Chemel Mountain Dew

Dedicated to all the old smokers and all the Old Ones in the Chemel= Rif and beyond. I promised you not to write about Morocco because everything had been told and it was all marveloous in the realm of art and literature. . But I did not find that Morocco again, so I had to write about that land I found. So I did not break my promise, I do not write about Morocco and the Rif is not Morocco. It is the last stance of a magical life.

This is the last story forever of a four story sequence about the country that we once knew as Morocco, in 2018.

 

By Ronald Kaiser 2018

 

The bus journey to Chaouen or Chefchaouen was always pure magic. The mountains appeared after some curves leaving Tetouan and all in the bus knew that the game is changing. All the people in Djellabas and Jeans, the women from the Tetouan mountains with straw hats and red/white skirts, the women in traditional garments and the freaks and travellers in the midst of luggage in bundles in the middle of the bus with chicken and bags of olives. Music from the bus’ loudspeakers turned us on: Jajouka music and other traditional bands from the Chemel with guinbris in front and extatic rhytms mixed with Bob Dylan and Patti Smith until we rached the holy city of Chauoen after endless turns of the road winding higher and higher. 

 

There we were lead into old houses in the Medina and were offered excellent hashish and sweet tea until I asked for kif for my sebsi. Our women were with us and this was never questioned but they envied us for that and sometimes one of our women had a short affair or longer with one of the Rifis. Nobody spoke a word about it, me neither because my women never did this. One tried with wicked words and was told how bad she is many times later by many. Everybody in the Old Kingdom greeted us when coming back from Chaouen: „Oh from there you come, you must have good hash my friend, welcome“ That could survive until the end of the milllenium. I experienced the joy in the gate to the Chemel, the Rif, last time then before the big switch. That is the truth about the Millenium bug as the called this phony bullshit endlessly in 1999 and pushed it through any media globally. They, the AOI was and were the millenium bug, destroying all and everything who and what had any traditional values or emotions that have developed in an organic way. Even romantic love and the bond with children are under attack by the Millenium bug. The Millennium bug is still around and transmitted by the AOI everywhere until today. I saw the AOI just before the end of the Millennium as three French idiots in a hotel in Chaouen when I came home with my pregnant lady and was attacked by the trio infernal when just walking in and stumbled a bit over a rug on the floor a bit „uhhh, ohhh, ces’t le whisky marrocain, ohh uhh“ and then reporting me to their fucking police back in Europe or Paris for just being there and being suspicious and high on hash, what lead to endless harassement later in Spain by some fascists when we drove back. Pregnant women and Beatnik appearance do not work well with Grand Okzident figures from police, right. These are the ghosts and agents of the Regie des Tabacs still wandering around in neverending attempts to crawl into our asses even when kif is sold in the next nightshop and in health stores. 

 

The bus from Tetouan to Chaouen was filling up with King Nchaouis female army as soon as I took seat. All around me were colored headscares and kaftans and some few men who were looking downtrodden and afraid. There was absolute silence, nobody talked, nobody listened to music because there was none. I had my own two seats and was sitting at the window, looking forward to watch the mountain panorama when suddenly a Moroccan woman was sitting next to me without greeting me and asking me before. That was the next step I thought to take me on and down. I moved away from here as far as I could and the bus started moving. The bus was modern and clean and there was a strong hissing sound inside suddenly instead of music when it started immideately to show us the benfits of modern electronic times. The panorama was as it was twenty years ago, some more people around but the freedom in their faces was gone, some islamist jockeys around the Tetouan area and lots of Queen Esther’s female army in kaftans. But it was still going to the Rif and there were cottages and goats and pine forests to feel good about. She began to catch my eyes near me and I took out small transistor radio pressed it to my ears because I tried to catch some Rifi tunes. There were none, no Guinbri sounds at all in the ether of King Nchaoui but the evil whispers around me “what is he doing ńext to that poot woman?“ „Are they married? Why is he sitting next to her?“ „He has no dignity at all, he wants to do it to her and all of us“ „He is listening to radio now, as is this is nothing, a radio with music, I can hear the music“.

