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A visit to the city of Tangiers hits you with a strong sense of intoxication, a sentiment that draws you towards it is imperial history. Tangiers has undergone a radical makeover from it is Phoenician past. From tales of Hercules to the martyrdom stories of Saint Marcellus and the legendary espionage activenesses of the former century, the excitement around this place is palpable.
A hub of multicultural activity, Tangiers is home to communities as diverse as Muslim, Christian and Jewish. As a port and a gateway to the Mediterranean, the place has experienced rapid economic growth over the past few decades. Tangiers has been a trade center for the Europeans and Americans, who have had a huge role to play in it is growth.
One of the oldest cities of Morocco, Tangiers is encompassed by the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The town offers tourists the chance to experience an offbeat holiday. For tourists, a promenade along the Beach Walk is a great way to spend a lazy afternoon. As you travel westwards, you would find assorted other beaches set amidst picturesque mountains along the Atlantic coastline.
The Medina in Tangiers is also one of the places frequented by tourists. The hub of mercantile activity, this place is arousing and attention holding for it is narrow streets, specifically styled houses with prettified doors and gates, and handcraft. Connected to the Beach Walk, the entrance to the Medina is visually likeable and is the most interesting place of old Tangier. As you walk down the narrow streets, you will find yourself at the Petit Socco – the center of all illegal action in Tangiers.
The Kasbah Place is another tourist attraction in Tangiers. You may visit the museum here, which was once a Sultanate Palace. The Kasbah was one of the most beautiful tourist emplacements before the new particular spatial arrangements in Tangiers started out to draw visitors. However, humans still proceed to visit this place for it is mysterious air.
Established by Moulay Ismail, a Moroccan Sultan, the Dar El Makhzen is one of the most visually beautiful places in Tangiers. Replete with wooden roofs, marble fountains and two opulent courtyards, the Dar El Makhzen is a museum of art. Tourists may view the oldest works of architecture and fine craftsmanship in this place.
For a more modern feel, tourists may visit the Place de France that has galore of the finest cafes in Tangiers. The Grand Café De Paris is an splendid place for an evening coffee and is one of the most usual cafes here.
Tangiers
From one of the world’s great writers, a breakthrough novel regarding leaving home for a better life
In his new novel, award-winning, internationally bestselling author Tahar Ben Jelloun tells the story of a Moroccan brother and sister making new lives for themselves in Spain. Azel is a young man in Tangier who dreams of crossing the Strait of Gibraltar. When he meets Miguel, a wealthy Spaniard, he leaves behind his girlfriend, his sister, Kenza, and his mother, and moves with him to Barcelona, where Kenza at long last joins them. What they find there forms the heart of this novel of seduction and betrayal, deception and disillusionment, in which Azel and Kenza are reminded powerfully not only of where they’ve come from, but also of who they genuinely are.
From Publishers WeeklyAs various expatriate Moroccans learn in Jelloun’s latest, it doesn’t matter how difficult life may be in the home country, a whole new set of troubles waits in the promised land. Most of the novel focuses on Azel, a young Tangier native and a self-described Arab who doesn’t like himself. Desperate to escape, Azel agrees to become the object of affection for a wealthy Spaniard named Miguel, who takes him in after a brutal police beating. Leaving behind his family and girlfriend for the good life he’s imagined in Spain, he soon learns that daydreams may be misleading—and that the life he’s always wanted is causing him, in spite of his benefactor’s best intentions, to self-destruct. Before long, Azel’s sister Kenza, a nurse, weds Miguel to gain Spanish citizenship, then falls in love with an expatriate Turk who comes with his own set of problems. This harsh, unsentimental view of the risks and repents of emigration—as well as the stunning realities of life underneath Islam law—is a stark, straightforward tale that readers can’t aid getting caught up. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From BooklistAward-winning Jelloun offers a forthright novel illuminating the dreams and harsh realities of emigration. Brother and sister Azel and Kenza are living in Tangier, Morocco. Azel has two degrees but is unable to find work, and spends his evenings at a café from which he may see the lights of Spain. He longs obsessively to immigrate to Europe, convinced that only there will he be successful. When Azel is viciously beaten, Miguel, a wealthy Spaniard, comes to his support and helps Azel get a visa to Spain on the provision that Azel will become his lover. Azel leaves his family and girlfriend to accompany Miguel to Spain but becomes growingly disillusioned when he realizes that his new country is not the easy answer to his visions of a better life. Kenza soon joins Azel to pursue her own desires and meets a Turkish man with a dark secret. Jelloun’s compelling characters often fall prey to the shadow side in their quest for a bright future in this frank and authentic tale of hope, risk, and regret. –Leah Strauss
Review”A brave, unflinching look at the issues underlying economic migration from North Africa-and the hard selections humans make amid roots and wings.”
