The Pillars of Hercules

The Levanter was as strong on the sixth day as it had been on the first day. But there was nothing new about this. In 1854, in a book called The Mediterranean, Rear Admiral William Henry Smyth wrote, “The hardest gale of the neighborhood is the Solano or Levanter of the Gibraltar pilots … That the winds in the Straits of Gibraltar blow either from the east points or west points of the horizon (technically termed down or up) in general has been immemorially remarked; and the conformation of its coasts on both sides renders the reason palpable. Of these winds, the east is the most violent, being often the cause of much inconvenience in the bay, from its gusty flaws and eddies, besides its always being found raw and disagreeable on shore: hence Señor Ayala, Historian of Gibraltar, terms the east wind ‘The Tyrant of the Straits’ and the west their ‘Liberator.’ ”

The morning of my sixth day sickly yellow-gray clouds with shafts of dawn appeared over Gibraltar. Though from La Linea the Rock had the appearance of the Matterhorn, and from the heights of Algeciras Gibraltar seemed like a fortress, glimpsed from the port here the complicated rock looked like a mutt snuffling on a hearth rug.

“I think that flag’s starting to droop a bit,” the bird-watcher said.

He was wrong again, but that afternoon the wind did abate, and by evening it had slackened enough for the port authority to give the order to start loading the ferries. After that, everything happened quickly. The whole port came awake, people began running to their cars, gathering their children and dogs. The truckers started their engines. And Algeciras, which had been scoured by wind for six days, just slumped and lost its look of defiance. The storm was over. The town was as limp as its flag and it reassumed its guidebook description: “An ugly town of very slight interest.”

After all this, the ferry trip was an anticlimax; from Algeciras to Ceuta, the southern Pillar of Hercules, took just one hour. The pillar stood at right angles to Gibraltar. Hardly more than a hill, it was said to be Gibraltar’s “rival in antiquity if not in splendor.” Neither photogenic nor remarkable, it was upstaged by its geraniums, another two-star relic that made me reflect again that what matters is the journey, not the arrival.

That glimpse of the other Pillar of Hercules should have meant the end of my grand tour. But I had waited so long to get to Morocco I decided to stay in Tangier. Besides, David Herbert had just died, at the age of eighty-six. “End of an era,” the obituaries said, writing of his frivolity: “He became the toast of Tangerine society. In that ‘oriental Cheltenham’ (as Beaton called it) he was often to be found arranging flowers for one of Barbara Hutton’s rooftop parties in the casbah.” I had been urged to look him up. “He’s awful—you’ll love him.” He was colorful, he wore a wig, his sister was lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mum, he had known everyone who lived in or had ever visited the place, and every pasha and pederast in Sodom-sur-Mer.

David Herbert’s father was Lord Herbert, elder son of the fifteenth earl of Pembroke and twelfth Earl of Montgomery—he was also bankrupt. The old man had inherited Wilton, “perhaps the most beautiful house in England.” As second son, David Herbert had no title, though to irritate his brother he called himself Lord Herbert. He was known as the “Uncrowned Queen of Tangier.”

I rode from Ceuta to Tangier with a pair of terrified tourists, a husband and wife, in a busload of Moroccans. “I’m a surgeon and my wife is an attorney,” the man said, with uncalled-for pomposity. They were from Minneapolis.

“Both those professions will come in handy here,” I said.

It was raining very hard when we entered the city, and at the Avenue d’Espagne, where it met the Rue de la Plage, the pelting drops turned the puddles mirroring the bright piled-up Medina into its own glittering reflection.

Almost at once I was set upon by four men.

“Big welcome, my friend—”

“Listen, I not a guide. I want to practice my English—”

“I am student. I show you what you want—”

“I take you to hotel—”

They followed, haranguing me, and it was hard to shake them off; but I walked resolutely in the rain as though I knew where I was going, and they dropped by the wayside. Farther on I was accosted by beggars, but the street grew steeper—Tangier is spread across several hills—and soon there was no one except the Moroccan men and women, Smurfs and nuns, their pointed hoods up against the rain and cold. I passed the Medina. Medina in Arabic means the city, and is usually the walled city in any Arab settlement; Casbah means citadel. The most convenient definition is: A medina is a walled city with many gates, both exits and entrances; a Casbah, being a fortress, has only two, an entrance and an exit.