The plan was to buy a Land Rover and spend three months traveling in Europe, Turkey and North Africa. It would take the money earmarked for my tuition to carry it off. So there was a sub-plan – a way to recoup the money with a victimless crime – to import some exotic hashish and Berber marijuana. We would be taking our dog Tina, a Siberian Husky with champion bloodlines. She had to be properly crated in order to fly with the other live animals that the airlines transport and that got me thinking, “I might be clever enough to build the perfect crate, one that would hold more than just the dog.” I felt compelled by the times to take the risk.
During my senior year in high school (1965), a philosophical bomb had been detonating and resonating in public universities and filtering down to public schools. I heard the Call: “Defy Authority.” The Free Speech Movement, as it came to be known, challenged established protocols that determined what you studied, where you could meet, how you dressed, etc. Dailiness was shaped by pushing the envelope with its attendant risks. Protests led by charismatic speakers like Mario Savio and Abbie Hoffman made it easier to feel “free” and break with the larger society (and one’s own superego). It was an empowering, if dangerous, period of social history – an era when individuals felt licensed to check others or themselves – “Hey, wait-a-minute.”
It took me about a week to build the crate. The crate had to be tall enough for Tina to stand up, to turn around, and to lay down in, stretched out. It had to be lockable and have sufficient air circulation. I used half inch plywood, braced in the corners. The kennel floor was carpeted. There was an opening, 4” x 12” on three sides, covered with hardware cloth. The actual crate was an additional 2” taller and had stubby legs that elevated the entire crate off the ground so air could circulate beneath it. There were galvanized steel handles attached at each end. The top was piano-hinged and mounted with a cabinet latch which could be padlocked. Tina would be placed in her crate.
We had to split up from the very beginning. In England incoming dogs were subject to a lengthy quarantine due to rabies so Tina went directly to Paris while I traveled to Coventry, to the Land Rover factory. Before I took possession I was given a tour of the factory and marveled at the black and white photos of famous people either behind the wheel or as passengers in the iconic vehicle. After the factory tour I got into our new Land Rover and raced the three hours to Dover hoping to catch the last ferry to France. I missed it and spent my first night abroad parked at the ferry terminal sleeping in the new Land Rover.
After several weeks in Europe we finally arrived in Istanbul, perhaps the greatest border town on the planet. A New York sized Tijuana famous for the qualities of many things, including Hashish. Early one morning, before sunrise, I set out from our hotel on foot, along the Golden Horn – so named for the golden reflection of the sun’s rays on the water – which empties into the Bosphorus. I was headed to the Galata Bridge which separates old Istanbul from the new, and where Europe and Asia meet. When I got to the bridge there were flocks of sheep, herds of goats, a couple of camels and several donkeys burdened with goods. Families too, huddled against the damp. All were waiting for the bridge to open. I hung around not knowing what exactly I was doing when someone came up beside me and whispered, “‘ash ‘ash.” I turned to see a short man in a shabby sport coat who motioned me to follow him. I did. He led me into a part of the old City, the Casbah, a labyrinth of houses and shops. I began to wonder – “getting out without a guide…I don’t think so.” As we walked deeper into the casbah, I registered a mounting sense of risk. What if this was setup? What if I was a mark? My adrenaline began to flow. Before I could get a handle on my fear, the man in the shabby coat stopped at a door and knocked. A groggy person opened up. He’d been awakened by the knock. Looking quickly looked up and down the street, he ushered us into his room, his only room. There was a kerosene lamp, a bed, a chair and a small table with a pitcher on it next to a basin.
After a brief exchange in Turkish, the groggy man pulled up one of the floorboards and brought out a plastic bag with what looked like about quart of flour in it. He set the bag on the table and reached for a roll of plastic wrap. After tearing off several squares, he began to fold the squares up into envelopes about 3 inches by 7 inches, leaving one end open. He used his teeth to crimp the edges of the envelope together. After he finished, he spooned the white powder into the envelope. When it was bulging slightly, he folded the open end over and crimped it shut with his teeth.
After he had assembled several such envelopes he placed them on the floor, on a damp sheet of newspaper and started to wrap them with more dampened newspaper; the bundle began to take the shape of a child’s football. After a few more layers of dampened newspaper he finished the bundle with dry paper. Like the wet stuff, the dry was wound around the bundle. When the entire thing resembled a regulation football he stopped. Looking up from the floor he signaled that he needed a match. The man in the sports jacket handed him a lighter. He struck the match and leaned the flame against the paper. It began to burn. The man turned it over several times while the flames accelerated the internal heat of the bundle. When the flames died down, he placed the floor board on the hot package and with a foot on each end of the board, began to rock back and forth. When the remaining paper embers no longer glowed he unpacked the bundle. At its core were the envelopes, now looking like Hershey Bars the color of amber honey. I think the price was in the low two figures.
