FICTION 
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Midnight in Morocco
by Matt Ginsburg

​When I graduated from college in 1982, everyone had seen the movie Midnight Express. It was based on the memoir of an American student caught smuggling hashish in Turkey. Billy Hayes had taped two kilos to his chest and tried to board a plane back to the States. I knew little about Turkey, except that its government was unstable and subject to military coups. It seemed like a dicey place for a cavalier kid to break the law. How could anyone be so stupid, I wondered, as I watched him in the opening scene.

Hayes was sentenced to 30 years in prison, repeatedly tortured, and would surely have died before serving his term. He eventually escaped, but not before biting out the tongue of one guard, a scene that was depicted in slow motion, and killing another by ramming his head into a coat hook. The movie was a gruesome warning for anyone tempted to mess with drugs in a third world country.

My roommate Jake and I were serious students and had every intention of putting our degrees, Jake’s in Business, mine in Political Science, to work one day. But we also shared a sense of adventure. While many of our classmates focused on finding a job, we viewed that time as a unique opportunity to travel abroad, absorb foreign cultures, and better understand our place in the world.

We admired the travel stories of Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, and Hunter Thompson. They depicted free spirits, spiritual seekers who defied societal expectations, and, most attractively, partied like there was no tomorrow. We didn’t think of ourselves as bohemians, but we wanted to taste that life for a while. After that, we could buckle down and submit to the Man.

We decided to travel across Europe. We discussed our trip over beers and bong loads throughout our senior year, wondering if it would be as easy to get high over there as it was in Berkeley. Referencing Let’s Go Europe, a budget travel guide written by Harvard students, we found something to like in just about every country. The music in England, the food in France, the history in Germany, and so on. After each discussion our itinerary expanded until it stretched out to six months. We planned to spend at least a week in every major city, and visit nearly every country in the book.

The last one we considered was the lone Islamic country, Morocco. Our interest increased when we read that Jimi Hendrix had visited there between albums in 1969.
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“That’s right!” said Jake, jabbing his finger into the book. “My bro said that he wrote “Castles Made of Sand” while he was vacationing on the beach.”
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“Dude,” I replied, marveling at the thought of chilling like a rock deity. “I am so there.”

Despite our enthusiasm, Morocco didn’t conjure music in the minds of some of our friends.

“Don’t end up like Billy Hayes,” warned some friends, reminding us that Morocco was known more for the quality of its hashish than its adherence to due process. We always laughed at that comment. What happened to Billy Hayes wasn’t funny; on the contrary, it was terrifying. But we had no plans to smuggle drugs. The thought of taping bars of hash to my chest and sweating my way through a security line at the airport seemed ridiculous. We weren’t that stupid.

Amsterdam came early in our itinerary. To that point, we had adapted to the local customs of England and France by smoking the local cigarettes, quaffing warm beer and cheap wine, and ditching our razors. In the Dutch den of depravity, we had more options to go native; it seemed like everything was legal from a flourishing red light district to an above ground drug scene. We were more interested in the latter. We started by purchasing hash brownies in the youth hostel. They proved a tasty supplement to the Heineken tour; we ate them in the park across the street from the brewery and woke up four hours later. Then we visited the Melkveg.

Upon entering the infamous nightclub, we confronted a haze of smoke as thick as Bay Area fog and more odorous than a post-finals party at Cal. The smell may have been familiar, but the sights and sounds were not. The patrons, men and women our age or a bit older, resembled a vintage clothing ad. The men combined pointed shoes, dark jeans, striped vests and threadbare jackets with grungy hair sometimes topped by a beret or a fedora. The women were mostly clad in Euro brand jeans and frilly blouses or flowery summer dresses accented by various bangles and dangles. A band played in a large, dimly lit room and some people were bobbing or swaying in synch with the beat. They resembled a Grateful Dead crowd, albeit one with a higher sense of fashion. And the way they carried on, smoking insouciantly and conversing indecipherably, lent them an air of sophistication that seemed as foreign as the Dutch (I think) band sounded.

