The Hashish Trail - Chapter Four - Into the Medina

When we arrived in Algiers we really had no idea how to go about purchasing hashish but were able to get a name and a rough map of where to go inside the Medina. We wanted to get some of the famed kief, which was rumored to be cheap in the Medina, and which promised the best high! Kief was marijuana of the highest order.
The medina quarter is a distinct city section found in many North African cities. The medina is typically walled and contains many narrow and maze-like streets; many were built by Arabs as far back as the 9th century. The medina quarter is the oldest part of the city. The word "medina" itself simply means “city” or “town” in modern day Arabic. Medinas often contain historical fountains, palaces and mosques. The monuments are preserved for their cultural significance (and are also a draw for tourists). Because of the very narrow streets, medinas are free from car traffic, and in some cases even motorcycle and bicycle traffic. The streets can be less than a metre wide. This makes them unique among highly populated urban centres. Some medinas were also used to confuse and slow down invaders because of the narrow and winding streets.
We entered the Medina through a rather impressive archway and nervously followed our little map through the twisting streets. When nearly at our destination we became confused by all the twists and turns, but after asking a passerby for directions, we made our way up a steep flight of stairs, down a dark hall and into a rather large, bare and shadowy room. There sat a man whose features have long since flown my memory, but who proved indeed to be our connection. We were offered samples, made our purchase and were soon euphorically tripping through the streets. But not before learning that we could purchase a kilo of hand pressed hash made only from the pollen of the marijuana flowers for US $25.
Emboldened by our success, we began to absorb the bizarre efficiency of commerce in the Medina. It was common to see small boys as young as 6 years operating a shop single handedly and competently. They would call to us to come in for tea and look at what they had to offer. One small boy coaxed us into his shop for tea. He poured the water from large clay vessels, boiled the water on a little primus stove and served the piping hot, highly sugared tea in small glasses in which floated the fragrant peppermint leaves. While we sipped our tea he showed us his magnificent carpets, and if I’d had a house in Morocco it would have been furnished with goods from this little lad’s store! He was a salesman extraordinaire.
After a few days in Algiers, we decided to go deeper into Morocco, away from the tourist traps, to try and get a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Moroccans. So we climbed into our Peugeot and headed south intending to go to Casablanca and Marrakech. We drove as far as Rabat, the capital of Morocco, where we decided to stay for awhile. At a nightclub we met a couple of young Moroccans, one of which was a chef at the Rabat Hilton. His name was Mehdi, but I don’t remember his last name. He invited us to stay at his apartment for as long as we wanted to. Almost immediately upon our arrival in Rabat, Gidonia came down with a bad case of Asian Flu, and we were grounded in Mehdi’s apartment until she got well. She lost so much weight that she was barely recognizable. Each day Mehdi would make sure that she had a pile of kief on the table to make her well. She was perpetually cold – there was no central heating in the apartment block, and no elevators. And so at regular intervals we filled jars with hot water, which she then used as hot water bottles. Each morning I would respond to the calls of bread vendors in the street below, and would walk down the 4 or 5 flights of stairs to purchase fresh hot rolls and bread. Consequently while Gidonia lost weight, I gained weight and for the first time in my adult life put on an extra 20 pounds. Each evening when Mehdi returned from work, he would bring a sumptuous, authentic Moroccan meal for us to eat. It is customary in Morocco to serve the meal on a large round plate which sits on a turnstile in the middle of the table. The men then pick out the choicest offerings from the common plate to give to their ladies. So Mehdi made sure that I ate well and put on some weight – skinny was not fashionable in Morocco. Then we would meet his friend and go to a disco club to dance. I ended up in Mehdi’s bed, where our cultures collided in no uncertain terms.
After some weeks Gidonia finally began to feel better and we made plans to leave Morocco. We would have to do Marrakech and Casablanca later (so far, that later has never come). I said my goodbyes to Mehdi. He had plans to emigrate to the USA and I promised to look him up in San Francisco when we got home. We were scheduled to celebrate New Year’s Eve and the dawn of 1970 with Vosharnia and Ladonia in Spain. We stopped at a special bakery and bought some hashish cookies to share with our sisters of the heart. The most amazing thing was that we placed these cookies, still in the paper bag they came in, on the seat between us in our Peugeot and were ushered through the border as if we were tourists, not smugglers. Ah, only in the sixties! But we still looked more like jetsetters than anything else. I had a feeling things would be different if we looked like hippies. But at this stage of our journey we were still trying to figure out just what being a hippie was all about! We wanted to look like them but just didn’t yet have the knack of it. You see it wasn’t just about taking off your clothes and enjoying free love; there was a definite style that was recognized by other hippies and that opened doors to friendship, drugs and more. Mostly it was about trying to capture the world’s attention and show it that our numbers were sufficient to warrant change, to stop the war and to usher in a beautiful era of peace and love. Yes we were dreamers, but as the old tune from the movie South Pacific says, “You’ve got to have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how’re you going to have a dream come true?” And so we tried! I’m so glad we did, or forever after I would have been asking myself why I didn’t at least try to create change in our (still) violent world.