Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY Saturday, Januor ry 25, 1975 EEll MlEW Part Two Ml usings from Marrakech "We sat and smoked French cigarettes for about twenty minutes and then stomped off to find 'Snack Hippies.' That couldn't actually exist; too obvious, I thought, to be real. But there it was." By DAVID GARFINKEL I MUST PREFACE this by saying that I gave up drugs (chemicals and can- nabis) after a particularly hairy elec- tric punch a few years ago at a Grate- ful Dead New Year's Eve marathon at Winterland in San Francisco. I'm pretty easy to please with coffee, alcohol, cig- arettes and an occasional cold pill. But coming into Marrakech on a pleas- ant warm sunny afternoon on Decem- ber 30 . . . "Marrakech the Rose" they call it . . . Well, it was just like run- ning into an old friend after a long time. And how can you turn y o u r back on an old ,friend? Now, Dotsen had no such qualms wha4- soever. Ile just wanted to get stoned on his ass. However, we arrived under unusual circumstances, to say the least. My friend Dotsen Acronym (not his real name) had been regurgitating his life away for the 1st five hours. I had called it "the best meal of my life" the night before in Casablanca, but his stom- ach didn't agree. I had to carry his pack and shoulder bag in addition to my own gear. Since he was reduced to saying "Water . . . water . . . water " I also had to handle a very sketchy map to find our way into town from the train station. ANOTHER PROBLEM which we were unprepared for was that Marakech was full-up with other pleasure-seekers for the vacation. We found a cafe co serve as our base while I went from place to place, getting a string as long as my arm of "sorry sir - full up's" and seeing in my mind's eye Dotsen, bent over the cafe table, two steps away from the death rattle. I went back and told him all the mod- erately-priced places in the business dis- trict, where we were, were full up. What about a place in the Medina (old town)? I'asked.. With a tremendous effort he .,ummon- ed his reserve and screamed at me, "No cockroaches, damn you! Let me die in a clean place!" and slumped back onto the table. I shrugged. I figured he probably had that right. So I slipped my shades off, ran a comb through my hair, straight- ened my collar and as a last effort, strutted into the Mamounia, the classiest place I've ever seen. Every conceiv- able luxury except a beach, but we'd already had that one and all we really needed was a couple of beds .. . I WAS QUITE sure that when the desk clerk saw me he was going to call the police or the bouncer in the bar, but with professional serenity he asked me in good French if he could help me. We arranged a room for twen- ty dollars for the night, almost un- heard of by Moroccan standards but affordable for one night for us. Acronym now in bed, I made a pan- icky phone call to the American em- bassy in Rabat to get a list of doc- tors. "All you have to do is look in the phone book," said the annoyed secretary in a twangy Midwestern ac- cent. "Look, you're going to be handling the funeral arrangements in a couple of days!" I exloded. "So you might as well help me out now, while he's still alive." I finally got my list, in case of emergency. Dotsen wanted to sleep. I told him I was going up to the Medina to see what I could round up. The Medina is the ancient section of the city, where dope and veiled corruption flow smooth- ly. To the visitor, it can be remark- ably welcoming, or it can be infernally hostile. WHAT: HAPPENED to me in the next four hours would take so long to fully explain that I can only give the high- lights. After taking the No. 3 bus up to the Medina, I wandered around, look- ing for a cheap hotel for New Year's Eve. Everyone was friendly to me, for the first time in a while, and I felt un- cannily at east. I found one and made a reservation at the dirt-cheap Moura- tania for the next night, on the blind faith that Acronym would miraculously recover. That settled, I sat down at a modest cafe and ordered a cafe au lait. A little old lady in a red raincoat and a bon- net came by with a small package about the size of a deck of cards. "What I have in here is of great in- terest to you," she said in French. "Tell me more," I said, my curiosity aroused. "Your future, your fate, all the good and evil in the world. I have the an- swers to your problems. All I ask of you is one dirham." AFTER FURTHER discussion it turn- ed out that she was a gypsy fortune teller. I was quite troubled about my immediate future then and anxious for any new insights. Little of what she had to say at first was much held. I was soon to receive an important letter. A young girl more lovely than I, she said mysteriously, would fall madly in love with me. I was about to embark on a successful finan- cial venture concerning a lawyer and a military installation. Then I asked her about Acronym. He was suffering a "malady of the spirit" but