Ketama: Morocco’s Hash Capital
Ketama, Morocco – You don’t even have to get to Ketama to discover you are in kif country. Over 25 miles away, on the rudimentary road that leads from Chaouen to Ketama, a teenage boy in a djellaba stands by the side of the road waving his arms and shouting. What he is shouting is “Hashish! Hashish!”
He is holding a small red-paper packet. “You want to buy some hash?” he asks in a friendly way, and comes to the window of the car. He opens the packet, revealing the familiar green-gray fine powder. Another boy comes over from his position down the road to offer a smaller package of the same thing. He wants 30 dirhams ($6) for what he says is 120 grams, but we pass up this deal.
A good thing, too, for just 25 kilometers up the road on an uphill grade, two Royal Moroccan policemen wave us over to the side of the road. Both policemen, dapper and military in gray uniform and red-banded caps, walk over to the car. They come on very official. The older one with the mustache stands back looking stern and Arab while the young one speaks to us in French.
One by one, he asks us for our documents: passports, insurance green card, automobile registration book, international driver’s license. He studies each gravely, turning it over in his hand and then peering once more into the car at us as if to express grave doubt that either we or our papers are legitimate. Then he confers with his partner at length in Arabic.
He looks up again. “Where are you going?”
He knows, and I know he knows: “Ketama.”
“Ah,” he says. “Why?”
“Pour le tourisme,” I reply. We both smile.
“Not for the hashish?”
“Oh, no. Never.”
“Now really,” the cop insists. “You’re going to Ketama for hash. You like hash. Everybody likes hash.”
“Not me,” I repeat innocently. “For the tourism.”
“But you have heard that Ketama has hashish?” he demands.
This is too obvious to deny. “Yes. I’ve heard that.”
Aha! The cop pounces: “And that’s what you’re going for, right?”
“Ah, no. Not at all,” I insist.
Stalemate. The kif policeman gives up on me and turns to Anna. She explains right out of Fodor’s Morocco 1970: “Ketama is a beautiful place, with lots of hunting and fishing.”
“Ah, yes,” says the cop, “hunting for the hashish.”
“No, no, no,” we laugh.
“Yes,” he insists with finality. But he hands back our papers, gives us a mock salute and says, meaningfully: “I’ll see you later.”
A short while later we pull into Ketama’s main—and only—street. (We’d gotten a bit lost and stopped to ask a goatherder the way. He had some kif he was interested in selling.) The first citizen we meet is a boy of about 12 who flags our car down. Whatever can he want?
“Hey, you want hash?” he asks, pulling a flat, cellophane-wrapped wafer the size of a giant-sized Hershey out of his dark brown djellaba and shoving it in through the window of the car. “Premier qualitee,” he adds.
We hand the six ounces or so of hash around, admiring it. “Maybe later,” we say. “We’ll be at the hotel.”
This is pretty obvious. The 75 room Hotel Tidighine, a posh hotel for tourists, hunters and fishermen, looms over the squatness of downtown Ketama like a giant matchbox. We park in front of the hotel, and magically, another boy appears at the side of the car. Of all things, he wants to sell us some nice hash. Perhaps, we smile, but later, and we start toward the Tidighine with our bags.
As we leave, the boy gives us a meaningful look and warns: “Nix confiance aux hotel,” meaning: Don’t trust anybody at the hotel or they’ll do you.
Right you are.
Except for staff, the lobby is deserted. The desk clerk looks pleased when we say we’ll take a 40 dirham ($8) room, and a white-coated bellboy grabs our bags. As we follow him through the lobby the few customers in the bar watching television and drinking beer seem to follow us with their eyes.
After the bellboy puts down the bags, opens the terrace door, turns on the lights and flushes the toilet, he stands with one hand on the door, apparently about to go. But he closes the door, puts his back to it and says in a nervous half-whisper:
“I’m not just a bellboy. I do business, too. I can get you stuff. We go in my car to my house. Just ten kilometers. No trouble with the police.”
Later that night I go out for a walk. Except for the brightly lit hotel with its three phallic gasoline pumps out front, Ketama is seemingly dark and quiet. Not a soul except me is at large on the street. I walk coolly and casually down the block-long row of small white-washed shops.
At the end of the block is a small cafe with a light showing through the partially open door. At least I can buy some mint tea there. But who is in the cafe but my old buddy, the kid in the brown djellaba who offered us the hash that afternoon. He greets me eagerly, and shows me to a table. No sooner does my tea arrive, than a young Moroccan with curly hair appears at my table, and I offer him a seat.
Ketama: Morocco’s Hash Capital, Page 1 of 3