Howard Marks' Book of Dope Stories (54 page)

‘You know,’ Dowst was rattling through the cans of soup in the cupboard under the sink, ‘for sinsemilla pot. We’ve got to weed out the male plants.’

That was something we’d known all along, in the way we knew that chickens laid eggs whether there was a rooster or not, or that Pluto was the ninth planet in the solar system – it was part of our general store of knowledge. But we hadn’t really stopped to think about it, to consider its ramifications or work it into our formulae for translating plants into dollars. Any fool knew that in order to get sinsemilla pot you had to identify and eliminate the male plants so that the energy of the unfertilized females would go toward production of the huge, resinous, THC-packed colas that made seedless pot the most potent, desirable and highly priced smoke on the market. Any fool. But to this point we’d conveniently managed to overlook it.

I watched Phil’s face as the realization of what Dowst was saying seeped into his nervous system and gave vent to various autonomous twitches of mortification and regret. ‘You mean . . . we’ve got to . . . to . . . throw
out some of the plants
?’

Dowst had found a can of Bon Ton lobster bisque and was applying the opener to it. ‘Usually about fifty percent. It could be higher or lower. Depending.’

Phil looked like a man being strapped into the electric chair while his wife French-kisses the DA in the hallway. ‘On what?’

The lobster bisque was the color of diarrhea. Dowst sloshed it into his spotless Swiss aluminum camp pot and stirred it with a spoon he’d carefully disinfected over the front burner. ‘Luck,’ he said finally, and he pronounced the word as if it had meaning, pronounced it like the well-washed Yankee optimist he was, a man who could trace his roots back to the redoubtable Dowsts on the
Mayflower
. Besides, he had his van, a condo in Sausalito and a monthly stipend from his trust fund. He didn’t need luck.

I thought of Mendel’s pea plants, x and y chromosomes, thought of all those hale and hearty many-branching glorious male plants that would be hacked down and burned – fifty percent of the crop in a single swoop and the second such swoop in a month’s time. Numbers invaded my head like an alien force, a little problem in elementary arithmetic:
Take 840 pot plants and divide by 2. Divide again, allowing for one-half-pound of marketable pot per plant, to solve for the total number of pounds obtained. Multiply this figure by $1,600, the going rate per pound. Now divide by 3 to arrive at the dollar value of each share – the financier’s, the expert’s and the yeoman’s – and finally divide by 3 again to find the miserable pittance that you yourself will receive after nine months of backbreaking labor, police terror and exile from civilization
.

Dowst was whistling. Phil gnawed at the edge of a black plastic checker, expressionless, his eyes vacant. My half-million had been reduced to $37,000. Barring seizure, blight, insect depredation and unforeseeable natural disasters, that is. It was a shock. If Jerpbak, ravenous rodents and the ‘Sinsemilla Strike Force’ had driven a stake through my heart, Dowst had just climbed atop the coffin to nail down the lid.

Budding Prospects
, 1984

A
FTER AN HOUR’S
drive, we reached the foot of a hill covered with heather and flowering broom. A farm with tiled roofs set against it, facing the rising sun and overlooking the plains covered with orchards and wheat fields. The buildings were of granite, and seemed very ancient. They were as massively constructed as a fortress, with vaulted entrances, and the great flags which paved the courtyard had been worn away by the contact of countless generations of feet.

It was the hour when yokes of oxen returned slowly from their work in the fields, and flocks of black sheep came pouring in at the great outer gate, running in disorder towards the sheepfolds, the ewes with distended udders answering the plaintive bleatings of the hungry lambs. A warm smell of hay and the breath of trine came out to meet the chill of the falling night.

