Leaving Banality Behind

Tangier - How Perspective Starts with Ankle Traps, Digital Kiosks, and Chaos.

We’re off to Tangier with the prospect of sun, and the first thing I do is shovel the snow off the pavement at 6 AM. We've had it with winter, but winter—obviously—hasn't had it with us.

There’s a thin layer of white stuff clinging to the cobblestones. I consider leaving it there just for the beauty of it, but my sense of courteousness takes over, and I worry about people breaking their ankles in the places where cobblestones are supposed to be but are not.

Ankle traps.

They’re easy to spot when there is no snow. The city's official ankle trap surveyor picks a sunny day every spring for a head-down walk along our boroughs' sidewalks to spray-paint a fluorescent circle around the missing slabs. Last year it was pink. The year before, it was fluorescent green. It’s January now; both paints are fading, and the holes are still there. But this is Brussels, the place where Nordic walking could have been invented just to keep you afoot if it wasn't for the Scandinavians, who unexpectedly found wooden planks their favored method of locomotion.

That was before they started making Volvos.

No broken ankles on our stretch of the sidewalk. I do the neighbors' too while I’m at it. A delightful lawyer couple on the left, whom I provide with a momentary free accident liability cover, and our amazing but occasionally absent-minded neighbors on the right, who may wake up thinking of snow in academic terms.

We love them both, whatever the weather.

I'm barely out of breath when I finish shoveling. For the first time in 40 years or so, I'm in awe of my physical condition, wondering if it's the swimming that Reinhilde talked me into. I'm now doing 50 laps in a heated outdoor pool four times a week. Even when it freezes or snows. If it's not sheer madness, it must be love. Especially because she moves through the water swimming breaststroke with the elegance of a dolphin, while my freestyle is about as efficient as trying to skim a brick across a pond against a gale.

Mohamed, our Uber driver, testifies to his 4.95-star rating by arriving 20 minutes in advance. "I’m early," he says, "because of the snow. Thought I’d get a head start." Great minds think alike. We ordered our ride an hour earlier than necessary.

You just can't win against collective providence.

We arrive at the airport in record time, four hours before our flight, and we join the other forward-thinking citizens who—by experience—anticipated that traffic would halt, railroad switches would become snow-blocked, and overhead lines would snap. But none of that. We're all staring blankly at the flight boards, searching for flights that haven't opened for check-in yet.

I need caffeine to contain my jittery senses from starting a rant. It's the banality of airports and their visitors that triggers them most. I wonder what's worse, giving free rein to my upcoming grumpiness or fetching a cappuccino from one of the chain stores that litter the departure hall.

Reinhilde decides on the latter. Self-preservation, I guess.

Starbucks is a no-go; I decline to order a regular coffee as tall. No marketer in Seattle can give me a warm feeling paying 5.80 euros for a mockery of measurement and skimmed milk. It's been a long time since Exki was exquis. So thank God for Le Pain Quotidien.

We thought.

Until we were forced to order from one of these digital kiosks where a team of marketers—every one of them more irritating than the creator of Starbucks' tall latte—obliges you to tap through an idiot-proof Q&A designed exclusively to make you add items you don't want. I don’t want a breakfast combo, nor do I need a side of guacamole with my croissant, thank you. I want a flaky croissant that's baked golden, but since these technological pillars of salt have taken the place of Alain Coumon's bric-a-brac counters, which were once brimming with generous sourdough loaves and buttery viennoiseries, what you get is not what you've been shown.

That's Le Pain Quotidien off our list as well. And hungry onto the Air Arabia flight to Tangier.

If Ryanair makes you think of The Pogues blasting from the speakers in an empty Irish pub smelling of stale Guinness at 9:00 AM, Air Arabia evokes strolling along the Corniche under the palm trees on a mild spring evening humming 'As Time Goes By.' But the fundamental things just don't apply today, as this exotic low-cost carrier seems to prefer keeping everyone on board for three hours, waiting for the weather to improve, rather than spending money on deicing the plane.

Tangier makes up for it immediately. The immigration officer cracks a joke as he compares my face with the mugshot on my passport. Both are ludicrous. The taxi driver doubles as an over-excited tourist guide with his left arm gesticulating wildly through the open window—oblivious of what's happening on the right, as testified by its disproportionate number of dents—as he takes us on the scenic route to the kasbah through Rahrah Park. Fresh fruit and vegetables spill out of the grocery stores onto the sidewalks. Our surveyor would need all year to mark the potholes in the streets. Cats curl up under a write-off Piaggio Ape that has been refurbished as a mobile coffee shop. There's not a single tall latte in sight.

Tangier's unintentional chaos is of a comforting nature.

Nordin welcomes us to the hotel. Smiles that are both genuine and frequent reveal two rows of big, healthy teeth. They are as white and as naturally irregular as the walls in the kasbah. A pair of dark eyes surrounded by wrinkles in a sort of one-sided mischievous halo is in sync with the smiles. We haven't eaten all day: the smell of ras el hanout for the chicken tajine, ginger for the butternut, and mint wafts up the staircase.

There's no kiosk to tap our order into. There's just Nordin and the chef. A tiny dining room. A bottle of rosé on ice to finish upstairs. And an eccentric bedroom with sturdy shelves stacked with books to read on our rooftop terrace.

Beauty lies not in perfection but in the comfort of chaos. The Strait of Gibraltar fades into the night and the warmth of Tangier reminds us that traveling is not about distance but perspective.

https://www.aestheticnomads.com/

Contributors:

Hans Pauwels, words - Reinhilde Gielen, photographs

Locations:

Kasbah Museum, Tangier, Morocco

Nord Pinus Hotel, Tangier, Morocco

Dar Nour Hotel, Tangier, Morocco