william burroughs, bachir, his son and these musicians maintain one of the oldest still-living musical traditions on earth. anthony: we re invited for dinner. [ laughter ] it s family style, of course. beginning with braga, like a kefta pocket. hand-formed envelopes of dough filled with seasoned beef, baked until golden, then crisped in oil. i m good for now. well, one more. bachir: mmm. anthony: uh oh, here we go. the main event: tagine of chicken. bachir: yeah, welcome, tony. anthony: thank you. just gorgeous. first, chipped onions, garlic,
gone wrong. he was also, to my mind, the greatest writer of the whole damn bunch. on the road? you can have it. his classic, naked lunch, was written here. a non-linear, dark, dry-humored, searingly critical, satirical, and profane masterpiece. burroughs was apparently high for much of the process. on heroin or a locally available prescription opiate called eukodol. and of course, the daily staple of many in these parts, hashish, kief, and majoun. hashish is the concentrated tch-rich resin of the cannabis plant, as well as a varying amount of its flowers and leaves that have been separated from the buds and compressed into sheet or brick-like form. kief, a more local and indigenous product, is the part of the plant containing only the strongest concentration of psychoactive ingredients.
christopher: they say, bonjour, monsieur. blah, blah, blah. blanca: i always feel welcome here. i never consider that this is mine. it s theirs, and they ve allowed me to live here in a very nice way. and i feel recognition. they know who i am. they know who i am. anthony: there is a side-by-side aspect to life here that s very unusual. blanca: very unusual here. it s mostly, you can do whatever you want if you do it with good manners. anthony: but it is a sort of a station of the cross for, you know, the bad boys of culture. i mean, verlaine, rimbaud, iggy pop, the stones. christopher: burroughs and guyson. anthony: burroughs writes about, he came here to be a writer. christopher: he was a junkie before he was a writer. anthony: as so many of us were. [ laughter ] but i think this was a place where if you wanted to think of yourself as a writer, you would come here and somehow you were working within a romantic tradition. christopher: yes. anthony: burroughs sa
a crispy layer of french fries within the sandwich. anthony: this is delicious, by the way. the bread here is very good. you work in a magazine? a journalist? nosaeri: yeah, i am not a journalist, but i own an urban magazine here in tangier, to inform moroccans we are living in a place that s pretty special. it s not for any purpose that william burroughs or paul bowles or henri matisse. all these people came to tangier. this city has something which makes it different from other, you know, from other cities. anthony: well, what about young artists, young writers, young musicians? did they come here expecting this romantic paul bowles wonderland of the 50s? nosaeri: some were, some weren t, i m going say too, bohemian. anthony: too bohemian? nosaeri: yeah, because, they thought that, like, you know, coming and being an artist like anthony: is going to be enough? nosaeri: is going to be enough. it s not, today it s not enough. anthony: right, yeah. nosaeri: it s pretty
so this is the petit socco? jonathan: this is the petit socco, yeah. this socco existed in venetian times. it existed in roman times. it existed in the portuguese times. the english were here for 22 years. then, the international city until 1956. and now it s completely moroccan. but this is a very historic square, very historic. anthony: as a writer, um, i ve noticed everybody who comes here to do an article does the same article. jonathan: well, it s so damn boring. they all do it. paul bowles and the beat generation. and, uh, there are, there are lots of other stories in morocco apart from that. but everyone likes the beats. bill burroughs and all that stuff and tennessee williams. and, uh, they were all here. anthony: yeah. jonathan: uh, but that s a small part of moroccan history. that s a 15-year period. there s, there s a life before that and a life after that. you re here. anthony: yeah, it was inevitable. let s pretend those guys never came. what is, what is, what