Hash Read online

  ‘That’s gotta be the place,’ says Si.

  ‘How do we get up there?’ I ask.

  ‘You walk, old son,’ said Si. ‘Nothing’s easy round these parts.’

  Just then the man up in the distance waves in our direction. It’s a relief to know he is even expecting us.

  Ten minutes later we’ve reached the shack after a twisting and turning hike up a steep rocky verge. It’s a strange feeling to know people must have been talking about your arrival before you’ve even got there.

  Then, as if he is reading my mind, Si explains: ‘The maximum we should stay here is a couple of hours before everyone knows we’re around. Then we might have a few problems.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because every fucker within a hundred miles of here will want paying. That’s why.’

  ‘What happens if we don’t pay them?’

  ‘They nick our watches and our phones and our wallets, if we’re lucky.’

  The man we saw from below is smoking as we approach his building. He looks very young, maybe no more than about twenty or twenty-one. He seems friendly enough but then he has just finished smoking a big Kif spliff while awaiting our arrival. The red polka-dot neckerchief around his neck contrasts oddly with the tatty jeans, sweat-soaked T-shirt and flip-flops.

  Just then I catch a glimpse of a striking Moroccan woman of about the same age as the man and a small child, probably no more than two years old. They’re sitting outside the back area of the shack by a makeshift clothesline. The man seems irritated they’ve come into view and immediately shouts at them. They disappear inside.

  ‘For fuck’s sake don’t look at his wife. He’ll take it as an insult,’ explains Si, helpfully.

  The man turns and glances at us through narrow, suspicious, bright-blue eyes. He must be a Berber because he looks more European than Arab.

  Si engages the man in a proper conversation while I retreat to sit on a rock in front of the shack.

  Si eventually beckons to me to follow him and the man inside the shack. Si explains that we can watch him sieving a crop of cannabis buds. It’s only then I am formally introduced to the man, whose name is Hassan.

  Later, I discover that Hassan keeps a gun under the bed he shares with his wife, just in case his friends turn into his enemies.

  CHAPTER 2

  HASSAN

  The nondescript scrubland behind Hassan’s house is where bushels of cannabis, left to dry in the hot sun, are hanging from wooden frames. In this climate very little grows apart from cannabis and Hassan depends on this crop to support his family. Inside the shack, Si translates as Hassan explains the process of how the hashish is made as he places the cannabis buds on a giant sieve and covers it with a tarpaulin.

  Hassan then beats the tarpaulin with sticks rather like a drum. The pollen or resin crystals – which contain the drug’s main psychoactive ingredient THC – break from the plant and fall through the sieve. When the drumming is complete, Hassan gathers the pollen together, compressing it to form bricks of yellowy-brown hash.

  As Hassan prepares the hash, he talks about his family, who’ve been harvesting hash for three generations. He tells of his dream of one day leaving the mountains and seeking his fortune in Europe. It seems strange to hear this young man talking about his future when we are sitting thousands of feet up in one of the world’s most isolated mountain ranges.

  Even more confusing is Hassan’s appearance. With his piercing pale blue eyes and thick brown curly hair, he looks very European. His granite shaped face and lean physique would not look out of place on the catwalk of a London fashion show. It seems incongruous that he has a wife and child tucked away in a backroom just a few feet from where we are talking.

  As Hassan starts to relax more in our company he opens up about his lonely life on top of the mountain. ‘There is no other job for me here. My father and grandfather harvested Kif and it is the way to survive out here. I know that others are making much more money from it than me but that is the way it goes out here. We farmers are just the start of the supply chain. We have little power to force the gangsters to pay more for the Kif because there is so much of it here they will simply go and buy it elsewhere.’

  Hassan shrugs his shoulders a lot, giving the impression that despite his earlier claim to want a better life in Europe, he knows in his heart of hearts that he will probably end up harvesting cannabis for the rest of his working life. After showing us the process, he sits down with Si and the two men enjoy a massive spliff together and that’s when Hassan really starts to open up.

