Tangier

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Tangier in the rain: it's as if our whole gleaming city is bathed in tears. As the rains lash the streets, the Moroccans pull up the hoods of their djellabas and hurry for shelter beneath the arcades. Men push vegetable carts through deep puddles on Rue de Fez, and in the cafe s of the Socco Chico one sees abandoned lovers hunched over their coffees and the haunted, glazed eyes of the smokers of hashish. Suddenly Tangier seems filled with stricken people. Arrayed at the tables in the Cafe de France are the faces of our dispossessed.

Passing Madame Porte's pastry shop last February, one might have seen the agony of the old architect Leo Fischer through the broad window that looks out on the intersection of Rue Goya and Rue Musa Ben Nusair. He was sitting at the corner table sipping from a cup of tea. Were those tears streaming down his cheeks or an illusion, caused by the raindrops that washed the windows of the shop?

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