I realized the set up when I checked out that she had a child and a husband sitting also in the bus and he sent her to sit with me.

 

The bleak atmosphere prevailed until we reached Chefchaouen that stretched now about ten time its size build brainlessly into the mountains by migrants from France mostly. I stepped out and found nothing but Banlieu plus tourist atmosphere with Rotisseries and traffic sounds and banks everywhere and a huge mass of former migrants behaving as if in France. I followed a Rifi from the old times to a hotel in the Medina I knew, just for the old times sake again and that was a mistake off course. I entered it through one of the beautiful small blue lanes Chaouen is famous for this time filled with hordes of tourists from Asia and France mostly in groups. My spirits were sinking, only my old guide kept me up. He found that old house in the Medina build into a „hostel“ style turd oven and I checked in only to him a favour and to stop the process. There were about five cameras even in the small entrance area an French style gay man watching huge monitors displaying the interior of vthat house. I showed him my passport and gave him hundred dirhams before I climbed up to my room. It was small and sticky but that did not count in the old days but now because it was not real. It was a bloody movie set. I felt like in a film set for a cheap sitcom or Big Brother in the Medina. I decided to take them on, whoever from the AOI was behind that bucket that has housed generations of real travellers before and went down were they had a grand living room in the patio before. Now I sat down in a black leather couch surrounded by huge monitors and the white cats of the gay manager. I watched the scene and the cats, which I liked, the cats were nice but from another world in France. They were the only positive sight I could catch. I could not stand the looks of the manager and his „no smoking“ signs and warnings that smoking weed and hash is prohibited, he did not say by the Regie des Tabac as they did before in the fifties, and went upstairs to the great roof where we had also slept, smoked and talked before in the old millenium and an endless stream of travellers, freaks, hippies and even old beatniks had left their DNA code for the later interpol and BKA to be evaluated in two old Medina houses in the center of Chefchaouen. We shared our lives and stories there in endless and always repeating night sessions, in a time that was totally destroyed and abandoned by the AOI by just claiming it never existed. It is all gone and they take it out the internet step by step, Only our pictures, fingerprints and DNA are left in the databanks of the AOI as remnants of an extinguished tribe.

 

On the terrace they played 1976: a young German woman was blocking the ladder and smiled at me the typical way I know from the German AOI, I totally ignored here and went up, just passing her. There was her counterpart, playing with his secret service notebook shouting out loud in German what and whom he was and is going to watch and surveil here. I had enough. I passed the old writer friend sititng in his room after chatting with him and left. He did not give me the hundred Dirham back for the ten minutes in his AOI surveillance shack museum. He knew what he did. Stick it in your best place “Jean Pierre”.

 

I was gasping for breath outside until an old friend arrived. One of the old smokers of the past my age showed up: „Hello my friend, how are you?“ „Fucked up, I have the surveillance shit still in my ears from that fucking place – bsssss bsss“ „hahaha, hohoho“ he went, „let us find something better, man.“ „Yeah, but outside the Medina, I can’t stand that tourist shit here, what is this, Avignon now? Take me to the Sahara“ „ hahahahaha, it changed name“ he said and we marched on. Endless small lanes right and left, colored as it was in the past, ocean blue and white, so beautiful, but now they changed the colors to some fancy blue synthetic shit to make it more shining, more bright, more dumb. It was nice, but it lost that inner peace and the greatnhess of the universe that it catched before. It was plain and flat now, but wow for the tourist groups from France and Japan and China running through the smallest houses entrances and micro lanes. It was as phony and disgusting as Avignon is these days: totally surveilled and on the other hand playing the seventies tune in a shallow idiotic French theatrical Jewish way. Take care, this is the worst spectacle of all. “oh euh monsieur, take my flyer look at my pics, we are so seventies, we are so hip,  I for sure work for the pigs, aeh the flics, get your jail term for smoking kif, we are the cool French chivatos from the Rif.”

