Gin Joints and the Expat Life By James Bruno
“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine…”
How many of us watched the movie Casablanca in our youth and thought: "Yeah. I want a life of adventure and romance like that. I want to experience foreign intrigue, danger and derring-do. I want to meet my very own Ilsa Lund, or Rick Blaine, fall madly in love and sing La Marseillaise full-throatedly and defiantly before the Bad Guys."
How is it that such a life attracts a certain slice of society? People who spend their adult lives in wastelands among lawless tribals, ruthless contrabandists, blitzed freedom fighters, mercenaries and debauched expats chasing down stories for a song as a freelancer, exploring for oil, saving souls, eradicating pestilence, spying or, perish the thought, doing diplomacy?
Why don't these folks resign themselves, as do the vast majority of the citizenry, to making spreadsheets of monthly sales, teaching urchins, fixing widgets, driving things, building motels and selling stuff? It's because many, if not most, are congenital miscreants and hopeless dreamers.
The legendary adventurer T.E. Lawrence nailed these types: "Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible."
Photo from Wikicommons
As for me, I had a normal middle class upbringing one generation up from farming. Instead of going into the family business, I instead went astray to live in sweltering, fetid, microbe-rich lands to press Freedom and Democracy on benighted aboriginals for my country as a - yes, diplomat. On a government wage, no less. A non-conformist, left-handed dreamer, my teachers sent a constant flow of letters home to Mom & Dad, stating, "James always has his head in the clouds and fails to pay attention in class."
I've had many friends - journalists, military, business people, development workers, intel officers and fellow diplomats - dreamers all - who've been taken hostage, blown up, shot at, jailed, bullied, assaulted and diseased. But the survivors kept on coming back for more like moths to a flame.
Which gets us to the best gin joints in the world. My pick to top the list is Rick’s Café Casablanca in Morocco. It was the dream of a fellow American Foreign Service officer, the late Kathy Kriger, who upon retirement, decided to re-create Bogie's night spot from the iconic film. Shortly before her death two years ago, she told a New York Times reporter, “We wanted to make it everything it was in the movie, and then some." And she did. Owned today by "The Usual Suspects Company," Rick's is a monument to cinematic nostalgia.
A reporter for The Telegraph, aptly captured Rick's Café:
"Its interior is modeled on the arabesque arches and balustrades that appear in the original film set.
A pianist, Issam Chabaa, emulates the famous Sam as he tinkles away, playing big-band swing music typical of the 1940s, such as Shine and It Had to Be You.
If you try hard enough, it is just about possible to conjure up the grainy, smoky bar of the film that was a louche gambling den of racketeers and spies and the image of Paul Henreid (Victor Laszlo) Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and Rick (Humphrey Bogart) standing in front of the sign Rick's Café Américain."
I've never been to Rick's, but it's on my bucket list. But I have dined at the famed Strand Hotel in Rangoon, lingered at Raffle's in Singapore, sipped gin and tonics at the British colonial Peshawar Club, nursed mojitos at El Floridita (Hemingway's favorite watering hole) and the Hotel Nacional in Havana, enjoyed apéritifs at the roof top bar of the Hotel Majestic Saigon, and courted my future wife (who actually bears a resemblance to Ingrid B.) at the incongruous Hard Rock Café overlooking the Mekong in Phnom Penh. At various times in their histories, these places were where journalists, smugglers, spies, entrepreneurs and diplomats congregated to swap secrets, apocryphal and true.
Even if you design spread sheets or sell or fix stuff, do go to these magical places and nurse a drink. Who knows? Captain Renauld may saunter in to wet his own palate and arrest the usual suspects. Including you!
James Bruno (@JamesLBruno) served as a diplomat with the U.S. State Department for 23 years and is currently a member of the Diplomatic Readiness Reserve. An author and journalist, Bruno has been featured on CNN, NBC’s Today Show, Fox News, Sirius XM Radio, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post, and other national and international media.
