{"id":151149,"date":"2021-02-26T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T14:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=151149"},"modified":"2021-02-26T10:37:59","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T15:37:59","slug":"the-storyteller-of-tangier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2021\/02\/26\/the-storyteller-of-tangier\/","title":{"rendered":"The Storyteller of Tangier"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her column, Re-Covered, Lucy Scholes exhumes the out-of-print and forgotten books that shouldn\u2019t be.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Like many readers, I suspect, I first came across the name Mohammed Mrabet in relation to Paul Bowles. Throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, everyone from Life <\/em>magazine to Rolling Stone<\/em> sent writers and photographers to Tangier\u2014where Bowles had been living since 1947\u2014to interview the famous American expat, author of the cult classic The Sheltering Sky<\/em>. \u201cIf Paul Bowles, now seventy-four, were Japanese, he would probably be designated a Living National Treasure; if he were French, he would no doubt be besieged by television crews from the literary talk show Apostrophes<\/em>,\u201d wrote Jay McInerney in one such piece for Vanity Fair <\/em>in 1985. \u201cGiven that he is American, we might expect him to be a part of the university curriculum, but his name rarely appears in a course syllabus. Perhaps because he is not representative of a particular period or school of writing, he remains something of a trade secret among writers.\u201d This wasn\u2019t to say that Bowles was reclusive. In fact, he kept open house for one and all, whether they be curious tourists, his famous friends\u2014Tennessee Williams, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg among them\u2014or the crowd of Moroccan storytellers and artists he\u2019d befriended over the years. And of these, one man in particular stands out: Mohammed Mrabet.<\/p>\n

Bowles and Mrabet met in the early sixties, and they remained close until Bowles\u2019s death four decades later in 1999. Mrabet worked for Bowles in various capacities: as a driver, a cook, general handyman, and sometime traveling companion. But theirs was much more intimate a relationship than that of employer and employee. They were friends\u2014and it\u2019s assumed, at one time or other, lovers, too\u2014but most importantly, artistic collaborators. Throughout the sixties, Bowles increasingly turned his attention to translating. His wife, the novelist Jane Bowles, suffered a stroke in 1957, from which she never fully recovered. From then until her death in 1973, she was plagued by depression, impaired vision, seizures, and aphasia\u2014health problems that also had a notable impact on her husband, depriving him of the \u201csolitude and privacy\u201d that he needed to write. \u201cThe real reason I started translating, was that Mrs. Bowles was ill and I couldn\u2019t write, because I would only have twenty minutes and then I would be called downstairs,\u201d he explained to McInerney.<\/p>\n

But what started out as a piecemeal activity that could be squeezed in between the demands of caring for his spouse soon became an impressive project in and of its own right. Bowles worked with oral storytellers who hadn\u2019t learned to read and write, Mrabet included. Thus, in taping, transcribing, and translating their tales, he was, as McInerney points out, \u201cvirtually inventing a new genre.\u201d He also developed close bonds with many of the men he worked with. Take, for example, the writer, playwright, and painter Ahmed Yacoubi, who was Bowles\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 (and most likely also his lover) until he emigrated to New York in 1966. But his collaboration with Mrabet was by far the longest of these relationships. The first project they worked on together was 1967\u2019s novel-length Love with a Few Hairs<\/em>\u2014the story of a young man who pays a witch to cast a spell over the girl he loves so she will agree to marry him, and which the New York Times <\/em>declared \u201can engaging and readable story, often touching in its account of a Moroccan youth still in the grip of old tenets and customs while struggling with the new\u201d\u2014and the last was Chocolate Creams and Dollars<\/em> in 1992. In between they coproduced another eleven volumes, mostly stories, but also Mrabet\u2019s memoir, Look and Move On<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As entertaining as Mrabet\u2019s stories are, they inevitably lack a certain polish. For all Love with a Few Hairs<\/em>\u2019s charms, the New York Times<\/em> argued that Mrabet would have done well to explore more perspectives than that of his central character. Meanwhile, although Mrabet\u2019s talents as a raconteur are widely noted\u2014McInerney, for example, calls him a \u201cborn performer\u201d\u2014this isn\u2019t something that necessarily translates onto the page. As such, it\u2019s easy to understand how his stories have fallen out of print over the years.<\/p>\n

His memoir, however, is a different beast. It\u2019s no masterpiece, but it is a fascinating literary curio. Mrabet\u2019s no-nonsense attitude and unadorned style makes for comfortable reading, and\u2014if, indeed, any further evidence of this is needed\u2014here it\u2019s clear that he\u2019s a man who knows how to tell a good story. As he pinballs from one escapade to the next, freewheeling between moments of comedy and tragedy, Mrabet\u2019s life reads like the adventures of a picaresque hero of old. It\u2019s not that he\u2019s at the mercy of those around him\u2014he\u2019s happy to assert his own agency when he needs to\u2014but more often than not, he\u2019s content to sit back and see where fate takes him. The book offers an intriguing counterpoint to the accounts written during this era by Bowles, et al., Westerners who flocked to Tangier because of its louche, exotic, and international atmosphere. To see this world through Mrabet\u2019s eyes\u2014as well as his take on Americans and America\u2014is to see it anew.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