 

After half an hour we found a hotel outside the medina near the police that looked like a tradtional old Moroccan hotel. The clerk was a woman with a modern haircut and she wore no traditional cloth. I checked the rooms and realized I was the only guest beside „her brother“. So, the Moroccan police had again ruined and renamed an old hotel and was running a setup scheme. But I took it, since I had no dope, and cared for my friend the guard then. I gave him ten Dirham and that was cool and we departed with good wishes. And then the trouble started. When I came back from my room to check the town, she was already high up in anger and on the rag: „Why did you giiiivee him moooneeeyy? Whyyyyy? He smooooke druuuugs, he smooooke druuugs very dangerooouus“ „what did you just say?“ „Hashish, Hashish“ she shrieked in utter hysteria. „Where do you come from by the way?“ I asked „Iaaam frooom heeeree I aam fooom heeeree!“ „Yes, right, here from Grenoble I guess. Listen, when I want to pay somebody because he had worked for me hard and good that is my thing and not yours. By the way he led me to your hotel and I just paid you.“ „But hashiish, hasshissh, you aaalsssooo smooke hasshiish? Do you smoke hasshiish?“ „ Can you tell me the way to the restaurant next to the French police where you come from?“ And she took out a city map as íf we were in bloody Paris and began to check for French Restaurants in Chaouen. I had enough again. „Thank you, I will take the Point Chaud then“ „Oh I don’t know it it has opened yet“ she said. „I am absolutely sure about that“ I answered an decided not to talk to here and her haircut ever again.

 

I searched for tradional food, some tajin or couscous and soup all over town, I was turned away harshly by the Taco and Rotisserie stalls and restaurants, it was not appropriate anymore to even ask for harira soup. I ate harira in on of the left over old restaurants, that was quite good but was then asked by the employees if I would lime to fuck the waitress loud all over the place. I took this as the first AOI attempt to take me down in Chauoen and left without a word and without tip, „ But don’t you want her, don’t you want her“ they shouted behind me in the lanes….

Traditional food was only avalaible now at the central place, the central place where everything happened in old times, when we were there and real people occupied the place with old men walking around with a broad inner smile and the mountain people all around. I saw all expensive table cloth on fancy restaurant tables and Japanese signs: Sushi restaurant, but they even had „traditional moroccan food“ for tourists only. I looked over the scenerey with flickering candles in the evening in the centre of our most favoured town up North and felt like an alien. ‘who is able o create such a set?’ I asked myself and went around the corner and there were the ‘artist restaurants’ for the „freaks et artisans’ with similar ridiculous prices but with batiques and French women a bit younger but open long hair. They all looked sad and worn out, as the tourists of the central square, even the Japanese men felt bad and disgusted. But something was missing: right, the entertainment and there it was: a French-Moroccan singer and songwriter with guitar displaying the best southern France has to offer in French and Árabic with well cut middle long hair and a well cut beard. I could not believe that and looked around me and so one old men in the crowd of French-Morroccan migrants and tourists with Djellaba and beard an walking stick, one of the old ones they had left out. I looked at him and saw his attempts to tune into that mediocre crooner bullshit and it failed. He looked like a stranger in his own town, left alone and full of despair. Our eyes met and we agreed. I turned away and puked into a waste basket in front of all eyes and went away. 

 

I walked down again to my hotel and passed endless shops in the once beautiful medina with the same arty kitsch display as the other and I passed groups of French men with the same beards, known as „toilet seat beard design“ discussing the beauty they had here. I opened my hotel and found the neighboring rooms occoupied. The police from the other side of the road had logged in there, most probably because „I maybe smoke hasshiissh“ or wheatever bullshit that French-Morrocan had told them in advance to make herself even more important. That isn’t even ridiculous to believe because the Regie des Tabac or whatever mask the French re-occupied the Kingdom had advised the Moroccan police and the AOI agents everywhere to report even the buying of one gram of Kif. As in the old days, but the Fifties, par bleue.

