Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Checking into Hotel Continental, I was greeted by l amboyant Jimmy,
who runs the shop there. Jimmy knows every telephone area code in the US.
A few years ago, I had told him I was from Seattle. He said, “206.” Now I
tested him again. He said, “206, 360, 425...new area codes.”
Hotel Continental had me looking for the English Patient. Gramophones
gathered dust on dressers under mangy chandeliers. A serene woman painted
a sudsy i gure-eight in the loose tiles with her mop, day after day, surrounded
by dilapidation that never went away.
As I updated the information in my guidebook, I found a striking and
nonchalant incompetence. My guidebook listed the hotel's phone and email
data more accurately than their own printed material. It's a 70-room hotel
with, it seemed, not a sheet of paper in its oi ce.
Roosters and the Muslim call to prayer worked together to wake me
and the rest of that world. When the morning sun was high enough to
send a rainbow plunging into the harbor amid ferries busily coming and
going, I stood on my balcony and surveyed Tangier kicking into gear.
Women in colorful, flowing robes walked to sweatshops adjacent to the
port. They were happy to earn $8 a day (a decent wage for an unskilled
worker here) sewing for big-name European clothing lines—a reminder
that a vast and wealthy Continent
is just a short cruise to the north.
Cabbies jostled at the pier for the
chance to rip off arriving tourists.
It's an exciting time in Morocco.
Walking the streets, I enjoyed
observing a modest new affluence,
lots of vision and energy, and, at
the same time, no compromise with
being Arabic and Muslim. The king
is modernizing. His queen, a com-
moner, is the first queen to be seen
in public. Moroccans have never
seen their king's mother. The fact
that Moroccans couldn't even rec-
ognize their former queen shows
how much can change in a relatively
short time.
Morocco's new king is more modern,
and with his friendly policies, Tangier is
enjoying a renaissance.