For a moment I felt awfully American in my blue jeans and a tee shirt that read, “Forty Fucking Niners.” American football, even when creatively referenced, probably wasn’t considered cool. Jake’s unkempt hair, scraggly beard, and spiritual demeanor—he had a habit of placing his hands together and bowing slightly to say thank you—enabled him to fit in more easily. I always wondered how he managed to blend business with Buddha, but somehow it worked for him. Nonetheless, he dressed and spoke like I did and upon close inspection was decidedly American.
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Fortunately, no one regarded us strangely, if they regarded us at all. Most of the people wandered aimlessly or huddled with friends. Nearly everyone was smiling, their eyes glazed with bliss. The laid-back vibe caused my discomfort to waft away like a passing cannabis cloud.
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As we explored the other side of the entryway, the music faded to a rumbling bass. Ahead was another darkened room filled with people seated at weathered wooden tables and ending with a long glass counter stretching across the back wall. The drinks scattered across the tables indicated some combination of coffee house and bar. However, the other paraphernalia, rolling papers, pipes, lighters, and what looked like black gobs of tar, marked this as a distinctly European milieu.

The back counter encased a cornucopia of hashish from countries that reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia’s travels. Afghanistan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Turkey were represented in sticky black, brittle brown, and compact clay varieties. I was briefly reminded of my studies of the Ottoman Empire and pleased about the opportunity to learn more. We sampled several varieties, blending the hash with tobacco in a cigarette. Before leaving, we each purchased enough of our favorite to last for several more days.

Smoking hash in Amsterdam was legal. It was ubiquitous, inexpensive, and high in quality. I particularly enjoyed it because it rendered a mellow buzz that allowed me to drift through the day’s activities, comfortably numb but never overpowered. Jake said he liked that it gave him a greater sense of “oneness,” whatever that meant.

Getting high became part of our daily routine. We thought nothing of smoking between museum visits, during a bike ride, after a meal, or lounging with other travelers back at the youth hostel. Whenever we started to come down, it was time to fire up again. Why not? we reminded ourselves. We were on holiday.

We enjoyed showing the Europeans, who preferred blending hash with tobacco, how best to smoke it straight. Travelers surrounded us at the hostel bar and watched curiously as Jake first jammed a sewing needle into the cover of our battered guidebook. Next, he pushed a chunk of hash onto the protruding end of the needle and ignited it just enough to emit a steady stream of smoke, its earthy odor eliciting a murmur of appreciation. Just wait, I thought, thinking of the ever more inquisitive crowd. You’re about to learn how to do this right. Jake then placed a small glass upside down over the smoldering lump to trap the smoke. When the glass was "full,” he tilted it slightly away from the book and gently inhaled the unfurling smoke, filling his lungs with a direct hit of Middle Eastern magic. Jake exhaled a dense cloud, leaned forward, and pressed his hands together. “Namaste,” he replied after receiving a rousing ovation.
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Not knowing if we could find any hash in Denmark, to keep the party going at our next destination we took some with us. Accustomed to the steady state of being stoned, we were more concerned about going without than whether or not it was legal. Denmark was liberal, we thought, nothing really bad could happen to us. As long as we were careful, everything would be okay. Before the border crossing, we stashed our supply in the train’s bathroom and retrieved it on the other side. 
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​No other country was as tolerant as Holland, but it wasn't hard to indulge our cultural pursuits. Let's Go provided not so subtle hints about where to look. In Copenhagen, for example, the description of the Christshavn district mentioned not only "quaint canals and houses," but also the commune Christiana, "a former military district occupied in 1971 by young people, where hash is smoked openly by the long-haired and shirtless crowd." Let’s Go indeed, we thought! We found it exactly as described.

In joining the locals in Amsterdam, Christiana, and similar settings across Europe, the legality of our activities drifted from explicitly permitted, to illegal but tolerated, to punishment unknown. In city after city, the product was easily accessible, affordable, and good. We wanted it and there was no reason not to have it. Purchases became a mere errand to complete amidst the day’s activities. We conducted business in the bathroom of a nightclub, behind a train station, under a tree at a street fair, at an outdoor concert, next to the junkies on the riverbank, and across the street from the police station. We learned to scout locations, approach dealers, peruse inventories, negotiate purchases and safely store our stash. The greater our success, the more confident we became, and the less we worried about getting caught.

