Hash (4 page)

Si immediately warned me that it would not be easy. ‘They’ll think you’re planning to try and set up a hash deal. They’re Berber people and they don’t trust strangers,’ said Si. ‘It’s a closed society, mate. That’s why it’s survived all these hundreds and thousands of years. They don’t like foreigners sticking their noses in their business.’

Eventually Si pulled his mobile out of his pocket and punched out a number. Speaking in rapid fire French he told the person at the other end of the line my name and that I
was a writer. Then he handed the phone to me. ‘His name is Leff and he speaks good English.’

It turned out Leff was speaking to me from Tangier and his cousin, he said, ‘knew of’ a hash farm in the mountains overlooking the so-called hash capital of Ketama, where the drug ruled every aspect of local life. It was also a place that foreign criminals and even tourists had ventured – and never returned. Leff sounded friendly enough and said with remarkable coolness and ease that he could set the whole visit up for me – for a price.

I explained that my budget was non-existent. Surprisingly, Leff agreed to my terms without any argument. I had expected a long bartering session. After making an arrangement to meet him in Tangier the following week, I put the phone down and asked Si why Leff was helping me. ‘Because he owes me a big favour. That’s why.’

Si never told me what had happened between them and I decided from the tone of his voice it was best not to ask. The following day Si called me and said he had a ‘business meeting’ in Morocco the following week, so he’d accompany me on my trip into the Rif Mountains. I was relieved to have him along for the ride.

*

Five days later I arrived with Si in the bustling port city of Tangier on a ferry from the Spanish mainland. We met Leff and his ‘cousin’ Fara in a cafe and discussed the arrangements. They promptly disappeared after promising to meet us in Ketama forty-eight hours later. Si assured me they would turn
up. It all seemed too easy at this stage but clearly having Si on board was my passport into Morocco’s secret world of hash.

The following morning we headed east out of Tangier in a rented four-by-four along the Mediterranean coast and then turned south towards the Rif Mountains. Gradually, the influences of hash became obvious: heavily guarded villas with strangely stylised pagodas and expensive German cars in the driveways plus a seemingly endless supply of young men drifting along the main roads – and we hadn’t even got into the Rif region yet.

Many are said to fear that Morocco is under threat from an Islamist challenge to its stability and that international drug trafficking is relentlessly chipping away at the state’s power and influence. But from where I sat that day it looked as if Morocco’s drug networks were also aiding financial stability. The hash barons are rich and wealthy and, in Morocco, money buys you everything. Many even reckon the drug barons and the strict Islamists in the north draw upon the same group of discontented poor, creating possible alliances and the sharing of resources and tactics. No wonder many people say these two groups hold the majority of power in these parts.

One Berber hash baron called H’midou Dib still retains folk hero status in the Rif region. A former fisherman, he constructed his own port in Sidi Kankouch on the coast north of Tangier, which was an embarkation point for a steady stream of high-speed inflatables on their way to
Europe with hash shipments. Dib developed an enormous network of loyal foot soldiers and villagers eager to protect him. He supplied jobs, built mosques, delivered social services and kept the despised authorities at bay. Dib was also involved in complex real estate transactions in Tangier, money laundering operations and other elements of organised crime. Through sheer wealth and organisation, he was one of a handful of criminals who’d become leaders of that quasi-state in the Rif region. Even the Moroccan government itself admits that Ketama and the surrounding Rif region enjoys ‘semi-independence’ from the rest of the country. Surrounded by mountains with peaks reaching heights of almost 3,000 metres, it has been a smugglers’ paradise for centuries.

As we drove up the potholed, winding, deserted blacktop towards Ketama, I noticed a police car in my rear mirror. Within five minutes, we’d been stopped and the car searched and Si had suggested I hand over a 20 dirham note to the two friendly officers, who then wished us well on our journey. ‘Look out for the bad men,’ said one of them, laughing as he slid his finger across his own throat.

From here onwards, the countryside turned steep and rugged. It was clear we were now in no-man’s land, a place where few strangers dared to tread. ‘I bet those cops’ll be telling all their mates in Ketama that we’re on our way into town,’ said Si. ‘That police roadblock marked the end of Moroccan rule. We’re now in bandit country, my friend.’

