Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993 Read online

  There are still thousands of evil-doers, most of them Moslems who in the past have made a business of collaborating with or informing for the French authorities, who remain to be liquidated. The Moslem population lives in the expectation of eventual large-scale violence, and for various reasons -social, political, historical – it seems likely that it will not be disappointed.

  The two men most influential in forming Morocco’s political atmosphere at the moment are both in Cairo: Allal el Fassi, the religious teacher turned politician, founder of the Istiqlal Party; and the intransigent old soldier, Abd el Krim. Certain differences of opinion have recently been reported as existing between them, but the two are in disagreement only as to tactical procedure. Allal el Fassi is willing to negotiate with the French (that is, to determine the provisions of “interdependence”) while the latter are still on Moroccan soil in an advisory capacity; Abd el Krim insists that no agreements can be reached so long as one French soldier remains anywhere in all North Africa. Since there are in the neighborhood of 50,000 French soldiers here at present, with more reservists arriving each week, Abd el Krim’s program seems unrealistic, and if put into practice would be likely to enlarge the theater of war, which is something that responsible people on both sides hope to avoid. Both men have the classical Moslem fervor, which is to say that they are both extremists in their religious xenophobia. If you have the hardiness to frequent the little cafés in the back streets of Tangier’s Medina, you can see their portraits flanking that of the Sultan. Usually on another wall, by himself, is Egypt’s Gamal Abd el Nasser in full military regalia; he is the teenagers’ hero, the man who succeeded in throwing out the Christians and is getting along beautifully without them.

  And so it is understandable that the Europeans who live here in the still International Zone should be uneasy. More than the other cities of Morocco, Tangier, because of its lack of town planning, normally demands a constant sidewalk mingling of its population. The European city is sandwiched in between the old Medina and the big new proletarian Moslem town which in the past decade has grown up out of the fields and sand dunes. Harmony among the various elements of the population has always been taken for granted in Tangier, and the city has attained its physical form in accordance with this.

  THE EUROPEANS are continuously in touch with the Moroccans whether they like it or not, and they can instantly recognize the prevailing mood of the hour. There is none of the fatal pretending to be “back home in France” in which the French used to indulge in places like Casablanca and Algiers, with the result that they quite forgot their status of guests in a foreign land. In Tangier you know what the Moslems are thinking, how they feel. They sit in the hundreds of tiny cafés, listening to the news bulletins, broadcast not in their own Moghrebi tongue but in standard Arabic (of which most of them have an imperfect understanding, but sufficient to seize what is being said). When the news is bad, the whole city seems darkened by a collective scowl, and it is not merely imagination that makes the nonMoslem passer-by feel that the scowl is directed at him. The radio is roaring to each Moroccan that Christians are killing Moslems in Algeria, that Christians still own the best land in Morocco, that Israel has not yet been destroyed, that Tangier, his native city, is still cut off from Morocco, his native land. In addition, each afternoon at four-fifteen Radio Cairo beams to North Africa a special program of vitriolic propaganda in which the French, the English, and the Americans are portrayed as monsters of evil. On the other hand, when there is a bit of good news, such as a successful ambush in which a fair number of French troops are destroyed, or a couple of helicopters shot down, everyone is jolly. There is no danger of getting out of touch with reality here. Even if like most of the residents you exercise prudence and stay out of the Moslem city you are always among Moslems.

  ON THE first of June here in Tangier, Si Ahmed Balafrej, the Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs, made a series of declarations which one seems to have read in print innumerable times before: the Sultan was desirous that the integration of Tangier with the rest of Morocco should be effected in an atmosphere of calm; every possible precaution would be taken to safeguard foreign investments: the standard of living would rise as a result of the transfer of powers; a transitional regime was envisaged before the definitive taking over “in order not to paralyze the life of the city”; and, most important, His Majesty’s subjects in Tangier must be given the impression of not being in any way separate from the “central power.”

  Whether or not the free money market, Tangier’s principal raison d’être, is to be allowed to continue in existence the Minister refrained from saying. But as long as there is any kind of frontier, the Moroccans will be voluble in complaining of

  Tangier’s “isolation,” and most Europeans find it difficult to see how a free currency market can be maintained without some sort of border control. Yet a way may be found.

  So far everything is quiet. Whatever happens, we can scarcely find fault with the Moroccans’ aspirations to national independence or their efforts to right some of the injustices which have for so long prevailed in their country. Nor can they, for their part, criticize our attempts to understand as clearly as possible a situation which for their own various purposes they may often prefer to leave nebulous.

  Paul Bowles’ original typescript for his Holiday article. He re-edited the piece for inclusion in Their Heads are Green - the text reproduced in this book.

  All Parrots Speak

  Holiday, November 1956; Their Heads Are Green, 1963

  PARROTS ARE AMUSING, decorative, long-lived, and faithful in their affections, but the quality which distinguishes them from most of God’s other inventions is their ability to imitate the sounds of human speech. A parrot that cannot talk or sing is, we feel, an incomplete parrot. For some reason it fascinates us to see a small, feather-covered creature with a ludicrous, senile face speaking a human language – so much, indeed, that the more simple-minded of us tend to take seriously the idea suggested by our subconscious: that a parrot really is a person (in disguise, of course), but capable of human thought and feeling.

