Stranger and Stranger in Tangier (Part 1)

In which I nearly get kidnapped within days of arrival on the continent of Africa and find myself playing alongside Meursault. Quiet on set!

As the doors of the big white van slide and slam shut with me in it, I briefly considered texting my mom to remind her that she has access to view and track my GPS location on the Find My Friends iPhone app, then reconsidered — she was in Oklahoma. What good could she do to help stop a kidnapping-in-progress from five thousand miles away? I thought about sending Nina, my Airbnb host, my live-location via WhatsApp. If I was getting human trafficked, I thought, better someone local know about it. Everyone else in the seats next to and around me seemed weirdly chill about all this. “They clearly know something I don’t”, I think to myself as I watch my own blue dot on the map disappear down a highway as the white van I had voluntarily climbed in moved further and further from Tangier.

I’ve been here three days. Three days ago, I was in Paris! I had a life, close friends, and a strong sense of normalcy in routine. I knew what to expect. European life isn’t that different from American life. Substitute in croissants for bagels — it’s just sparkling New York. I’m getting thrown for — and throwing myself for — all kinds of twists and loops. Before setting out, my thought process was this:

1. I’m being effectively exiled from a city I love. I have two choices: I can either go back to the United States while I wait for my 90-day Schengen Zone Visa to renew itself, or I can pack a bag and travel for three months while I wait to be allowed back in France.

2. If I’m going to travel, I want to visit somewhere that’s new and exotic, but not too exotic. I ask myself, what’s the closest I can get to Europe, outside of europe, that still feels like another world? In other words, how can I go to Africa without going *full africa* on day one?

3. When I’ve traveled before, I’ve basically just made round trips between Paris and New York and never thought much of it. It was safe travel for me, because I speak the language. Tangier seems as good a place as any to dip my toes in the water.

Tangier has always been Interzone. Home to expats and artists. Within days of arrival, it’s clear that anything goes here — and like everywhere else in the world I’ve been, no one really knows what’s going on. The nickname for the city was popularized by Borroughs’ “Naked Lunch”, but Tanjawi have adopted this name and in the 60-ish years since transmogrification from internationally governed no-man’s-city of spies and junkies, of which there are still more than a few, Tangier has taken on a population and citizenship of its own. Oriental, yes, and distinctly not occidental, but with the whispers and noddings to westernization that any threshold city might have. Tangier is weird as fuck, and it attracts weirdos. It’s the kind of place where anyone can show up and become someone new.

Gina is a 70-something Spanish immigrant who fell in love with Tangier and never left. Her story, I’m learning, is similar to countless others that I met during my monthlong stay in April 2025. Gina came to Tangier and opened a shop in the Medina. I met Gina like I met most people there -- walking through the Petit Socco she struck up a conversation with me when I sat at the next table over at the Tingis.

“Do you want to be in a movie?” she asked me, within seconds (literally, seconds) of sitting down. I thought she was joking — like she was making a quip about my outfit which, admittedly, might have looked more like Bogart stepping off the set of Casablanca than a typical 29 year old American guy who had been here less than a week. I am who I am everywhere I go, I guess. Gina took my photo and texted someone. The next morning, I was being fitted for one of the three films that were simultaneously being produced in and around the area. This is just how things tend to unfold in Tangier. Jumping off points. One thing leads to another, and anyone who pretends to know what’s going to happen next is lying. This is actually, as far as I can tell, how most places work. It just seems hyper-visceral and everpresent here.

Gina took my notebook and wrote a page of notes. “Pick your bag off the floor”, she said. “You don’t want all the good ideas spilling out on the ground.” If I was going to be a good, productive writer, she said, I needed to learn about Qabalah, Jewish mysticism, about Quantum Mechanics, and I’d need to read the Kybalion, and study hermeticism. This essay isn’t about any of those things, but I just felt like it was important to mention.

“I’m not even an actor— what am I doing??”, I think to myself while I stop in the Petit Socco of the Medina for an espresso. It’s 9:29am I’m already running late to my designated meeting spot, in front of the Cinema Rif. The twisting, labyrinthine streets of Tangier’s old city are still new to me, and I should’ve given myself more time — no matter. I’m four days into a monthlong stay and I’ve already found myself half-jogging in the early morning light, trying to make my call time to appear in a movie that may or may not even be real.

I’m approaching a man I’ve never seen before with a beard and beret who is calling my name and waving me over. This man does not speak French. He does not speak English. As far as I can tell, he can say “Jackson?!” in various tones of inflection and that’s about it. Yesterday I was chatting with some new friends in the Cafe Tingis over mint teas, the next thing I know, my selfie was being sent around group texts and WhatsApp threads and I was receiving mysterious Monday morning summons to the Place du 9 Avril.

The man in the beret, exasperated, calls my name again as if I’m not now standing directly in front of him.

“Jackson?!”

