Intrigue in Broad Daylight at the Café de Paris, Tangier, Morocco

Intrigue in Broad Daylight at the Café de Paris, Tangier, Morocco

You take a street-facing seat at the Gran Café de Paris with a view of the French Embassy, and join the men’s club of regulars sipping espressos, lighting cigarettes, reading newspapers and greeting acquaintances with handshakes that evoke secret societies. Despite the city’s current development and modernization efforts, as the three-piece suit worn by the silver-haired gentlemen at the table next to you affirms, present day citizens of Tangier wear the past close to the vest. All it takes is time and imagination to restore the Plaza de France to its post WWII international zone days, when lawlessness attracted everyone from black market businessmen to international spies to beat writers on the social fringe. Tennessee Williams wrote here. William S. Burroughs wrote here. Perhaps you’ll pen a coded message on the back of a postcard here. Add a sugar cube of imagination to your mint tea and everyone is a spy: the bowtied, red jacketed waiter, the woman with the Burberry plaid headscarf on her cell phone, the mustached man in the fez working the crossword, the straight-razor wielding barber around the corner, the boy selling counterfeit sunglasses and headed toward your table, and that expat woman across the street walking the little dog – didn’t you see her yesterday on the casbah? Are you being followed?

Going undercover,

Alison

The usual suspects take in the scene in the Plaza de France, Tangier, Morocco

The usual suspects take in the scene in the Plaza de France, Tangier, Morocco