The Cold War: Unreasonably Good Times In East Berlin

With a slight push on the heavy steel door, the five of us come in from the cold. The small building is the size of two tractor trailers, and constructed from pockmarked wartime concrete. It is almost invisible against the wide white landscape of snow and crooked winter trees. The floors, which were once painted a rusty blood red, have been chipped away by the passage of hundreds, or thousands of tourist feet. We huddle for a moment before continuing; the German winter sun is setting at 4:00PM, and outside the temperature has dropped to -10ºC. With another nudge, Nikola opens a second door to our left, into the small museum the Germans have erected around the remains of the Orianneburg concentration camp prisoner’s kitchen.

On the main floor, small windowboxes hang at eye level, protected by centimetre-thick glass and lit impassively from below. Each includes a name, an enlarged black-and-white photo, and a simple story of persecution. Here is Max Ernst, a camp escapee from Poland. Here is Rosa Limburg, who smuggled medicine from army barracks to concentration camp prisoners. Here is Daniel Schauzberg, who was forced to help the camp doctor when he prepared lampshades for his personal study. He writes that he threw up when he found a tattoo on a pelt: he realized the lampshades were being cut from the dead skins of camp prisoners.

His picture, and many of the others, bear wide and unconvincing smiles. The years of torture, rape, abuse, starvation, and assault the Nazis inflicted on these people has left around their eyes the lines of an old man. At the bottom of a staircase, we come upon a long flat display case, full of leather scraps. The caption reads: “At the ‘shoe-factory,’ camp workers disassembled the leather shoes and luggage of concentration camp prisoners, after execution at Dachau. New prisoners were issued wooden clogs. On the scrap above, an address in Vienna is still visible.” Another passageway opens into a new display room, where stories of grief and horror lay beneath plate glass. A staircase at the back of the exhibit drops into the frigid basement. The floor here is unprotected, and I descend alone. An empty cold-room holds fifty-or-so thick iron hooks, hanging from the ceiling to hold sides of meat. In the the next room, a concrete depression the size of a washtub is marked by a simple sign: this was the sink for a camp of thousands. Any prisoner attempting to wash a potato, or any food, before it was cooked was beaten and held under the putrid dish water.

On every wall, and many of the colossal concrete columns of the basement, the prisoners left paintings. Water droplets with tubby legs and cartoony smiles leap from deep porcelain tubs; carrots with googly eyes dance with onion women at a festival; a small display of painted flowers has faded with time, mostly because food dyes were never meant to be used as paint by prisoner cooks. They are scenes of happiness, of being fat and unwrinkled, of groups and dancing and mythic feasts. And there, alone in the basement of the Orianneburg concentration camp kitchen, I felt as though I should cry; not because the camp was a tragedy, which it was, but because people had left paintings in this kitchen. Starved and beaten and hated by mad-dog guards, these people had painted anything but their grim camp-lives.

*

Whatever you have heard about Germany is wonderfully, eerily true. The people of Berlin are built tall and thick, and are remarkably blond. The language is full of English-sounding barks, coughs, and mouth-rounding “U” noises. They seem to be unaware that they all sound like B-movie Germans, and insist on saying things like “Brunsbetter Franklewurster” without laughing.

At the end of four days in Berlin, it’s obvious that four days aren’t nearly enough to grok Germany. Winter fairs have sprouted in the main squares that make us laugh with pleasure, and uncomprehending delight. Booths sell absurdly long sausage, and hot spiced wine, and bear-fur balaclavas. Small drinking halls have been erected next to fountains. The closest thing to fruit in Berlin is probably the sauerkraut. Children are ice-skating in front of the Reichstag. Beer is as cheap and hearty as bread; if your nose isn’t cherry red from the frigid river winds, then your cheeks are rosy from being gently drunk. The Germans are ruthless in their hospitality and efficiency. Lines form automatically. Although there is every reason to get in out of the cold, there is no jaywalking. None.

A much mocked sign marks one edge of the old Berlin Wall, at the border of the old wartime American zone. If you have seen it, on t-shirts or in dorm rooms, you may understand a little of German humor. Though the old sign was stolen in the fever of re-unification when the Wall fell, the Germans have reconstructed it, and mounted the replica about where the wall fell. It reads:

YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR.
please obey all traffic rules.

