Guerilla Traveler - Have pen, will travel..

WHICH WAY TO ZE CASBAH?

by William Roderick Richardson

I was on my way to Morocco.

Terence Froon, the butterfly-catching/English teacher/hash-smuggling chap from Thailand had planted some seeds in my noodle on the beach at Pattaya. His words had had more influence on me than I had realized. Anyhow it was time to shake myself up and  flirt with Bohemia. I wanted to wander footloose through the open spaces exploring places I'd never seen after globetrotting for the previous several years.  

             I had itchy feet . . . never could sit still for long, even in school I was always trying to worm my way out of the classroom, squriming and shifting around in the seat and daydreaming.  

            I flew into Paris, the world's most beautiful and perhaps most olfactory-challenging city. After a few days hanging round St. Germain looking wistful and wearing a beret, I hitched down through France along a Route Nationale from hostel to hostel. The Loire Valley. Limoges. The Dordogne.  Bordeaux. Biaritz. I took it easy. Morocco wasn’t going any where. It was chilly, even cold sometimes. That’s why I kept moving south. I ended up at Gibraltar. The Rock! The Pillars of Hercules were a hint of Greece to come. Up at the Queen’s Gate the Barbary apes[1] were monkeying around, teasing tourists. They are more troublesome than dangerous. They’re only about three feet tall, max. . . That’s how I met my traveling companion for the immediate future. One of the curious guys had taken a liking to her and had her corned up against a wall.

               Ivanhoe to the rescue. . . I ran the monkey off with a boot to its butt.

               ‘Oh my gawd,” said the girl.  ‘Thanks awfully. That filthy little bugger had it in for me!’

              That’s when I saw it. Right off. She had the most wonderful face. What’s more that face, at least to my memory, was very similar to the angel-girl’s face—the one I’d woken up to in the hospital. It couldn’t be the same girl though. She had the same green eyes, the light freckles, the straight nose and soft blonde, almost reddish hair. She had lovely pale-skin and a wonderful curvy figure, but that British accent put her out of the running. My angel was American. And somewhat older somehow.

              ‘Received pronunciation’ I think Katie Shy described the way she spoke. I’d never heard of  Hackney, the part of  London she said she came from. Who cares? I’d hardly ever met any British before. Maybe she was joking with me about being British, having me on, as Katie would’ve said because sometimes her accent sounded awfully Australian.[2] That Aussie thing again . . .  

               Did I say that she was also very sexy—the slightest hint of nipples made seductive twin imprints in her tight t-shirt—and seemed thoroughly cool.  She and I stood there chewing the fat, two travelers, looking across the Straits toward Africa. It turned out she was a budding actress on her way to drama school at some place called RADA?[3] in the autumn. Besides, we all have out little hidden agendas . . . To cut to the chase, she was on her way to Egypt. I was on my way to Greece. So we decided to travel together via Morocco to follow our noses to points east along the African coast.

We crossed on a ferry the next day. Morocco had a mythic—Hollywood-style— ring to me. Casablanca for a start. Humphrey Bogart saying ‘Play it again, Sam.’[4]  The plane taking off in the fog. ‘Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’ The Barbary Pirates . . . The Marrakesh Express song we used to hear during the war.[5] 

 A few months before when in a mood to experiment, I’d got hold of a copy of  Naked Lunch by William Burroughs and tried to get into it. A guy I knew at UU had turned me onto it. I’d picked it up and put it down again. To be honest I didn’t make much of it. It was hard to read. There was no apparent plot, but it exploded with images. Burroughs, that most eccentric byproduct of the Beats had lived in Tangier for several years in the mid-50s after fleeing Mexico, where he had accidently shot and killed his wife [7]. Naked Lunch, which followed his first short novel, Junky, was inspired by Tangiers' International Zone,[6].

In Tangiers does indeed blow up right in your face, a real ruckus. People running every which way helter skelter. Everything was for sale. Hagglin had been transformed into an art form.