Next morning, (I slept in another room secretely off course) I returned to Tetouan immediatley without looking back at that town. The AOI had shown me their masterpiece of contempory destrcutive art and it was well done in their universe. They must have opened a bottle of champagne.

 

I decided to say goodbye to that Kingdom that had vanished and to visit some Old People in the Chemel for a last puff since I did not smoḱe anyore for years and bought a ticket to Bab Berred on the long an winding road to stroll around in the area a bit to reach Ketama finally to say hellogoodbye forever or until the AOI is beaten out of the Kingdom. That is not that easy, even not in Tetouan where „many old friends“ handled the taxis and ticket sales and were constantly stoned on the move in bus station. „Hey man where can I buy a ticket to Bab Berred?“ „This man comes back at 12 he will sell you“ I waited and nobody arrived and all the stoned guys selling tickets and stuff were watching me how I behaved. I took this for a time and then asked again. The guy came and just grabbed inside the closed ticket counter window from behind, pulled out a block of tickets and issued one for me with a pen I gave him. I gave him some money and saw that he just wrote some bullshit on it but that was cool, since the busrides on the long an winding road from Tetouan to Al Hoceima were always very different and hard to handle for todays travellers and smetimes for the Oldtimers too. So I was waiting for the bus that would off course not arrive at the time he wrote ón the ticket he had self issued but I bought my way in and they „knew me“ from a distant magical past when they looked in my eyes.

And all the islamist in posh middle Eastern style that hang around in Tetouan too these days avoided me for that, because I am part íf that old semi-pagan culture they are all destroying. They are not dirty at Tetouan, no, they look brilliant when they go for proud jaywalking with their expensive kaftans, the white cap and their wives totally in black, fully veiled with sunglasses also and gloves and black socks. Visiting their shops everywhere in Tetouan Katari and Oman style where they buy new black gloves for their wives and daughters and veiles and they were never allowed to take out. And then have some islamist snack with their friends form the Salvation Front for the brotherhood in fancy shining and glittering and bright with halogen lights Omani and Katari style snack shops for the typical „Tacos“ they eat.

I checked all the old friends of the ticket compartment who were considerably stoned right now and asked „what the fuck is about the bus to Al Hoceima, I want to go to Bab Berred, where is it man, where is it“ and played the angry idiot

„Do you still know the land and the people? Do you know where you go?“ „Yes, what the fuck do you think, you know me well, right?“ They all grinned and one went back to the empty ticket couter, grabbed behind and issued a new ticket and told me: at 13.30 at platform 3. Nothing had to be paid off course and everbody was smiling, smoking and I was waiting and decided to take the piss. I was waiting there and the Islamists women there were turning me down, the only infidels, the Moroccan smokers do not count, they are a different class, they are out, and shouted at the guy: „Hey what you do, when is the fucking bus is arriving?“ He jumped to me like rocketdriven and explained totally stoned now that the bus will come at 1.30 but then he got it, that I felt like shit with these islamist creatures around me with their utter disgust towards anything that comes not from the koran explained by their husbands and the Salvation Front. He waited with me until the bus arrived as a relative or friend so they could not talk to much bullshit as usual, he was a witness, and the old hog arrived. The worst bus they had on display is crossing the Chemel horizontally to give you, the only European the feeling how it was fourty or thirty years ago when it had to stop for repairs in villages and you made new friends there. It is always special to go from Tetouan to Al Hoceima via Ketama and off course I was the only non Moroccan in a crowded bus and yes we were driving like 1981, it was aching and creaking and moaning and sometimes the back door opened, full of Rifis and no Islamists.

