When we got off the ferry in North Africa we boarded a bus to Tangier. Moroccan border officials boarded the bus and challenged an American sitting in front of us. He had long hair pushed up under his hat. Rather than being polite, pleasant, and cooperative, he took the exact same attitude and approach that I have proved was the decidedly wrong approach to border crossing officials.
« Fuck you, » he said with bravado.
The two guards bodily carried the young man off the bus and with the assistance of others threw him on the ground. With guards sitting on him one did the sheep shearing till his hair was all gone and bleeding scalp was left. Crying he got back on the bus. We all headed onto Tangiers. Our introduction to a sometimes brutal nation.
When we got off the bus, street urchins tried to grab our packsacks, our only possessions and all our worldly goods, insisting on letting them carry our bags for a fee. We told them ‘no’ and carried our own bags. What would stop them running off with our bags? The boys and some teens then began to pelt us with rocks. We were being stoned and it hurt. Baiba was less than impressed as she ducked missiles.
« What should we do? » I asked Gerry.
« Throw bigger rocks. « I thought that a great idea.
So began my greatest rock and stone fight with our side winning and the street urchins dispersing bleeding. Gerry and I were very good throws. Baiba’s had not participated and stayed behind her ‘guardian knights’.
When we arrived Ramadan was in progress. We were told everyone was fasting and there was no food to be had.
We were shocked and unprepared. I thought the situation desperate until a kind Moroccan took us into the back of his cafe and said that because we were foreigners he could feed us. We ate then and drank, the weather being terribly hot and dry. The only thing was, that a mere few hours later when sun down came everyone began feasting. Knowing Hindu and Christian ‘fasting’ we simply hadn’t considered not eating in day light hours anything of a hardship especially with the orgy of fare that appeared everywhere in the night with all the restaurants open and doing brisk business.
I was smoking a pipe these days. I’d had fine meershams and ornate German ones and corn cobs. I’d run out of British Three Nuns pipe tobacco in Spain. I really did like the flavour and smell of Three Nuns. In Spain though the tobacco industry had become state controlled. This resulted in there only being two types of tobacco. The merchants told me
« There are only two types of pipe tobacco in Spain. One tastes good and smells like shit and the other smells bad and tastes like shit. ».
I took the one that supposedly tasted good and it sure did smell like shit.
Sitting down in our first evening in Tangiers a young man sat beside me in the outdoor cafe where I was having delicious Turkish coffee and smoking my pipe.
« That smells like shit. » he said.
« I know it but it tastes good. »
« The other Spanish tobacco tastes like shit and smells like shit. »
« You know. »
‘Every one knows.’
He took my stubby pipe and pounded it empty on the side of the table. Then he filled my pipe from his pouch.
« Here smoke this. It tastes good and smells good. »
I did and he was right. A major improvement over Spanish Tobaco.
It was high grade hashish. He offered me a large big chocolate bar of it for roughly $20. In Canada a thousands of that would have cost as much. Gerry and Baiba were soon as enamoured with Morocco as I.
The next day a hotel owner on the water front asked us if we would move into her penthouse suite for next to nothing. We were glad to. The reason was a young American woman had been murdered just inside the entrance. They’d done their best to get the blood stain on the floor out and were going to get a new rug to cover it. But she said people were superstitious and no one would pay what it was worth until someone else had stayed there. We were definitely not superstitious and for something like $10 a week we were staying in a luxury penthouse looking out on the harbour. It would have normally cost a thousand.
At that time the telephone poles had lots of pictures of missing American and Canadian girls. We were told that the white slave and sex trade was the most likely explanation. Years later I’d read Maggie Trudeau’s ludicrous memoirs of her time in Morocco and how it was so safe for her and her girlfriend to roam alone through the streets unaccompanied. What she failed to mention was she was with the Australian Rugby Team. Moroccan hospitality was really wonderful for men and men with women. But women alone didn’t roam the streets without major risk of disappearing especially blonds who fetched a higher price.
