Chapter 19
Drug Smuggler in Morocco 1973

A few days after the birth of their third daughter on four years, Ali sits outside his family's tent upon the dunes, smiling out at the lines of rolling surf on the sea a little way below. To his surprise, he sees that he's about to receives an unexpected visit from two of the area's leading community figures. They stroll up the incline determinedly, disagreeing as to which one of them will be the spokesman. They sit down upon the carpets outside his tent and stroke their beards nervously, declining the offer of tea in their uneasiness. Each waits for the other to explain to Ali the reason for their coming. Finally the chubbier of the two clears his throat and tilts back his head to speak as manfully as he can:

"We have come to offer our condolences of the community on the delicate matter that must be troubling your heart. " He rests his hand upon Ali's shoulder, who slowly shakes his head, not quite seeing what they could mean.

"What we mean is," The thinner man contributes, "that it must clearly be a matter of distress that your wife gave birth to a daughter last week."

"But fellas, I'm delighted! Things couldn't be better - Thanks be to Allah!"

Yes, yes," They agree impatiently, "But what about your sons?"

"But I don't have any!" Ali exclaims in confusion.

"Exactly!" the chubby man sympathizes, "Now why do you think that might be?"

Then it dawns on Ali. In this part of the world it's probably not thought to be so auspicious to live among a family of females. He breaks out in uncontrollable laughter - How could they find his blessed situation lamentable? The two elders exchange confiding glances. This is, after all, a matter of serious concern and so Ali's hysteria can be forgiven.

It takes Ali a long time to persuade them that he doesn't see any problem with things as they are. The committee of two eventually realize that there's no use in talking at this highly-fraught time. They leave Ali's tent with woeful shakes of their head as he sings praises to Allah after them.

"What was all that about?" Lucette asks as she comes through from the back of the tent with the baby on her arm and the two toddlers trailing after the hem of her dress. She strokes the back of his head.

"They're worried that I'm being outnumbered!" Ali laughs and he's pleased to see that there is tenderness amidst her puzzled expression. It has sometimes been missing in recent moths and he finds himself needing these reassurances of her love. It's at these moments that he can believe in the memories of their first few months together that made him feel as worthy as a prophet. Her words now come less often coated with honey than as lashings sprays of hail and fury. A small part of him flinches each time she starts to speak and sometimes he feels hunted within his own home.

Children changed everything. From the first moment Ali beheld their first-born suckling on her mother's breast, he barely suppressed the rising urge at the back of his throat to take hold of the other nipple and drink deep of her love. Whilst they forged a new intimacy in the adventure of parenthood, so too the cute innocence of romance died like the passing of a season.

Ali soon discovered that his wife expected him to be aware of this and to rise to the challenge of the required maturity. Her ensuing wrath when he failed to do so was quite enough incentive to catch up with the act. As when Ali returned home of one evening, he found Lucette waiting for him outside the tent - Her eyes boring into him before he could wave in greeting.

"Hi, babe, I'm home!"

"Did you bring the milk?" She asked with truculent quiet.

"The milk? Oh, well, you know I met this really interesting guy in the street and-"

"Then why don't you go and marry him?" She snarled as a wildcat sprang to life inside her, "And then you wouldn't be inconvenienced by the fact of children! You-" And by this time, Ali was scampering down the hill to fetch the milk while he was still alive and well enough to do so.

This is not to say that Ali is indifferent to his children. On the contrary, he considers these screaming, snotty-nosed creations to be more of a miracle than the moving of any mountain. And he pulls more than his weight - Thirty buckets of water from the well each time the nappies need to be changed. It's just that as a Sufi space cadet, his sense of priorities don't always coincide with a mother's ideas of what is of importance.

But if there's one thing that Ali has extracted from his session with Ahmed, it's that there is no strength like that in surrender. The lone fighter in the ring hasn't got a chance with all the vicissitudes of Life in the other corner. So Ali humbly accepts his status as an inconsiderate, hypocritical, burnt-brained piece of sherbet shit and resolves to do better.

For whatever he might lack in failing to understand the importance of things like shopping lists, schedules and that no, baby clothes cannot be made out of the spare carpets, Ali makes up for it in sweeping waves of adoration for his wife and children that he hopes will smooth all niggling creases. He is passionately attentive to Lucette and eases any worries she may have about her desirability.

Though still beautiful, her body has inevitably taken the toll of delivering three fleshy souls into the world. Her breasts droop under the inexorable pull of hungry lips. The skin stretches around her hips and thighs. A hue of weariness nestles in bags beneath her eyes, though barely discernible against her evening complexion. She doesn't mention these things but her silence says it all.