Katie caused a stir. Every eye in the noisy market was on her blonde hair and her lowcut shirt from underneath which her nipples stood to attention. 

A crowd of young men had gathered near us and were eyeing Katie lustfully.

‘Let’s get out of here before they rape you and me,’ I said.

I quickly purchased a large silk scarf from a stall and laid it around her shoulders.

‘Cover up,’ I said. ‘There’s a long tradition of white slavery in North Africa.

As we moved on a little shriveled-up man, not very threatening since he wasn’t much bigger than one of the Gibraltar monkeys, asked, ‘What you want?” and opened his coat. Both sides were bursting out with baubles, pipes, knives, ornaments, and bracelets.

‘You want whisky Marocain. You want smoke, yes?’

I’d heard alcohol was banned in the casbah, so what was this special local brand?  The little fellow seemed to know his way around. We followed.

Katie’s eyes glistened. ‘I’m game for laugh if you are,’ she said.

We followed the little man down an alley. It was a tight fit. Three people side by side walking left one rubbing shoulders with the wall. We ducked through a beaded doorway into a tearoom where old men sat sucking long tubes filled with smoke. I tipped the little man. The sweet smell of fresh apricots mingled with mildew and the fragrance of musty cotton, rotting garbage, and sweat. That kind of exotic atmosphere was easy to resist. We went right out the way we’d come in.

We ended up a little bit lost but eventually found our way into the Petit Socco, which is the famous little marketplace where the artsy crowd used to hung out. People like Tennessee Williams, Ian Fleming, Burroughs and Kerouac and Ginsberg and so forth. I found out what ‘whisky Morocain” was. It’s mint tea, the national beverage of choice.

We swallowed some tea down, being Roman about it, at the Cafe Fuentes and watched one hell of a crazy world go by speaking dozens of languages in every shape, size and variety of color imaginable.  

 

***

Next day we hitched a ride on a flatbed going south toward Rabat. The driver dropped us in the middle of the countryside where we were puzzling over a map as a dust-covered black Mercedes halted and the window rolled down. Here we go, I thought.

‘Hello,” he said. ‘My name is Omar. Are you lost?’

‘We want to go to the Rif mountains.’

‘You are looking at them. It’s a long way to the next good hotel. My house is nearby up in those hills.’

He pointed off in the near distance.  

‘I am on my way home for supper. I would be honored if you would be my guests.’

I looked at Katie. She whispered, ‘Okay, if you keep your eye on me.’

‘Okay,” I said to the man.

Omar smiled. ‘You make me very happy.’ He probably was in the mood for some fun, or wanted to show off for the foreigners. He wasn’t maybe ten years older than I was.

We set off throwing up a cloud of dust with the radio blaring some loud local music. What’s that instrument? The bazooka? Too late to turn back now. We’d lose face, look like chickenshit pale faces. Of course it was possible that he would take us to his place where he and his gang of forty thieves would rape and rob us both. But I had heard that when Muslims take you in, you’re in. Just like the Army. Only they’re honor bound to treat you courteously.

We wound up and up and up through the mountains on narrow roads toward the home of the Riffi Berbers. It was getting toward sunset. Ketama is the center of the hashish trade and that was where Omar came from he said. For all I knew he was the headman of the place, though he seemed a little young for that.

Omar talked as he drove. “I am a Berber. We have lived in North Africa for as long as history tells.”

I knew we were in for a history lesson now.

“We knew the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans and traded with them, even hashish. In the tenth century! Even before Jesus we ruled Egypt! It was not always the European who were bosses here. During Ottoman times we had many slaves from Europe.!”

I nodded at Katie and mumbled, “Told ya.”

 “How nice,” said Katie.

“We have in turn seen many invaders beside the Greeks and Romans—the Phoenicians, Vandals, Byzantines, Ottomans, French, and Spanish. Today is only one page of a very long book.”

“Not as long as your speech,” I said quietly. He was starting to sound like my high school civics teacher.

Katie giggled. “He’s well away,” she said.