I actually sold Baiba for a camel. We were in this shop. He’d asked me what I wanted and I’d joked that I wanted a live camel as at that time I’d never ridden one and fancied myself Lawrence of Arabia, my favourite movie. He asked me if I’d trade ‘the woman’ for a live camel. I was having fun bartering in Morocco and would be told often that when I did I got better prices than the locals. I just considered it a tremendous waste of time but for people without sex and other entertainments it appeared that business and bartering was their only orgasmic activity. With my pipe always full of hashish time slowed down and I was content to barter. Just like playing chess which Gerry and I spent hours doing.
I shook my head and the the merchant raise his bid to three camels and perhaps a horse and some carpets and a camel saddle. An old bearded guy he kept dying Baiba lasciviously, sort of drooling out of the corner of his mouth while I kept indicated more. I was doing well. Baiba had been looking at jewelry and came over to ask what I was doing.
« I’ve traded you for three camels, a horse and couple of rugs and a camel saddle so far. ». She was aghast and furious.
« You’re not serious ».
« I’m pretty sure I can do better. »
« They’re not joking, Bill. This isn’t funny,. »
Well at that two more men with knives appeared. I realized she might be right. It was looking like we were going to have difficulty leaving the two new guys moving to bar our exit. Baiba darted past me for the street and I was a close second. The men from the store stopped chasing us within a block when we returned to the main thorough fare.
Baiba was very angry. She wasn’t going out by herself already with either Gery or myself accompanying her.
Not that many nights later I was having a Turkish coffee and a smoke writing poetry in the kasbah, or inner walled city. We’d been told it was not safe for foreigners to be in there after dark. During the day it was wonderfully exotic. I loved the boys carrying large circular flat bread on their heads. Stalls had beautifully coloured birds for sale. Old men smoke opium from water pipes
I was finishing up a poem and noted the light dying but I was moving slowly. Like one does when mother calls for dinner and you’re doing something you as a child think is more important. Twilight and danger were rapidly approaching.
The minute I stepped away from the cafe veranda two men with short curved swords tried to pounce on me. Literally jumped together right out of the dark alleyway swinging and jabbing their weapons. They would have cut me or run me threw if I’d not been quick of foot and richly blessed. It was a life and death chase with me knocking over clothing racks and running around and over displays of rugs. The knife and sword wielding thugs stayed hot behind me faces covered with scarves.
No one seemed to care. It was as if the locals were somehow in agreement with these men « policing’ their kasbah from foreigners. If I was killed and robbed it would have been no matter. As it was I ran very fast and was very thankful to be out of the Kasbah gate. They didn’t follow. The new city was better lit and more cosmopolitan.
The kasbah had been fine during the day but never again at night. It was where the old men sat in little rooms smoking opium from long water pipes and illicit transactions took place. We tended to stay together, the three of us, after I shared my near death or near maiming encounter.
It really was exotic though and relatively safe in the day. We loved Tangiers. It really was so different from anything we’d known. It brought back memories of the movie Casablanca and men really did wear the Fez. The Moroccans were very hospitable. After a week or two we were told that our presence had sufficiently cleansed the apartment , that it could be marketed again at it’s legitimate steep rate. . The murderers had not returned to kill us either. We moved into to a little less appealing room very modest rooms away from the harbour.
Minarets. Daily prayers. Early music blaring. Calls to prayer. The delicious sea food. Hashish and more hashish. I smoked my pipe with hashish as if it was regular tobacco. We were all in a dreamy state the whole time in Morocco except when Baiba feared she’d been traded for camels or I was fleeing for my life. We were so relaxed. I don’t remember much of our weeks there consequently. We were there some time and not wanting to leave. We didn’t have the money to go further and headed back to Europe to return to England knowing it was time to get work.
I had a chocolate bar of hashish in my jacket as we were in line to board the ferry. We saw that everyone was being searched so we began to devour the hashish unwilling to let it go to waste. We’re lucky we didn’t get acute hashish poisoning. As it was a major storm came up suddenly at sea and the lower floors of the ferry were flooding with the water coming through the portals. I remember going to the head to pee and seeing half the guests and crew in there puking., the floor awash with vomit. The sea was so bad the crew were sick.