Her mood swings become longer and more pronounced. occasionally she is lost to him for days at a time. Then she is beyond reach though Ali might try a thousand frequencies in a multitude of tongues. All he feels he can do is sit tight and pray that she returns from whatever isolated isle it is to which she retreats. She comes back with a forgiving smile or stroke of his cheek but it seems to him that he loses a tiny part of her each time. He feels their love slipping away like the sand that rolls down to the sea, a little at a time. Yet he can't see what to do about it.

He knows that she is not happy about their livelihood. It seems to her that he risks their future every few months, each time he smuggles suitcases into Western destinations.

"Just what do we do when you eventually wind up in a prison cell with a bucket for your shit?" She sometimes yells at him during the rows that occur with increasing frequency. He doesn't think of it that way. He's no more risking his family's future than each time he crosses the street, takes his chances with the charging mule carts.

Ali considers them all to be incredibly blessed to be in this situation where a few months of living can be taken care of in just a few days. Freaks have been exceedingly fortunate, he realizes one day, that cannabis is illegal in all Western countries. If it were not for the frothing hysteria of anti-drug campaigns screaming panic across television screens, glaring warnings on billboard posters and sternly instructing in school textbooks of the evil menace of this friendly green plant, then the whole business might be legalized.

Then the multinationals would swoop in to usurp the entire market. Mass production centres would be set up and local farmers be forced out of business. Quality of the herb would quickly deteriorate and prices escalate as the traditional resin of small mountain fields would issue forth on conveyor belts in sterilized plastic packages. The cigarette companies have already bought up all the trade marks like Acapulco Gold, Moroccan Black and Panama Red, just in case the market is to open.

But as things are, the whole affair remains on a small-scale, personal basis where the freaks have friendships with the hash farmers based on the mutual benefits of trust and discretion. And the illegality of dope in the First World means that it's profitable to bring even a single suitcase from the place of origin, through the shark-infested customs channels and onto friends and contacts in the concrete cities who are only too glad to buy as much as they can of something good. They in turn divide up their stash into smaller pieces to be sold individually and so tens of thousands of non-conformists are able to make an honest (if illegal) living, or at the very least cover the costs of what they smoke themselves. And everyone is happy.

"Except," Lucette likes to remind him, "except for those who are caught red-handed, hand-cuffed and thrust into squalid prison cells for years at a time."

Ali doesn't really know what prison is like but is aware that it's not necessarily a closed arena for masturbation three times a day - Heroes of the 20th century like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X all found a spiritual strength in the confined silence that made them impregnable to the fortunes of the outside world upon their subsequent release. And in the more fraught periods of marital tension Ali can identify with the Chinese tradition that prison is actually a great blessing: A time to hide away and rebuild oneself away from the clutches of wife and business.

But generally he lives in simple contentment with his family in their simple tent life without electricity or telephone. Although Lucette casts anxious eyes to the future education and sustenance of the kids, she also fully appreciates the idyllic dream of the present. Thus, with three beautiful daughters beneath the incomparable compass of sea, desert and sky, they consider themselves richer than any Manhattan millionaire, chained to the frenzied demands of his bleeping digital watch.

The only blips in this material serenity come when Ali goes away every two months or so on a run. He tries to arrange them at as short notice as possible to lessen the period of anxiety that Lucette suffers beforehand. As soon as he's at his destination with the danger all over, he always calls her from Sydney, Montreal or Amsterdam to let her know he's alright. She never quite believes him until he reappears in the flesh again and even then it's often many days before she can open up to him again, resentful of the bouts of anxiety he puts her through with this renegade profession.

From time to time payment comes not with the fluid feeling of cash in the hand but through the foreign and distrusted institutions of finance. On one occasion a cheque is placed in the account of Ali and his friends that is so large that they must go along to the bank four days in a row to withdraw the maximum limit permitted every 24 hours. By the third day, the bank manager is waiting eagerly by the steps for them, waving jubilantly as they approach, calling out 'welcomes' and 'good mornings' like the old friends they have so rapidly become.

Whilst business at this level depends on heroic solo missions, at the target destination Ali must connect with trusted dealers with whom he has a comfortable and honest relationship. However, perhaps because someone down the line ingests too much of the stock, there are often inexplicable grey areas and delays. In this business, no one takes a deadline seriously.

One day at the end of a nervous period of waiting, as they begin to run up embarrassing credit at obliging market stalls, a long overdue cheque arrives. It's three weeks late and Ali has thought more than once that his Dutch friends must have screwed him - But no, someone was clearly just 'stoned again' and has now got their act together at last.