“The highlands! Here we have almost always been independent. What was the reason to conquer us? The foreigners only wanted our ports.”

There was plenty more to come about the Berbers and how they live mainly in Morocco and Algeria and in the deserts of Tunisia and Libya, how they are mostly farmers and that hashish is their biggest crop, how right there we were in the hashish center of the world.

“Your Jimi Hendrix was here.” Omar shouted over the music, glancing back over his shoulder.

Morocco was a favored stop on the sixties' hippie trail.

Omar went right in to explaining the history of hashish.  He told us that Baudelaire and Dumas—the second guy I knew but about the first I had no idea—used hashish. In the old days they even had a hashish club in Paris.  Now things were too serious.

“Everything is taken so seriously,” Omar said, critically.

“I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Katie whispered. Omar went on.

“In America you even tried to outlaw alcohol. Why you Americans dislike such things? It is only a plant. It must be about money. That is America,” he said thoughtfully. “Money. Money dripping like Honey! . . . Of course we don’t give away hashish for nothing either, except to friends.”

Katie was nodding off. It was really very warm inside the car with the windows down.  There were many famous Berbers. A long list . . . St Augustine was a famous Berber. Someone else was. And then another. Winston Churchill, too. And let’s not forget Muhammad Ali.

“You see I studied philosophy in Fez,” said Omar.

Well. That spoke volumes.  

“Your first America war was fought against Tripoli,” said Omar. He was right. The war against the Barbary Pirates was the first war we’d fought outside the U.S.

Katie moaned, “More Berbers.”

“Many, many, many, more Berbers,” I said. “Berber, berber, berber.”   

“It was not a war against hashish! No! No!,” said Omar. ‘It was a war against slavery and piracy, an economic struggle.”

Omar was a wealth of information. He could have told stories of his nation all night. Then he dropped a bomb. 

‘What about me? What do you guess my work is?’

You’re training to be a civics teacher? I thought.

 ‘It is I. Who control ze hash market in Morocco! Just me!’

Ordinarily that would have been a red flag, right there, don’t you think?

I looked at Katie who wearily said, ‘In for a penny in for a pound.’

She kept saying stuff like that. I wasn’t always sure I understood.

‘What do you think?’ I said.

 ‘We’ve fallen on our feet,’ she said.

‘What I was thinking,’ I said.

After Tangier  and after all the other stuff from before, it seemed natural to meet a guy lik Omar. Besides I had my SOG knife[8] in my backpack and I knew how to use it. Anyhow, Omar didn’t seem too threatening.  

‘Trading in hashish is a family tradition! We’ve done it for generations!’ shouting over the music, glancing back over his shoulder with a big reassuring smile.

‘See. Nothing to worry about,’ I said to Katie. ‘It’s a family thing.’ 

‘Long live tradition,’ said Katie.

‘No problem.’ I shrugged. ‘Can you do the dance of the seven veils?’

‘I don’t know. Why don’t you hum a few bars and show me the steps?’

She was a sport all right.

Finally after about forty minutes or so, we arrived at his house. It was readily apparent that Katie and I had stumbled onto the place. It was a pretty big place set on in an impressive location with a view commanding the whole valley for miles around. You could hold off a division from there. I’d seen the kind of thing done. 

We were the guests of honor at a huge feast which was set on a large table outside on the terrace. It was dark by now. Katie sat next to Omar, who could hardly take his eyes off her.

‘Moonlight is good for you,’ Omar said to her.

Moonlight becomes you, I thought of the song. Oh yeah. 

“I know,” she said. “It goes with my hair.” 

Our host hardly ate, but seemed content to watch us enjoy ourselves. The others at the table were mostly his growers, Omar had told us. No Ali Babas, this gang. A nice enough bunch, like farmers everywhere, lined and tanned by the sun, thinned out by the altitude and days toiling in the high fields.