Petros went off immediately to fetch a sample of his hashish. I wondered how I was to give an intelligent opinion on it, and not betray the fact that it was the first I had ever seen. I didn’t even know how the quality was indicated. I was afraid of making a fool of myself and revealing my ignorance, for after that I could be sure that all the poor stuff which had been unsaleable would be joyfully palmed off on me. I fell back on a method which is often useful. So far as possible, I would be silent. Petros came in with a fragment of brownish matter in his hand. He immediately gave me the clue to how to test the value of his merchandise, by proceeding to sniff. Then he took a piece and rolled it between his fingers into a slender cone, to which he put a match. It burned with a tiny and rather smoky flame, and when he hastily extinguished it, a heavily perfumed white smoke arose from it. In my turn I took a piece and went through exactly the same manoeuvres, only, having noticed how quickly he put out the flame, I on the contrary let it burn. Then in silence, with a cold and rather disdainful air, I held it out to him. He interpreted my silence according to his fears, and instantly exclaimed: ‘Oh, but don’t be afraid, I have better stuff than this. Only I thought this might perhaps interest you; it is much cheaper.’

I replied with dignity: ‘I have not come such a long way to buy cheap stuff. Please show me your best at once.’

He vanished, and returned in a moment with a piece of the same matter, but less brittle and of a greenish hue. He went through the same gestures, but this time the flame was long and very smoky, and he complacently let it burn. That, thought i, is probably the sign of really good quality. Now I knew how to buy hashish. I declared myself satisfied, and we settled on the quantity I was to buy, four hundred okes (six hundred kilograms), at the price of twenty francs the oke. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘we’ll go and fetch the goods from the warehouse where they are stored.’

A servant girl brought us little wax torches, and two hefty workmen armed with huge cudgels accompanied us. Petros opened a vaulted door, behind which a stone staircase led down into the cellars. A musty smell of damp rose from this underground passage, and almost at once we came to a crypt hewn out of the living rock. In this vault, which was circular in form, sacks were piled up; this was the hashish crop of the current year. The two workmen picked out the number of sacks which corresponded to the weight I had ordered, put them in the middle of the floor, then fell upon them with their sticks, in order to break up the contents and reduce them to dust.

We must have formed a strange group. First there was Papamanoli, the priest, in his flowing black robes, and beside him, Petros, holding in his hand a piece of white paper, into which he put a sample from each sack. Each of us held aloft a little wax taper in order to give light to the men who were beating so furiously on the bulging sacks. Our shadows danced fantastically along the vaulted roof, and the bats, panic-stricken and blinded by the light, bumped their horrid soft bodies against us, making the flames of our candles flicker. I shall never forget this scene, though the others seemed quite unconscious of its picturesque quality. Petros poured the different samples from his paper into a little bag, which he gave me as indicating the average quality of my hashish. The sacks were then carried into a barn, so that the icy cold of the night should prevent the powdered hashish from coagulating afresh.

Next morning I was awakened by a humming activity which filled the house like the murmur of a beehive. In the barn into which we had carried the sacks, a crowd of workers were going to and fro through a thick dust. In the middle of the room was a sort of table consisting of a very fine metal sieve set up on four legs. On it the hashish was being thrown in spadefuls. A big sheet was wrapped round the outside of the table legs to prevent the fine powder which fell from the sieve from blowing away. Women with their heads swathed in handkerchiefs were spreading out and sifting the powder. After this, men shovelled it into an enormous iron basin in order that it should be well mixed. Madam Petros was sitting before a sewing-machine, feverishly running up little white linen bags. These she passed to a woman who stamped an elephant on them with a rubber stamp. She in turn passed them to a third woman who filled them, weighed them with great care, and finally tied them up. They were then put in neat piles into a great press. When there were a certain number between the steel plates, a muscular workman tightened the vice and the sacks flattened out slowly until they were like square pancakes four centimetres thick. These pancakes were hard as wax; this is the form in which hashish is exported, and the elephant was Petros’ trade-mark. From time to time he himself lent a hand to the brawny fellow who was working the press. I looked at the latter with interest. He was very tall; I could not see his face, as his head was covered with a towel with small eye-holes bored in it, but his eyes seemed vaguely familiar, and suddenly I realised that they were the eyes of Papamanoli. At this moment, having finished, he laughingly removed his improvised cowl, freeing his luxuriant beard and his hair, which had been rolled on top of his head. This priest seemed to take everything as a matter of course, and nobody seemed surprised to see him helping at a busy moment.