When he\u2019s interviewed by Michael Rogers for Rolling Stone <\/em>in 1974, Bowles explains that once Mrabet tells a story, \u201cit gets lost.\u201d If the morning after Mrabet\u2019s been entertaining people with his tales Bowles then asks him to retell one of them so as to record it, Mrabet inevitably professes to have already forgotten the details, and tells a new story instead. So, Rogers asks, he just makes them up on the spot? Bowles explains that he\u2019s not sure whether it\u2019s this, or whether Mrabet \u201csynthesizes them.\u201d He thinks not even Mrabet himself quite understands the process involved, explaining that, since \u201cMoroccans don\u2019t make much distinction between objective truth and what we\u2019d call fantasy,\u201d the whole notion of making something up in the way Westerners understand it might simply not be relevant. When in Look and Move On <\/em>Mrabet describes the stories he tells to Bowles, he credits a wide array of inspiration: \u201cSome were tales I had heard in the caf\u00e9s, some were dreams, some were inventions I made as I was recording, and some were about things that had actually happened to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to his memoir, though, Mrabet had little need to embellish; his life was so full of incident, it was a story begging to be told. Much of what he writes about concerns the years before he met the Bowleses (it\u2019s actually Jane whom he meets first, and then she introduces him to Paul). They appear relatively late in the book, and they\u2019re certainly not the most enigmatic Americans featured in its pages. That privilege is reserved for another couple, known here as Maria and Reeves, whom Mrabet meets when he\u2019s only sixteen and working as a caddy at the golf course at Boubana, just outside Tangier, in the early fifties. The teenage Mrabet is already a singular figure. He\u2019s unworldly in that he\u2019s had little in the way of memorable experiences; he didn\u2019t finish school and he isn\u2019t trained for a particular profession. He spends much of his time drinking to excess and smoking copious amounts of kif. But he\u2019s not at all naive, and he immediately gets the measure of these two American predators.<\/p>\n

Mrabet and the couple get to chatting in a caf\u00e9, and in a matter of hours they\u2019ve taken him back to their apartment. \u201cIt was at that moment I said to myself: Both these people are vicious,\u201d Mrabet recalls. \u201cThey both want to sleep with me.\u201d Not that he minds being taken advantage of. He\u2019s drunk, high, and attracted to both, so he makes love first with Reeves, and then Maria. If anything, it\u2019s the couple who don\u2019t know what they\u2019ve let themselves in for. They come barreling into Mrabet\u2019s life with a serious white-savior complex. \u201cAs soon as we saw you, the first time, we both thought the same thing in the same moment, that we were going to do something to try and save you from the terrible life you\u2019re living,\u201d Maria tells him condescendingly. \u201cWe felt we had to help you somehow. We don\u2019t want to see you hungry, or sleeping in terrible places. It hurts us to think of you suffering like this.\u201d Mrabet, however, is quick to correct them: \u201cExcuse me, I said to Maria, I want to say something. I\u2019ve never gone hungry. I come from a big family, and we don\u2019t need friends to help us. The life you see me living is the life I picked out for myself, the kind I wanted. I\u2019m not a boy. I know the difference between what\u2019s good and what isn\u2019t. It\u2019s very kind of you to worry about me and want to help me. I appreciate it. But it\u2019s impossible.\u201d All the same, he lets himself become embroiled in a tense m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois, one that sees husband and wife bickering over whose turn it is to have him in their bed that night.<\/p>\n

As with everything he relates, Mrabet doesn\u2019t provide much context outside his own immediate experience, but we are able to infer that this sort of sex tourism is abundant in Morocco at this time. When Maria rather foolishly professes that she and Reeves want to treat him like a son, Mrabet is having none of it. \u201cHalf the Europeans who live here in Tangier like to live with young Moroccans,\u201d he tells her frankly. \u201cWhen the old English ladies go back to London they leave their boy-friends behind, and you see the boys wandering around the streets looking like ghosts. They have money in their pockets, but their health is gone. And it doesn\u2019t come back.\u201d He\u2019s wise beyond his years when it comes to the predilections of his paramours.<\/p>\n