The food was new and delicious and endless. Hot and cold salads, tagine stew, bread, lamb, chicken and couscous topped with meat and vegetables were served, washed it all down with wine. We ate with our fingers as they did and used the bread as a fork or spoon. I tasted cinnamon, cumin, tumeric, ginger, pepper, paprika, sesame, coriander, parsley, saffron and mint.

And mint tea, of course.

between courses, the hash pipe was passed. It was only good manners, I thought at first, but Omar eventually got down to business. It was let’s make a dope deal. He wanted to sell us a reasonable chunk of hash, but we didn’t have enough money, and not a credit card between us, even if we had wanted to buy. I was wary, to say the least, of   keeping hash on me in Morocco. You only have to get caught once. Anyway if you’re talking drugs, I’ve always found that prescribed stuff was the best medicine.   

We slept like tops on the terrace where we had eaten under the stars. I slept with my knife under my poncho, just in case. Katie slept as if ready for dreaming. I wished I could have tagged along.

The next day broke fine and bright. I looked out way across the valley far below. shadows of clouds flew across the terraces. There were some kids playing nearby so I got out my frisbee and threw it long and far, and watched the breeze catch it. The kids scampered after it and brought it back.That night, another group came in. They might have been buyers or middle men because they worse nice shoes and slacks with expensive shirts.

This night we slept in the stable. The guests had taken up the terrace space. I felt Katie moving in the darkness. I pictured her thighs. I had wanted those thighs since the first day in Gibraltar. They were good firm thighs. Unfortunately she rolled over the other way. It was Katie bar the door. At least she didn’t snore.   

We headed out early the next morning. Omar tried to load us up with hash again. He was persistent—I’ll give him that—but we politely put him off. We were clean as a whistle, which was a good thing because after we hitched a ride we were stopped and our bags were searched by a military patrol.

***

 Lazily, we followed the coast road into Algeria.  

We’d did the casbah in Algiers, which was cool, but I’d thought the casbah was in Tangier, and we’d already seen it. Really. Algeria was even more Berberous than Morocco, apparently. Omar would’ve been happy. 

By the way, wasn’t it a Pepe Le Pew pick up line, ‘Come with me to ze Casbah?’ 

‘You do not have to come with me to ze Casbah . . . We are already ‘ere,’ I said to Katie.  But where was here exactly, I thought. We were lost in the Casbah. 

A tourist leaflet I’d picked up said, ‘To outsiders the Casbah appears to be a confusing labyrinth of lands and dead end alleys flanked by picturesque houses (or something like that) . . . I would’ve just changed appears to is. We kept having to retreat downhill toward the seaside to find our coordinates. The Casbah was no big shakes. It turns out they have them everywhere the Arabs went—even Spain. Casbah, Kasbah, Quassabah. Kum bah yah. Sis boom bah. Cat’s paw,[9] Katie called them. Whatever. Casbah’s just another word for fortress. Nowdays the one in Algiers is a World Heritage Site, but back then it was what you’d call a tourist trap or gip joint full of pushy hagglers and as the leaflet said, clausterphobic little paths and dead ends, which is no big deal, unless you are walking through the casbah of your choice—so many to choose from too—with a curvy blonde female. Hell, men ought to wear burkas too. That’s my advice because those Berbers will screw anything that moves.   

There was an added plus.  You could always get blown up into little pieces at any moment. I’d seen The Battle of Algiers,[10] and all the characters had lived in the casbah. Algerians may hate the French, but they weren’t too hot on foreigners either. Between Vietnam and Algeria, the French must have been really freaking out during the 1950s. Anyway, even though we weren’t French, you can only hang around ze cazbah so long before you start to feel like a fool, considering there’s one in every town. Romantic baloney. But I don’t want to be „offputting” as Katie said. See for yourself.

Oh, okay.  It was really all right I guess—if you like that kind of thing. I wanted to get inside Katie’s pants and being in the lost in the Casbah wasn’t going to impress her and aid in my mission. Anyway, I’d had enough of ‘ancient walled forts also known as medinas, or sometimes just the old city’ as further seraching for the true meaning of ‘Casbah’ revealed.   

