Tom Vandel asked Stephen Holgate:

I was escorted out of a bar in Tangier a few years ago on New Years Eve when I stupidly took a photo and video, which you should not do in bars in Tangier (many people don't want to be seen drinking) - a well dressed man took me by the elbow and showed me the door without saying a word. Classy way to get booted. Did you ever get in trouble in Tangier?

Stephen Holgate First, of all, I'm very sorry to be so slow responding. I'm not very good about negotiating Goodreads, and didn't realize I had questions pending. That's a pretty funny story about Tangier, though I suspect it wasn't very funny at the time. I had some interesting times there. I got to meet the author Paul Bowles at his place there. I met a former OSS officer named Gordon Browne, who was in his 90s and had retired to Tangier, where he had been a spy during WWII. Some of the stories, Gordon Sands tells in "Tangier" are ones he told me, including the one about the exploding turds. (If you haven't read my book yet, this isn't much of a spoiler.) As for trouble, I only had the social kind. Twice when I was staying at the American Legation Museum for a couple of nights I brought along a guest. Both times the guests managed to really cheese off the director of the museum. I was terribly embarrassed and I think it ruined my relationship with the director. I still feel bad about it. But I had a diplomatic passport, which can keep you out of a lot of trouble. I was once way out in the countryside in southern Morocco on vacation when a policeman stopped and asked me what I was doing. I explained to him my family and I were seeing the sights. He wanted to take me down to the police station and question me. I don't think he was really suspicious of me, but he didn't want his chief finding out he had spoken to an American diplomat and simply let me go. The background to his behavior, which I didn't know at the time, was that riots had exploded all over the country that day. As in most places, they wanted to blame it on outside agitators. And here I was, the most "outside" guy he could think of, floating around his area. Anyway, I let him know I was a diplomat and made clear he couldn't force me to go with him. He was very polite about it, but very insistent. I told him he was more than welcome to take down my name and my passport number and my license plate. He wasn't very satisfied -- was no doubt afraid that he would still end up in trouble with his chief -- but didn't have much choice but to let me go. I felt a little sorry for him.

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