Tangier in Literature
"Of course world travel isn't as good as it seems, it's only after you've come back from all the heat and horror that you forget to get bugged and remember the weird scenes you saw."
- Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac passed by Morocco before traveling to France. The American confessed he liked the women he saw in Tangier, but readers would sense his true feelings. Tangier was too dull for him. He never appreciated the history of this metropolis, which was unusual for a wanderer like him.
Greek legend told how Hercules lived in Tangier, where the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea would meet. This was his home before he embarked on his eleventh labor. The city in Northern Morocco was the entry to the Ancient Lands, which Rick Riordan depicted in "The Mark of Athena". The third book in "The Heroes of Olympus" series saw a bitter Hercules guarding this part of the world, a reward for his successful completion of the Twelve Labors. Perhaps Zeus disapproved at how Hercules find some helping hands, like the case of the golden apple. Most Young-adult readers won't figure out that Riordan was alluding to the Cave of Hercules, which was a major tourist destination.
The Phoenicians created the carvings in the cave, perhaps inspired after looking at the sea for hours. There were two openings, one of which would lead to the bottom of the sea and into Gibraltar. Some suspected the Barbary macaques, ubiquitous sights in this British Overseas Territory, have gone through the passageway. It seemed like a stuff of legend, like how Hercules slept in this cave before traveling to the garden of Hesperidas. It was located in modern-day Lixus.
It was the legend that lured the likes of Paul Bellow. He lived in Tangier until the end of his life.
The dark sky will protect us
“Another important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.”
- Paul Bellow
Bellow's greatest work, "The Sheltering Sky", was about an American couple who traveled around the world. They hoped unfamiliar places and new experiences would save their marriage, but Tangier brought them something else.
Bellow would speak of alienation in the post-colonial era. He came to the French Morocco, and the novel was released before the outbreak of World War II. He might be lost after looking at the structures, a mixture of Christian, Muslim, Roman, and Greek influences. He didn't miss the U.S. either. The title was a figurative expression, where Bellow would hide from the turbulent events beyond Morocco's shores. Indeed, the country became the nest of spies during the war. (Just watch "Casablanca".) But Bellow's mind was somewhere else.
