickon Edaqrds;

In Tangiers, most people speak Moroccan Arabic, then maybe French or Spanish in that order. Putting it very nicely indeed, his French isn’t too good, and his Spanish and Arabic is non-existent. His travelling companion and employer has been here before and can speak a bit of Spanish, though on some days he barely speaks at all. Today the friend is confined to his hotel room, sleeping, reading, smoking and drinking. Mostly sleeping and drinking. The unitiated are often distressed, even upset to see him like this, but the fake-blond man is used to it. The Irishman may no longer be a heroin addict, but he’s still a gin and tonic and cigarettes junkie. To stop those, he says, would kill him.

Besides, as the Toothless Junkie told his Toothsome Secretary the previous day, ‘I didn’t come here to wake up.’ And he giggles his rattlesnake giggle: ‘KKkksshhhhhhhh.’

The friend, who has treated the Englishman to an impromptu week’s paid holiday here, is a famous Irish rock star. Or at least, famous to those who have heard of him. In Tangier, only what really matters really matters. People here earn a tiny fraction of the average Englishman’s wage, even a tiny fraction of the non-average Englishman’s wage, like the fake-blond man. He may be a housed beggar in his home country, but here he has the spending power of a minor aristrocrat. Which is what he always thought he was anyway. He feels wealthy, vulnerable and lost, but doesn’t mind too much. This is Tangier, city of dreams according to all of those dead literary hooligans connected with the city, whom he feels connected to himself: Paul and Jane Bowles, William S Burroughs, Jack Kerouc, Truman Capote and all their decadent pals.

What must the locals think of this pair? The nervous fake-blond younger Englishman in the white suit is older than he looks, but mainly because he hasn’t really begun to live. The older man with black hair in the big black coat gets annoyed when hearing himself referred to as English or American (‘I’m Irish! Irish!’); he looks and acts like he’s lived several dozens of lives. English and Irish; White Suit and Black Coat; Yin and Yang; Innocence and Experience.

Tangier is another planet, even more so than Tokyo. Which is perhaps why so many Western science fiction movies and TV, from Star Trek to Star Wars to Serenity, imagine that most settlements on other planets look like Tangier. People in scarfs, cowls and hoods mingling with the modern, ululating howls from exotic temples, streets which are really one-person corridors in buildings, desert and ocean vistas around the corner, drugs and street hustlers, the bizarre and the bizaars; indecipherable but beautiful alphabets, indecipherable but beautiful everything.

The Englishman sniffs away at the beginning of a cold, and stops typing in order to find a piece of tissue with which to blow his nose. Is there ‘une Kleenex’ pres d’ici? The place does have a toilet, but no toilet paper. He asks for some, and they smile and laugh as if this is an entirely unreasonable demand to make. You buy your own, you bring your own. He does have a pocket handkerchief, but it is only for show. Serves him right, really.

The Englishman decides to check his email. To be continued. He will be back in London on Tuesday. He has to rehearse with his band, just as his employer has to rehearse with his. Both men are known, if known musically at all, for their lyrics. One is playing at the Camden Purple Turtle, the other is headlining Brixton Academy.

Till then, he feels a little like the butler at the end of Citizen Kane.