Yet there were Gerry Baiba and myself full of anti nauseus, anti sea sickness hashish, totally unperturbed by the motion. Unstoned it would have been quite frightening to see such high seas , a hundred foot at the time, crashing over the three story ferry which was having a terrible time making headway. Passing through the freak squall we eventually arrived safely on the other side.
We loved returning to Algeciras. We’d purchased magnificent white lambskin coats for the cold northern weather and decided to ship our bikes and most of our possession north planning on selling the bikes in London; Spain was impoverished and no one could pay anything like what the bikes were worth.
We hitchiked to Calais and took the ferry to England. We saw the White Cliffs of Dover and were so thankful to hear English being spoken by everyone. We’d been in foreign lands for months. Being able to understand everyone was such a joy even though some of the accents made the language still obtuse.
Our first disappointment was finding out that our bicycles and gear hadn’t arrived. It would be a month or so late in transit. We had used the last of our money on the ferry for some English pastry and tea. A celebration. We walked into a temporary agency and immediately were offered jobs in clerical. Further we found a cheap flat with a flush toilet outside the basement suite door and a radiator that ran on bobs. We’d late find the hedge came with the sweetest little resident hedge hog.
The final part of our plan was a trip to the Canadian Consulate. I’d forever be impressed by the Canadian consulate overseas at the time. Our Foreign Affairs and beurocrats in general in these days were the thing of the English civil service. A matter of pride and true service sadly often absent in today smug government bureaucrat. . Then was a great era.
« Yes how can I help you, » this well dressed kindly older man asked.
« We are flat broke. We arrived from Europe and our bicycles we had hoped to sell for immediate cash haven’t arrived. We’ve a flat we can have rent free the first month and we each have jobs that will start to morrow. We can throw ourselves on your mercy or our parents would have to pay you for flying us back home or you could lend us 50 quid and we’d pay it back next month when we get our pay. »
« Well that’s well thought through and you’ve done what you needed to do so we’ll spot you fifty but you’ll need to leave us your passports. »
« Of course. »
I believe Baiba almost feinted with how well received our plan was. She’d really expected us to be told to fly home then. I believe we had our return flight but hadn’t told them that as it might have gone against us. As it was we lived very poorly the first two months hardly eating and doing nothing but reading in a cold flat because we couldn’t afford to heat the place.
The wool blankets were warm and we spent a lot of time in the bed. Mostly fully clothed and reading but sharing a bed with Baiba in those days was heaven under any conditions. Soon we’d be having fish and chips on the streets, eating pate and crackers and shopping on Oxford Street. We’d get extra jobs, me as a bar tender and Baiba waiting another evening shift. In a very few months our situation had changed entirely and we had money for dance lessons and nights at Jazz Clubs. We’d make friends with a couple of beautiful sisters with handsome crazy South African ex commando boyfriend, and some Australians. Gerry and his Girlfriend would be back together though Gerry was working for less money on the dangerous North Sea oil rigs than I was getting as an executive assistant in London working for the Mercantile Bank of London or the new TV station competitor to BBC. We’d go to dances with the Moody Blues and eventually take excursions on bicycle to all the surrounding villages. Our bicycles arrived with our souvenirs and others stuff. We’d have fun , really great fun. London was so special. I could go on forever about the wonders of that time and the city. The history and sense of time was enthralling. Everywhere we walked and looked we’d see a little brass plague saying Dickens lived here or Maugham lived there.
Baiba wanted to stay and dance and dance.
I wanted to return to Canada because I could get an education there. We’d been to Oxford and stayed in the rooms of a friend doing medical school there. She was a Quaker. We’d sat with other Oxford students and met dons. The whole idea of learning and study so appealed to me now that I’d had my eyes and ears awakened by travel and reading and museums. All the reading of the classics and all the discussions opened my eyes to what a real learning could be. I loved the Quaker medical students desire to serve and the Quaker service and silence.
I don’t think Baiba would forgive me for bringing her home. She had threatened to stay alone but I’d insisted she return with me.