  ‘I have worked and lived up here since I was fourteen. School was pretty much a waste of time because round these parts you know the only job you can hope for is to harvest Kif and that doesn’t require qualifications and exams. Sure, it’s lonely up here and in the winter it’s bitterly cold but it was much more lonely before I got married. Having a wife is my salvation in many ways. It is the key to my survival.’

  But, I ask through Si, what are the dangers associated with producing Kif in the world’s hashish capital? Hassan hesitates and whispers a few words to Si, who explains: ‘He is worried about upsetting the middlemen. He thinks you will get him into trouble.’

  I try to reassure Hassan, through Si, by promising to use a different name for him in my book and assuring him I will not reveal the specific location of his hash farm. He nods somewhat reluctantly and then lowers his voice.

  ‘You see, the men who buy the Kif from me and then smuggle it into Europe are often bad people. They treat us farmers like shit but what choice do we have? I now keep a gun under my bed because there have been many bad incidents in the past.’

  Hassan explains that one hash gangster accused him of watering down the Kif with powdered tree bark and earth. ‘This guy came up here with three others in the middle of the night, dragged me out of my bed and then threatened to rape my wife at gunpoint. If I had had my gun then I would have tried to shoot them all dead. They then forced me to give them another shipment of Kif for free to replace the stuff they said I had watered down. I had to do it to stop them hurting my wife.’

  It’s not clear from what Hassan is saying as to whether he still does business with the same men who threatened to rape his wife. But he makes a point of telling this story in a quiet, conspiratorial tone that leaves one with the distinct impression he does.

  Hassan says he earns about £2,000 a year from harvesting Kif. He knows others are making a hundred times that amount out of his same crop. ‘Sometimes I think about defying the gangsters and selling my own Kif in Ketama but the criminals would soon find out and I’d be killed.’ There are strict demarcation lines in the Rif region when it comes to the production of hash. People who step out of line and try to set up their own ‘business’ in defiance of the local drug lords don’t tend to enjoy long and healthy lives.

  Hassan explains: ‘I had an uncle once who used to harvest Kif on his own plot of land. He got fed up with being forced to sell for low prices, so he decided to cut out the middleman and headed down into Ketama to try and find a buyer direct. My father told me that my uncle lasted all of two days in Ketama before his body was found dumped in an alleyway behind one of the town’s most popular cafes. It was a message to others not to try and ignore the Kif gangsters.’

  Hassan says he fears the day when his daughter is old enough to attend the local school in Ketama because there have been a number of kidnappings of children from the school after their fathers fell out with local drug lords. ‘In many ways,’ says Hassan, ‘it’s safer to keep my daughter out of school completely. The trouble is that it is a vicious circle because if she gets no education then she will never have a chance to leave this place and I want her to experience the world away from here and be happy and successful.’

  Just then Hassan is diverted by a small cloud of dust off in the distance on the same mountainside track we had driven up a moment ago. We can just make out a flatbed truck travelling at what appears to be high speed. W
e all glance down as a much bigger lorry appears from around a corner coming in the opposite direction. The two vehicles are about two hundred feet apart but neither seems to be slowing down to give way.

  Hassan says nothing but continues watching the scene down below intently. The lorry is forced to the edge of the track where there is a drop of at least 500 feet. The smaller vehicle surges past the lorry hooting its horn loudly but not even slowing down to acknowledge the existence of the other, much bigger vehicle.

  ‘Okay,’ says Hassan. ‘I must be careful what I say from now on. The men from Tangier are here.’

  Down below us, the Moroccans Leff and Fara, whom I met through Si in Tangier two days earlier, jump out of a gleaming $35,000 Nissan flatbed truck. A strong wind is starting to blow in from the east and an uneasy feeling is suddenly in the air.