*

The early golden sun rises over Ketama. The earth-red rooftops glow in the morning light. Prayers are being called as the city wakes. The hypnotic sound of a muezzin wailing through loudspeakers casts an eerie atmosphere.

Ketama’s status is perfectly summed up by the absence of Moroccan police, as well as of Moroccan flags on any house or building. You get the impression these people look after themselves and don’t appreciate any interference – but then the main produce of the region is hash, so it’s not that surprising.

This gateway to the hash frontier is notoriously – and many say deliberately – badly connected to other urban centres of Morocco by winding, treacherous mountain roads, which help it thrive as a base for the illicit production and sale of what locals call
Kif
, an Arabic word meaning ‘perfect bliss’.

In Ketama, you instantly get the feeling that local people are sizing up all newcomers. They are up early in these parts. The cafes are bustling with men, most of whom earn their living from the cultivation of cannabis.

Some are smoking Kif. Nearly all are watching the early TV news on Al-Jazeera. It’s the middle of the Arab Spring in early 2011. Uprisings across the Arab world are all that anyone seems to be talking about.

There were fears within the Moroccan authorities that the neighbouring anarchy might spread into this nation. As a result, two army tanks are positioned just outside Ketama’s main square as a ‘warning’ to anyone who might decide that
Morocco should get caught up in the biggest revolution to hit the Arab world in centuries. But Ketama’s Berber population don’t even acknowledge the tanks because they know the army will not stop them going about their daily business, dealing in hash.

The men up early in the cafes that morning seem to be no more than vaguely curious about what their Arab neighbours are doing. There is a feeling of contentment among many more Moroccans than in most other North African nations. A local man we met called Omar explained: ‘In Morocco we like to feel we have a good life, even though most of us have little money. The King respects his people. The politicians are not extreme or brutal. We trust the government.’

Or maybe the government is simply happy to let hash rule the economy of this rugged region?

‘The people of the Rif Mountains know that so long as they can support themselves then the rest of Morocco will leave them alone,’ adds Omar.

If the government and police tried to crack down in this region they’d have a mini-revolution on their hands. As Omar explains: ‘We are the authority in these parts. We run ourselves. The Kif goes in and out without restrictions. It is the lifeblood of this region. Without it there would be poverty and starvation. Why would the government want to change that?’

There is a lot of wise logic behind Omar’s explanation. It would take a small army of Moroccan soldiers many years
to eradicate the cannabis crop in the way that the United States would wish to happen. ‘What’s the point?’ says Omar. ‘The Kif provides us with money, happiness, homes and contentment. The King and his government knows this only too well. It’s been like this for thousands of years and it’s never going to change as long as the West wants our Kif.’

In the muddy, uneven main street of Ketama, huge tractors from local farms are parked alongside gleaming flatbed trucks, Mercedes and BMW saloons. This is the proof that hash provides untold riches to some of the people who live in these parts.

Inside one cafe, I smell the familiar whiff of Kif from within a group of middle-aged men sitting close to the over-hanging TV set as it blares out the latest news on the Arab uprising. They glance menacingly at myself and Si. We look away, careful not to catch their stares for too long as it could spark trouble. ‘Just keep yer eyes off them and they’ll leave us alone,’ says Si.

Overhanging the bar area are two huge sheep carcasses, which will be sliced up and cooked on a massive concrete barbecue outside later that day. The coffee is bitter and thick, almost like syrup.

Opposite us, two old men look up and examine us closely before going back to their conversation. I start to wonder why we’ve made ourselves so conspicuous in this hash town ahead of the trip up into the lawless mountains that overlook it. But Leff and Fara from Tangier had insisted we meet at this particular cafe. It’s almost like a test for us. It feels as if
we are being examined before being allowed to enter the secret kingdom of Kif.

Si is a vital lynchpin. He knows these parts well. As he explains: ‘This place is a shithole once you look beyond the Beemers and Mercs. Many of the locals say that strangers who turn up here don’t usually stay for long. I’ve seen men shot at in the main street here. It’s a dog eat dog kind of place.’