That was that. We split the scene and spent an R&R week in Tipaza, at little town which was built by the Phonecians a zillion or so years ago. I had some vague recollection, most likely from some war flick about allied forces landing at Tipaza in WWII.  At any rate, the modern town was founded in the 1800s and was notable for its wide sandy beach according to another leaflet I picked up. The beach wasn’t horribly wide, but it was sandy for sure. We slept on it. Just in case you are wondering, that night the beach was pretty much Berber-free.      

Some days later, we were relaxing in a cafe in Tunis on one of the main streets. I wondered if Katie was thinking what I was thinking? I nodded in the direction of the medina which is built on a hill that gently slopes down to Tunis lake.

‘If only we had a compass,’ Katie said.

I laughed.

‘I think I need a barber,’ I said. My hair—I had some back then—was getting scraggly. ‘What do you think?’

‘You could use a trim. But beware.’

‘Why?’

‘What if the barbers are berberous?’

‘Or the berbers are barbarous?’

‘Mais oui! Your have to weigh the possibilities,’ said Katie.

‘I do not fear the Berber barbers whether barbarous or berberous.’

‘Do you fear the casbah? That is perhaps the more relevant question.’

‘You know that I do,’ I said. ‘All white men fear the casbah. It is a den of intrigue.’

           Right then some obvious big-shot was passing right in front of the cafe. He was surrounded by an entourage of bowers and scrapers.  When he glanced at our table and saw us he stopped and walked right up to us with this big smile on his face.  

            The big-wheel spoke through a translator who asked me if we were Americans.   I told him that yes I was, that my name was Bobby and that my friend Katie came from London. The translator explained that this man happened to be the President of  Tunisia, the dictator seemed excited to sharing a photo opportunity with foreigners. Cameras snapped.  We stood up so that the TV cameras could catch our exchange of pleasantries.

               ‘He wants to know how you find Tunis,’ said the translator.

               ‘We like it very much, don’t we?” I said nodding at Katie.              

               ‘Oh yes,’  said Katie. ‘Especially the cat’s paw.’

               ‘We love the cat’s paw,” I said. ‘It is like second home for us.

               ‘Oh, yes the casbah,’ said the translator and relayed this message to the big cheese.    

               The translator informed us that his boss, who’d be smiling his head off for the folks back home that very night, was very happy to hear that we liked the casbah.  

                I whispered, ‘This guy’s the nicest dictator in North Africa. I read about him.”      

                ‘I knew that,” said Katie under her breath, ‘He must be a good dictator. His translator seems to be very pleased with taking his dictation. He’s all smiles.’

                 She was right. That translator was in hog heaven now, showing off his expertise.

                ‘Should I mention barbers?” I said.

                ‘Yes, please,’ said Katie. So I did.

                ‘We look for good barber in the casbah. But we have no compass.’ I shrugged.

                 Katie shrugged, too, as if to say, Search me.

                 ‘No problem. Berbers everywhere,’ said the translator.

                 ‘No kidding,’ I said. 

                 The translator whose eyes had zoomed in like one of those TV cameras on Katie’s bosum, explained quickly to us that Tunisia was not truly a Berber nation like Algeria or Morocco. He himself, though was in fact part Berber. Alas, the president was not.

                    ‘Then our nations can live in peace and harmony. We’ll forget about the pirates.’

                     ‘Pirates! I not understand,’ said the translator.

                      ‘The Barbary Pirates. You know Tripoli. It was—’ 

                       ‘Ah, pirates! Gaddafi very bad. He is deek-ta-tor,’ said the translator without translating what he was saying. The President nodded agreeably.

                       ‘Gaddafi is bad berber. Here only good berbers. But not so many’ said the translator.

                        Was that drool forming on the President’s lip?  

                       ‘Gaddaffi needs a barber,” said Katie.  We both got the giggles at that point and Katie, me and the translator were all laughing, though the translator must have been laughing at something else, just being good-humored. Ho ho ho hee hee hee ha ha ha. I have no idea what they made of this on TV later. One can only guess. Anyway you can’t stand there all day laughing at dictators. They have things to do.

