TANGIER, MOROCCO–Dusk was falling on Tangier, and small cliques of nattily dressed expats were sipping mint tea and socializing on the top floor of the Hotel Nord-Pinus, a sumptuous riad-style guest house in the Casbah.
A gentle sea breeze wafted through the arched doorways and filled the stylish lounge, decorated with embroidered Moroccan pillows and modern photography, with an air of exclusivity.
Down the street, a different scent drifted from the fabled Café Hafa, once the haunt of Beat poets and musicians like the Rolling Stones.
Two dozen young men were sitting on battered folding chairs, several discreetly smoking kif – tobacco blended with hashish.
This Moroccan port has always been a city of extremes – a surreal crossroads where Northern Africa meets Europe, the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean.
But while the gritty authenticity of Tangier is still there, a new cohort of artists is giving this fabulously shabby port a new shine.
In the heady years after World War II, when Tangier was still in diplomatic limbo as an International Zone, its craggy shores became a gay-friendly haven for spies, globetrotting businessmen, beatniks in exile and eccentric foreigners.
This is where William S. Burroughs wrote the bulk of Naked Lunch, which marks its 50th anniversary this year, and where Paul Bowles completed his haunting and existential cult classic, The Sheltering Sky.
As recently as the last decade, Tangier was still considered a down-on-its-luck town riddled with drugs and hustlers. But while sleazy dives, decayed buildings and dark alleys can still be found, a stylish new Tangier has emerged, fuelled by royal investments and a thriving arts community.
There are now renovated architectural gems like the 1940s Cinematheque de Tanger, quirky boutiques loaded with one-of-a-kind objects, and cafés that draw a sophisticated but idiosyncratic crowd.
That crowd includes the supermodel Jacquetta Wheeler; Bruno Frisoni, the designer for Roger Vivier; and the French writer Bernard-Henri Levy, who recently bought a starkly modern house next door to the Café Hafa.
Much of Tangier's renaissance can be traced back to Morocco's king, Mohammed VI. Unlike his father – the late King Hassan II who ruled Morocco for 38 years and was said to have despised Tangier – the new king is an enthusiastic champion. Instead of an urban wasteland, he sees Tangier as a cultural and commercial gateway between Africa and Europe.
The king was also the driving force behind Tanger Med, a giant new cargo port whose administrative centre was designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel.
Also in the works is a high-speed train network that would cut the travel time between Tangier and Marrakech to less than three hours.
Despite the changes, the surreal jumble of alleyways, crooked white facades and shady courtyards that make up Tangier's historic heart hasn't changed since Bowles wrote Without Stopping, his 1972 autobiography that recounts his itinerant love affair with North Africa.
In it, Bowles described Tangier as "rich in prototypical dream scenes: covered streets like corridors with doors opening into rooms on each side, hidden terraces high above the sea, streets consisting only of steps, dark impasses, small squares built on sloping terrain so that they looked like ballet sets designed in false perspective, with alleys leading off in several directions; as well as the classical dream equipment of tunnels, ramparts, ruins, dungeons and cliffs.''
And the slightly sinister and exotic underbelly that inspired Burroughs' Naked Lunch is still found at places like Café Hafa and Café Central, a faded coffee house in the seedy but always buzzing Petit Socco square, where everyone seems to have something to hustle among the fin-de-siecle facades.
But there is also a glamorous new side to Tangier, where socialites air-kiss by the palm-lined swimming pool at La Villa Josephine, a lavish hillside retreat. Or where coiffed ladies nibble on prawn cocktails at Le Mirage resort.
"There's a wonderful term in ornithology that is perfect for the kind of people that end up here," said Elena Prentice, an American painter who lives in Tangier.
"They are called accidentals, birds that end up in an area where they don't really belong. Everyone in Tangier is some form of accidental.''
New York Times News Service