|
Before I go any further, I just want to make a few things quite clear. Having the journal to work from made a huge difference in putting many pieces of the story together, as well as helping to remember so many almost forgotten details. There were however as stated earlier that some events weren't logged, and memory does tend to fade a bit after forty plus years. I decided before I started writing the story, if I was going to go through all the work of putting it together, it was important that the events and the details within them be as accurate as possible. So when I had a recollection about a specific incident or event that may not have been logged, or maybe I just a vague remembrance of an event and was unsure about how it came about, I would then confer with Eve; which I did many times. If we came to roughly the same conclusion we deemed it to be correct. If we were too far apart in our remembrance of the event or some details, I would just skip it and move on to the next event. I never wanted any part of the story to be artificial or manufactured just to fill a gap, the accuracy was very important to me. Fortunately there were only a few small incidents and details that we were too far apart on, and by not including them never really took anything away from the story. ... now back to the adventure. After spending quite a bit of time at the beach, we decided to go back to the campground and chill out for a bit. There were lots of hippies at our end of the compound, people from many parts of the world, several different languages being spoken; but many spoke varying degrees of broken English. Everyone was going around looking for some hash. Even though some of the languages weren't understood by everyone, we all understood the gestures. No one had any hash, at least not that they were willing to part with.. A little while later, or maybe the next day, can't be sure, we saw this little Moroccan guy setting up a tent. We knew that Moroccans weren't generally allowed into the compound, so we wondered how this guy got in. Okay... we now know why he was allowed in. Once he got his tent all set up he began moving through the groups of campers, asking if anyone was interested in buying some Hashish. Everyone who said yes was given an appointment time with a 20 minute time limit. Processing everyone that wanted some hash would probably take a couple of days. Our appointment was for 9 o'clock tonight. We went to the bar to have a beer and something to eat. The beer was real good and cold, Stork Pilsner bottled in Casablanca. We ate what they called ke-bebs; they're the very same thing as shish-kabobs, just not so western sounding by name; ke-bebs is the name they prefer, so from that point on we always referred to them as ke-bebs. It was getting on to 9 o'clock, time to keep our appointment. We headed on over to the guy's tent. As we arrived four people were just leaving with big smiles on their faces, no surprise there. The guy invited us in. He said his name was Amon. We went in and sat down. He had quite a setup. The tent was a six man tent. Across the floor at the back was a carpet with a cushion that he sat on. Down each side from back to front were two more carpets for his guests to sit on. Slightly to his rear was a cassette player, a small speaker and a box of tapes. On each side of where he sat were medium size duffle bags, and in the top of the tent was a single light bulb with a plugin for his cassette player. This guy was no run of the mill hash dealer. He had a great setup and conducted himself like a businessman, a real pro; or at least a wannabe pro. He opened both bags to expose their contents. "Holy fuck-WOW"!, and I really mean holy fuck-WOW! Inside each bag were many dozens of slabs of Hash, each weighing four ounces [115 grams] they looked like little chocolate bars, mmm yummy. He explained the difference between the two grades, one was called "zero", quite a good grade and modestly priced, the other one is what he said was "the best Hashish the country has to offer". It was called "Double Zero" and it cost 25% more than the lesser grade, but it was twice as good. To me they both looked the same, but you can't really tell any difference just by having a look. He was really pitching quite hard the difference between the two grades, like one of those TV commercial 'Snake Oil Salesman'. Apart from that he was a really likeable guy. I suspected both bags contained the same kind of hash and his story about two different grades was just the business tactic he used to get you to buy the higher priced hash, and attempt to convince you that you were getting a better deal and a bigger bang for your buck. I'm pretty sure that when the Double Zero bag became empty, the other bag of hash became the new Double Zero. His business strategy was an indicator that he wasn't all that experienced with sales, but we were experienced when dealing with salesmen. For us the bottom line was, we didn't care about the cost, we were there for the hash, it was all cheap so the money part didn't matter that much, we just wanted to get high. And just like almost everyone in the park, if you're there for the hash you didn't care about the cash; we were all there on a holiday and not concerned about the price for hash. Rich man poor man, it didn't matter which you were, we were all there for the very same reason. But just in case everything he told us about the difference between the two grades was true, we wanted to make sure we got the best hash we could get, so we were going to opt for the Double Zero. We had no idea whether it's better hash or not, we'll just consider the 25% extra as cheap insurance. He put on some Doobie Brothers for background music, it was the "Once Vices/ Now Habits" tape; awesome, and humorously ironic I thought. Now before he would sell us anything he insisted we sample it first. It was important to him that we knew exactly what we were buying. Customer satisfaction seemed to