This hashish powder had gradually excited the men and women working with it, and they began to sing at the tops of their voices, and joke and laugh like mad things over nothing. I took part in this crazy gaiety like the rest, and even the plain little niece from Tripolis grew quite flirtatious. Fortunately, the work was soon completed, or I don’t know how it would all have ended. Outside, a plumber soldered the zinc linings of the packing-cases in which the hashish pancakes were to be packed.

For those who are interested I shall describe briefly how the hashsish comes to the state in which I had first seen it, powdered and stored in sacks in the cellar. The fields in which the hemp grows are carefully weeded and all the male plants are pulled out. The female plants which remain cannot therefore bear seeds, and the result is that the leaves become fully charged with resinous matter. The secretion of this sticky substance is further increased by breaking off the tops of the plants as they grow. When the first leaves, that is to say the lowest ones, turn yellow, the plants are carefully cut down about four inches from the ground, so as not to soil them with earth or sand. Then the crop is dried in the shade and stacked in barns. Some growers only keep the leaves, for the stems are of no value whatever. On very cold winter days, when there is a keen frost and the waxen matter secreted by the leaves has become brittle as resin, the dried plants are broken up by rubbing them between two sheets of canvas. This gives a dust made up of broken leaves and the resin which is the active part of hashish. This resin gives the powder the property of forming a sort of cake when pressed, and of softening when heated.

All the farms in this district prepared hashish; it was their chief industry. Each estate had its brand, quoted on the market, and there were good and bad years, exactly as for wines.

Hashish
, 1935

C
ENTRED ON
K
ETAMA
(a small village a hundred miles from Tangier which once showed promise as a ski centre and hunting paradise) and on top of pine-covered crests of otherwise barren mountains lies the source of most of the world’s imported hashish. The area increases every year and now covers several thousand square miles, stretching to twenty-five miles from Tangier. Almost every terraced field in the area with a water source is filled with kif plants that are planted in February and harvested in summer, when the raw plants are cut and bundled for donkey and mule transport to the homestead where they dry on hot tin roofs for up to a week. When fairly crisp, the bundles are stacked in the cool interior and stored for one to six months. The timing was excellent: they would be making hashish right now. A few well-placed phone calls to old friends soon provided an invitation to come and sample the latest produce.

I took the S302 north out of Fez. This was the Route de l’Unite, finished in 1963 and built by the recently deceased King Hassan II as the first north–south route across the Rif, which had previously uncomfortably symbolised both its own isolation and the separateness of the old Spanish and French colonial zones. All travel guides to Morocco, including the
Lonely Planet
, strongly advise giving it a miss. They warn of hooded drivers of Mercedes cars ambushing unwary visitors and press-ganging them to become dope dealers. I saw nothing like that; I must have come at the wrong time. But the road does go through Ketama.

Within hours of leaving Fez, I watched as bundles of cannabis plants were beaten with sticks over a tub covered with a sieve. At first just the good resin (destined to become the much sought-after ‘double zero’) got through, then eventually, after dozens of repetitions, the resin-starved powdered leaf. The sieved resinous powder was compressed and heated, binding the vegetable matter. The resin (varying in colour from light yellow brown to reddish brown) was then compressed into blocks and sealed with Cellophane or cloth.

I waited until sundown and tried the ‘double zero’. A battered cassette player hung from a tree and blasted out a medley of Creedence Clearwater Revival and swing jazz. Mint tea and fruit juice flowed. Birds perched on sacks of hash. Pet monkeys played with wild cats.

C
AIRO’S HASHISH QUARTER
, inner sanctum of the medieval portion of the city, was called ‘Batneyya,’ a poetic nomination since the word derives from the Arabic for ‘belly’ and ‘nourishment.’ There was a market place, a small clearing or square surrounded by cafés, shops and houses, like anywhere else in the Old City. Fellaheen herded sheep, goats nibbled piles of alfalfa, chickens squawked from their cane crates, women hawked vegetables from hemp baskets while their barefoot children played beside them. The only difference was that in the center of this rustic scene was a row of wooden tables furnished with scales and bricks of yellow and red Cellophane-wrapped hashish.