By the time we reached Gibraltar we had traversed at least a dozen countries, enjoying most of the monuments, museums, castles, and cathedrals on every tourist agenda. We had also purchased hash in every major city and had taken risks that were unthinkable when the trip began. We had learned the ropes of the soft drug trade. Propelled by the slippery slope of inconsequence, we boarded the ferry to Morocco, abound in hubris, and anticipating even higher times ahead.

Morocco, like Turkey, is a Muslim country. We had prepared for one particular cultural adjustment. Our trusty guidebook had advised us that alcohol, forbidden for the locals, would be difficult to find, perhaps limited to the bars of fancy hotels. To protect our budget, we each purchased a fifth of Johnny Walker Red at the duty free shop in Gibraltar. We were prepared to tend bar in style in our hotel room if necessary.

The peculiarities we had observed crisscrossing Europe, like eating with a fork in the left hand or having salad after the main course, seemed quaint in comparison to the sensory shock that greeted us in Tangiers. Exiting the ferry, a gang of pre-teen boys, wearing tattered clothing like one might find in a goodwill store at home, surrounded us. They were shouting in unison, repeating "hello mister" and asking where we came from in half a dozen languages. Each one sought to "guide" us around the city.

We insisted that we were going straight to our hotel, but they clung to our clothing and tugged at our backpacks. Jake brandished our guidebook to indicate that we knew where it was. They weren’t physically threatening, but there were too many to keep track of; I worried about the zippers at the back of my pack. The words kasbah, medina, couscous, and snake charmer buzzed repeatedly as we pressed forward, blasted by heat, besieged by the cacophonous swarm.

We continued to insist that we didn’t need any help. As we approached a large street to exit the port area, each one reluctantly let go, some changing their tone and cursing us, also in several languages. One of them threw a rock that skidded across the dirt beside us.
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I hadn’t expected the boys to be so aggressive. They had gone from amusing, to irritating, to threatening. Our introduction to Morocco was unsettling and I worried that we’d have difficulties exploring the city. Nonetheless, I was optimistic that we’d figure things out and have a good time. We always had so far.

Tangiers rose before us, its gentle, sunbaked hills covered with whitewashed, cinder block buildings, many in need of several slabs of stucco and a fresh coat of paint. The skyline was broken only by the majestic domes and minarets of the occasional mosque. Other than the Arabic signs, this was our first reminder that we were in a Muslim country. Looking up, I marveled at the exotic structures, feeling pleased that we had crossed onto a new continent, and excited that we were set to explore a much different culture.

Fissures and potholes marked the streets, which had last been paved many years ago. Many were simply dirt paths. Open ditches that reeked of sewage lined some of the side roads. On the main roads belching trucks, tiny taxis and the occasional donkey cart rumbled amidst ambling pedestrian crowds. A wafting breeze carried a mixture of diesel, spices, and stench, one odor more powerful than the others depending upon the location.

I had never witnessed the poverty of what my textbooks had called a “less developed country.” Seeing the decrepit infrastructure and smelling the noxious pollution made me feel sad for the people who lived here and grateful that I did not. I thought again about the boys who had accosted us. What are they supposed to do? I wondered.

Almost all the people had brown skin and black hair. Most of the men wore the same variety of faded jeans, misspelled tee-shirts and supermarket shoes as the boys. I felt that they eyed us suspiciously as we passed, but they may have been simply observing us. The women, many clad in traditional white robes, covered their hair with hoods or scarves. Their faces were uncovered, but they avoided eye contact.