be a big deal for him. He had a container with little 90 degree clay pipe fittings. He fit them onto the end of long hollow wooden stems that he called sebsis, assembled it was just a hash pipe. Into each bowl he put a small chunk of hash, enough for two really good tokes. This Double Zero hash really kicked our ass man. Major head tripping, lips sticking to your teeth, tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth, very hard to work up enough saliva so you could even talk or swallow. All signs of good hash. This was all part of the holy fuck-WOW! factor. Al bought a chunk, Mel and I split on maybe two ounces, and Ron, if he was still with us would have for sure bought a chunk; just one of the details that didn't get logged and one I couldn't remember for sure. Amon told us that at the time, "this quality of hash was only available in Morocco, only the other grades were subject to transport out of the country", but was this just more of the salesman bullshit, or was it factual; we would never know and we didn't care. What we cared about was scoring some good hash, and we sure did. Our 20 minute time limit was now over and we had to leave as the next clients were arriving. We went back to the bar for a drink, we needed to wet our mouths so we could swallow and talk. Mr. Amon, you make good hashish...thank you Now hydrated we went back to our tent to have a few more tokes, didn't really need it but we had it so we're smoking it. I remember thinking, WOW, wouldn't our friends back home love to smoke some of this hash. CLICK.......the idea light in my head just turned on and ah...um...um...ah... fucking hell, I think I'm losing my train of thought? yeah Joe, you are. Oh yeah man, I'm really fucking high. It was getting late, everyone has had their appointment, we've all got our hash and now it's time to crash, but not everyone did. For the part of the night that I can remember, all you could hear were muffled happy coughs. The coughs came from all over the compound, even from the rich European area, it was funny, we laughed about it. After smoking Double Zero we were laughing about everything. Sleep finally came. Up early the next morning, went for showers and breakfast. The girls are off to do an old time laundry in a sink with a built in scrub board, no wash machines here. Later, after smoking a little we went back to the beach where we hung out for most of the day playing and having fun. Eve and I decided we'd had enough fun and sun for the day and headed back to the compound. Along the way we ran into a couple of Canadians, a guy and girl from Alberta. They had a van and had been travelling around Europe and north Africa since September. We all hung out and chatted for quite awhile. We exchanged a few stories about some of the places where we had all been, and how nice it was to run into fellow Canadians. We all had a few laughs, but now it was time too split, the couple left and we went back to our tent. When the rest of the gang got back we decided to go out to one of the local dining spots for dinner. We wanted something different than fried potatoes and ke-bebs from the bar. Amon's tent was still here so we asked if we could take him out for dinner, he accepted. We didn't know where to go, but we knew he did. He took us to a nice little bistro. When we went in he asked us to wait for just a minute while he went to talk to the proprietor. They spoke briefly, then the proprietor went into a back room and within in a few seconds a half dozen men came out, a couple of them left, the rest sat somewhere else in the main room. We were then escorted into the back room which had a pleasant sweet aroma of hashish lingering in the air. The overall look of the rooms interior gave me another one of those Arabian Nights vibes. Along the walls were large sofas, carved benches, big stuffed cushions all around the room, there were also several carpets as well as wall mounted tapestries. The room was quite long but narrow, it had a table that was half the the length of the room, maybe eight or ten feet long with very short legs, there was also no chairs. To eat you could sit on the benches and lean over the table, way too uncomfortable, but as the table was made for floor use we opted for cushions and floor, it was quite comfortable. This dining style had a definite feel that we were in a Bedouin's tent somewhere out in the desert. This whole scene is so fucking cool, I'm absolutely loving the vibe here. There was six of us or maybe seven for dinner, depending whether on Ron was still with us. Although Ron spent a few days with us, he was still quite the loner, and inconspicuous most of the time. It was quite easy now to see why he was travelling alone. He wasn't very comfortable around other people, not at all. When they started bringing the food in, there must have been enough to feed at least ten or twelve people, I'm not kidding either, trays of their local cuisine consisting of couscous, chicken and lamb Tajine, ke-bebs, figs, dates, a variety of cooked and raw vegetables, baskets of bread, orange Fanta and mint tea, this was so incredibly awesome. They brought the food to us in courses so we always had hot food in between courses of raw vegetables. It was all so great that we were feeling like royalty. We were again blown away. We ate what seemed like tons of food, smoked a shit load of hash and laughed our asses off the whole time. This was an amazing dinner event, and in the end it cost about $20 for everything. What a fantastic meal and an unforgettable night. We're all tired now, it's time to crash out and have pleasant dreams about the start a beautiful new day tomorrow... oh yeah man, this is really good hash .... Page #7 Page links 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 |
Al and me at Agadir beach
Mel & Aileen, at beach
Agadir Kasbah
Mel, Aileen & Al
Mel & snake guy
Agadir Kasbah 
our sebsis
the Kasbah wall
after some reconstruction 
more wall
Moroccan roadkill
|