This is a place of dreams... 'Mab travels to Morocco - Episode IV: Tangier the city'

Push play. Then read.

There's a timeless place in Tangier, with messages engraved into tabletops, and yellowed pictures of famous visitors hanging on the walls, with a picturesque view towards the ocean over roofs blooming in blue and violet flowers, and pigeons fluttering above the walls of the medina. The coffee there is thick, sweet and strong, the coffeegrains swirling as they are setting down on the bottom of your glass, like one of those sand pictures sold on the street markets, everchanging images of moving sand dunes and sand seas. You can find it easily, just walk past the cunning fox smoking a cigarette on the wall, walk up the sky blue stairs and greet Abdul, who takes great care to ask exactly what you wish your drink to be, and brings it to you perfectly executed. The cushions smell like candy floss and mint, the chair is swaying under your weight and threatening to throw you off till you find a balance point, and that is Tangier in its heart. Charming and playing cool, minding his own business, watching you from the side and silently urging you to work for his attention. You get small tokens of approval, like doors opening at the softest push, and fingers pointing you in the right direction, and sweet pastry form the neighbours at the coffee table. But you also get trapped and hindered, in the agitated crowd on the street, in the sugar on the bottom of your teapot, in the bank on the main square, in the blaze of the midday sun.

Tangier feels like waiting. And when you're already waiting, you could do something useful with your time. Like write a novel, or few. Like invent a new way to make coffee. Like discover new music and write new stories and compose a soundtrack to the novel of your life. A limbo of ideas guarded by their executions. Whether the good kind or the bad kind of execution, that's up to you and the street you're currently walking on. 

Tangier feels like a nostalgic movie of have-beens and might-have-beens run through a hipster filter, washed out by the sun and the ocean waves. You inevitably find yourself thinking of your own -beens, and writing letters to your past loves, current crushes and future liaisons.

Cafe Central, sunset and books. We watched 'Only Lovers Left Alive' last night, hoping that our friend Marc recognizes the places in Tangier where it was filmed, and we could try to find them the next day. A tour of places in the heart of the city, Kasbah and narrow streets of Medina, retracing the steps of movie-Adam and -Eve. Then a drive to the extremities, the light-towers in the west and the east and the construction sites and residential areas in between. Faces of Tangier, or should I say tentacles of an octopus city, crawling out of the ocean and growing bigger and longer with every passing year... 'This too, is Tangier' says Marc, and I squint into the blinding sun, following the seagull flying overhead. Soon she's joined by others, and as we climb down the rocky coast closer to the sea, they climb higher into the clear sky.

I find a little abandoned wasp nest in one of the rocks hollowed out by persistent sea waves, and it seems like such a perfect miniature representation of Tangier.
This is a place buzzing with barely concealed excitement, busy but with an easy flow of life, cars and coffee. This is the place where dreams are born. Beautiful words were written at the same table where I'm sitting now. Brilliant music was composed, inspired by the sounds of the land. This is a place of artists, and artists are dreamers.
This is a place where dreams turn to nightmares, rolled in a ball and wrapped in aluminium foil, rocking in a corner in an unlit alley. You can buy them on the street after sundown, they crawl out of the shadows and come after you when your steps slow down and your eyes are wide open but unseeing.
This is a place where dreams die. Abandoned, with bare bones sticking out of open wounds, clutching a ticket in skeletal hands 'First class' but they missed the departure by months, by years. You don't look directly at them, lest they make you unbearably sad.
This is a place that is deliciously, painfully, humanly real, and it brings tears to your eyes as every mouth around you says 'no' and every head shakes in denial, while your heart flutters and jumps in the cage of your chest screaming 'yes!', so then you are given one more day and one more night, one more beat of seagull wings over the harbor, stone's throw away from Europe.

Back at Cafe Baba. 'The best cafe in Medina' so the sign over the unremarkable door says, the door that leads to a remarkable place. Only a handful of guests are sitting at the tables now, smoking away in the late afternoon. I'd like to see it in the evening, at night. I'd like to come here often enough to know the regulars, to learn how to order coffee and tea in Arabic, to become a part of its rhythm.

After the sleepless night of the full moon, which made me grab my blanket and camp outside on Marc's terrace under the moonlight, coffee might be the only thing keeping me awake now. Coffee and stories. Tahir Shah's 'In Arabian Nights' is a perfect companion on this trip, weaving stories like a fine carpet with colorful patterns, and flying you to the fantastical world of Moroccan stories and folktales.

Walking through the Kasbah, the doors whisper to me again, half.open and tempting. These doors are huge, heavy and beautifully ornamented, they look ancient, and as I poke my head inside, two pairs of eyes look up from their work to me... and to my delight gesture to come inside and look around! They're hammering nails into what will be window frames, the building turning out to be a mosque in restoration. Engraved wooden doors lean on the walls adorned with colorful painted motifs and patterns, the ceiling is a work of art with its elaborate wooden beams and paintings. I look around in wonder, breathing in the smell of new wood and old dust, snapping a few pictures, not believing my luck.

'Mab liked doors.'

Yes, that she did,.