                     ‘I’ve never giggled at a dictator before,’ Katie said with tears in her eyes.

                     ‘There’s a first time for everything,’ I said.   

                     Now boom, the translator got back to basics. The President looked restless. The ship of state was veering off course. The President meanwhile continued to flash his pearly whites, joining in the fun as much as he dared to.  Dictators, even the benevolent ones, have to maintain their dignity.

                   The jig was up. The President was shifting from foot to foot as if he had ants in his pants. It was obvious that the President wished us both a most pleasant stay in Tunisia and wanted to get the hell out of there. We all shook hands and smiled. And that was that. Finito Benito on the photo op. They disappeared in a cloud of musk.

          ‘Smelly chaps,” said Katie.

          ‘I need a cocktail to celebrate,’ I said.

          ‘Berber and water?” Katie asked.

***

                  

            Later on things got serious. It was my last night with Katie. We ended in the ruins of ancient Carthage. They are easy to find just across Lake Tunis opposite the center of the city. We’d managed to scrounge some wine at last.  It had been a long dry spell. We sat and talked among the ruins as the sun went down. The Carthaginians knew about defeat. The Romans had wiped them out. You know the story. Then they sowed salt so that nothing would grow there anymore. Defeat. A sobering thought to say ‘Cheers’ to. That’s the thing you have to get ready for, despite all your plans to the contrary. That’s the way it ends. Carthage was proof. So was Nam. But I didn’t care about that right then. I was thinking about winning Katie over. 

          We didn’t have a room so we decided to stay put and sleep in the deserted Roman amphitheatre, there in the ruins. It was very romantic. Don’t laugh. We were pretty young.

          Katie said, ‘Do you know what Tunis means?’

          ‘It’s Arabic for stay the night or camping out. Appropriate.’

          ‘Yes. I did not know that,” I said.

         ‘Stick with me, boyo.’

          Then she said, ‘You have the brightest blue eyes.’

          ‘Thank you,’ I said.

          ‘Bright as the blue on a butterfly’s wing.’

           ‘Who said that?’

           ‘I did. Iambic pentameter. It’s something I fool around with it,’ said Katie Shy. She was not living up to her name.

‘Well, now. Okay, long as it doesn’t make you sick.’

            ‘Ha, ha. Very funny . . . You’re cute?’ she said, lifting her chin to look at me. She was lying down next to me side by side.

I made a face. ‘So are you,’ I said. ‘Only you’re so cute it changes into pretty and lovely and stops at beautiful. Unless you wanna talk about goreous . . .’ 

‘Why thank you, suh,’ she said imitating Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara.

             I felt a friend of mine rising to the occasion. He was dictating terms. I hoped Katie would surrender unconditionally. Listen to me . . . I’m not going any further with this. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination. I liked this girl better than any girl I’d ever known up to then. She was special. She was my angel-nurse. She was how I imagined that angel might’ve been. That is if I’d ever got to know her.

                        

The next morning we said goodbye at the airport. We embraced and she kissed me hard on the mouth. I don’t think I’d ever been kissed like that before. It was even better than the night before. Kissing says volumes. 

 ‘You sure you don’t wanna come to Greece with me?” I asked her.

She just smiled. I’d asked her before, and she had said she couldn’t. She was on her way to Cairo to visit an aunt. She didn’t say why. I figured one last try was worth it. You never know.

‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ she said, avoiding my question, knowing of course that I had done and would be doing many things that she would never even dream of doing. And visa versa. 

We were headed in different directions.

I looked back over my shoulder and she was watching me. She blew me a kiss, the kind that penetrates right through glass. They don’t make them like Katie very often. A rare bird. And these days? An endangered species . . . the kind with magic dust on their wings.    

Later, I caught a flight to Palermo for twelve bucks, took the train to Brindisi and the ferry to Corfu. It was a hop, skip and a jump.