I slipped the bars of hashish into a pocket and followed my guide out into the street. By the time we got out of the casbah it was daylight and the streets were alive with pedestrians and animals. He returned me to the place where we met and before he let me go he reached into his coat pocket and took out what looked like a golf ball covered in leathery mud. He tore the ball in half and put one of the halves into his mouth and began to chew. He said the word Kashmir and pointed to the half that remained and then pointed to my mouth. He indicated that I should eat the remaining half, and we could say goodbye. I followed his instructions. By the time I got back to the hotel I was about as stoned as I’d ever been. When the door closed behind me I took the bars out of my pocket and grinned.
After a week or so in Istanbul we put the car and ourselves on an old transport ship that was stopping in Naples and then Marseille before arriving at Algeciras, Spain. From there we took a ferry across the Straits of Gibraltar to Tangier. The indigenous inhabitants of North Africa, the Berbers have occupied the mountainous coast along the Mediterranean in what is now Algeria and Morocco for a thousand years or more, cut off from the rest of Africa by the Sahara Desert. The cultivation of cannabis sativa which is blended with tobacco to produce Kif, has a long tradition among the Berbers who appreciate the psychoactive properties of cannabis. Men in traditional dress gather in tea houses to smoke and sip mint tea. Somewhere in every tea house there is a kif blender – an obscure man sitting before a small block of wood chopping tobacco leaf and cannabis flowers and blending the chop. Patrons would present their small leather pouches with the double flap closure to be filled for a few dirhams. Then they would return to their table, take out their pipes — beautifully decorated wood stems in two pieces, and very small terra cotta clay bowls that hold enough material for two or three hits. Despite the time-honored tradition the authorities resisted the implicit invitation to drug-traders and its effect on tourism. Police citations for possession were mostly handed out to Westerners in the hope of deterring Kif tourists.
After a few days in Tangier we set off towards Rabat and Casablanca, along the Atlantic coast. We planned to stay in Marrakesh for a few days which became a full week. We spent our time exploring the markets and gardens, including the night market in Marrakesh’s Medina. As the sun went down the Medina’s vendors and performers began to drift into their respective spaces. There were barbers, dentists, food wagons and snake charmers whose cobras mysteriously rose from their baskets as the charmers played small flutes. Shamans, sitting on their rugs would, for a small fee, diagnose what ailed you physically or mentally, and offer remedies, including specific incantations written down to be carried by the individual seeking help, or sewn into the body beneath a couple layers of skin. At the end of the week, we decided to take to the road, heading further south to Goulimine on the edge of the Sahara desert. It’s on a major trade route for the Tuareg and other nomadic tribes of the Sahara, and home to a big camel market where vast numbers of the beasts are traded and sold each day. The heat, the stench, the sounds of traders and camels, was mesmerizing. We found a cheap hotel and spent the night. The following morning we turned north toward Fez, Morocco’s spiritual center. From there we continued north eventually stopping for gas in a small village called Chefchaouen, also known as Chaouen. While the gas tank was being filled an old man wearing a djellaba approached me and offered to take us to a Kif farm. The timing, late afternoon, seemed right. I had wanted to add to my cache of contraband and this was a possible opportunity to do that. We accepted his offer. He climbed into the front passenger seat and directed me up into the mountains on a narrow partially paved road. After a couple of miles our guide motioned me to pull off the road and to drive into the bush. About a hundred feet in, with the road no longer in sight, he had me stop and park the car.
I pulled the land rover off the dirt track into the bushes and out of view of the road. The sun had just gone down behind the mountains and the light was fading fast. The old man got out of the front seat and stretched. He had come with us to take us to a Kif farm in the Rif Mountains. He was a ghostly figure, like the Grim Reaper, in his Jellaba with its peaked hood, as he struck wooden matches to light our way, cupping his hand over the flame so as to cast its glow onto the ground in front of us. We walked on a narrow trail leading into a small valley. My wife was unprepared for this side excursion and was still wearing her tight mini skirt and knee high boots, but she didn’t want to be left behind. At that moment I wasn’t thinking about the risks; it felt like an adventure.
