Crossings

Crossings alter us, but how many are required before one’s self-confidence will flourish and endure? This question plagues me at age 18, backpacking, the year 1979. If only for a moment to feel tranquil as a tarry aroma thickens the air, sliding across my cheek. I watch seagulls above the foaming V of the ferry’s wake. The coastline of Spain flattens into a yellowish haze. I touch the passport in my shirt pocket and think of its new tattoo there: Fronteras Salida Algeceras.

Shutting my eyes, letting my face drink in the sunshine, I understand, don’t I, that I’m not hopeless. I’ve researched a wee bit of the history regarding Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Caliph, son-in-law of Mohammed, his cousin and closest friend. Ali was stabbed with a poison sword on the steps of a mosque because he was willing to negotiate with other Muslims. His followers believed that, as a blood relation, he should be Mohammed’s successor. They became Shi’atu Ali, Shiite Muslims, the partisans of Ali. Fighting would have been avoided if Mohammed had left instructions before he’d died. Successors to Mohammed were chosen. They were killed by the Quraysh, who later moved from Arabia to Damascus and eventually became the Umayyads. Northern Africa came into play when the Berbers attacked the Umayyads.

How scarlet with blood these waters must have been.

The ferry’s engine vibrating through the deck sends shivers up my calves. Upright, I feel pretentious at the rail, gazing at the Mediterranean. Literally “middle of the Earth,” to the Romans it was Mare Nostrum. Our Sea. One of its shorelines, the Seven Peaks, is a strip of land linked to Africa’s northern coast that ends with Monte Hacho, Beacon Hill. From there, and from the ferry’s rail, one can see Gibraltar, the Northern Pillar for Hercules, who’d been sent to steal Geryon, a monster with three heads and six legs.

I’m not about stealing or conquest. I want to learn. Why else travel?

Shaped like a lonely thimble, Gibraltar looms out of the currents, greener and stonier than I expected. During the eighth century, Arab Muslims formed a crescent around the Mediterranean that looked directly on to Europe. The Berbers of North Africa didn’t like that. One of them, Tariq ibn Ziyad, conquered this dollop of a rock island that became known as Jebel al-Tariq—Gibraltar, the Mountain of Tariq.

As a Boston native, knowing it as the logo for Prudential Insurance, disgusted by this, I did some research at the public library. I’m glad of this as I think of Tariq ibn Ziyad, who, after converting to become a Muslim, amassed an army at Ceuta. In the year 711, at the Battle of Guadalete, he led them to attack the Christian Visigoths that ruled the Iberian Peninsula, modern-day Spain, including what is now Portugal. After three years of fighting, he drove the Visigoths north to the French Pyrenees. Inspired by his success, perhaps drunk on power, he planned to sack Constantinople and take all lands abandoned by Rome that had once formed a semi-circle around the Mediterranean. Tariq’s conquests would form a complete circle, a noose, allowing Muslims, not Romans, to claim the Mediterranean.

History. What is it? Humans seeking to control waterways, crossings, ports, insisting on slaughter in the name of religions that rebuke greed. One contradiction after another. As I write this, thinking of the current struggle over the Straits of Hormuz, I consider unleashing a primordial scream.

The Franks enter the picture. In 732, they fought the Muslims head-on, led by Charles Martel, known as Martellus, or The Hammer. What astonishes me is that I’m alone, a nervous provincial far from home for the first time, yet not much younger than Charles Martel when he took on Muslims led by Emir Abdul Rahman al-Ghafiqi, Governor General of Al-Andalus. When his army was driven back, he ordered them to return to the Iberian Peninsula and regroup. A turning point came in 732 with the Battle of Tours, also known as the Battle of Poitiers. In Arabic, it’s known as The Court of Martyrs because this was the fight in which Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi was killed.

Each story is a triangle, the head of a spear. When it comes to this period of wars between Muslims and Christians, historians don’t agree on where battles occurred or on the size of the conflicting armies. The Hammer, grandfather of Charlemagne, eventually became Augustus, Emperor of Rome. Another Augustus from this time was Saint Augustine, who I never once during Sundays in church learned was a Berber from Algeria.

All this history dazzles and intimidates. I must project myself, upon arrival, as a gentleman, an agent of peace. So many before me have made this crossing. So many died for control of these waters. Only a stooge would forget this.

The coastline of Spain recedes from view, flatter now, spreading, a yellowish haze. I lean against the rail and turn to face the bow, telling myself to let courage inform my choices. Maybe I’m born in this moment. It’s one I’ve never been able to forget.