It’s All Greek to Me: Rome in Three Days

I winced slightly as the bottle fell from my hand, clattering noisily across the slick, dark cobblestone steps. The sound rang out in long reports across the wet spread of St. Peter’s Square, an oval plaza big enough to hold several hundred thousand people. Less than a dozen citizens strolled around its center, damp foreheads frosted in the light from a towering Christmas fir in the center of the square. A police car hunkered menacingly across the oval from us four, its two headlights blazing twin golden arches across the plaza cobbles. As the beer bottle clattered to the stony floor of the square, I jerk my head up to meet that hot yellow stare; the unnerving impression of an almond-eyed predator watching us from a cave, made more dramatic by the fact that the Vatican is towering, dark and windswept, just meters behind the police car’s bumper.

Two ringing peals later, I had my hand on the neck of the beer, and had spun it behind my heel, out of sight. We are, in a time-honored Spanish tradition, botellón-ing the Vatican. A bag to the left has tidily swallowed the empties. I am sure this sort of public drinking must be illegal in America -- and regardless, it feels tremendously dangerous to wield your bottle-opener in the Vatican. We toast to the Pope’s good health, by nodding the tapered glass necks towards the hotly glowing windows of the pontiff’s balcony, and shiver in the frigid river wind that whips across Rome from the east.


*

We followed the winter winds around the Eternal City for three days: seven hills, four men, and thousands of years of history, caked on everything the eye could reach. The palm-sized, square slate cobbles run in crazed, angular capillaries between main thoroughfares, broad avenues choked by top-heavy Vespae, hammerhead SmartCars, and the bleating blitz of the Italian police force. The men are all a head shorter than our crew, and seem to favor their hair flipped backwards, and brushed to a glossy finish. Dark, knee-length wool coats are buttoned over suit-and-tie, or the strong, simple lines of a scarf. The gleam of buckled loafers ambles lazily in and out of their shadows; the Italian is not a rushed man, life will come at the same pace it always has. The women have zipped their legs into long leather contraptions, so that from knee to toe they are pure cappuccino calf-skin. In my red skiing shell, I look mostly like a stranded Swede.

Our warpath down the avenida was planned using the free, cartoonish map from the hostel. It includes helpful hints on how to respond to Rome’s monuments: toss a coin at the Trevi fountain (two if you seek love); look for the sun motif in the Pantheon (it’s under the crosses); climb to the top of the Coliseum to take in the arresting power of the arena (“are you now entertained!?”). Many were the times when I wished that the map would include other useful information (how do you say, “cheap,” in Italian?), but did not mind so much that I went off in search of the Italian answer. Nobody (but nobody!) in our group speaks any Italian, though we make a good show of gesticulating, and pronouncing our Spanish like the name of a pasta.

Later Tuesday, on the summit of Palatine Hill, wandering among the ruins of the Roman Emperor’s most magnificent palace, we ran into another set of Stanford-in-Madrid students. After quoting (and misquoting) our tourguides on the debauched origins of Rome, we slipped away to take in the rest. From the cap of the hill, which is crowned with the skeletons of the tallest arches of Rome, we could see across to the mournfully teetering half of the Colosseum. At the foot of the hill between the two giants of architecture, a double-wide road (Via Sagra) traces the spine of what was once the world’s greatest market. A thin cord separates the Via tourist’s footsteps from the graveyards of ancient Roman business; on the desolate field to either side hip-high marble columns have fallen everywhere, the intricate capstones nearly faded with time and neglect. A few walls still stand, reluctantly, gaptoothed and senile-looking, their brick covered with mossy verdigris. Grass springs up fitfully, as though it knows it shouldn’t reclaim the Forum; what was once the financial heart of a world is being slowly reclaimed, absorbed into a mossy hill.


*

The new, larger group has decided not to drink at the Sistine Chapel again, in favor of more traditional scenery. A dinner at Caffé Carbonara is one of the NYTimes’ favorites -- under the front awning, the restaurant frames its copy of the article that awarded it “best pasta in Rome.” It was certainly fresh: my spaghetti carbonara almost bit back, it was so new. A few glasses of red Tuscan wine convinced us we might like some gelato to close out the night’s eating, so we moved on to the NYTimes “number one” gelato location, a thin bar called San Nicolo’s that boasted unusually delicious flavors like Honey, Lemongrass, and Forest. We find a bar in Campo de Fiore, and say some long, well-liquored goodbyes. Though we hug goodbye, and mean it, our faces are full of a stronger, shared emotion: home is calling. And though these friends are heading off to the States, the rest of us are making one last red-eyed tour of Europe. Scarves are left hanging over bed-rails that night; we hear Berlin may bring our first snow of the season.