  In Central America and Mexico I have listened for hours while the Indian servants in the kitchen held communion with the parrot – monologues which the occasional interjections from the perch miraculously transformed into conversations. And when I questioned the Indians I found a recurrent theme in their replies: the parrot can be a temporary abode for a human spirit. Our own rational system of thought unhappily forbids such extravagances; nevertheless the atavism is there, felt rather than believed.

  The uneducated, unsophisticated Indian, on the other hand, makes an ideal companion and mentor for the parrot. The long colloquies about what to put into the soup, or which rebozo to wear to the fiesta, are in themselves education of a sort that few of us have the time or patience to provide. It is not surpris- ing that most of the parrots that have found their way to the United States have been trained by rural Latin Americans. As important as the spoken word in these relationships is a continuous association with one or two individuals. A parrot is not a sociable bird; it usually develops an almost obsessive liking for a very few people, and either indifference or hatred toward everyone else. Its human relationships are simple extensions of its monogamous nature. There is not much difference between being a one-man bird and a one-bird bird.

  I remember the day when I first became parrot-conscious. It was in Costa Rica; my wife and I had been riding all morning with the vaqueros and were very thirsty. At a gatehouse between ranch properties we asked a woman for water. When we had drunk our fill, rested and chatted, she motioned us into a dim corner and said “!Miren, qué graciosos!” There, perched on a stick, were seven little creatures. She carried the stick out into the light, and I saw that each of the seven tiny bags of pinkish-gray skin had a perfectly shaped, hooked yellow beak, wide open. And when I looked closely, I could see miniature brilliant green feathers growing out of the wrinkles of skin. We discussed the diet and care of you
ng parrots, and our hostess generously offered us one. Jane claimed she couldn’t bear to think of breaking up the family, and so we went on our way parrotless.

  But a week later, while waiting for a river boat, we had to spend the night in the “hotel” of a hamlet called Bebedero. Our room was built on stilts above a vast mud welter where enormous hogs were wallowing, and it shook perilously when they scratched their backs against the supporting piles. The boat came in fifteen hours late, and there was nothing we could do but sit in the breathlessly hot room and wait. Nothing, that is, until the proprietor appeared in the doorway with a full-grown parrot perched on his finger and asked us if we wanted to converse with it.

  “Does it speak?” I asked.

  “Claro que sí. All parrots speak.” My ignorance astonished him. Then he added, “Of course it doesn’t speak English. Just its own language.”

  He left the bird with us. It did indeed speak its own language, something that no philologist would have been able to relate to any dialect. Its favorite word, which it pronounced with the utmost tenderness, was “Budupple.” When it had said that several times with increasing feeling, it would turn its head downward at an eighty-degree angle, add wistfully: “Budupple mah?” and then be quiet for a while.

  Of course we bought it; the proprietor put it into a burlap sugar sack, and we set out downstream with it. The bend of the river just below Bebedero was still visible when it cut its way out of the bag and clambered triumphantly onto my lap. During the rest of the two-day trip to San José the bird was amenable enough if allowed to have its own way unconditionally. In the hotel at San José it ate a lens out of a lorgnette, a tube of toothpaste, and a good part of a Russian novel. Most parrots merely make mincemeat out of things and let the debris fall where it will, but this one actually ate whatever he destroyed. We were certain that the glass he had swallowed would bring about a catastrophe, but day after day passed, and Budupple seemed as well as ever. In Puerto Limón we had a cage made for him; unfortunately the only material available was tin, so that by the time we got off the ship at Puerto Barrios and were inside its customshouse the convict had sawed his way through the bars and got out on top of his cage. With his claws firmly grasping the cage roof, the bird could lean far out and fasten his beak into whatever presented itself. As we waited in line for the various official tortures to begin, what presented itself was a very stout French lady under whose skirt he poked his head, and up whose fleshy calf he then endeavored to climb, using beak and claw. The incident provided an engrossing intermission for the other voyagers.

  The next morning, with six porters in tow, we were running through the streets to catch the train for the capital; at one point, when I set the cage down to shift burdens, Budupple slid to the ground and waddled off toward a mango tree. I threw the cage after him and we hurried on to where the train was waiting. We got in; it had just begun to move when there was a commotion on the platform and Budupple was thrust through the open window onto the seat. The Indian who had perpetrated this enormity had just time to say, “Here’s your parrot,” and wave the battered cage victoriously up and down as a gesture of farewell. Tin is evidently worth more than parrot flesh in Puerto Barrios.

  A few days later we arrived in Antigua, where we let Budupple get up into an avocado tree in the back patio of the pension and stay. I have often wondered if he managed to survive the resident iguana that regularly took its toll of ducks and chickens.

  It might seem that after so inauspicious an introduction to parrot-keeping, I should have been content to live quietly with my memories. But I kept wondering what Budupple would have been like under happier circumstances. After all, a parrot is not supposed to travel continually. And the more I reflected, the more firmly I determined to try another bird. Two years later I found myself in Acapulco with a house whose wooded patio seemed to have ample room for whatever birds or beasts I might wish.