Mrabet is, however, eager to see the world. When Maria and Reeves invite Mrabet to sail back to New York with them, he agrees. His family is worried, believing America is a \u201cvery dangerous country, full of savages killing each other,\u201d but Mrabet doesn\u2019t let these fears deter his search for adventure. But for Mrabet, as for many who\u2019ve made the same journey both before and after him, the American dream fails to deliver. One of the things he notices immediately is the glaring racism. He\u2019s an astute observer of the uncomfortable reality behind the polite fa\u00e7ade. He\u2019s only been in New York for two days when he asks Maria why the white people don\u2019t like the Blacks. \u201cMostly it\u2019s because they\u2019re dangerous to society,\u201d she tells him. \u201cYou mean society\u2019s dangerous for them,\u201d Mrabet corrects her. He understands immediately how American society works:<\/p>\n

The white people think they\u2019re better because they have white skin. It\u2019s really the opposite. The only dark thing about a black man is his skin, but the white man\u2019s heart is black. And yet they\u2019re both the same race. The big difference is that the black man is poor. And the white man wants him poor, so that he\u2019ll do the work the white man doesn\u2019t want to do himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mrabet\u2019s sojourn in America is full of such moments of clarity, namely because he refuses to play by the rules of so-called civil society. And nowhere is this more apparent than when he travels to Iowa to visit Reeves\u2019s family. Reeves\u2019s parents are horrified by their hard-drinking, chain-smoking houseguest. Reeves\u2019s father insists Mrabet cut his long hair, going as far as to give him a buzz cut himself. When Mrabet kills and cooks robins he catches himself in the family\u2019s garden, everyone is horrified by what they regard as his savagery. Yet rather than allowing himself to be shamed for his behavior, Mrabet is adamant that he\u2019s done nothing wrong.<\/p>\n

The book is peppered with occasional moments of searing acuity, but most of the time, Mrabet shows no interest in analyzing or picking apart the decisions he has made, or displaying much empathy to those closest to him. Due to the almost slapdash way in which Mrabet offers us his keen insights, the true extent of his powers of perception are easily underestimated.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Mrabet is still alive today\u2014he\u2019s eighty-four years old\u2014thus Look and Move On<\/em> only tells a fraction of his life story. He has survived Bowles and all those other American and British writers and artists who found both inspiration and sexual freedom in Morocco during a time when their own countries were much less forgiving. According to Jeff Koehler, who traveled to Tangier to interview Mrabet in 2019, he\u2019s still telling stories. These days, he also paints, though his attitude toward that medium is similar to his attitude toward storytelling, in that he\u2019s never been much interested in critical acclaim. \u201cHis literary success is a source of some amusement to Mrabet,\u201d Rogers reported when he met the Moroccan back in the early seventies, \u201cwho does not, himself, think too much of writers, intellectuals and kindred occupations.\u201d As for his paintings, \u201che won\u2019t explain their narrative or help decode the symbolism that is so obviously present, or even give the works names,\u201d reports Koehler. \u201cQuestions are met with a disinterested shrug.\u201d Indeed, if one pushes Mrabet into identifying his profession, he apparently claims he\u2019s neither a writer nor a painter, but rather a simple fisherman.<\/p>\n

One sees the same refusal to conform in Look and Move On<\/em>. Not only does Mrabet treat his work with Bowles, and the subsequent publication of his first book\u2014by the extremely well-regarded British publisher Peter Owen\u2014as an incident of no more or less import than anything that was happening in his life at that time: becoming Bowles\u2019s driver, for example, or the nefarious means by which he steals another man\u2019s bride\u2019s virginity. But neither does Mrabet show any interest in celebrity. The book is littered with mentions of famous people, such as Bill Burroughs (the \u201ctall American they call El Hombre Invisible\u201d), the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton and her seventh husband, Prince Champassak (a title that she\u2019d purchased for the man formally known as Raymond Doan), and Tennessee Williams, whom Mrabet meets when he travels to California with Paul. (His second trip to America leaves him just as disappointed as the first; he\u2019s especially unimpressed by Los Angeles, which he finds \u201clike the Sahara, only dirty.\u201d) But he\u2019s not name-dropping in the way we might expect. As both a writer and a man, Mrabet continually defies expectations, something that makes Look and Move On <\/em>a curious book, and an important artifact among so many others of its time, one that made some notable headway in articulating a non-Western perspective.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read earlier installments of Re-Covered here<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Lucy Scholes is a critic who lives in London. She writes for the\u00a0<\/em>NYR Daily,<\/em>\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0Financial Times,<\/em> The New York Times Book Review,\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>LitHub, among other publications.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mrabet was friends with Paul Bowles\u2014and, it\u2019s assumed, lovers, too\u2014and they were artistic collaborators. But his memoir begins long before they met. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1670,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46439],"tags":[67827],"class_list":["post-151149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-re-covered","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Storyteller of Tangier<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mrabet was friends with Paul Bowles \u2014and, it\u2019s assumed, lovers too\u2014and they were artistic collaborators. 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