Go Bing Or Go Home: thoughts from a long quarter away

I feel as though I should say something, as the waiter whisks away the dessert plates. Dessert has finished, I say to myself, in Spanish: <ya se ha acabado el postre> Such a simple tug, and the program’s last dinner has ended; if I want to, for the first time in three months, I might say something in English. Nervous and clammy, I hastily excuse myself (perdona) and walk stiffly to the bathroom.

I make a small ritual of washing my hands, just to give myself time to really swallow the moment. “You’ve earned it,” I’m thinking. “Just let the rest go.” I’m almost surprised by the resistance I’m getting, as I walk through the motions of English in my head. For a long, long time, I put a viciously sharp end to any English thought, and the sensation feels forbidden, taboo, and something like cheating.

We depart by Metro, soon to meet up and head out one last time, on the famous Madrid party circuit. As the cars trundle mildly under the city, an entire car full of Americans is gushing English, vowels twanging off the steel walls and arching their backs under the long, fluorescent lights. Gische and I are talking about the trip we’ll be taking afterward, and sudden, almost-unwanted freedom of leaving Madrid. As is our custom, he speaks in English, I respond in Spanish; it is very comfortable this way. And then James says, in response to something I have said: “Yeah, it’s been a long night.” And as easily if I meant to do it all along, as if my mind knew before I did, the last little brick in a once-tall wall toppled over. “It’s been a long three months,” I respond, watching the last of a steely damping wall slide past the slowing railcar. I do not know if he sees the long shiver that runs across my back, or the hot rush of blood across my face. It is done. The Americans have arrived, and I pick up what is left of my papers and join them. We leave the station in a large, ungainly pack.

*

If you and I, friend and reader, have a moment sometime, we might talk about what the Madrid program taught us all. To be sure, each of the forty students left Madrid with a heavy helping of Spanish, of Iberian culture, and the chafing uncertainty of being alone in broad, foreign city for months. Many of us cried when we hugged our host-moms goodbye: for me, Maria Luisa Basail Larrañaga was everything; she taught me thousands of words, how to cook patatas bravas, and shared her family with an open heart. Leaving her was harder than leaving Stanford.

I will not return, I think, unchanged. One of the unfortunate side-effects of the language ban was the complete death of your social life (which sounds melodramatic, but is surprisingly true). For three months, I did not make jokes: you simply don’t have the tools to make them. No wordplay: you don’t have the vocabulary. No comebacks: you’re still not fast enough. And if you’re planning on going out tonight, and you aren’t packing English, you’re more of an involved bystander than a party-goer.

In the beginning it was difficult, but it isn’t any longer. I spent many more hours reading than talking; Atlas Shrugged, I Am Charlotte Simmons, Five Smooth Stones, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Freddy and Frederika, Ringworld, and many more besides. These authors were the only English I allowed myself, and I clung to them like a drowning man. Solitude became passable, even agreeable. The Spanish meal schedule was the norm; the family became everything; the language took life. It was exactly what I asked for, when I applied in March, now that I think back, exactly what enraptured me at the end of that long and indolent summer at Stanford. If I thought it would be a pleasure, then I was a fool.

As I write this, my plane to Rome leaves in three hours. I must close the lid and weigh my bags one last time, trying like a mad man to fit my life into twenty kilos. I can hear Señora opening the lock on the apartment door, which means that she’s come home from shopping to see me off safely. There is a word in Spanish for this feeling, of being special and cherished, but lonely and singular. It is word that wraps up these three months well, in three syllables.

The word is <único.>

BURN AFTER READING: contraband news from Madrid

BURN AFTER READING:
contraband news from Madrid


I would like to begin this letter with a hug.

[THIS IS A HUG]

There. That’s much better, if I say so myself. If you caught that hug correctly, you already know everything I’m about to tell you: about the desperation and exhilaration of bungee-jumping into life overseas; about the pain (and that is a weak word) of denying ourselves our mother tongue; about the castles, the palaces, and the paradises that I live in, and around.
A good hug should do that.