I think of soldiers my age making this crossing, involved in Operation Torch, a joint eight-day landing campaign of British and American forces that started on November 8, 1942, and ended eight days later. In October that same year, under Montgomery, British forces pushed Rommel and his Africa Korps back into Tunisia. During this campaign, Ultra intelligence, a system of breaking enemy code, was developed at Bletchley Park in England. Helping to secure victory, many of those in service at Bletchley were women.

With assistance from Canada, the American General Eisenhower led a three-speared attack calling for a speedy assault on Oran, Algiers, and Tunis. It involved the United States’ first major airborne assault carried out by the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion. These men were trained at Fort Benning, Georgia. Their jump was known to some as the Geronimo mission.

I can draw courage from the air.

Joseph Stalin in the USSR favored Eisenhower’s strategy. He viewed North Africa as a Second Front to fight against the Wehrmacht. This would bring relief to his Red Army battling Axis forces on the Eastern Front. Half of the German Ju52 transport planes at Stalingrad supplied forces in North Africa. Ultimately, Operation Torch led to the seizure of Tafarquay Airport in Oran. It was also the start of the Italian campaign that led to the end of Mussolini’s fascist government in Italy, which at the time was Germany’s primary European ally.

Thanks to stories from my father while growing up, I know a bit of this history, which isn’t saying much. With what I think is an overdramatic intensity, I stare at what resembles a sleeping feather of light that marks the rim of another universe.

Morocco. From 1940 to 1942, it was controlled by Vichy, France, which was then occupied by Germany. This dated back to 1906 and the Algeciras Conference. On October 4, 1943, the country was declared free of German and Vichy control. It wasn’t until October, 2013 that Moroccan soldiers known as goumiers, who fought for the French in a vital role to liberate Corsica, were given overdue credit and military pensions as a paid debt of gratitude from the French government. Only two percent of those goumier veterans were alive to receive the Legion of Honor awarded by then-President Francois Hollande of France and Morocco’s King Mohammed VI.

My father was based in Corsica as an Airman during the Korean War. He’d befriended some of those goumiers. All my life, he’s encouraged me to travel, to know God, to seek peace.

I turn again to the bubbling of the ferry’s wake, her engine rumbling under the deck, both sounds coalescing to put me into a trance. Closing my eyes, I see emerald waves collide. I open my eyes. The sea holds me a willing prisoner. The words Islam and Tangier send little shivers through my body.

This rim of North Africa, once known as Carthage, glimmers. What will I pursue? Do I need to know? I can’t just travel for the sake of it. There needs to be a purpose.

Or does there?

Carthage was home to the ancient port of Ceuta. Phoenicians mined silver there and in Spain and as far north as Britain. Islamic Spain, Al-Andalus in Arabic, was where Christians and Jews lived together under Islamic rule and were treated as dhimmi, or protected peoples. This is due again to Mohammed, who forbade followers from interfering with the religious freedom of fellow citizens. In Spanish, La Convivencia defines this approach between those of different faiths residing in harmony. Another word, Sepharad, Hebrew for Al-Andalus, is the name for those Jews, the Sephardim, who coexisted with Arabs. Cordoba, home to The Mezquita, the Great Mosque, and half a million residents, was their capital on the Guadalquivir River, with allegedly 70 libraries and 400,000 books.

I ask myself what happened to the energy of La Convivencia. I’m still asking.

Ports of call alter us. Some soften and erase dermal layers. Others hasten unwanted wrinkles. On the Tangier landing quay, a mob, all men, most of them in sandals and long flowing jellabas, blocks passage en masse at the bottom of the ferry catwalk. Each new arrival must pass through their clutches. I lift my backpack higher as I inch down a narrow, rattling slope of angled steel. I hold sun-warmed handrails, and I’m smiling when my boots hit solid ground, a blur of grizzled faces surrounding me. An elbow strikes me in the ear. Startled, I shrug it off and forge ahead. I need to find a hotel.

Hands tug at my backpack and try to rip open pockets. Dust stirs underfoot, making it hard to see. Fumes of human sweat, including my own, mingle in the sea air. The sun feels brighter on land, hotter than anything I’ve felt in months. I can’t believe it’s February.

I hear shouting in French, English, Spanish, and what I think is Arabic and Farsi. It’s nerve-racking, too much too soon after the reflective gestalt of the seventeen-mile channel.

Someone yanks my pack from behind, trying to pull it off my shoulders. My right knee buckles in pain. I turn to the offender, so close I see food filling a gap in his teeth. Sweat beetles from my pores. I don’t speak, keep my head down, the mob around me moving as I move.

Wiser passengers cleave through the mob, enduring shouts and taunts while remaining calm. These aren’t tourists. I assume they’re Moroccans dressed in a European way. Though I’m irritated, on the defensive and afraid, I won’t show it. I must ignore these jeers and curses as they swell in a slangy mélange, someone crying, “Taxi, taxi, taxi.”