We followed Let's Go's recommendation to a hotel partway up a hill overlooking a quiet, treeless patch of dirt lined by cement curbs surrounded by small shops and restaurants. The room was plain, dusty and damaged. It was filled by three beds draped with rumpled sheets, a wobbly chair and a tiny graffiti-laden desk just large enough to support our Johnny Walker bottles, two shot glasses from Heidelberg, and a juice glass used strictly for smoking hash under glass. The bathroom stunk from several feet away and contained a cracked mirror over a sink stained brown from foul facet water. In the corner was a softball-sized hole in the ground straddled by porcelain foot-grips. Above it was a pipe leading up to a tank connected to a dangling chain. That was the toilet.

Let’s Go had assured us that this wasn’t the Hilton. And we’d used squat toilets before, the first time way back in France. In fact, we’d each packed a roll of toilet paper in preparation for uncertain circumstances. Our room was a dump, I thought, observing its deficiencies. But it’s not a big deal.
​
“I can sleep here,” I said to Jake, flopping on the bed.
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“Check this out,” he replied, looking out the curtainless window.

The view looked down on a sun-beaten square filled with untended vegetation and weeds. It wasn’t a beautiful sight, but if offered a pleasant contrast to the bustling city we had escaped. Behind the square, men sat at small wooden tables under broken umbrellas, faintly advertising "Campari." They drank mint tea, each glass suffused with a clump of green leaves flavoring the brackish water. Some were smoking bulbous, multicolored hookahs with sparkling metallic bowls, adding an exotic (and somewhat familiar!) flair to the otherwise squalid scene. My spirits heightened. This, I thought, looks awesome.

We ate lunch at the restaurant next door, feasting on harira soup, varieties of couscous and drinking mint tea for the first of many times. To our surprise, three of the pesky guides were waiting for us as we left the hotel. My heart sank. They must have followed us. I didn’t want to deal with them. But I was willing to work things out, even hire one if necessary. We begged them to leave us in peace to finish lunch and promised that negotiations would follow. Overhearing our pleas, a man behind a multi-colored, multi-tubed hookah with dazzling gold accents, called out to us.

"Don't mind them, my friends," he said. He rose, grinned widely and approached us, rifling Arabic at the boys, scattering them across the courtyard. Right on, I thought, grateful that he had solved our problem. His face was dark and round, covered in black and white stubble and topped with closely cropped black hair. His expression would have looked friendly if not for his coal black eyes, gold front tooth, and a scar that ran below his left ear. I couldn’t help but sit up in my chair as he regarded us.

"They are harmless," he said, sitting down at the table next to us. "Tell me, where do you come from?"

"San Francisco," said Jake, cupping his hands together and leaning forward.

"Ah, the Golden Gate," responded our new . . . friend. "I have seen it many times . . . in pictures of course. You, my friends, are a long way from home."

"Yes, but we’ve been in Europe for a long time," I said.
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"I have many American friends. And now I have you, my friends. Whatever you wish to do in Tangiers, I am here for you. Please, take my card," he said, standing and removing a business card from his pocket. It read in English: El Hashmi, tourist consultant. "I am Hashmi," he said stepping back and taking a bow. “Please to meet you.” He thrust out his hand to shake with each of us.
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"Hashman" said Jake, studying the card and laughing. That was all it took. His name alone broke the ice. Hashmi sat down, scooted his chair closer to our table and began regaling us with stories about the splendors of Morocco, mostly elaborations of the same things the boys had mentioned. As expected, he soon offered to introduce us to the sights, sounds, and smells of Tangiers for a "very reasonable" fee. His charm was paper thin, but his English was good and we were desperate to rid ourselves of the annoying boys who were awaiting us from across the square. We negotiated a rate of 100 dirhams for the day, about $20.

I wondered if we were simply paying him protection money, or if he was really going to show us some interesting things. Even if his tour guide skills disappointed, I thought, we had done well to shake the boys at last. And this guy had a kaleidoscopic hookah that demanded attention.

As if reading my mind, Hashmi rose from the table, asked if we wanted to smoke "the hubbly-bubbly," and pointed to his extravagant device still gleaming in the sunshine next door. I don’t think he expected what came next when Jake asked the question we were both thinking.

"Can we smoke hash in it?"

