rock the casbah

For decades, Tangier has captured the Western imagination as a hedonistic enclave for bohemian expatriates. Now, a new generation of native Tangier creatives are taking the reins to reclaim their city's narrative

- Stephanie Rafanelli

People will tell the same old story until they hear a better tale," says Ahmed, an elder I meet by chance in Tangier's casbah - a Cubist jumble of white buildings beneath circling gulls that cry out over the morning call to prayer. We're chatting, perched on the high ramparts of the old Portuguese citadel, our heels in Africa, Europe on the horizon like a giant seabird gliding toward us. "Birds go back and forth without borders," muses Ahmed, his words flying just as freely among Darija (Moroccan Arabic), French, and Spanish. Tanjawi - or Tangerines - are sociable polyglots who speak in a meze of languages. Ahmed's hair is as silvered as Moroccan sardines, his green eyes drizzled with amber like the olive oil in bissara pea soup.

Colors pop in this city of white and pearly light: the emerald of mint sold next to nets of escargot and the jade roofs of mosques; the yellow stripes of hooded djellaba robes; the cumin-like sprinkles of gold bougainvillea - and everywhere, across the network of roof terraces, the oily indigo brushstrokes of the sea. The shifting politics of the Gibraltar Strait have endlessly recalibrated the fate of Morocco's northernmost port city and the identity of its people; Tangier has been held by the Phoenicians, Portuguese, Middle Eastern caliphates, Spanish, British, and French before becoming the Moroccan sultanate's diplomatic center in the late 19th century. "We have been a nexus of culture in the Mediterranean for thousands of years, and Jews and Muslims coexisted in peace," says Ahmed. "Yet in the West, they only talk about the moment 20th-century colonists created 'the Tangerine dream.'" Ahmed is referring to the era in Tangier's history, beginning in the interwar period and peaking in the 1950s, when the city served as a licentious playground for a motley assortment of artists, socialites, and hedonists.