"Come meet me at the Casbah"

That's Charles Boyer's great line to Hedy Lamarr in the great 1938 movie Algiers.

He plays Pepe Le Moko, a notorious thief hiding out in the dilapidated coast-line quarter that has sheltered outlaws, revolutionaries and other bad boys since pirate days.

The Algerian revolution against their French colonial masters began here. It was a deadly locale again in the 1990s when terrorism followed an Islamic party's attempt to win power in the country.

The Casbah, in short, has been a place of mystery, danger, intrigue for centuries. Foreigners are still warned, as they have been for at least 15 years, to stay out. Monday (May 28, 2007) I walked through the winding, narrow alleys and climbed up and down steep stone stairways with Said, a journalist-fixer and a lifelong resident of the city. The Casbah didn't feel romantic. It also didn't feel dangerous, so much as run-down and sad.

Unemployment in Algeria is above 40 percent -- the counting is inaccurate -- so the streets here and elsewhere in the city are crammed with idle young men. Some of them hustle money by finding parking spaces in the tight quarter; the service includes not scratching or denting your car, which is the cost of refusing service.

Other men just stand around, leaning against buildings, talking and smoking. Algerians call them hittistes -- a bilingual coinage from the Arabic word for wall (hit) and the French suffix (iste).

Street crime is bad too, and the various troubles have ruined tourism and closed many of the artisan shops. Said takes people on his tours to a tiny shop where an old man still turns out bracelets and salvers of copper and silver. He says no one nowadays is learning the art he was taught as a boy. No future in it.

The Casbah, always densely packed, is overcrowded now -- maybe 70,000 people, though, again, there is that problem about counting, and many of its buildings are crumbling from age, neglect, the sea and sun.

Rock the Casbah, a popular song by Clash (hear it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAkfHShATKY&mode=related&search) takes on new meaning in the real place where falling debris is actually a danger.

So is the traffic, but that's all over Algiers where drivers in little cars dash through narrow hilly roads without regard for lane markers or decorum of any sort.

Now that all the negatives are out of the way, I liked the Casbah. It's busy, just bursting with food sellers, markets and women shrouded in the full, traditional white wrap of old Algiers, which turns them into little walking sailboats, shopping for wedding gear. Stores around the mosque spill out yards of embroidered jackets and spools of material into the street. Also, shoes, purses, jewelry, lace. Brides wear nine outfits during a wedding here -- requiring more costume changes than Tina Turner in concert -- so there's a lot to buy. Men are excluded from all these shops, as they also are from the hamman or bathhouses. Same idea as our spas, full of women relaxing, pampering and gossiping.

I like how Said has tailored this tour to woman's stuff in my honor.

There are signs that Boyer's Casbah will be revived. UNESCO lists it as a World Heritage Site and it could be a huge tourist draw with planning and some investment (and peace from terrorists, of course). This government, rich with oil revenues, has begun that work.