Soon we came to a small, walled compound. Our guide found the door and knocked. A man answered his knock and opened the door. Inside the small compound were a pair of goats tied to a post, and a few chickens scurrying around pecking at the ground in search of food. We were introduced to a youngish man and his younger wife and their sleepy child. After the customary Arabic greetings and glasses of sweetened tea I was taken up a ladder into the barn’s loft. There, in the light of a kerosene lamp, was a circular stack of cannabis plants that had been pulled from the ground and stacked in a column about four feet high. Other plants were hung around the loft in various stages of drying. I had found what I was looking for on the road to Tangier, at the foot of the Rif Mountains. Or, rather, it had found me. I must have been wearing an invisible sign that made the old man make his approach.
Eventually we settled on a price and the farmer began to fill a large burlap bag with the plants from the stack on the floor. When the bag was packed full and tied off, he hoisted it to his shoulder and carried it down the ladder into the courtyard. While this was going on my wife was being entertained by the woman and her child. Despite the cultural and language differences the notion of sisterhood framed their communications.
When it was time to leave, the old man hoisted the bag to his shoulder and with his free hand holding a lit match, guided us back up the trail to our car. He declined our offer to take him back to the station where we’d first met, indicating that he would return to the farm and spend the night there. We returned to the main road and to the hotel we’d booked a room in.
That night I stripped the flowers and leaves from the stalks and packed them tightly into plastic bags. After taping the bags in several layers of tape I was ready to secure the packages in the hollow bottom of Tina’s crate. She would later serve as the mule when we returned to the U.S.
The next morning we packed up the car and headed down the mountains expecting to get to Tangier in the early afternoon. What remained of the previous night’s work, lots of stems and seeds, were in another bag on the floor of the car. I’d planned to dispose of the bag somewhere in the bush between Kenitra and Tangier. On the back seat was a pillow in which I’d placed the bars of Turkish hashish I’d obtained in Istanbul in trade for an old 35mm camera and a little money.
Descending the mountains, about a mile from the hotel a Renault sedan, with flashing blue lights appeared in the rear-view mirror. The Renault was gaining on us and soon pulled alongside. With guns drawn and pointing at us, the police motioned for us to pull over. They instructed us to get out of the car and stand to one side. We were guarded by two of them while the other two began a systematic search of the car. One of the policemen quickly discovered the bars of hashish and the bag of seeds and stems which was broken open in their haste to discover the contraband. At that point they stopped searching the car assuming that we had made the hashish and that was why there were so many seeds and stems in the bag. Suddenly one of the policemen searching the car gave a shout and held up several leaves of tobacco. There would be two charges brought against us; possession of hashish and possession of unregistered tobacco.
Soon another Police Renault pulled up. The commander of the police detail that had pulled us over instructed us to get back into our car and to follow the Police car in front of us while the second car hemmed us in from behind. We were led to a rural police station and placed in a small, primitive cell with a dirt floor and a slit in one of the walls that served as a window. The local commander questioned us in detail and threatened us with his leather belt when our answers did not meet his expectations. By the next day things had calmed down. We were to be transferred to a prison in Tetouan later in the day.
There was one other problem…the dog. What to do with Tina and all the stuff we’d bought along the way which was locked in Tina’s crate. As it happened, the young guy who brought the food to the police station, a local Berber tribesman whose mother managed a Moroccan guest house, offered to look after the dog during our arraignment which was scheduled for the following week. The next day we were driven to the prison in Tetouan. On the way we were allowed to check Tina’s crate into the bus station’s baggage storage. Finally, our small caravan arrived at the prison. We were told to remain in our car. Soon a couple of men in uniform came to get us. We were taken inside and separated. We would not see one another until our day in court. I found myself in an old cell with several other men who eyed me warily. I was dressed like they were, in an ankle-length jellaba, but I wasn’t one of them and my cellmates knew it. I took an unoccupied spot on the floor and kept still. After a few minutes one of the men looked in my direction and said, “American?” He was German and had some handmade tattoos and a corona of hair a week or so past his last shave. He’d been apprehended while attempting to enter Morocco, without a passport. After an hour or so a pair of guards brought our cell a few loaves of bread, one for each of us, and a heavy vegetable soup. I had noticed that the lock on our cell door was very old, the kind that required a long, simple key to move the heavy bolt back and forth into the jamb. Using the soup spoon I was able to slide the bolt out of the jamb. Once done I nudged the door open and then went back to my place on the floor. My cell mates found this quite funny. When the guards came by, they demanded to know how this happened. We all shrugged and someone gestured and said something to the effect of, “maybe the last guards who were here forgot to lock the door.” After that I was accepted – given a peerage, as it were – welcomed into an exclusive group. All of this was conveyed through facial expressions, hand gestures and a few signifying words…as none of them spoke English and I didn’t speak Arabic or the local Berber dialects, or German for that matter.
