Still: Mohammed & Paul - Once Upon a Time in Tangier - Nordin Lasfar

Paul Bowles was the American author of The Sheltering Sky who decided, in 1947, to live in colonial Tangier, a place which offered unlimited freedoms, whether sexual or in terms of narcotics. The locals were poor and ripe for exploitation, and so the Moroccan city became a haven of excess, further attracting writers from the Beat generation, such as William S Burroughs who could find “beautiful brown boys very cheaply.”

Mohammed Mrabet was a strikingly handsome man in his early twenties. He may have been illiterate, but nevertheless had the most extraordinary propensity for story-telling. The tales that he told were complex, romantic and mysterious, rivalling The Arabian Nights in their beauty. 

Bowles and Mrabet struck up a friendship (non-sexual) which extended to a professional accord. The clarity of Mrabet’s story-telling influenced the American’s writing. In return, Bowles translated many of the Moroccan’s stories and arranged for their publication, under Mrabet’s own name.

At the core of Nordin Lasfar’s Mohammed & Paul - Once Upon a Time in Tangier** are extended interviews with Mrabet, now in his late 80’s but still sharp as a pin, and great archival footage, much of which is located in the Bowles domicile. Mrabet recounts his relationship with the US writer, at times pleasantly, at other times with bitterness, even accusing Bowles of not paying him the royalty fees he was due (although several people in the film dispute this). Still, what emerges is a fascinating and vibrant account of their unusual, somewhat asymmetric, liaison, albeit set against the ugly backdrop of colonialist excess.

There was no doubt that Bowles himself took a dismissive, patriarchal view of his new country of residence. “I don't particularly like any particular [Moroccan] individual,” he is quoted in the film. “It’s very hard to like them personally, but you can like them en masse and approve of their existence.”

That said, director Lasfar (who is Dutch, with Moroccan parents) maintains that Bowles was affable and welcoming when he met him in the 1990s. “And if it wasn't for Bowles, who recognised the talent [of Mohammed] and was interested in those stories, and took the effort to translate them and make books out of them, we would probably never have heard of Mrabet,” Lasfar adds. 

The director first met Mrabet in 2008, when he was filming a documentary for Dutch television [Pilgrimage to Tangier], and was told of the Moroccan’s dissatisfaction with Bowles. “Off camera, I talked with him [Mrabet] and I discovered that he was very, very negative, very bitter about Paul. And then I thought, oh, there is a story to be told here.”

The relationship between the two men, therefore, was always going to be the film’s focus - not the country’s colonial legacy, whose influence is evident in all scenes. “I hope that the film is more balanced,” Lasfar says.

“That was a very important thing that we strived to do, [to make] an honest and nuanced portrait, and that you don't have this black and white contrast, where one is the good guy and the other is the bad guy, or one is the victim and the other is the perpetrator.”

“These were two people that were genuinely interested in each other, but found themselves in a neo-colonial system that wasn't fair,” Lasfar clarifies. “Paul was part of the group where the power lies. And Mrabet was part of the group that was suppressed.” There was a “perverse dynamic,” the director adds, but in his film he sets out to find the layers of gradation between the polar extremes. 

Mrabet has more than a touch of a touch of the street-fighter about him. In the documentary, he tells how, when he was propositioned in Bowles’ kitchen by the headmaster of the local American school, he responded violently, and was only stopped from pouring a pan of hot oil over him when none other than Tennessee Williams entered the kitchen and begged him not to.

Even now, Mrabet remains distrustful and at times irritable, such as when Lasfar asked him to sign copies of his books that he had brought over from The Netherlands. “He looked at the books and at the cover, and then he got mad and said, ‘this is not my book. I've never seen this edition,’” Lasfar recalls. “He was probably thinking that his books were being published out there, somewhere in the world. And that publishers are making money from his books without his knowledge. I could hardly blame him for that, because it probably happened too in the past.”

Yet, the film also presents Mrabet as a poetic genius who narrates to camera tales of breath-taking beauty, that tell of love and magic.

With the film about to make its bow at IDFA, how does Lasfar distil its essence?

“It is about a genuine relationship, but at the same time, an impossible relationship, and one destined to clash because of the time and the system in which it existed. For me, the most important objective was to make a balanced film between two fascinating characters.”

Mohammed & Paul - Once Upon a Time in Tangier is produced by Dieptescherpte BV and is part of IDFA Luminous. Find out more about the Dutch selections at IDFA here.

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*film supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Netherlands Production Incentive