Mohammed Mrabet

Driss is a jack-of-all trades type who sells fish from his car and moves furniture from one end of his hometown Tangiers to the other. His girlfriend is a free-spirited and wealthy European lass who runs an antique shop. One day, Driss becomes fascinated with Fouad, an old man who runs a rundown café by the beach. Fouad disdains his fellow Moroccans, calling them lazy, preferring the company of Europeans -- particularly, as Driss later learns -- young European women. Always on the make, Driss offers Fouad a business proposition -- to revamp his establishment and turn it into a proper restaurant with Driss as his business partner. He is later shocked and hurt to learn that Fouad starts to remodel his business but without Driss. Sending out his friends as spies, Driss learns a number of unsettling things about his would-be associate.

Tangier, Europe's gateway to Africa, was an international playground for eccentric millionaires, famous artists, crooks, and secret agents in the 1940s and 50s. Interviews with well-known and lesser-known figures from that era are interwoven with historical and contemporary photographs in this essay about the city's golden age. These elements are linked by the story of a former secret diplomat who returns to the city after more than 40 years, haunted by the past and the loss of his former lover.