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TANGIER
By Jonathan Cohen

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Say: “I take refuge with the Lord of the Daybreak
from the evil of what He has created,
from the evil of darkness when it gathers,
from the evil of women who blow on knots,
from the evil of an envier when he envies.” (Koran 113)

My friend Lateef greets me at the gate to the old city,
his dark fiery eyes keeping the street kids at bay
and smiling, he tells me he knows the whole kasbah
the way his father taught him . . .
The air smells of myrrh and jasmine and cardomon.
Three kids fight to carry my bag for less than a penny,
Lateef swats at them like flies, shouting “go ’way, go ’way”
—and he gives them the evil eye.
Street peddlers with carts of candy, nougat, figs, dates like beads of amber,
a shadow tries to sell me some hashish, then disappears.
The Mediterranean sun on the old cobbled street.
Lateef wears a long hooded robe—a djellaba—of camel wool.
He says: “What bothers me so much about Americans
is they never see the real Tangier.”
Then a little girl jingling my pockets tells me:
“You have money—I have no money—Give me money!”
Lateef gives her the evil eye and she runs away.
A blind beggar, with flies on her face, looks dead.
An old man squatting beside a parked tourist bus,
his eyes fixed on the bus: he’s a watchman, I’m told
—that poor stick for hitting thieves.
My friend Lateef knows the kasbah like a palm reader,
the marketplace crowded with men, women, children, old people
we walk through these narrow ancient streets
and stopping for mint tea in a little tea room (no liquor)
we watch a snake charmer and listen to a prophet shaking his staff,
we eat fresh dates as we talk about kif with a cat-like man
under his hood, puffing a long thin pipe, drinking mint tea.
And in this little place there’s an old tv casting images
of the circumcision of the sultan’s new prince
far from here in the royal palace,
with court musicians playing tom-toms and flutes
and veiled women dancing through the afternoon . . .

Later, the streets minaret their evening prayers
and a rising full moon gives me the evil eye.

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