Paul Bowles on the Dreamlike Old Tangiers

by novalark

Posted to Utterances on 2002-06-15 10:29:00

“If I say that Tangier struck to me as being a town of dream, it is necessary to take the expression in its literal direction. Its topography was rich typically oneiric scenes: covered streets similar to corridors with, on each side, of the doors opening on hidden parts, terraces dominating the sea, of the streets which were only staircases, dark dead ends, small places arranged in sloping places, so that one would have said the decorations of a ballet drawn to the contempt of the laws of the prospect, with lanes leaving in all the directions. One found there also tunnels, ramparts, ruins, keeps and cliffs, as many traditional places of the oneiric universe.


By a beautiful end of afternoon, I walked slowly in a complex network of galleries. Lengthened in my bed, I reviewed what I had seen in dream, afflicted to have left this marvellous place by waking up me when suddenly, I understood with stupor that this magic city really existed. It Was Tangier.”