Jean Genet on the African Shore…

We weren’t quite sure it could be true – that Jean Genet lies buried in the sleepy seacoast Moroccan town of Larache. So we drove south from Tangier for about an hour on muddy roads, skirting long and deserted stretches of Atlantic beaches, low dunes topped with scrub brush and stunted pines, flat estuaries where storks and egrets mingled with herds of sheep and goats, with straying cows and donkeys.

Along the route smiling Moroccan shepherds waved us by; Berber women tended roadside stalls selling avocados, mint, onions, garlic; djellaba-clad men stood stoically amid the reeds and pines – doing what, thinking what, expecting what, god only knows.

We passed pretty Asilah, its stout walls and whitewashed houses agleam, and continued along the old coastal highway (eschewing the nearby modern turnpike) towards what the guidebook says was an important army outpost and regional capital under Spanish rule.

Eventually Larache came into view, a wide grey smudge of jumbled buildings, just past a tall hill rising beside a river where the ancient Phoenician/Greek/Roman town of Lixus once stood. We traversed a sort of low causeway, past signs announcing the port of Larache (with its apparently thriving fishing industry) and finally rounded a long curve to the seafront of the town. Larache has seen better days - now down-in-the-mouth, ragged, soiled, smelly, and unkempt – yet one must acknowledge the friendly native spirit, the personal dignity, warmth, and kindness that abounds despite the poverty and disrepair.

We wandered through the old medina, past the most authentic market we have seen, to the ruins of the 16^th century Portuguese kasbah that once defended the port. There, on a seaward terrace café, a group of four young Moroccans greeted us - two boys and two girls - first trying French and then English. ‘Where are you from?’ they enquired. ‘Do you like Morocco? Have a nice stay!’

We retraced our steps to the oval Spanish piazza and found the Restaurant Commercial under the long curve of arches that encompass the place. With a flutter of hands and eloquent greetings we were seated – at a card table covered with oilcloth surrounded by plastic chairs. We duly feasted on a Moroccan version of fish & chips – fresh, delicious sole and cod – washed down by water, one of the only drinks available in this largely non-alcoholic Islamic country.

‘We will walk to the graveyard’, Francesco announced – and so we did. Along the seawall, past the mosque and Muslim burying ground, to the old Catholic cemetery beyond. Two small boys stood at the door of the gatekeepers lodge. ‘Jean Genet’? they asked, spying two obvious foreigners. Then they ran to fetch their mother.

Past the gate, amid a riot of cross-topped tombs, down the path to the sea. There, at the end, the simple gravesite; a whitewashed boulder with a plain marble slab. Jean Genet, divided by just a short wall from a large group of idle Moroccan men and boys gawking at fishing boats heading to sea. Perhaps among them a vagabond, a pickpocket, a thief or two.