I looked around to see if anyone reacted, worried that we should be more careful, but no one looked at us. Hashmi responded with the hint of a smile.

"Not here, my friend. Moroccans can smoke hashish, but it is forbidden for foreigners. If you like, you can buy some for private use. You want?" he asked, arching his eyebrows. We both knew that he knew the answer to that.

"Sure," we replied in chorus.

Walking towards the teahouse, Hashmi stopped and pondered the situation. "Do you stay in this hotel?" he asked, pointing across the square. We nodded. "Go to your room. I will meet you there." As we turned to retreat to the hotel, he called out, "First, you must pay 50 dirhams."

He said this loudly enough that anyone could have heard him. But again no one reacted. None of the people around the square seemed to take any notice of our discussions. I was worried about what we were getting into, but saw nothing to worry about. This guy still wants his tour fee, I thought. Worst case, he’s just going to milk us for money. As long as we’re careful, I reminded myself, everything will be okay.

Jake peeled off 50 dirhams and we started towards the hotel while Hashmi turned back towards the teahouse. The boys were still watching us. They didn't try to approach and we ignored them while crossing the square. Hashmi may have warned them to stay away from us, but they weren’t about to disappear. They shouted in Arabic and fired a volley of pebbles that skipped past our legs as we entered the hotel.
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From the window, the hubbly-bubbly gleamed in the distance as we waited. "I wonder if we just lost 50 dirhams," I said. After about ten minutes Hashmi emerged. Again he shouted at the boys, but they stood their ground and merely stared back at him.
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We heard a knock on the door. Hashmi entered, beaming with success and opened his palm to reveal a crumpled piece of white paper. Unfolding it, he unveiled a hard, dark brown cube. As we admired our purchase, his eyes roamed across the room, then lasered onto our makeshift bar.

"You have the Johnny Walker Red," he said. "I prefer the Black, but the Red is good too."

Within minutes we had entreated our guide to the western delights of Scotch whiskey and hash under glass. Rotating our shot glasses, we offered a toast to Morocco. He countered with one to America. Jake then carved a chunk of hash from the cube and demonstrated our preferred way to smoke. Like the Europeans, Hashmi had never seen this technique. Inhaling a dense cloud on the first try, he coughed profusely and asked for more whiskey, "for my cough.” Amused, but not converted, he was content thereafter to leave the pyrotechnics to us and chain-smoked his French cigarettes. He flicked the first butt out the window, but after we were finished smoking hash, he used the juice glass for an ashtray. Before long, the room was filled with smoke and we had toasted friendship, whiskey, women (Moroccan and American), King Mohammad, and even President Reagan. We had reached the point where everything was simply funny.

“This is what we came here for!” said Jake, leading to another toast.

And he was right. In a few hours we had befriended a man who could guide us around the city, spoke great English, shared our sense of humor, and liked to party. Every journey has its high points and we were in the middle of one. We were at the top of our game, certain to have a great time in Tangiers. My only concern was to lay off the Johnny Walker and avoid a brutal hangover the next day.

Our reverie was broken by a knock at the door. We stopped laughing. Hashmi quickly gathered the remaining hash in the crumpled paper and stuffed it in his pocket.

"Who is it?" I shouted. My high was in freefall as I wondered why anyone would be knocking at our door. I hoped maybe it was because we were making too much noise.

"Police! Open the door!" It was a heavily accented voice, but the English was clear. Fuck! I thought. This can’t be happening. Blood rushed to my head and my temples began to throb. Jake and I looked at each other. His eyes were as wide as I’d ever seen them, like he had seen a ghost. I glanced towards the window. Then I looked at Hashmi, searching his bewildered face for an explanation. Clearly, he didn’t have one. I broke into a sweat.
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The policeman throttled the doorknob, shaking the flimsy plank that separated us. It seemed possible he could yank it from its hinges. We sat frozen, a still life with whiskey bottles, shot glasses, and smoking apparatus. He pounded again on the door. My heart pounded harder, my eyes teared. The room rattled and wobbled as if its crappy construction was set to collapse. I felt faint, bereft of oxygen, and thought about jumping out the window.
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Hashmi shouted back in Arabic and exchanged several curt sentences before opening the door. A Moroccan policeman, dark, fat, and sweaty, with a badge and billy club confronted us. Scowling, he removed the truncheon and pointed it at the table, the bottles, glasses, and guidebook, all the while spewing Arabic. He moved past us, adding his body odor to the rank atmosphere and lifted a bottle, examined the label, grunted, then quizzically regarded the needle, pulled it from the guidebook and tossed it aside. He turned and berated Hashmi who rose to confront him.