  CHAPTER 3

  LEFF AND FARA

  It soon emerges that Leff and his associate Fara have a part-share in Hassan’s hash farm and they immediately make it clear who’s in charge as they check the ‘produce’, which lies in sacks outside the front of the shack. Fara’s backstory is chilling and disturbing. He was first recruited into the ‘business’ as a thirteen-year-old street hustler in Tangier by an older man who sexually abused him. He ended up killing the man and taking over his hash connections. No one objected because the older man had a reputation as a sexual predator, so many were happy to see the end of him, according to Leff.

  Leff is Fara’s cousin and that’s how he got involved in the hash trade. He explains: ‘It’s like the Wild West out here but there is such great demand for hash in Tangier and Europe that it made sense to put some money into Hassan’s farm and begin a proper production line.’

  I’m already beginning to suspect that Leff and Fara wouldn’t hesitate to intimidate Hassan, especially since Hassan shrinks very much into the background following the arrival of the two Tangier gangsters.

  Fara seems much more edgy than when we first met in Tangier. He even complains about my presence to both Si and Leff, despite having agreed everything two days earlier. ‘He is worried because we make it a rule never to allow other people up here in case they tell criminals about our business,’ says Leff. Si and I try to reassure him we have no intention of doing that.

  Then Leff shrugs his shoulders. ‘I told Fara it’s good for people out there who smoke to understand how difficult it is to get them their hash. It’s not an easy business. The Kif is handled by many people before it gets to places like London. Sometimes I think the people who smoke it over there think it gets picked up from the mountainside and driven straight to Piccadilly Circus. If only …’

  Leff is eloquent and confident and reveals that he is university educated. He even spent a year in London learning English at a language school in Fulham, west London. ‘I wish I was there now. I love London. One day I hope to have enough money to buy myself a work permit and settle over there with a beautiful English girl.’ It’s such a pat reply I presume he must be telling the truth.

  But, I ask Leff, how does a well-educated, middle-class Tangier resident end up working in the underworld as a hash dealer? ‘It’s simple. The money is fucking good, my friend,’ he says. ‘I went to school with Fara when we were just ten years old. He left at fourteen and then had some problems but he’s turned his life around now. When I met him again I was twenty-one, just out of university with a degree but there were no jobs in Tangier. Fara had a BMW and a rich life. I had nothing. When he asked me if I wanted to work with him, I jumped at the chance.’

  Fara appeared at the doorway to Hassan’s shack and barked some orders in Arabic to Leff. ‘He’s still suspicious of you. He keeps saying he thinks you’re working for the police.’ Then Leff slapped my thigh playfully and added: ‘Only joking!’

  But it was clear after I learned about Fara’s disturbing past that he was the trigger-happy one of the pair. He constantly seemed on edge and Leff spent much of his time calming his partner down. ‘Fara says I bring him back down to earth. He needs me with him otherwise he would lose his temper and end up dead.’ Leff laughed again but I suspected he was telling the truth.

  I then ask about their families back in Tangier. What do they think about their ‘career’? Leff smiles yet again: ‘They know what I do and they’re cool with it because Kif is an important industry for the Moroccan economy. In any case a lot of people in Tangier smoke hash. It’s no big deal.’

  Just then Fara sits down on a big stone outside the shack and lights up a massive spliff, takes three huge sucks on it and then passes it to Leff, saying something in Arabic.

  It’s just become apparent that both Leff and Fara have one classic weakness. They adore smoking hash. Surely that breaks the golden rule for any professional criminals involved with the drug?

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ Leff says with a shrug. ‘We both love to smoke but we make sure it doesn’t affect our ability to make money from Kif.’

  The effect of the hash seems to calm both Fara and Leff down and they drift effortlessly from hard-nosed criminals into slightly vulnerable-looking young Moroccan men, who obviously find hash the best way to try and forget their problems.

  Hassan the farmer, meanwhile, is now back inside the shack going through the final stages of the process to produce more hash for the middlemen. He is pouring it into ten-kilo sacks. Hassan delivers yet another sack outside to the now vacant looking Fara, who opens it and smells it like Hannibal Lector inhaling a fava bean stew. Fara looks up, grins broadly and passes the bag to Leff, who performs a similar task before tying up the bag and casually leaving it on the ground.

