them, these wealthy Arabs, these new lords of the hill. He knew that when the next rampage took place they'd be the object of Dradeb's wrath.
Townes, like most of the European community, had used Tangier as a shelter from the storm. Often, sitting in his tower, looking across the city at the rising sun, he'd felt that he was cheating his way out of a fair share of the world's misery and pain. But now everything was changed. The refuge had collapsed. The city had been revealed, and now he felt shaken out of voyeurism and ennui.
Yet even though he was leaving Tangier, Martin Townes knew he would never escape the city's spell. He'd decided to write a novel about Tangier and some things he'd imagined there, and though he knew there would be those who would say his characters and scenes were based on real people and events, this would not be true. Everything in his novel, he'd decided, would take place only in his mind. He would attempt nothing more than to chronicle the fantasy which he dreamed while staring down upon Tangier that final afternoon.