-The Economist
“[A] penetrating tale.”
-The New York Times Book Review
“Ben Jelloun is arguably Morocco’s greatest living author, whose impressive body of work combines intellect and imagination in magical fusion. . . . Leaving Tangier is a exclusively primary feat of form and imagination. . . . There is unexpected humour jostling alongside the horror, in magical-realist passages illuminating the clash of traditionalisti and modern.”
-The Guardian
“Artful and compassionate, Leaving Tangier evokes a milieu of self-exile and great expectations.”
-The Washington Post
“Just as John Updike reminded Americans of the guilty conscience and vertigo they sort out amongst the sheets, Ben Jelloun has chronicled the shame and secrecy surrounding sex in a Morocco of creeping fundamentalism and diminishing opportunity. The explicitness of the sex in his work is powerful and many times beautifully erotic; it’s . . . where sex amplifies the degradations of postcolonial economic reality that Leaving Tangier lands like a hammer blow. . . . Leaving Tangier would read like a blunt political instrument . . . were Ben Jelloun not such a wondrous specific writer. Many scenes of agonizing depravity convey the desperation of poverty. . . . From such bracing particulars, Ben Jelloun fashions political fiction of outstanding urgency.”
-John Freeman, Bookforum
“Tahar Ben Jelloun lifts the veil on an astounding world of a thousand and one nights.”
-Le Point
“Of the thirty books Tahar Ben Jelloun has written, this is undoubtedly one of the most courageous.”
-Le Monde des Livres
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Most helpful client reviews
14 of 14 persons found the following review helpful.
 Powerful stories of home leaving
By Blue in Washington
“Leaving Tangier” is Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun’s portraits of immigrants and would-be immigrants, who reluctantly leave or are forced to leave their homes and families for what is many times the untrue promise of a new and more rewarding life in a dissimilar country and culture. These unlooked-for departures are necessary because Morocco (and a lot of other countries) can not provide them with any reasonable probability for a decent future, and these are persons who are unwilling to receive that fate so early in life.
Each of the characters in this book–Azel, the handsome and well-educated young man who moves to Barcelona to become the associate of a wealthy gay Spaniard; Kenza, Azel’s sister who leaves Morocco in pursuit of the perfective romance that might provide equality and security; Malika, the teenage girl who dreams of personal independence but is forced to leave school to work in a frigid canning plant; Mohammed Larbi, who because he attempts to aid a young woman matched for marriage with an old man, disappears into a jihadist training camp in Pakistan; and Nazim, the Turk, who is exiled to Spain by gamblers to whom he owes more cash than he may repay and ruins his own life, that of his Turkish family and ultimately, of Kenza, who believes him to embody her dream of the perfective mate–face enormous odds versus success, but they all have an strange degree of personal courage that pushes them to try a leap into a better life.
These stories are heartbreakingly sad and in all probability accurately reflect the experiences of thousands of progressed immigrants who struggle to build new lives in countries where they are not in truth welcomed; where their cultural background, physical looks and fixed education keep most of them outside the new culture and at a permanent disfavor economically and socially. Even sadder, they are often times totally disconnected from their home cultures and support systems. Marginal success at assimilation is in general the most they may aspire to. Melancholy and alienation dominate their feelings.
Author Ben Jelloun is a wondrous story-teller who does justice to the stories of his characters. This is an essential contribution to understanding the plight of millions of today’s immigrants and displaced people. Ben Jelloun’s prose is well-served by translator Linda Coverdale.
1 of 1 humans found the following review helpful.
Leaving Tangier
By Gary M. Anderson
This was a great book regarding being gay in other countries and like a lot of gay people here and in numerous other situations as well, thinking the grass is always greener on the other side. Unfortunately this is not always the case as our young hero finds nor does his sister who leaves to join him in searching for a better future as well. This a very good novel, one I highly commend and that would make an splendid play I do believe.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
 Vivid portrayal of the Moroccans who yearn to leave for a more splendid future
By Kiwifunlad
This novel deserves to be read as it captures the essence of what life is like for immigrants both legal and illegal. The dreamlike opening and closing chapters were exceptionally hauntingly evocative. Set in the 1990′s Leaving Tangier is told through the respective main characters each relating their own desires, doubts and feelings. Whilst this method of deliverance allows Ben Jelloun wider scope to explore the respective reasons why persons emigrate, I felt that the book suffered from too much fragmentation.
Azel, a well educated 24 year old Moroccan, becomes involved with Miguel, a very rich Spanish Art Dealer. Initially set in Tangier, the latter share of the book is set in Barcelona. Particularly well drawn out is Azel’s conflict amidst his love for women and being kept by a gay man. There is much to savour from this book as it reveals so much of what living in another country is like for humans whose own upbringing, customs and traditions differ so much.
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