Jake and I made little eye contact and looked mostly at the floor. We didn't know if Hashmi or those wretched urchins had sold us out, or if the smell had carried across the courtyard, or our reverie had simply caught the attention of the hotel staff. Whatever the case, we were busted.
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Had I not been so scared, I would have cried. Thoughts swirled around my head like the wind in a cyclone. I thought of my parents and what they would think. I imagined my dad traveling to Morocco to help me, like Billy Hayes’ father had gone to Turkey. I couldn’t even think of my mother because that would have totally set me off. I would have melted down. I thought of my friends, some other roommates, an old girlfriend. What would they think? I had just wasted four fucking years at Cal, that’s for sure. I hated myself.

Jake was slumped in a chair, still staring at the floor. He must have been thinking some of the same things. I wondered if we would be separated or if they would keep us together. How many years would we get? His dad was a lawyer, I thought. What difference would that make? Our parents didn’t know each other, but they soon would.

Face to face, spittle flying, arms flailing: the Arabic argument persisted. Sometimes, the policeman looked at us, but more often he pointed towards the evidence on the table. Hashmi lifted the juice glass and pointed at the cigarette butts inside. He pointed to the shot glasses and repeatedly held aloft two fingers while shouting in the policeman's face. Besieged and befuddled by angry Arabic, haunted by the prospect of a Moroccan jail, I buried my face in my hands, using my palms to rub away tears. God, I thought, how the fuck did this happen?

As the argument waned, Hashmi snapped back into English and addressed us. "He is very upset," he said, nodding towards the policeman. "He thinks you are smoking hashish and I am drinking whiskey, but it is not true. You drink whiskey and I smoke cigarettes. That is all. I have told him he can search, but he will find nothing.” He paused and glanced at the policeman. “There is one problem. He says you must have license to serve whiskey in hotel, even to each other. He will not fine you but he wants your whiskey.”

We both looked incredulously at the two Moroccans. He only wants our whiskey, I thought. I wanted to hear it said again, just to be sure. It felt like I had awoken from a nightmare just before hitting bottom. I started to cry and quickly wiped my eyes. My anxiety drained so quickly that I almost fainted. I was afraid to look at Jake and possibly smile.
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mBefore the policeman left, Hashmi convinced him for reasons of “friendship” to leave the nearly empty bottle for us. I shakily smoked a Galois, remembering how several months ago, in another lifetime, they seemed exotic. Everything we did had seemed exotic.

I felt nauseous. Was it the cigarette, I wondered, or the realization of something else?
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I remembered how Billy Hayes escaped from prison, but not before biting out the tongue of one guard and killing another. Surely, I thought, that should have been warning enough. But when is a warning, without any consequences, simply enough?

After the whiskey and cigarettes were gone, Hashmi stood up, wavering just a bit. His smile had returned, his gold tooth familiar now, not devious, but inviting. He held up a crumbled piece of white paper.

"Come, my friends,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “Let’s visit the kasbah. It is always most lively in the night.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
​Matt Ginsburg recently received an MFA degree in Creative Writing with a concentration in playwriting at San Francisco State University. His work often explores his interest in business, economics, and politics. Matt has written several short stories, monologues, and comedy routines in addition to his focus on playwriting. His plays have been read or performed at numerous theaters in San Francisco. In the fall of 2019, a memoir piece by Matt, “Finding My Father,” was published by Vistas & Byways.
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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.​
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