We’re just finishing up our bittersweet coffees when Si’s mobile rings. It’s Leff, the hash farm fixer. He and his cousin Fara have changed the plan and now want us to meet them at the hash farm. Si talks to Leff in razor-fast French. ‘They’re worried about being seen with us in Ketama,’ he says. Then he announces it is time to leave.

We walk out of the cafe and head to our rented red Toyota Land Cruiser slung up outside the cafe. Three kids have gathered round it. One of them asks, somewhat threateningly, for some money. Si asks me for five dirhams and I give it to him to hand to the boy.

‘If you don’t pay ’em they’ll get their big brothers to slash our tyres next time we’re in town,’ explains Si.

Si then takes the wheel and we set off through bustling Ketama. Si chats to locals in perfect Arabic and French as we sit in slow traffic in the crowded main street. Then, for the first time, Si reveals he learned the languages while serving four years in a Moroccan jail for smuggling hash.

Si has been out for six years, and now lives half the year near Murcia, in Spain, and the other half in London. He got
into drug smuggling because his brother was a renowned hash baron who also lived in Spain after absconding from a five-year prison sentence in the UK. Britain was unable to extradite him due to a legal technicality, but he paid the ultimate price for crossing a Moroccan drug baron when he was shot dead in a warehouse on the Costa del Sol. His body was then dumped inside his own Range Rover at a local airport car park. ‘That was a message to others not to cross this Moroccan. Hash is a nasty old business,’ explains Si, who even managed to sound matter-of-fact when discussing the murder of his own sibling.

Si says he took over his brother’s hash connections, although he claims that these days he is virtually retired after making enough cash to live comfortably for the rest of his life.

As we finally leave the traffic and staring people behind to begin the steep drive up towards the mountain peaks, Si continues to explain his life backstory. ‘I was nicking cars and stuff from the age of twelve. It was the only way to survive where I came from. I looked up to my brother then. He seemed to have it all. By the time he was twenty-one, he was driving a flash car and making a fortune from coke and weed. But then he got nicked and one of Manchester’s biggest firms decided he was a liability, so he fucked off to Spain and began all over again in the hash game. He had the bottle to deal directly with the Moroccans and the police back home couldn’t get him back because of a legal technicality, which had allowed him to get bail when he was still in Manchester.’

Si interrupts himself to point over the edge of the road as we climb the side of a mountain. ‘There’s a few of my mates down there somewhere,’ he says, almost casually. ‘They got too heavily involved with the local hash boys and ended up in shallow graves.’

We continue our journey along hazardous, rocky tracks. Tarmac roads simply don’t exist in these parts. Si tells me that most of the roads have been carved out of the mountainside by the drug barons, who wanted quick routes away from the hash farms, so they can transport hash swiftly and safely out of the Rif Mountains. Until twenty years ago, many of these tracks did not exist and smugglers often transported hash by donkey through a mountain pass from one isolated hash farm down to the nearest coastal port.

‘If you want a road out here, then you pay for it yourself and make sure that only your friends use it,’ explains Si.

The full impact of what he says only comes home to me as we slow down to stop in front of a makeshift gate, a plank of wood leaning on a rusting oil drum slung across the mountain-edge track. Before Si has even pulled up the handbrake of the Land Cruiser, two wiry-looking locals appear from behind a huge boulder.

Slung over each of their shoulders are Uzi machine guns. Yet they are smiling as they approach our vehicle.

‘Fuck,’ says Si. ‘Sit tight. I’ll sort this out.’

Si jumps out of the car and greets the men. They seem deeply suspicious and look at him through narrowing eyes. One of them has a scar across his left cheek.

Then Si shoves the man with the scar in the shoulder. The local looks furious for a split second before a further, breathless exchange of words. This is followed by a broad grin across scar-man’s face. I open the window to try and hear what they are saying. Si turns and shouts at me.

‘I know this bastard from prison. Small world, eh?’

Si then goes into a huddle with the man as his friend joins them. After a few moments, Si emerges and shouts across at me.