Monkeyshines
chapter seven a

The cheap way from Gibralter to Tangiers was from Algeciras, which is up the coast from Gibralter, by ferry to Ceuta, a Spanish foothold in North Africa. Ceuta was just a few miles from Tangiers. The ferry direct from Gibralter to Tangiers cost twice as much. Ken and I went the cheap way.
I was still traveling barefoot, and by the time I reached Tangiers, my feet were so sore, I had to rest them. I lay in the youth hostel for two days soaking them and fighting bedbugs. As soon as I could hobble, I got a rooftop room at the Hotel Schauen. I took my meals at Casa Maria.
At the Dancing Boy Cafe, Ken and I had our first smoke of marijuana. The Dancing Boy was out of a Bogart movie. I was told (wrongly it seems)that Tangiers was where the movie Casablanca was filmed. Casablanca was described as hardly more than a village when the movie was made. The Dancing Boy's windows opened onto the port of Tangiers. At night, when they were closed, they got steamy, and you could hardly see through them. The cafe's interior was bleak. There were bentwood chairs and warped tables, a little stage for the odd performers, and a small bar where coffee and tea were prepared. The patrons were a surrealistic blend of scruffy transients and locals. This day, I was with Ken and our guide, Mustafa.
A pipe of Kiff, marijuana, was offered the way one offered a drink or a cup of tea. Ken and I were both new to the subject of drugs. It was only 1965. Fighting drug abuse wasn't yet the highly publicized growth industry it soon became. I remembered vague, ominous warnings that associated "reefer" with dreadful, sinister affairs, but they were ghostly concepts buried in a deep corner of my mind. Somewhere between spiders and the boogie man. Ken and I took deep inhalations from Mustafa's long, slender, small-bowled pipe.
"If I go mad, you'll tie me down, eh, mate?" Ken said.
After a few drags we waited for the effect. I became very conscious of the blood flowing through my veins. I hadn't thought about that very much before. I also became extraordinarily aware of the operations of my various limbs. Ken and I started smiling a lot. The music sounded really good. And we got hungry. Interesting, but no big deal.
Later, as we left the cafe, I saw two guys jump into hidden positions on opposite sides of the street fifty yards from the cafe. We had to pass right by them. Mustafa agreed that it smelled fishy. My stoner solution to the problem was to go back inside the Dancing Boy and wait 'em out. There was a woman inside who had reportedly not left the cafe for two days. I wondered if she saw these guys each time she wanted to leave. Then I wondered if I'd really seen them at all.
The next day a bunch of us smoked kiff on the roof of the Schauen. The roof was arranged like a courtyard. There was a garden in the center and small rooms set around the outside edge. One of the guys was a well-bred English kid who'd heard a lot of horror stories about marijuana from his parents. He told us these stories as we passed the pipe around. He smoked with us while he told the stories. As everyone got high, the kid became increasingly nervous. Suddenly he turned toward a window and vomited.
I took a week traveling alone through southern Morocco. One night I stayed with a family in Rabat. I was brought to their home by a couple who picked me up on the road. I couldn't speak Arabic, and my host, Ahmad, spoke no English. He was middle aged, and his household included his wife and three boys, aged 10, 12 and 17.
The first order of business after I was dropped off/introduced was to sit on the floor in the main room and have tea. Ahmad and I sat while his wife brought the tea. It was very hot, very sweet, and was served in a glass half stuffed with fresh mint leaves. We drank to the beat of smiles, grins, penetrating glances, gestures and stares. When Ahmad offered some kiff, I nodded assent. He prepared the kiff by mixing it with black tobacco. He seemed to suggest that one got too stoned smoking the kiff straight. Guri, the guy who'd brought me there, apparently smoked too much, in Ahmad's opinion.
Ahmad noticed that I wasn't adept at manipulating the pipe. A worried look passed over his face. He sent his wife from the room. She returned with a stack of pillows. Ahmad and his wife arranged the pillows around me so that any which way I reclined, or collapsed, I'd land on a pillow. I was impressed. This was hospitality.
Later that evening, an old man came to the door with a bunch of flowering marijuana tops. They were cut in two foot lengths and wrapped in newspaper. Ahmad invited the old man inside, then picked through the plants, setting aside six of them. An elaborate discussion followed as Ahmad and the old man got down to fighting inflation, eventually agreeing to a price. Ahmad entertained the old man for a time, paid him, they exchanged warm words and gestures, and the old man left.
Ahmad settled down to the task of preparing the kiff. He went over each stalk, carefully removing the leaves, and separating out the twigs. He got out a small cutting board and a pocket knife and meticulously cut the leaves into fine bits. The index finger on Ahmad's left hand, the finger that took most of the pressure from holding the leaves tightly in a bunch, was slightly and permanently bent from the many repetitions of this operation. The wood cutting board had a valley down its center.
That night, when it was time for everyone to sleep, the youngest boy cheerfully yielded his usual sleeping place, a mat on the floor, to me after Ahmad spoke a few soft words to him. The boy slept on the plain hard floor.
When I returned to Tangiers, Ken and I prepared for a trip to Egypt. This consisted mostly of smoking kiff, drinking tea and playing dominoes. It never occurred to us to take kiff with us on the trip.