Before I begin in earnest (and I must type like the wind, for I have to get myself to the Parque de Atenas in just a mediahora), I should tell you that this note is the largest body of English to have seeped out of me in awhile. In a long while. Already I can feel something stirring, sleepily; the old tricks are rumbling to life. And so you’ll have to forgive me two things: that I had a weak moment, and wrote home in English; and secondly, that this note is less-than-grammatical. The code of silence has put a serious hurt on my English skills, for sure.

*

Every day, I wake up in my room on Calle Virgen del Puerto, in the centery-westy-part of Madrid. Think Upper-Row-type distances from everything I need. Marisa, my host mother, is invariably awake -- she jumps out of bed by six. As soon as she hears me, she starts the tea. As soon I hear her, I get out of bed, and try to fall asleep in the cramped, lineolo-tastic shower.

Marisa and I share toast and tea, and watch the morning news. We converse in Spanish. She tells me about how to get to that-new-place, and where she-said-he-said is living. I currently understand approximately 80% of what she says, I think. I am occasionally suprised to find out that I have agreed to things unknown, in my haste to greet every question with an earnest ¡sí!, but it’s happening less. We spar on politics, and I try to make overtures to leave, only to be steamrollered by the rat-at-tat-tat of her castellano.

I leave for school late. Invariably, and without exception. Getting to school (the International Institute of Nosequé) entails three big chapters: running, busing, and metro-ing. The science of the 25-minute commute (a golden goal) is more of an alchemy: it seems like no matter how much time I feed to the bus stop, the walk, or the train-ride, it’s never enough.

And so I start running to the bus station. (Look at the Brasilian run!). (But seriously, I’m not Brasilian). I jaywalk across the last road. I shake my fist at the picaro who ran his light. I do the left-right sidewalk tango with an old codger. I climb on board a bus, any bus -- as far as I can tell, they all f#@% you over about the same -- and wait until it seems appropriate to get off, or I see signs that have the Metro diamond on them. I push the button. I get off.

The train to the Center is free, thanks to the Bings. As is, I should say, all public transportation in Madrid.

========================
|  THANK YOU FROM THE  |
|  BOTTOM OF MY HEART, |
| HELEN AND PETER BING |
========================

The Metro is a minefield of stares. Spaniards love to stare. LOVE to stare. I secretly rejoice that I am building awkward-immunity: when I return to America, life is going to be so much more comfortable.

And that, I suppose, is the theme of this letter. I’ve laid a heavy bet that this is worth it; I’m hoping that at the end of this, I’ll be able to write home in castellano, without spellcheck. If you are at Stanford, and wonder what life here is like, I would ask a boon of you: pick a day to do with your off hand. If you’re a rightie, use your left hand. And vice versa.

Be very strict about following your new, highly-arbitrary, educational rule. Eat with your off-hand. Piss with your off-hand. Write with your off-hand. Catch that pencil with your off-hand. Type using only your off-hand. Wave goodbye to your parter with your off-hand. And so on. Seriously. I'm being earnest: you should try to meaningfully switch.

If you did that, it would go a long way towards explaining what my hug left out. I think. It’s hard to be sure of anything, writing in English. By the time the idea is shaping up nicely, the sentence just gives out at the knees. If you did that, we are mostly up to speed. The rest is just my baggage.

Con un abrazo fuerte,
Roberto

(9, 10, etc.) — Famous Last Words: first days in Madrid, last days in English

The girl from L.A., sitting overly erect at the end of the lunch table, is treading all over her vowels; every English word bends over backwards to make itself “looooong,” and “NAAAAAY-sal.” It’s almost too much, now that Madrid has forced us into a new accent, into a new language. It’s almost too much, because American English seems indiscreet; it’s almost too much, because when she stops shaking her gold-bangled wrist at no one, she says “gracias” to the waiter, and it tumbles out as: “GRASSY-ass.”

Carl has long flown: we hugged our bleary, early morning goodbyes at the Metro stop under my hostel. The Metro air was heavy with the scent of hot metal, of scuffed rubber, of well-rubbed plastic; an assault on your nose at 8:00AM. A hug, maybe a handshake, and he whipped around the corner. There was no practical joke moment; no mistakes—from what I hear, he is back at Stanford; he is home.