He and Lucette naturally make prompt celebration. A never-ending stream of friends arrive bearing platters of couscous, kebabs and salads dripping with olive oil. Musicians gradually drift in and soon the setting sun is accompanied on its graceful descent to its oceanic grave by taboukas, desert flutes and twanging ouds.

As the sun blows its farewell kiss of light for the day, Ali and Lucette stand together on an isle of relief amid the throng, squeezing each other gladly now that the weeks of tension have come to an end. Then the stars appear like magic in the emerging velvet canopy of night. They soon vanish again as a dense fog of hashish smoke obliterates all views.

The morning reveals a battle-field of collapsed bodies with their long kif-pipes still clutched to them. Plates of food are scattered around in post-party debris and Ali hopes that some of the women will see it as their task to set things right. He is off to town to cash the all-saving cheque. He splashes water on his face and arms and thanks Allah before he heads off in his best clothes.

"No, sir." The clerk at the bank says.

Ali laughs once in disbelief.

"What do you mean 'no, sir'?"

"We are not knowing the bank of this cheque, sir!" The clerk announces with great satisfaction.

"Well, look!" Ali says, reading with his finger along the cheque as he feels the moment slipping away, "It's the Rottenlieben International Institution of Finance and-"

"No, sir."

Ali walks out with the bewilderment of a man who's just been told he might as well go and throw all his gold in the river for all that it's worth. He heads straight for Ahmed who tells him:

"Never spend your money until you have it!"

"But I had the cheque!"

"Never spend your money until it is in your hand."

"But it's the Rottenlieben International Instit-"

"Don't tell me that - Tell them!" Ahmed laughs, jerking his thumb in the direction of the bank.

Ali packs a small suitcase of a change of clothes and a prayer mat and kisses goodbye to his family, certain in the knowledge that he won't be separated from this quiet idyll for more than a day or so. However he arrives at one of the largest banks in Tangiers to find that they've never seen a cheque of this kind before either.

Wising he'd brought more than one spare shirt, Ali boards the ferry to Spain, counting his remaining money nervously. In Barcelona, Ali attempts to get forthright in his non-existent Spanish until all the staff end up laughing at him. Every mile he heads North he can feel the serenity and magic of his home retreat behind him. He stumbles through sterilized cities of concrete and tarmac, along air-conditioned corridors and sits upon plastic seats while he waits for his turn at the window. All the while he clutches his little cheque for all he's worth, rehearsing his indignation before each encounter. He is trapped in a bad dream and is condemned to stand before dehumanized glass counters, where he must stammer at constipated pen-pushers through dinky little microphone systems that distort his every word.

He finds himself watching clocks in draughty bus stations, floundering like a fish heading ever further away from his element. Landscapes of towns and hillsides pass by and it seems a lifetime ago that he passed this way with Lucette. They were just kids then. Yet by some design of Allah, it seems he must play out this strange charade. As the miles roll under him, we see Ali pull out the crumpled chit to examine the writing once more, as if it might have changed since the last time he looked.

In Nice they won't even look at him and in Milan they have more to say about the state of his clothes than about his cheque. Ali is indeed dishevelled and disheartened, a ghost of the man that set out from his tents in the desert ten days before. His spirit has been sucked dry by the modern world he thought he'd abandoned and which now lures him into a quest of Kafkaesque cruelty: Through glaring city centres, boxed-in elevators and neon-lit corridors. Though the people in these institutions speak English, Ali can barely remember how to speak their language. Their eyes are dull and pedantic and their voice droops out like a wilting flower. It's all Ali can do to keep himself from grabbing them by the ears and shouting 'Wake up! Wake up!'

To save money he cuts down his living costs to just one Coke and a packet of cigarettes a day. A weariness sets over him like that of a boxer pushed to the fiftieth round, bells ringing in his ears of their own accord. In his crumpled suit, Ali looks less like a businessman demanding respect than a defendant pleading for mercy.

He hitchhikes his way to Stuttgart, suffering endless monologues from German drivers about the efficiency and precision of their 2.8 litre engines. All the buildings stand too straight and he already knows better than to try to establish eye contact with anyone. They'd probably have him arrested.

He weaves his way into the central bank with head hung low and pushes his crumpled cheque under the bank-teller's window without looking up. He dimly wonders why it's taking them so long to refuse him.

"Excuse me. sir? Would you prefer the payment to be in dollars or marks?" Ali blinks as he senses the nightmare of the past fortnight fading around him and he's cautious to take it for real.

"Say that again?"

