Hash by Wensley Clarkson Read Free Book Online

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 oneclassic 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