And so, for the next six days, I tried to mummify myself; tried to spend as little as I could, tried to sleep too much, tried to hold myself ready for the arrival of 50 StanfordKids. And then Madrid, the capricious wondertown, took me along for the ride. Without realizing what I was doing, I finished all the big museums, I began to memorize El Centro, I found myself taking root in my neighborhood. I picked a restaurante, I order ‘the usual’, I don’t eat on gringo-time, I thank the waiter (Pepe) with “GRATH-iahhh.”

It feels normal, now. That’s all I can say.

As I write this, the language ban begins in one hour. The pocket dictionaries are out. Phones are switching languages. Last questions — “what does equivocar mean?” — have the desperate edge of the linguistic refugee. And I have to say: this note has been very difficult to write. I have re-typed almost every sentence, because English feels like someone else’s car: familiar, but only because the rules are known. It’s not my car anymore; it’s not quite my language. Whatever magic I found in these sounds is gone, replaced with the local contempt for anything that doesn’t slur.

To my friends, and my family: “good luck with Fall! I’ll see you soon!”—because really, it’s not going to be long before the program ends. Not too long before I go back to street signs, and a full work day, and the muted efficiency that is rolling off of these freshly American students. Today my isolation in Madrid ends: in one hour, we will gather for the “primer reunión,” and the Iron Curtain will fall. Or something.

To my friends, and my family: “nos vemos; suerte, y adios.”

(6, 7) — From the Halls of Algeciras to the Shores of Rough Tangier

A cell phone goes off in front of us in line. Two or three heads swivel towards the tinny sound, sighing loudly in annoyance. A powerfully-built black man in a palomino daishiki and tambourine-shaped cap turns in front of me, a curiously thoughtful expression passing across his face. He steps out of line slowly, dreamily, kicking off his black leather sandals next to a bulkhead door set into the wall to our left. His briefcase is lowered on top of his shoes, and he slips out of view into the room. A stern figure in an all-black paramilitary suit peers from around a corner several yards ahead, checking on the commotion. His arm bears the seal of the King of Morocco, a densely knotted star of crimson on a field of green; he is Moroccan police control. The fumbling hand of a stranger ahead finds his phone’s mute switch and kills the ringtone -- the tinny call to prayer that pulled the daishiki out of line. The policeman retreats to his bulletproof booth. The only sound in the room now comes from the room to our left, little more than a closet, labelled crudely in three languages:

MOSQUÉE
MOSQUA
مسجد‎

Unable to help myself, I clutch my passport a little tighter, and pick a porthole out which to stare, fixedly. The seas outside the ferry are choppy, a gunmetal blue under a slate-grey sky.

*

With my passport stamped, Carl and I slip back down to the lower deck, where teal sectional couches and navy armchairs sprawl against the lens-like, concave plastic windows. Save for commenting on the mosque upstairs, we do not talk much; it is easier to pretend to doze, or just stare out the windows at the gloomy weather. When the time comes, we shuffle outside against the blustering winds, to take pictures of the port emerging on the horizon.

My first glimpse of Tangier, and of Africa, is unremarkable. Low mountains are stenciled against a dim late afternoon. It is warm enough to wear t-shirts, but the clammy inscrutability of the clouds roiling on the horizon prompts me to pull a hoodie on. Over the loudspeaker, a woman’s voice is serving up instructions, first in mucous French, then in the barking, sharp coughs of Arabic. Carl listens attentively to the French, nodding at the door to show we should leave. The small group of passengers, half-backpacker, half-robed Moroccans, grip at the railing as we dock. Minutes later, we are clanking down the gangplank, in no danger of looking as though we understand what is happening.

As we try to leave the glassed-in holding tank, a small waiting room for passengers’ safety, we are pulled aside by a dapper-looking senior man in a suit. He is wearing a prominent lanyard and I.D. card under a salt-and-pepper bead, and begins speaking in rapid French. Carl and I, alarmed but docile, let ourselves get steered away from the stream of tourists, straining to hear the man speak.

Suit: “English? Do you speak English? ¿Hablaís castellano? Parlez vous Français?”
Carl: “Je parle...”
Rob: “Sí, castellano está bien...”

The suit gives us a critical eye, and settles on English. The appraising look he gives us, a swift once-over that takes in our daypacks, sandals, and deeply suspicious faces, says a lot about him. It is the efficient sort of look a waitress gives to a table, or a pickpocket gives to your back. Carl leads in French, his mouth a hard, firm line. The man matches him, and continues on in French, locking me out of the debate. Whatever Carl is saying, he seems deeply agitated, and ready to break away. I am uncomfortably aware that the last of the tourists are leaving security, and that the doors are beginning to close.