I see the many taxis lined up along the quay. Yellow, orange, avocado-green, they’re small and banged-up. I see two passengers getting in and within minutes they’re jouncing along safe from the mob. I raise one arm to hail a taxi, speeding my pace, absorbing shouts of “Taxi-taxi, hashish-hashish, hotel-hotel, map-map I show you, I show you, I guide.”

So many jellabas, sandals, eruptions, threatening shouts. Deep-set eyes squinting. Beards, thick crow-black hair, all faces male, acorn-brown, ravenous, a few hands rising to deflect sunshine. I cannot, if asked, tell the difference between a Moroccan, an Algerian, a Libyan, an Arab, or a Spaniard.

An open hand swings at my chin. I dodge it, but this leaves me vulnerable to a blow that strikes my temple, nearly knocking me over. Vision blurred for a moment, jostled, needing to collect my wits, I surge against them, thrown in one direction then another in my attempt to reach a taxi.

“Hashish, you want? Taxi-taxi. I guide. I show. Taxi-taxi.” The cries trill in spastic rhythms. “Map I get you. Map-map-map. Hotel-hotel.”

What do they want? They’re so angry and aggressive. And now, so am I, but I must not give in to emotions. I must behave like the experienced passengers. They move, heads up, alert, unconcerned, ignoring taunts and jeers. Standing up straighter, I tell myself I can do this as I see a wolfish-looking man shove a passenger aside to clear a momentary opening. I seize on this, getting closer to the taxis. Is this a game? If so, though not liking it much, I must play.

Wincing, wiping sweat from my eyes, I spot another backpacker. His hair long, straw-colored. In sandals and dirty jeans, he totes a small canvas pack, keeps a brisk pace, swarmed but showing no fear or anger.

I do the same and hurry to catch up to him. No mob will get the best of me, though my legs are growing heavy, chills racing over sweat that pastes my shirt to my flesh. When, at last, I reach that traveler, I feel as if I’ve emerged from underwater to regain a sense of proportion. Not much time has passed. The mob already appears smaller and not as loud or insistent.

Breathing more evenly, I observe the straw-haired traveler standing at the open door of a battered taxi the color of butterscotch. He looks composed, a welcoming sort, and so I risk it, waving one arm, shouting, “Hey man, you speak English? Share a taxi?”

“Vamos,” he shouts, seeing me. “I wait you.”

Relief carries energy. With a destination, perhaps a new friend, my visit is going to improve. This quay mob can deride us new arrivals, they’re only trying to survive, and I don’t mind that they chase me as I lope toward the taxi, burdened by my pack.

The traveler shouts in Spanish, shooing off my trackers. They listen and obey. Why? I don’t understand. This traveler looks harmless. He helps me remove my backpack, sitting in front as I drop my pack next to me onto the rear seat. The driver hurries to toss out his cigarette and roll up his dirty window. Makes sure his door is locked. I do the same. All mud-streaked windows are now up. With a metallic plunk and a clank, the driver shifting into first, the transmission jerking, the taxi begins to lurch ahead. The driver curses those who bang their fists against his roof.

Fistfuls of gravel spray the windows as some from the mob chase the taxi through blooming eddies of dust. Some kick its doors. Springs squeak as the taxi bounces through ruts. The driver sneers at them, gunning the engine, his curses sounding malevolent in a language I’m hearing for the first time.

One more crossing and arrival completed. I choose not to speak as I see hotel buildings, their stucco fronts in different pastels and sherbets—mauve, lilac, dusty rose—all neat yet with a patina of sootiness that speaks for an elegance degraded. Side by side at the same height, some are trimmed in vanilla white with ornate balconies. Despite these hotels and their tropical suggestions, I don’t view this harbor area as a tourist destination. I see rail cars and warehouse buildings. People work here. It’s a port, after all.

For the first time in my life I’m in Africa. This thrilling thought is what I need to remember as I see a wide boulevard running parallel to a line of aging passenger- and freight-train cars, some dark green, others rust brown and dirtied after long exposure to sunshine and cinder dust. Crossing a railroad yard each track like a prong on a fork fuses from different directions to become one track that curves contiguously with the harbor shoreline. Dotting the hills above beach and boulevard rise smaller buildings, many of them homes the color of sand. I see a spire I assume is the minaret of a mosque. I want to ask, but decide it’s best I wait. I’ll let my fellow passenger speak first, putting my skills in Spanish to the test.

I’m on my way, but to where, and what do I expect? Decades into the future someone, perhaps my own child, will hear about this. The trepidation pinching my stomach, still there, at last starts to fade. I’ve everything to find.

Image Credit: Farid Belkahia, “La Main” (1979)