I nod. I look around, trying to avoid looking directly at the large white van parked next to us, for fear that I may have to climb inside it if it was real. I almost turned around. If I hadn’t spotted a girl I recognized inside — Thaïs, whom I met just the day before at the cafe with Gina — I might have.

“On va où?” I asked.

“Le fitting,” he answered.

Ok, he speaks some French.

Tangier has a delicious and infuriating cultural hybridization of their local languages. Only 14km across the Gibraltar strait is Tarifa, the southernmost tip of Spain. There are as such more than a few centuries of Spanish influence in and around town. Since the French colonized Morocco in 1905, their language has become the de-facto administrative language of the country (shops and signs, etc) and everyone speaks Darija, which has been a berber-arabica blend since the 7th century and more recently has incorporated French in, too. Menus in cafes will be tri-folds in English, Spanish, and French. English is still a baseline standard that everyone can more or less understand, but French and Maghrebi Arabic are the most common here.

I reluctantly got in the van, thinking about what a great story this would make if I got snatched. Every nerve in my body screamed this is exactly how people get got, but I had already committed to the bit. It’s like the public hammam: Whatever happens now is out of my control.

Besides myself and Thaïs, there were about a dozen of us in the van — we were all set to appear as featured background in a film, but none of us knew which one. The prevailing rumor (which later turned out to be true) was that we would be in a major studio adaptation of Albert Camus’ L’Etranger, directed by well known (to everyone but me) French director Francois Ozon. All that’s missing is a hastily painted “FREE CANDY” on the side of the van, I think to myself.

We drove and drove, and finally pulled in to what is best described as a post-apocalyptic fabrication yard, popped up as film set basecamps do, in a sort of community center — complete with two full sized indoor soccer fields and a local team practicing while PAs with coffees dipped in and out of ad-hoc makeup rooms and admin offices. I was not being kidnapped, I decided. If I was, at least there would be a lot of witnesses. There was a 1930s military tank (or a damn good reproduction to one) getting hosed down like it had just returned from war. Four men sat around a table with a sparking soldering iron like they were fixing a broken time machine.

Inside, my fellow recruits and I all lined up in fold-out chairs against a wall. The fluorescent lights overhead made me feel like I was in elementary school again. I was told to wait in line with my passport to have my photo taken and my identity recorded. They gave me a paper with my name and a character: vendeur des journaux. I’ll be a newspaper salesman! Thaïs and I get to chatting. Like everyone else I’ve met here, she left her life in Paris after visiting Tangier a year earlier, she made a life for herself, fell in love with a guy from Cameroon, and never looked back. I went back to sit and after half an hour, someone called my name.

Upstairs, the wardrobe room — floor — was absolute chaos. Plastic bins overflowing with patterned neckties. Mountains of felt hats and flat bill caps stacked on top of each other, nearly tipping over. Steamer trunks as set-dec doubling as shoeboxes and rows and rows of racks with hung shirts and suits of all colors, cuts and materials. Runners darting back and forth, arms overloaded with bolts of wool. Two french women, clearly in charge, looked me up and down. One short, round, and sharp-eyed. The other tall and thin, cool like a cigarette. They didn’t speak, just scanned. I liked them. They seemed to work in tandem, a very sort of yin and yang vibe.

A man assisting them joked that I came “dressed for the role already.” They almost let me wear my own pants. Then the rounder of the two women changed her mind. I got the full kit—suit, shirt, tie, suspenders, shoes. It fit surprisingly well. I snapped a mirror selfie, assuming that was it.

Nope.

I was corralled over to hair and makeup. A woman waved her hand toward me and said, “On enlève la moustache.”

Excuse me?

I tried to protest, albeit weakly. I’ve never had facial hair before and this mustache is a new thing I’m trying out. “I think my mustache makes sense for the 1930s?” I didn’t want to part with it for background part in a movie. I hadn’t even been told how much, if any, I was getting paid for the gig. I was not here to get rich, I was doing it for the bit. I decided in that moment that my new upper lip hair was worth more that I imagined they’d be paying me for my appearance.

She relented. Barely. I was allowed to keep a razor-thin Errol Flynn sliver above my lip. The barber slicked my hair back. No photo or official documentation was recorded here — just transformation for the sake of it.

Outside, I wandered. I took selfies, smoked cigarettes, and watched as they spray painted the tank to look weathered and worn out. I scribblewrote bullet-point notes in my journal— “how is this my real life??”

Back in the van. Then back in my apartment. Was that it?

Hours later, my phone dings.

“Tomorrow à 5h clock de morning. Cinema Rif. For shotting.”

Followed by:

“200+800=1.000. Paye fin de jour de tournage.”

1,000 dirhams. Around 108 bucks, paid after a full day’s work. Not bad, but glad that I fought to keep the ‘stache.

So — I guess I’m in a movie now. Call time is 5 a.m. Still not sure any of this is real.