 

They began to play around with me in the back, showing off, the young guys as in the old days, making fun and bullshitting all the time. The women from the mountains were turning around, making jokes about me and were smiling. After Bab Taza, the last checkpoint of the Regie des Tabacs and the AOI in disguise who want to drag you into cars and show you Corporal Luis des Funes later the real mountains began, with some snow on some tops and heavy mists in pine trees. The settlements changed, the became rough and basic and looked like they could defend themselves.

We stopped at a truck stop picnic place and it was like in the old times: a menue for the travelers, with soup and chicken and salad plus a coke, special Rif Coke in very small bottles with the real thing as usual there, served in a large hall and you could see that money was invested there a bit in a decent way. It was not downtrodden or poor but different. I ate the good and rich food and walked around and all the women were laughing and said that I ate like an animal, where I come from, they were asking their men. But that was friendly and attentive as they were before. I walked to the terrace and the most important guy, a Rifi from the bus followed me and we began to talk. He showed me the fields behind the truck stop, where the green has just started to grow and explained the land and its soil to me and said, that I should go to Ketama, that this was better for me, the real thing. I explained that I was not going to buy, since I had no money but I am writer but that I was not intending to write about Morocco. I would go to Bab Berred to stay to write. The bus started again and the fog became impermeable. All I could see were branches of pine trees hanging on to the small and winding road and white fog. The bus went on like that was nothing, and groaning and creaking and the back door was half open. That went on and on for hours and the I asked: „when do we stop at Bab Berred?“ everybody was laughing „Hey man, Bab Berred is twenty kilometers behind, we ask the drive to stop, you can walk back“ hahaha, the went, „Bab Berred, where is Bab Berred, has anybody seen Bab Berred, the bus did not see Bab Berred, nobody sees anything“.

 

Half an hour later we stopped in Ketama and I stepped out of the bus as if this was planned ages ago and my friend, the Rifi from the bus came with me and two friends of him and I was invited for a Pow How in the best place of Ketama to explain myself. So my expedtion had gained some members and then we were four and we went to a marble plated restaurant and club, five storeys high, with uniformed waiters and music and TVs and full of men talking and smoking and drinking tea and coffee in a dense but relaxed atmosphere that is so typical for the cannabis tribe around the world. We reached storey four so I felt quite accepted from the beginning, being up high, the waiters were all around us and talking began. I made myself clear in the end that I really was a writer and just wanted to stay some days but off course they did not believe really but I was ok, that was given to me, I was ok and could stay over night at least. We drank very sweet mint tea traditional style in a luxury environment, talked about many things mostly in metaphorical language from the past. We had coffee later and after an hour we went down and they brought me to a cheap but immaculate clean hotel at the main road. The owner was told that I am his guest and I was checked in and sat in my room watching the street scene from my balcony.

 

There were hundreds of big and old Merdecesses mostly the same and tractors with plows lined up at parkings lots and along the main streets. The town was not clean at all, no, it was dirty without sidewalks, there was no city planning going on, but cafe after cafe could be found, full of life and secrets, of bright and shady people, the worst met best and vice versa. Business deals were made, they whispered about weddings and intrigues but there was one thing missing in Ketama: the army of King Nchaouis and Queens Esthers women in headscarves and their slander and the islamists. No more whispers and yelling to be heard, there was silence that created a beauty in the place despite it looks.  Men were greeting me when I stood on the balcony : „Hey ca va, how is it going“ „Ca va bein my friend, maybe we meet later“ and he departed with a smile. There was no hassle at all but a steady coming and going and staying and working on each other.