Suit: “My friends, I just give you information -- if you don’t like it, you don’t have to buy my tour.”
Carl: “I really think we’ll be okay”
Suit: “You see this?” [holds up I.D. card] “it’s my identification card. See? Issued by the government. Right here: it says in French. This is official.”

Carl and I exchange deeply dubious looks, unsure how long we have to talk to this man, before it’s OK to leave. We wave him off three, four, five times, telling him that we know that it’s dangerous, thank you very much, but we’ll be fine. “Before you leave...,” he keeps saying, describing the port’s dangers, its petty thieves, the winding back alleys of the medina where anything (and anyone) can go missing. “Much better,” he says, “to have a Moroccan with you. Protection.” His eyes shuttle between us, looking for some insecurity, some wavering urge to fork over fifty euro (around eighty dollars), if only to be safe; if only to be sure.

Carl and I tell him to back off, and walk quickly through the closing doors. The sun is falling off of its noon, and the wind that stirs trickily off of the port’s waters should not be enough to chill us. Regardless, we feel unnerved, uneasy; the man’s long description of the dangers outside the port’s gates had the uncanny ring of truth. We padlock our bags, hide our passports and wallets, and march past security, into the dusty cacophony of a Tangier afternoon.

*

We are heading, in a vague way, towards the top of the hill, the casbah, a limestone-white fortress of columns and domes. It seems less like a destination, and more like an agreed upon warplan; as Carl and I climb the narrow, choked streets of the medina, the old town, our faces are creased with constant worry. “Some welcome,” Carl says at one point, as we wait for a two taxis and a motorcycle to untangle a fender bender. I can’t help but agree: the market air is thick with foreign sounds, strange smells, and my mouth is full of the metallic taste of paranoia.

The young people who move around us in shoals are comfortably Westernized; some even have track jackets, though none could be mistaken for European. Each adolescent has one thing slightly off: a bald head, or bright yellow clogs, or the thin barrel of a cigarillo, wagging from between gap-toothed smiles. The women are nowhere, or in every corner; it is hard to catch a lady’s eye, or even frame them in a glance. The burquas melt before men in tall black robes and small crowns, before ruddy-faced Frenchmen in safari khaki, before wolf packs of ten-year-old boys, who are playing with their lighters. It is utterly foreign, and disarming; half-storybook, half-nightmare, all-too-real for us, at times, to handle.

Our alley breaks out upon a square, an open plaza of palm trees and benches. With a wary eye about us, I fish my camera out of its locker, and take picture after picture. “I do have one mission,” I say to Carl, reminding him of my quest for spices. He nods, and we roll over to one of the spice vendors, a wooden stall under a sagging canvas canopy. The smell coming off of the tabletop is incredible, an assault on your nose: sharp balsam, spicy cumin and curry, riotously green olive oil, and there, in the center, in a mountain of burnt-scarlet, the paprika my mom asked for.

The man who owns the stall has a long, grey face, capped by another of those mini-tambourine hats. He speaks twenty languages, or maybe fifty, but all of them poorly, as though he no longer remembers which is his own. Our debate over the paprika is stewed in French, Arabic, English, and Spanish; Carl handles most of the actual details. The final price is three dirhams, the Moroccan currency. The lowest note we have is a 100-dirham bill; as we offer it to him, he throws up his hands, and issues pidgin-demands to Carl to get change. And so on.

*

We have retreated to a café in another back-alley. Somewhat shamefacedly, we order in English, uncomfortably aware that we have chosen these seats for the soothing island of pale faces around us. I try to order an omelette and coffee; a tuxedoed Arab whirls our plates back to us, bearing two Cokes and some sort of egg-wrapped sandwich. The frosty glass of the Coke bottle is unreadable, written in Arabic and French -- when the waiter is not watching, I slip it into my backpack for home. If I am going to remember Tangier, I want that bottle to anchor my memories. I want the Coke logo in Arabic, a talisman of the commercial, the quixotic, and utterly indecipherable feel of Tangier.

“Why is no one else eating?” Carl asks, his eyes scanning the long barrel of the alleyway. It’s true: every restaurant is empty, save for the palefaces at this café. “It’s Ramadan,” I hear myself say, almost unsure of its truth, until I hear myself say it. It is Ramadan, and these people have been fasting all day; these people are hungry; these people are waiting for dark to fall; these people are waiting to feed.