  It’s only then I enquire about the value of such a bag. Leff says in English: ‘That’s worth maybe $100,000 in Europe.’ Then he laughs. ‘But we make sure that Hassan doesn’t realise it!’

  Over the following half an hour, Fara and Leff load the bags onto the back of the flatbed truck below before announcing they will meet us back in Ketama, at the base of the vast valley. We all agree it would be ‘indiscreet’ if they were seen in a convoy with our vehicle.

  Si – who himself had sucked on a couple of joints over the previous half an hour – merrily acts as intermediary. He even adds: ‘They’re right. A convoy filled with strangers could really wind up the locals.’

  Just before departing, Hassan reappears from inside the shack and talks to me through Si. ‘He wants to know how much Kif costs in the UK.’ There is an awkward wall of silence as it becomes clear that Fara and Leff are listening to this exchange. Fara butts in and screams something in Arabic at Hassan. Si translates: ‘He’s just told Hassan to mind his own fucking business.’

  Hassan does yet another of his customary shrugging of the shoulders and tries to laugh it off. But then Fara yells even more angrily at Hassan. Hassan shouts back and for a moment the two men have a face-off as they try to stare each other down. Eventually, Leff intercedes and laughs while he tells them both to calm down.

  As Fara walks off down the hill towards his truck with the last bag of Kif, he looks up at Hassan, still standing outside his shack with his arms folded, glaring at the other man with a snarling expression on his face.

  Minutes later we set off ahead of the flatbed so as not to be seen driving in convoy to Ketama. I turned and looked behind me to see Fara still glaring up at Hassan in the distance.

  That’s when I decided that Fara must have been the same man who’d threatened to rape Hassan’s wife.

  *

  It’s now mid-afternoon in Ketama and there is no sign of Fara or Leff in a dusty layby on the edge of town, where we had arranged to meet them. After more than half an hour of waiting, Si walks me to the nearby souk, which is awash with dozens of traders, all pushing to sell their wares, from food to silk. Within this general market place, Si takes me to a discreet shop, where he’s quickly ushered inside. Here you can buy a ‘Caramelo’ or ‘egg’, which is a small pre-packed amount of hash, wrapped in clingfilm. Amateur smugglers can buy it, swallow it, and then trav
el over the border en route to Europe. People tend to buy between five and fifty at any one time. Si gives me a chilling first-hand account of how he met such Westerners in jail.

  ‘They’re fuckin’ stupid because the clingfilm is paper-thin and there is a danger it can burst inside you and then you’re in real trouble,’ explains Si. ‘I knew one guy who came here twice from Newcastle. He bought four dozen packs and then swallowed the lot with a bottle of castor oil to help them slip down more easily. First time he did it was a doddle but when he came back he got greedy and swallowed even more packs and, surprise, surprise, two of them burst as he got off the plane the other end. He was lucky there was a doctor at the airport but he ended up serving three years for smuggling. Stupid bastard, eh?’

  Just then Leff finally calls me from his mobile. As he speaks, I can tell he’s stoned because he keeps laughing and there is the sound of his associate Fara doing likewise in the background. They are clearly off their heads and I can just make out from Leff that they are in a cafe halfway down the mountainside. I’m irritated because I have to be back in Tangier as quickly as possible to catch a ferry to Algeciras in Spain, where I have an appointment with a Costa del Sol hash baron that very same evening.

  I know that Leff is fishing for a ‘fee’ from me, even though I told him I could not afford to pay anything for their help. Suddenly, the friendly potted-out voice changes tone.

  ‘You must wait for us,’ says Leff. ‘Or there may be problems. We need to discuss the expenses.’

  I didn’t like the coldness in his voice so I ignored his comment about money and told Leff I would wait for him but he must hurry up. Keeping Leff calm seemed a sensible move.

  Si doesn’t sound in the least bit surprised when I explain what has happened. ‘Sounds like it’s the devil or the deep blue sea, mate.’