he would snap out of it soon, she assured me. I paid her the dirham, and we were both satisfied. Then I paid for the coffee and left her to wander around the Jamaa El F'na, or the "Square" as it is popularly known. It is a vaguely triangular arrangement of stalls selling the familiar items, with side-shows of dancers and snake-charm- ers running all day. I found out later that the man who sells pipes iso does a regular business, over-the-counter, in hash and keef. He can arrange for more powerful drugs within half an hour. AT ANY RATE I did not know about him at the time. But there were plenty of people who knew about me, or at least that I was an American student in search of a Marrakech drug exper- ience. One who I felt I could trust - by this time that expression had taken on a very relative meaning, since no one can truly be "trusted" in Marrakech -- and I started talking and walking around. He said his name was Abdul. I explained my situation and we arranged a tenta- tive meeting the next morning at 10:00. The sun was setting and I wanted to get out of the Medina and back to the Mamounia. I caught the bus and made my way to the hotel room. There was Dotsen, sleeping as peacefully as a baby. I nudged him gently on the should- er. "Urrrrr," he growled at me. "What do you want?" "Just wake up for a minute," I told him. "I've got some good news for you." He rolled over and went back to sleep. I WENT BACK out and had dinner. When I came back I was able to con- vince him to wake up after about fifteen minutes of persuasion. "Now listen," I said. "You've got to get better, because tomorrow is New Year's Eve and I've made some con- nections for dope." Yes, I had said the MAGIC WORD. Color came back into his face. Fire filled his eyes and glee danced upon his smile. "You did?" he replied, ebul- liant. "Yes, I did. But you're gonna have to get better so we can move to the Me- dina. It's not safe here in town. Too many tourists, for one thing." "But we're tourists," he said with confusion. He was still heavy with sleep. "Never mind," I said as if the decis- ion had already been made. "Get some sleep now, 'cause the Medina's a real trip and you're gonna want to look end feel your best." DOTSEN GAVE me a big idiotic grin. I could tell he was coming back into the world of the living and I felt relieved. But I didn't want him to o.d. on too big a hit of good health all at once. "I've got it all arranged. So jst get some sleep and I'll see you in the morn- ing. Goodnight." I walked out of the room and slammed the door. I found my way to the hotel bar. Drinks were reasonably priced but I didn't care what they -ost, it had been a long day and I needed a few. About eight screwdrivers were enough to send me upstairs sleepy. I woke up the next morning with a splitting headache. Dotsen was moving slowly but he was having no trouble waking up. I called room service and barked for tw cafe- and-croissant breakfasts on the double, because we were in a hurry. Naturally Dotsen wasn't too up for eating, but what he did eat he snarged down. From the sound of it, I could have sworn he was sniffing a funny white powder. WE TOOK a taxi up to the Medina and met Abdul in the Square. He walked to our hotel with us and we checked in and put our packs in the room. The Mouratania was clean but extremely basic; the toilet was a "squat," there was no hot water and the beds were thin. Abdul wanted to get right down to business and we agreed. He tried to sell us "hash cookies" but luckily Dotsen had heard about those debilitating mon- sters, so he said with a wink that we were "just smoking" and Abdul grin- ned and nodded knowingly, Abdul then proposed ten grams of hash and ten grams of keef, for start- ers. He would also throw in a pipe. We were to give him five dirhams for good faith and meet him at "Snack Hippies" in half an hour to give him 35 more dirhams and complete the transaction. We figured if we came away with half that much we would be getting a very good deal by our standards, so after some ceremonial bickering over the price, we gave him the five dirhams (about $1.15) and shook hands on the deal. WE SAT and smoked French cigar- ettes for about twenty minutes and then stomped off to find "Snack Hippies." That couldn't actually exist; too obvious, I thought, to be real. But there it was. The morning crowd was already there smoking keef, and we were casually welcomed. Abdul showed up about fifteen minutes late. "There's a rush because of New Year's," he explained apologetically, loud enough for everyone to hear. "I had to go to a little extra trouble to get this." I wasn't sure what he was doing, but everyone around me was smirking. Dot- sen nudged me hard in the ribs. "Does HE POCKETED the money quickly, no doubt making a handsome profit. "And nothing for me?" he asked in a hurt tone of voice. Dotsen and I glanced at each other. We had payed the going rate . . . why pay more I thought for a moment and