Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles

The Beats in 1961 in Tangier with Paul Bowles. From left, Gregory Corso, Paul Bowles, Ian Sommerville, Michael Portman and William Burroughs. Photo by Allen Ginsberg.

By Michael Hooper

I've always been interested in Morocco since reading about the Beats meeting with Paul Bowles in Tangier.  Gregory Corso, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg met with Paul Bowles in 1961. I later met Allen Ginsberg in 1993.

I recently reviewed Paul Bowles' first book The Sheltering Sky on my youtube channel. I just finished reading his second book, Let It Come Down, set in Tangier, this review is also on youtube .

Published in 1952, Let It Come Down is a deep dive into the seedier sides of Tangier, Morocco, after WW II when its international zone attracted all kinds of characters who were trying to do business away from their home countries. Needless to say some of these businesses operating in the international zone were a bit shady. At this time, France, Spain and England controlled and administered the international zone agreement of 1923. Back then Tangier had about 40,000 Muslims 31,000 Christians and about 15,000 Jews, plus all kinds of foreigners.

The book's darkness, rainy days and nights, cosmopolitan characters, and web of entanglements remind me of Film Noir movies like Casablanca. I could just see Humphry Bogart among the cast of characters.

Let it Come Down is about an American named Nelson Dyar who gets a job at Tangier but the job isn't exactly what he had thought it might be. Dyar seems like a typical American with overconfidence, impatience, out for good time, and hoping for a steady job and a new life.

Shortly after he shows up he goes to a party where he meets a woman who tells him that his employer Jack Wilcox is not what he seems, that indeed Jack's office has very little business. We learn that Jack Wilcox is behind on his rent at a high-end hotel. One day he shows up at Jack's office, but Jack sends him away, I don't need you, here's some reading material, I will call you when I need you.

Dyar explores the hashish cafes and the brothels and restaurants in Tangier. At one bar he meets a girl he likes and wants to be with her everyday. Her name is Hadija, she is lovely and fun and enjoys having men spend money on her. She seems to be involved with another woman who runs the bar.

Hadija takes Dyar on a lovely trip to the beach, where they explore some caves on the shore. Dyar sees some boys frolicking in the sun without any clothes on naked and he seems a bit repulsed by this. His reaction is like a metaphor for his outlook here. He wants to have a good time but he really doesn't like the people. 

At the beach, inside the entrance to a cave, he tries to take off Hadija's dress but she wouldn't let him however he did have his way with her, was satisfied. He hopes to repeat this affair but this girl's partner doesn't want her spending more time with him. 

Eventually Jack Wilcox explains what Dyar must do for his job. Essentially carry money from one person to another person and exchange it along the way from 5 lb British notes to Spanish pasetas.

I remember when I traveled to Europe in 1990 and there was no Euro. Countries in Europe had their own currency. There were a lot of money changers at airports and bus stations and train stations. And back then there was a wide variety of exchange rates. You could get ripped off if you didn't know what you were doing. There seem to be some money changers who preyed on ignorant people who could not count or do mathematics. 

Dyar is a bit of a slouch really, not very dedicated but he goes to pick up the money. He carries the money to another place where it is exchanged for pesetas. He tries to deliver the money but the bank is closed. He then decides to steal the money.

Dyar visits Daisy, a wealthy woman who was living a cosmopolitan life in Tangier. She befriends him and invites him to join her for a little party and he consumes for the very first time majoun (Ma-Joon), a kind of cannabis jam. 

Eventually he leaves her to go meet up with Thami.

Carrying the stolen money, Dyar hires Thani to obtain a boat to go to the Spain. The driver of the boat takes 1,000 paseta note and leaves the two men on shore. They consume quite a bit of kif, another form of cannabis in a pipe they share. They are quite high on this cannabis but what's strange is how Dyar goes a bit mad and starts getting paranoid about his Muslim friend.

The Muslim friend Thami takes him to an empty home and then brings food in from his in-laws who live nearby. They eat and smoke more cannabis.  

Dyar dreams up ideas that Thami is going to bring a gang of thugs over to beat him up and steal his money. The next day while walking around Dyar gets the idea for some reason that he should steal this hammer and nail from a carpenter. So he drops it in his pocket and then that evening he sees his friend sleeping and so he takes the nail and puts it in the guy's ear and drives it into his ear and kills him. This form of violence seems unreal. I've been around people who've smoked cannabis and they never get violent. It seems to me I have seen more violence associated with alcohol than cannabis.

I admit, Dyar is overly aggressive with women. With Daisy, he crashes her bed while she is eating, creating a messy rendezvous. 

This notion that Dyar's going to just kill this guy with a nail and a hammer seems ludicrous.

Daisy finds him and then tells him to come with her back to Tangier and give the money back to Ronny and everything will be okay. Instead he says he can't return. 

"Rot rubbish now come don't disgust me with your fear. There's nothing more revolting than a man who's afraid," she said.

He laughed unpleasantly.

Dyar is a nerd in lust for a barmaid. He's lazy and un-inventive. He just kind of falls into this mess and can't seem to find his way out of it. At one point he asks himself "why am I here, what am I doing here?"

She says, "I'm the biggest fool of all because through some ghastly defect in my character ... I've somehow let myself become fond of you. God knows why, God knows why, do you think I've come all the way here only to help Ronny get his money back?"

After she sees the dead body in the kitchen she leaves. I shall tell Ronnie I couldn't find you," she says to him

I've listened to a couple of interviews with Paul Bowles. One of them he said he wrote about violence in his books but really didn't experience violence in his own personal life. I can say myself cannabis users are not typically violent people. But Paul Bowles used cannabis all his life. But he said you need conflict and a story. Without conflict there's no story. 

I think in this case he didn't need a murder to tell a story about a shallow American man with a loose moral fiber just out for a good time.

The story ends so we don't know exactly what happens to Dyar but I think jail or death is a real possibility.

I'm interested in going to Tangier someday because of this cosmopolitan nature of the city. 

I'm fascinated by all the Bohemians and artists who settled in Tangier over the years. I've read stories and watched videos about expats living in Tangier and really loving it. Paul and his wife Jane lived in Tangier for a long time many years

William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg were all in Tangier and met with Paul Bowles. I feel I am one handshake away from Paul Bowles because I met Allen Ginsberg at a bookshop in Lincoln, Neb., in 1993. Allen and I talked for a bit and he signed some books for me. This encounter is in my book, The Wonderment Years: Odyssey of a Bohemian published by Amazon in July this year.

Paul Bowles was not a beatnik but he certainly influenced these people.

I do appreciate Let It Come Down. It's a very wet and rainy story in Tangier it seems like it's always raining when there's trouble. The film Noir ambiance is captivating, but the climax seems unreal.

I liked the writing, but not the ending. If anything, I have more of desire to see Tangier. I hope to visit the city some day. Tangier was founded by the Phoenicians around the 10th century BC.

Writing for GQ Magazine October 1963, Paul Bowles wrote an essay about Tangier, saying, "living in Tangier however has still meant being witness to an array of strange episodes in the lives of the whole series of bizarre characters. Nowhere have I seen such a concentration of eccentrics."