|
Before I go any further I just want to make a few things 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, parts of events that weren't logged, and memory does tend to fade a bit after forty years. So I decided before I started writing the story, that 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 recollection about a specific incident or event that was only partially logged, or maybe not logged at all, maybe 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 minor details, I would just skip it and move on to the next topic. I never wanted any part of the story to come across as being artificial or manufactured just to fill a gap; that was very important to me. Fortunately, there were only a few small incidents and details that we were too far apart on, but by not including them never really took anything away from the story. ... now back to the story. After spending quite a bit of time at the beach, it was time to go back to the campground, back to the tent to chill out for a bit. There were lots of hippies at our end of the grounds, people from many parts of the world, several different languages being spoken. Everyone was going around looking for hash. Even though 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. It didn't take long to figure out why he was allowed in. Sometime later, once he had his tent set up, he was going around asking everyone if they were 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 was going to 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, that's how they prefer it, so from then on we 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 two 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 small cassette player and a box of tapes. On each side of where he sat were medium size duffel bags, and in the top of the tent was a small 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. 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 Hashish, each weighing about four ounces [115 grams] they looked like little chocolate bars, yummy. He explained the difference between the two grades, one was "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. I suspected both bags contained the same kind of hash and his story about two different grades was just a business tactic to charge a higher price and make you think you're getting a better deal. Really, why would any one buy the cheap hash when for 25% more you could get hash that was twice as good; which by the way didn't look any different than the cheaper hash; but from the buyer perspective, buying the better hash is the smart business choice, right; assuming of course his explanation was true and ah...ah....ah... ...shit, do I sound high?......yeah, you do Joe. 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, we just wanted to get high. And just like almost everyone in the park , they didn't care about the money either, they're on holidays and the money didn't matter. They just wanted the hash so they could get high also. Rich man or poor man, it didn't matter which you were; we were all there for the very same reason. Of course we opted for the double zero, who wouldn't. But 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. After we all smoked he put on some Doobie Brothers, it was the "Spirit" tape; awesome. This double zero Hashish 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 small chunk. Mel and I split on an ounce, and Ron, well I'm not sure again if he was still with us at this point; if he was, he 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 who knows and who cares, all we cared about was scoring some good hash, and did we ever. 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. We went back to our site and into the tent to have a few more tokes, didn't really need it, but why not, we had it so we're smoking it. I remember thinking, holy fuck-WOW, wouldn't our friends back home love to smoke some of this hash, CLICK.......the idea light in my head just turned on. It was getting late, everyone has had their appointment, we've all got our hash and now it's time to crash, but not everybody 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 a laundry in a sink with a built in scrub board, old time laundry, no wash machines here. Later, after smoking a little we went back to the beach, we hung around for most of the day playing. Eve and I decided we'd had enough 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 awhile about how nice it was to run into fellow Canadians. We exchanged a few stories about some of the places where we had all been, we all had a few laughs; 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 fries and ke-bebs from the bar. We asked Amon the dealer 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, they either left or sat somewhere else in the main room. We were then escorted into the room, which had a pleasant sweet odor of hashish lingering in the air. The overall look of the interior of the room 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 and tapestries, a long table with very short legs that was half the length of the room. 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 dining 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. {poor Ron, he always seems to be a mister inconspicuous} When they started bringing the food in, there must have been enough to feed ten or twelve people, I'm not kidding either; trays of local cuisine: couscous, chicken and lamb Tajine, figs, dates, a variety of cooked and raw vegetables, baskets of bread, orange Fanta and mint tea, this was so awesome. 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 for the night 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
Kasbah wall
more wall
Moroccan roadkill
|