TANGIER RISING

THE CREATIVE VISIONARIES OF MOROCCO'S OFT-ROMANTICISED PORT CITY ARE TELLING A NEW STORY.

- STEPHANIE RAFANELLI

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

In this city of white and pearly light, colours pop: the emerald of mint sold next to nets of escargot and jade roofs of mosques; the yellow stripes of hooded djellaba robes; the cumin-like sprinkles of gold bougainvillea; and everywhere between the network of roof terraces and the oily indigo brushstrokes of the sea. The politics of this 13-km stretch of water below Tarifa has decided the fate of Morocco's northernmost port city and the identity of its people since it was conquered by the Phoenicians, Portuguese, Middle Eastern caliphates, Spanish, British, and French, and became the Moroccan sultanate's diplomatic centre 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".