said, "Well, sure, why don't you smoke some more with us and have some tea?" He realized that he was wasting prec- ious time, and flashed an embarrassed grin. "Uh, I have a lot of customers waiting on the Jamaa. So I'll see you later, my friends. Bonne annee!" We shook hands, and he sliped unobtrusively out of the restaurant. Dotsen and I or- dered mint tea and smoked for a couple of hours. We got very, very high. But we never saw Abdul again. We spent a good week in Marrakech. That night, we tried smoking pure keef. It looks a lot like finely ground pot. But it comes on with such an incrediblc wal- lop that at one point I felt like my head had disappeared. Dotsen was very high himself and noticed my condition. "I'VE NEVER really been this high before," he said, helpfully. already made plane reservations from Casablanca to Marseilles. I woke up at three on the morning we were supposed to leave. Dotsen was sleeping in a cheap Casablanca bed. "Wake up, you fool!" I screamed at him. "I've got six grams of assorted goodies in my pack and we've got to smoke it all now. Only five hours until flight, time." "Urrrr," he responded. "Wake UP, motherf.....r," I said. Then I threatened him. "Or else I'll smoke it all myself." THAT WORKED. We had discussed the possibility of trying to sneak it through, but we had never come to a decision. I had been dreaming of being led to one of France's 18th-century chateaux- turned-into-prisons and I realized now that there was only one srolution. He was up in a flash. He doubted the wisdom of my move but when he saw I meant business he pulled on his cloth- es. We then smoked for three and a half hours, until we had to get the airport bus. You would have to search long and hard to find two more messed up people. We laughed all the way to the airport. I wrote in my notebook, "have you ever seen anything funnier than the sun rising?" Casablanca's International Airport at Nonasser is among the most disordered entities in the civilized world. We were forced to play soccer with our baggages, but our behavior got very weird. A Swiss couple looked at us with some concern. A French tourist who was very pushy accidentally got elbowed in the kidney by some clumsy laughing Amer- ican and expertly tripped by another. But they were so quick he never found out who they were. I WAS VERY hungry but there were only five minutes left to board. I thought that we only had time for coffee but Dotsen had the sense to start moving toward the plane. The passport control looked like just another waiter to me. "Votre passeport, sil vous plait." "Pas de blague, brave monsieur. Un cafe an lait. Vitre! J'suis presse!" He looked at me incredulously. "Votre passeport, monsieur," he said with anioy- ance. Maybe they were only serving coffee with passports. I fished out my passport. He stamped it and waved me through. "Pas de cafe? Pas du tout?" 1 yelled back at him. He looked at One first with a bewildered expression, and then with total disgust. "C'mon already!" Dotsen said, grab- bing at my arm. We only had two min- utes left. THE PLANE ride was very smooth. I spent most of my time singing to myself and watching the cloud formations out- side. A few hours later we were in Mar- seilles. At customs, I walked r i g h t through, but Dotsen got stopped. Where are you going," said the Cus- toms Man. "Back to Aix, I'm a foreign student there." Dotsen showed him the visa. "And I have nothing to declare." "So you have absolutely noting!" ex- claimed the jubillant Frenchman. And he nodded my friend through. Well, if we had only known," we could have brought back pounds . . but as I was telling Dotsen yesterday, I wouldn't really want to smoke here. I'm not much of a doper anyway, and ... "Oh, bulls t. That's sour grapes and you know it," Dotsen said to me. And we killed off a liter of wine between us, and each went our separate ways. David Garfinkel is a Dulty European Correspondent studying in Aix-en-Prov- ence, France. "'Your future, your fate, all the good and evil in the world. I have the answers to your problems. All I ask of you is one dirham,' said the gypsy fortuneteller." he have it?" he asked me. "Do you have it?" I asked Abdul. "I mean, man, are you holding?" A couple of Americans at the other end of the room cracked up. Abdul smiled at me and produced a pipe, a paper packet and a cellophane wrapper from a pack of cigarettes which held at least ten grams of dark brown hashish. "I have it," he said simply. HE THEN filled the very small bowl of a long-stemmed pipe which resembled a wooden flute, about three quarters of an inch in diameter, with a mixture of keef and hash. "You should always try it before you buy it," he said to me with mock seriousness. "That is the custom." He lit the pipe and passed it to Dotsen. Dotsen took a long toke and passed the pipe to me. I had been straight for over a year and had smoked little for the last two years. I took a toke and felt my head shoot right through