Saturday 2 January 2010

Happy New Year

After losing my phone on the 30th at a cybercafé in Larache, (where I also visited the grave of Jean Genet-the main reason I was there-losing my phone was just a bonus) I met a guy named Hicham who offered me a place to sleep, cooked me dinner and smoked an amazing amount of hash.

Nice guy but profoundly unhappy because he claims to have lost 2 million Euro when his partners in hash smuggling burned him. I put about as much stock in that story as I do in his chances of winning the lottery-though Allah knows he plays enough. The entire house is covered in spent football forms, lottery tickets and molding dishes. At one point he lost one of the football forms he was playing that night and and spent the next 5 hours searching and worrying about it.

But he was extremely kind and generous with me and I was grateful for his help. So often people that help me seem to need to reassure themselves that they are good people. It seems a sad but I suppose that is one way I pay my way; people ache for the opportunity to do good. Travelers like me supply that opportunity.

I left his place in the afternoon and by the time I got to a decent hitching spot it was almost dark. I tried a bit but figured hell its New Years Eve in the grain belt of Morocco. A party let alone Champagne is gonna be hard to find why not just walk. So, under a full moon and in heavy wind and scattered showers, I hiked the 40 kms to Ksar-el-Kbar-the next decent size town heading south.

Along the way, resting in a bus shelter after a couple kms slogging through a muddy field, two guys rode up on motorbikes and after explaining in bad French, Spanish and mime what they invited me to share a bottle of wine. We rode down to another bus shelter where the gendarmes wouldn't bother us and proceeded to drink the bottle and look at maps (I've a pretty handy little pocket atlas of the world). I left and kept on my way.

Midnight found me under a cork tree next to a pond filled with frogs. I gave a yelp, took a big swallow of water and smoked a cigarette as dogs for miles joined in to mark the new year.

I finally got to Ksar-el-Kbir (never did get the hang of pronouncing it-there are a few phonemes in Arabic I can't wrap my throat around) about 2:30 and found a bench to sleep on. Should have known better. Less than two hours later Ahmed and Ussay woke me up. Ussay, a flat faced kid dressed in 2 dollar Dolce & Gabana and a baseball cap on the side was blasting 50 cent or some other insipid hip-pop on his mp3 player and spoke decent French. Unfortunately Ahmed spoke no French at all. Instead he spoke terribly accented, grammatically disastrous, almost unintelligible English. All of which he learned from listening to American hip-hop and Death Metal. Literally every other word was either "Bro" or "fuck". They were both very drunk.

I only wanted to sleep a few more hours and get on my way at the crack of dawn. That was not to be. I had lazily lain in slow waters where strange things attach themselves in the wee hours of the morning.

Ahmed was concerned for me in the way that only very drunk people tend to be. I waved them off when he invited me to stay at his place. But they decided then to keep guard over me. Tired enough that I probably could have slept through the drivel pumping full-blast out of the half-inch speaker but every thirty seconds Ahmed said something like,
"Hey Bro. Fuck. You eit mi hoos. sleep bed bro. I slip flar Bro. Fuck mutherfuckers here. Niggers yo. Motherfuckers Bro. i from big family bro. mi father juges in Rabat. I no seeko killer Bro. Good man yo."
I tried to ignore him but then he'd come over, shake me. and say
"Bro. Fuck. You want Vodka Bro. Drink Bro."
I'd demure and he'd go talk with Ussay for a minute or two then start in again, albeit changing around the fucks and bros a little bit.

It didn't take long to realize that sleep wasn't an option there and I might as well go with them to a bed and they promised, breakfast. hadn't eaten anything since midday before and then only some bread and olive oil with cheese. They also had a big bag of Kif.

Kif is the ground-up buds of pot and the first step in making hashish. Its smoked out of long, collapsible wooden pipes with a small clay bowl at the end. In all of the more "populaire" cafés in the north of Maroc, old men wearing djalabas sit and smoke their kif pipes while drinking coffee or tea. It gets you stoned but is a much milder high than hash.

Somewhere along the way Ussay lost the clay bowl and we made a detour to where another poor soul was sleeping outside a cafe. Ahmed woke him up and after a few words in Arabic the old man reached below his Jalaba and gave up the little clay piece off his pipe.

Ksar-El-Kbir sits on some of the most fertile land in Maroc. Its a fairly new city though and despite a few hundred thousand people has absolutely nothing in the way of culture, nightlife or architectural beauty. Every block is exactly the same boxy decaying concrete as every other boxy decaying block in Morocco built after 1950.

Ahmed lives with his mother who he said was an Arabic teacher. His father, a judge, lives in the capital Rabat about 160 kms south. His room on the roof was disgusting in only the way a young man's (or junkie's) can be. The floor was wet and dirty, small piles or cigarette butts strewn about, an aging computer covered in grime in the corner, 3 scattered pieces of a black leather sofa and a bed with dirty sheets and blankets piled on a soiled mattress.

I sat down on a chair and tried to nod off. I explained I was extremely tired but they insisted in talking to me, Ussay telling me in French what a great guy Ahmed was and Ahmed, in his English insisting he was going to come with me on the rest of my trip, " Bro I come wit yo. I be yo protection Bro." Once I finally figured out what he was saying. I explained as patiently as I could that I traveled alone. No exceptions. At some point Ussay and & Ahmed started arguing in Arabic and I managed to nod off for a few minutes. When I woke up Ussay was gone and Ahmed was free to show me his favorite videos from YNC.com. Each consisted of a Death Metal soundtrack over a montage of banned-from-tv video of war zones, car crashes etc. I was sorry Ussay and his 2pac were gone. Ahmed for his part was amazed I, being American, didn't know the site or the music. Over the next 3 hours, Ahmed made me a little food and we smoked more Kif. The conversation consisted of him repeatedly asking "why me no come wit yo Bro. Fuck Bro. I need coom wit yo". And me explaining over and over again that he could travel without me and that I travel solely with God. This exchanged repleted itself literally dozens of times and only by becoming angry was I able to get a break...for about 5 minutes before, "Fuck Bro. why yo no take me wit yo?"! or Yo hav dinner wit us here"

"No, I have to be in Rabat at 2pm. I'm leaving at 9".
Finally, at 9am, as I had been telling him for hours, I got up to leave. I hadn't been able to get any sleep but had eaten and was ready to be away from him. He threw a little fit when I put my bag on and tried to take away my boots. He wasn't happy about me going but insisted on walking me to the highway about 6 kms away. I relented and offered to buy us some tea in town, again hoping to separate from him then.

No luck there. The first cafe wouldn't serve us after Ahmed insisted on bringing out the pipe and a big bag of kif on the terrace in full view of 10am traffic. The police largely tolerate the smoking of kif but discretion is the mother of tolerance. Ahmed though was drunk, stupid and showing off. The second cafe was the same and only by standing up and making to leave was I able to get him to put the pipe away.

We drank our tea and walked another few kms before I was able to get rid of him. Throughout it all him whining,"Bro, Fuck, Bro, I need go wit yo. Why yo no take me wit you Bro"?

Finally free of him I walked down the road, hitched a donkey cart for a few miles and sat along the river for an hour or so before walking another 10 kms before getting picked up by Omar and Omar who dropped me off in Meknes.

1 comment:

Sammi travis said...

Wow, so interesting. you're a strong writer! Thanks for the link to your blog!