 

I walked out after dark and walked the streets of Ketama through mud and potholes as it was in the old days without an Islamist or their women blocking our ways and passed endless varieties of cafes, always crowded and full of smoke and I choose one with a lot of windows and a huge crowd watching soccer. I went inside and placed myself at a table and was welcomed friendly by the older men sitting there, smoking hash and kif. „What you like, Barca or Madrid?“ „never Madrid, never Madrid“ „Ok the tea is on me“. We were dicussing the game and they invited me to their farm and I had to explan them I am a poor man and I am just writing. „I am just a poor writer“ „hahahaha“ the went alltogether, as if this was the best joke they ever heard and they made me a lot of business proposals I could not accept, because I am just a poor artist. I was high as a kite from the excellent hash they were smoking all around me constantly, the best qualities I have experienced for a very long tme. They showed me all the very primo personal stash they had with them and that was far beyond excellent. I really do not know where they get the bullshit from in Europe disguised as Moroccan hash even today, do you find that in canals around the North Sea? Everybody, about maybe one hundred men were constantly smoking, even sebsis with kif, but mostly excellent zero zero plus from their own fields. It was much more smooth, relaxing and strong than the kif from Bab Taza and Chauoen, that was more on the wild side down there. It took you the moon very quick in a rocket, the Ketama kif lifts you up slowly but neverending withóut ever encountering an edge. That is De Luxe in a unique way.
The aroma was unbeatable good and nobody could escape the gosths of that kif, no matter if you smoked it or not. I was floating along their tales and their mindgames and mimicries that was straight from Ali Baba and the Sufis and knew at a point after hours I had to go otherwise I would land on a farm and stay there for some months and then could not go back because was just up in the clouds. I could not admit to build up that strong bond to live with them and I apologized that I had to go and went home. We were all shaking hands and I left.

 

Everything looked different after I walked out of the cafe. But the kif was not singing, as it used to do before and down in Tangier and Chauen, it was just like a kite flight above the town, absolutly mellow and intense. I saw a fire down the street and looked what it was. It was just a pile of garbage with plastic and all stuff in it and they burned it down, as in the old days. That was no disturbance at all. Those were men in control of themselves, no King and Queen and Regie des Tabacs to be seen. I could not find the raod to my hotel, although I was in a haṕpy mood and somebody spoke to me: „Can I help you?“ „I can’ t find my hotel“ „Just come with me“ and he walked me to the main road and showed me the direction. I reached the huge building with cafe, restaurant and hotel and the owner, a Moroccan who looked like a Dutch guy from the eighties told me: „come here“ I walked to him and he whispered in my ear: „ Tomorrow you better go, police does not want you here in town, or you have to go to the mountains, to the farms and stay there.“ I knew it was over, writing did not count and when I turned away from him I saw the police jeep runnibg towards ths house and I went up to sleep.

 

Next morning I walked quick to the road and the men showed me the bus to Al Hoceima. We were passing the typical Rif villages with the villages and hamlets that do not look pittoresque at all but rough and a bit rundown. Metal rods stick out of the roofs and walls quite often to male it look tough and weird. Nobody wants tourists here and people like us can only stay in peace and without mobile towers and that shit when it looks ugly. And they had their ways to make it look unattractive. That is our only way to survice: remote and ugly. Our bus broke down and they repaired with the help of vilagers. Some beatiful girls were standing on the other side, waiting for their bus, chatting with men and each other, dressed with leather jackets and jeans and blouses and full of erotic and feminity, you can not find this anywhere else in the Kingdom anymore, maybe around Tafraoute, but different.

 

Al Hoceima was just an islamist hole, waiting to be taken over and not dreaming anymore about the old good times, nearly abandoned from all and everything alive since the King has destroyed the natural harbour with a futuristc harbour building in the middle. I hasted to Tangier via Fes, where the islamists secret police controls the bus station and is spreading hatred against unbelievers. I was just on step before kicking one of them in their asses when they denied me access to my luggage.

They bid me farewell in Tangier harbour by ripping off more than hundred Euros by changing money with an islamist with some islamist women suddenly popping up like mushrooms in the room. I Took it as a life insurence for my trip through the straits of Gibraltar and not being hassled by police and customs too much. I did not say a word and It worked and I did not say ‘Allahu Akbar“, that were his words and from his women when they stole my money five minutes before I left Morocco.

 

Copyright 2018 by Ronald C. Kaiser