the ceiling. Trying to hold it in, I coughed with such force that Dotsen later told me he saw the windows shake. "Nice stuff," 1 said with the best toothy smile I could muster. "You like it, and you will pay me 3 dirhams," Abdul said. No argument with that. "Yeah, y'know, a deal's a deal," I said in my best busi- ness voice, quickly withdrew the four bills from my pocket and slapped them on the table. I coughed about ten times and took a drink of water. We were in our hotel room. "Acid?" I squawked. He thought about it for about five minutes. In a moment of great clarity he stated, "Oh, well, that's difLerent." We met a lot of people, including the travellers of what my friend Paul O'Don- nell calls the "Amsterdam'd-Marrakecli highway." "Yeah, I think I just spent three weeks sitting in this youth hostel in Amsterdam. Just smoking hash,' a guy from Toronto told me. "It was alright. But I know this one guy who spent six months there. Anyone want a hit of this hash powder, hey?" There were a lot of people we met like that. For a traveller. drugs are hard to come by elsewhere in Europe or Af- rica unless you "know" some people. On the other hand, Marrakesh and Am- sterdam are both wide open for s o f t drugs. THEN, LIKE THE end of a beautiful dream, it w*s time to come back to Aix and go to school. Dotsen and I would not tend to stay too long in Marrakech if we could help it. We had spared no expense to make sure tnat we got back easily; and by this time I had been through a chain of bronchitis, a fever, a sore throat, a bad headcold and dyna- mite cough - all because of too much smoking. We would still be in Marrakech, rather than facing the prospect of those awful Spanish trains, except we had IT, f, I I ~4e £ripian at Eighty-four years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan tII BRIIE-iE: If both sides lead same suit, one is crazy Letters to The Daily (t I by FRANK BELL Saturday, January 25, 1975 News Phone: 764-0552 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104 Consumers hurt by lx law POSSIBLY MORE SO than any other state in this land, Michigan can be stereotyped as a one-industry state, and for good eason. No way around it; Wolverine State has al- ways lived and died by the economic fortunes of the ,automobile, a condi- tion never more starkly apparent than during the present economic crunch. But before becoming permanently resigned to Michigan's place at the short end of the recessionary stick, issue of prescription drugs. , In every state but Michigan and Florida, doctors are allowed to pre- scribe a specific brand name drug even it the generic, or common name, equivalent is available at cheaper cost. Many of the larger pharma- ceutical companies produce several brands of drugs which are chemical- ly identical, differing only in cost and packaging. I TNDER current federal and most When today's hand arose in a recent duplicate game at the Crystal House Motel, most pairs found themselves stuck in some number of hearts and going down one or two tricks doubled. But West's seemingly sound double and a slight slip in the defense gave one declarer the key to his contract. Too strong to overcall two hearts, South made a take out double of East's one spade bid. West passed, North responded two clubs, and East bid two diamonds. South now revealed his strong one suited hand with a jump to three hearts, and North correctly judged to raise to four hearts. East and South passed, and West doubled. Neither Vul. NORTH K54 The East 14 2+ Pass bidding: South DBL 3V Pass Opening lead: six of spades. When the dummy hit the table, South realized that West must have at least four, if not all five of the outstanding trump for his double. Accordingly, he won East's spade queen with the ace and led his diamond, preparatory to shortening him- self with a diamond ruff. East, unable to comprehend why declarer was leading dia- monds, won his jack and made the fatal error of continuing with the king. This was all South needed. Ruffing the diamond, declarer led a spade to the king and ruf- fed another diamond. He now cashed the ace of clubs, led a West Pass Pass DBL North 24 4V ethics fidelity becomes a worse crime than the napalming of a Viet- To The Daily: namese village. Using a four- ONE OF THE least noted yet letter word is greeted with more most foreboding outcomes of the disgust than the economic ex- Watergate affair is the re-emer- ploitation of millions by multi- gence of the traditional, con- national corporations. T h u s , servative Sunday-School-moral- despite the valiant efforts of ity ethic in the United States. some the bombing of Cambod- This ethic holds that the great- ia was not included in the arti- est of "sins" are those vices Iles of impeachment approved so often preached against by by the House. spinsterly little old lady Sunday THE WATERGATE episode school teachers and conserva- has caused such morality to re- tive "fire and brimstone" gain its former ren