Our day in court finally came. The young Berber showed up with Tina. The judge considered the evidence and we were fined $80 for possession of hashish, however the tobacco was another matter. The Regis du Tabac had confiscated our passports and our Land Rover.
Released after paying the fine, our funds nearly depleted, we found a very cheap hotel near the waterfront and fell into a disheartening rhythm. Each morning we would leave our room with Tina and walk along the quay – buy a loaf of bread and consume it with some eggs washed down with sweetened tea. I was suffering from dysentery and had to keep close by a toilet which in those days consisted of two stone foot pads over a hole in the floor.
Later that first week out of prison we managed to get an appointment to see the Director of the Regis du Tabac. An officious man in a tight lapeled suit with a narrow tie on a white shirt. His eyed us carefully, examining us through red tinted glasses from behind a large wooden desk. The only emotion his face allowed was disdain and annoyance. The director informed us that if we wanted our passports back we would have to relinquish our car, the new Land Rover I’d bought on arrival three months earlier.
We pleaded with the Director that we would be unable to transport ourselves out of the Country without it. He shrugged. The Director would not budge. We had only one choice, trade our passports for our car.
With our funds nearly gone I broke down and placed a call to my estranged father in New York. He listened to my story and said he would see what he could do. The Moroccan ambassador to the US had recently appeared on my step-mother’s interview/news program on ABC, College News Conference. If memory serves, that diplomat also was the brother of the King. A couple of days later my father sent us a telegram instructing us to make another appointment to see the Director. This time the Director’s demeanor was decidedly different, though annoyance still flavored his tone as he handed us our passports and the keys to the Land Rover. We were permitted to gather our things, including the dog crate from the bus station, and told to return to the Director’s office when we were done. When we arrived at his office a convoy of three police cars was waiting. They were to accompany us to the border to assure the authorities that Morocco had seen the last of us. We were told that we would no longer be welcome as tourists.
Dazed by our recent experience we now faced the prospect of entering Spain at the port of Algeciras. Going through Spanish Customs filled us with anxiety and trepidation. Tina’s crate was filled with rugs and other souvenirs we’d acquired during the previous three months of travel. We were told to remove the crate from the back of the car and open it. The customs official rummaged through our belongings and, finding no contraband abandoned his search. We were allowed to put our things back into the crate and leave the border station. Our plan was to drive directly to Paris. I was going to fly back to L.A. from Orly Airport ahead of Tina who was scheduled to arrive the following day. The Land Rover was being shipped back to San Francisco.
After a fretful first night back home it was time to pick up Tina and her crate. Before leaving the house I took two valium as a precaution. The hope was that the dog, after being in her crate for almost eight hours, would have relieved herself in the crate, providing another barrier to the discovery of the hidden compartment. I arrived at Customs facility and the crate, with Tina in it, were brought out. The customs agent asked me to remove Tina from the crate. Tina’s ability to hold it in was stronger than my expectations. The carpet that covered the floor was spotless. Tina was very happy to finally be out of her crate. I, not so happy. The agent commented on the quality of the crate while patting the floor down. Nothing. He handed me some papers to sign acknowledging that I had picked up the dog and that she was in good shape. We loaded Tina and her crate into the car and drove back to our house on the Venice Beach Canals. Safely back home, we opened the floor and stared at the contents with an air of disbelief. It was 1969 and the market was hot.
About a week after resuming classes, I was notified by Customs broker that the Land Rover had arrived and was ready to be picked up. I’d decided to use a freight shipping broker after looking at the paperwork I was going to have to fill out. It proved to be a good decision. When I arrived at the Port, I presented my ID and was told I could find my car on a large, secure parking lot next to the Customs Warehouse. At the gate to the lot I presented my papers and was handed the keys. When I returned to the gate the Customs officer glanced into the car’s front and back seats and then motioned to me that I was okay to go. As I drove through the gate I glanced down at the floor and saw that it was littered with the seeds and stems that had been in the bag – torn open by the policeman – on the side of the road in the Rif Mountains two months before. Thinking back about my decision to take the risk, I saw how that risk compounded itself, like interest on a savings account. I cocked my head slightly and smiled at my bravado, stupidity, and unrestrained ego, which had been nurtured in the cauldron of the 1960’s.