*

“It’s still not legal to take pictures,” Carl says, for the third time, as we sit on the concrete deck outside the dock building. I look around cursorily, and go back to building a panorama with my camera. Carl’s voice raises in pitch, almost imperceptibly. “There were signs all along the walk back! Non...” and he finishes in French, a phrase that probably means “picture-takers will be slain, and fed to syphilitic she-camels” (or something). I shrug, mostly because I don’t speak French, but also because I have zero faith in Moroccan rule-of-law. Not long after, we watch three young Moroccan kids sneak over to the fence below us, and jump into the loading dock area behind our ferry. “Shrug,” the new Moroccan in me wants to say.

We are outside because the guards refuse to let us inside; inexplicably, they have barred the doors against the coming night with potted plants and iron bars. As the bars rattle into place, I marshal enough Spanish to tell them that we have tickets, that we’re American, that we paid already, and can we please wait inside? They shake their heads curtly, and gesture firmly to the concrete ledge that hangs over a parking lot, and the port gates. We obey; there is no alternative.

A bitter wind whips off the casbah, carrying the sounds of the call-to-prayer. Ululation, the sound of weary wonder, and of stern warning, fills the sunset air. The mosques are the tallest shadows against the enflamed sky; the sun sets behind the casbah summit. On the port wall, over the sea, a tinker is walking, balanced delicately with a long pole. On one side, the medina, and the chaotic law of a black market. And on the other: a stable of glass and steel, of Americans and Europeans baying desperately at the falling night in this strange land. The tinker turns toward us slowly, silhouetted against the flames of Tangier. Our eyes do not meet.

(5) — Buses Galore: Salema to Seville

I winced as I swatted my calf again, and missed. The horsefly I was aiming for tried for the other leg, ignoring by crazy guero-luggage dance. Carl and a British couple looked on, somewhat amused from inside the Salema bus-stop—a silver nugget set into the dusty side of sandstone cliffs.

The only poster to have survived Salema’s sea winds clings to the Plexiglass of the bus stop wall in shreds. It’s a picture of Beyoncé, who seems to be getting a kick out of grabbing a handful of her own (well-conditioned?) hair; in fact, she looks so happy that she could be in pain. And someone has written, in a crude ballpoint speech bubble:

¿Sabe alguien a que hora viene el autobús?
(does anyone know when the bus comes?)

Beyoncé’s question gave us a good chuckle, standing in the noontime heat of a new day in Salema. Another morning on the beach had left us slaphappy with sun, and I was content to wait for the world to end. Ridiculous picture aside, it seemed amusing that anyone would stress so much about bus schedules; we thought of buses as a curious second option to trains. But Beyoncé had a point: the Andalusian people, a colorful tribe of rebels and misfits, decided sometime ago that they weren't okay with a train system. That is to say: by the time the bus to Lagos chugged around the corner of the Saleman cliffs, it was beginning to dawn on us how many buses were in our future.

We planned to attack the Costa del Sol from Seville, a classically crafted city famed for its bullfighting school and its lingering, pervasive scent of orange blossom. With my eye over his shoulder, Carl plotted our campaign: from Salema, we would swoop out of Portugal, ducking inland to Seville. Seville ran buses to Algeciras, which ran ferries to Morocco, which would return us to Spain through Tarifa. And from there, we had heard tell of the azure skies and warm sands of Spain's coast: we planned to indulge in a resort town, Nerja, just east of Málaga. It was ambitious; it was king-making; it was doomed from the start.

Ten hours later, cramped and irritable, Carl and I prowled Seville at dusk. A short dinner of croquetas (Iberian chicken fingers) did something to smooth the mood over, as did the walk we took through Santa Cruz, the old quarter of the city. But even as we planned our trip to Morocco the next day, tensions simmered: the long bus rides and curt treatment we had been receiving Spaniards was beginning to wear on us.

By the time we passed out on the stiff beds of our hostel in Seville, it seemed unimaginable that only that morning we had been wading in the clear waters of the Mediterranean. It seemed as though our day in Salema had been a dream I had stolen from a happier week; ahead, the skies seemed darker, gloomier, and inexplicably ominous. I slept fitfully, hobbled by bus-naps and the sinking-stomach feeling of a bet gone wrong.