For two thousand miles he's been at the mercy of this one piece of God-forsaken piece of paper. He's been dragged from primitive desert isolation through boats, buses and Saabs to the heart of industrial German monotony. He sinks to his knees and prostrates himself in prayer in front of the counter, oblivious to the disapproving muttering of the queue, begins to mutter the words of prayer.

"Excuse me, sir, but is this really the place?" Ali doesn't even take in the anxious tones or troubled expression of the young clerk, who realizes with alarm that nothing in his training quite prepared him for this.

Ali lands back at the airport to find Ahmed waiting for him with a wide grin of Devilish glee written across his face. Ali knows from experience that any attempt to unravel the convolutions of Ahmed's schemes will be utterly futile. And so he goes along with all the hand-on-heart salaams, inquiries about each other's health and talk about the weather.

Finally, as they exit the airport to the car park, Ali cannot restrain himself from asking:

"So where are Lucette and the babies? They couldn't come to meet me? I left messages with Hussan to let them know-"

"It was...not possible!" Ahmed pronounces with weighted words that he seems to have no intention of explaining. "Come! See what a fine car we have in which to drive home!" He takes Ali's arm around to the side where there is a magnificent blue limousine that he has probably just summoned out of thin air. Ali knows better than to ask where it came from for the resulting answer will probably take him hours away from discovering what his teacher is holding back about his family.

Night has long since fallen and neither speaks as they pick their way through the traffic on the tarmacked roads that are a recent growth upon Morocco's complexion., sadly beyond the reach of any scalpel. Ahmed plays with the radio, hopping from station to station and fiddling with the tone and bass controls of each. Ali can feel his impatience rising within him like a kettle coming to the boil. Gasps of steam escape from his nostrils. It's all he can do to restrain himself from sinking his teeth into the crooked finger joints of the absurd Sufi, who focuses more upon finding the BBC than on which side of the road he should be driving. Just as Ali can take no more, Ahmed pips him at the post by remarking:

"Do you know why it was not possible for your family to meet you?" Knowing full well that Ali has been waiting for an hour to find out.

"No, Ahmed, I don't!" Ali replies with gritted teeth.

"Because," His teacher announces with a flourish "They are not here!"

With that he returns his attention to the pot-holed road before them as if everything has been explained. Ali counts to ten before he asks in a strained voice, shaking from the effort of control,

"Then where exactly are they?"

"Your family, Ali," Ahmed tells him merrily, "are in India!"

"India?" Ali shrieks, his composure in tatters, "What are they doing in-"

"They are safe and well and in good hands too!" Ahmed interrupts "They are guests of the Prince of Morocco who is making a state visit there." Ahmed waits a moment while Ali digests this and then continues, "You are also invited and this is your plane ticket to Bombay." Pulling out airline tickets from one of his waistcoat pockets, "Bring your sword too, as you will be one of the Prince's official bodyguards!"

"And when," Ali asks, utterly bemused, "Are we supposed to return?" Ahmed turns to face him with a gentle smile and tells him:

"There is no going back, Ali." He pulls the car into the narrow street outside his residence.

"But I want to stay in Morocco for the rest of my life!" Ali exclaims like a child that can't have what he wants.

"Do you know how to make Allah laugh, Ali?" Ahmed asks with wink as he cuts the engine, "Just tell him your plans."

Ali wanders home that night across the desert sands that swirl and drift around his feet like puppies reluctant to let him go. The stars cry for Ali as he approaches his home for what may be the last time. The tents feel desolate without Lucette and the babies. She's packed many of their things and it doesn't seem to feel like home any more. Outside the sea is considerately quiet and Ali can see no way to fight this.

As Ahmed's student he surrendered the reins of his mind to his more capable hands. Now Ahmed has rolled up Ali's life like a ball of newspaper and tossed it onto an unknown continent thousands of miles away. Just like that. But there's a hypnotic quality to Ahmed's voice that makes his suggestions seem like something that has already been done. Lucette must have been convinced as she's already gone and, for that reason alone, Ali knows he must also go. He strokes the flaps of his canvas tent with tender regret that he didn't appreciate what he has had until this moment where it's all been taken away from him.

At this point he feels like sneaking through the streets of the city with a pair of scissors in his hands to rob his teacher of his little pointed beard. But it's no good to struggle, he realizes, as it's the ability to surrender to the will of God that separates the men from the boys. The challenge now is to submit to the situation with grace and to accept that the pages are about to be turned into the next new chapter of his story. If he has learnt anything while he's been here then he must accept the hand that he's dealt. The days of whining and complaining are now behind him. And so, it seems, is Morocco.