  I started out with a Mexican cotorro. To a casual observer a cotorro looks like a rather small parrot. Its feathers are the same green – perhaps a shade darker – and it has the general characteristics of a parrot, save that the beak is smaller, and the head feathers, which would be yellow on a loro real (the Latin American’s name for what we call parrot), are orange instead. Neither this cotorro, nor any other I ever had, learned to say anything intelligible. If you can imagine a tape-recording of an old-fashioned rubber-bulbed Parisian taxi horn run off at double speed, you have a fair idea of what their conversation sounds like. The only sign of intelligence this cotorro displayed was to greet me by blowing his little taxi horn immediately, over and over. After I had set him free I went out and got a true parrot.

  This one came to be the darling of the servants, because, although he had no linguistic repertory to speak of, he could do a sort of Black Bottom on his perch and perform correctly, imitating the sound of a bugle, a certain military march almost to the end. The kitchen was his headquarters, where, when things got dull for Rosa, Amparo and Antonio, they could bribe him into performing with pieces of banana and tortilla. Occasionally he wandered into the patio or along the corredor to visit the rest of the house, but he liked best the dimness and smoke of the kitchen, where five minutes seldom passed without his being scratched or fed, or at least addressed.

  The next psittacine annexation to the household (in the interim there came an armadillo, an ocelot and a tejón – a tropical version of the raccoon) was a parakeet named Hitler. He was about four inches high and no one could touch him. All day he strutted about the house scolding, in an eternal rage, sometimes pecking at the servants’ bare toes. His voice was a sputter and a squeak, and his Spanish never got any further than the two words periquito burro (stupid parakeet), which always came at the end of one of his diatribes; trembling with emotion, he would pronounce them in a way that recalled the classical orator’s “I have spoken.” He was not a very interesting individual because his personality was monochromatic, but I became attached to him; his energy was incredible. When I moved away he was the only member of the menagerie that I took with me.

  For some time I had had my eye on a spectacular macaw that lived up the street. She was magnificently red, with blue and yellow trimmings, and she had a voice that could have shouted orders in a foundry. I used to go in the afternoon to study her vocal abilities; after a while I decided I wanted her, although I remained convinced that the few recognizable words she was capable of screaming owed their intelligibility solely to chance. It was unlikely that anyone had ever spoken to her of the Oriental dessert known as baklava, or of the Battle of Balaklava, and even less probable that she had overheard discussions concerning Max Ernst’s surrealist picture book, La femme cent têtes, in which the principal character is a monster called Loplop. These words, however, figured prominently in her monologues. Sometimes she threw in the Spanish word agua, giving equal and dire stress to each syllable, but I think even that was luck. At all events, soon she was in my patio, driving the entire household, including the other birds, into a frenzy of irritability. At five o’clock every morning she climbed to the top of the lemon tree, the highest point in the neighborhood, flapped her clipped wings with a sound like bedsheets in the wind, and let loose that unbelievable voice. Nothing could have brought her down, save perhaps the revolver of the policeman who lived three doors away and who came early one morning to the house, weapon in hand, ready to do the deed if he could get into the patio. “I can’t stand it any longer, señor,” he explained. (He went away with two pesos to buy tequila.)

  Jane Bowles with the couple’s parrot,Tangier, early 1950s.

  There is a certain lizardlike quality still discernible in the psittacine birds; this is particularly striking in the macaw, the most unlikely and outlandish-looking of the family. Whenever I watched Loplop closely I thought of the giant parrots whose fossils were found not so long ago in Brazil. All macaws have something antediluvian about them. In the open, when they fly in groups, making their peculiar elliptical spirals, they look like any ot
her large bright birds; but when they are reduced by the loss of their wing tips and tail feathers to waddling, crawling, climbing and flopping, they look strangely natural, as if they might have an atavistic memory of a time when they were without those appendages and moved about as they do now in captivity.

  The word “captivity” is not really apt, since in Latin America no one keeps macaws in cages; they are always loose, sometimes on perches or in nearby trees, and it seems never to occur to them to want to escape. The only macaws I have seen chained or caged belonged to Americans; they were vicious and ill-tempered, and the owners announced that fact with a certain pride. The parrot, too, although less fierce in its love of freedom and movement, loathes being incarcerated. It has a fondness for its cage (provided the floor is kept clean), but it wants the door left open so it can go in and out as it pleases. There is not much point in having a parrot if you are going to keep it caged.

  Loplop was headstrong and incurably greedy. She had her own bowl of very sweet café con leche in a corner on the floor, and whatever we gave her she dipped into the bowl before devouring it. The edible contributions we made during mealtimes were more like blood money than disinterested gifts, for we would have handed her practically anything on the table to keep her from climbing onto it. Once she did that, all was lost: silverware was scattered, cups were overturned, food flew. She went through things like a snowplow. It was not that we spoiled her, but anyone will reflect a moment before crossing a creature with a beak like a pair of hedge clippers.