We couldn’t get all our clothes into the suitcases so we flew 12 hours like Michelin men with 6 layers of our English clothes worn stifling hot on the plane.
Our families were so relieved to have us home.
Baiba would be the best ball room and show dancer in western Canada after that much learning and exposure to greatness. She absorbed dance learning like a gifted sponge. She’d become the leading teacher at Ken Mathews and the principle choreographer.
Dr. Carl Ridd would help me return to University of Winnipeg. I’d known nothing of the proper way to leave having felt that as I paid for the education and no longer wanted it like a unfinished meal I could leave it on the table. There was however all manner of bureaucratic hoops to get me reinstated. Poor Dr. Ridd. He’d be my mentor and spiritual advisor so inspiring me to higher endeavours. My friends however would one day invite him to our apartment when we were all stoned and a little drunk. This was a great Christian leader who no doubt thought the experience anthropologically significant. I found it very awkward. I’d go on to be a straight A student studying more English, History and Shakespeare. I’d take one Biology course, the requisite science and fall in love with it. The next year I’d switch to all sciences. I’d then consider medicine which came as the answer to a prayer in the University of Winnipeg chapel.
I’d alsoalways carry a a little framed picture of the view out the window of Magdalene College Oxford, the medical student’s dorm where I chose scholarship over theatre and dance. Having read The Glass Bead Game and become enamoured by the plays of T.S. Elliott and his poetry I was humbled and knew there was so much I needed to learn and that the university was a good place to begin, I’d still teach some dancing and received some scholarship but with study and school and work it was a world that would pull me further and further from Baiba who continued to dance and party with our friends who felt I’d betrayed them by leaving the world of dance for the world of books.
Baiba took a lover. Vecsmamin was furious that I did not bring her home. She stayed out all night and Vecsmamin told me it was my job as a man to get her. I went to the house of two men who’d joined the studio. One was sleaze ball, a 50’s throw off, greaseball in a suit acting debonair but with no class. The other guy if he’d not been shagging my wife would have been okay. However when I arrived the party where all the booze was flowing and the music was loud. Baiba and Bobby, was that his name . bobby? were in the bed room. I walked in through the screen door and the grease ball told me to get out.
« I’ve come to see my wife and am not leaving till I do. »
He pulled our a revolver and pointed it in my face.
« You’re going to leave right now our I’m going to blow your face off. »
I think my experiences with crazy Lonny and his gun and my growing up around real men always affected my attitude to cowards and losers with guns in their hands.
I stared him in the eyes and said.
« I told you. I’m not leaving till I see my wife. If you want to pull that trigger go ahead. »
We were so into dares and playing chicken when we were young. I’d later drive my truck straight at another and watch him peel off in the ditch as I have this edge of insaniety that stood me later in good stead with my patients so many of who especially the criminals, ex military and dangerously insane who shared that trait. I just had a little better control and always played defence despite knowing the best defence is a good offence.
Baiba appeared deschevelled obviously having just scrambled into her clothes with Bobby following pulling up his pants. She stared at us, the ass, slowly lowering the gun from in front of my face. Someone had spurned off the music. Everything stopped. It was a tableau scene.
« I’d like you to come home with me. »
« I’m staying’
« Vecsmamin told me to bring you home. »
« I’m staying. »
« Alright. »
I turned and left then. She’d seen the gun in my face and the room mate back away when I didn’t back down.Bobby was just a little boy. Baiba was telling me in no uncertain terms she was unhappy.
She didn’t like Winnipeg. We’d been staying in the basement of her mothers. I’d made it known I was applying to medical school and she simply didn’t want to be a medical students wife in Winnipeg where she’d already surpassed all the dance opportunities. Besides I’d almost traded her for a camel. I certainly couldn’t be trusted.
She asked me to come with her to Toronto but I said I couldn’t. I had support of faculty here and getting into medical school would be likely here and not so likely in Toronto. I suspect I could have gone with her. I could have tried for Toronto if I’d kept my faith in love. But she’d chosen Bobby and I’d had a gun in my face.
I was more interested in scholarship and simply loved books, labs and biochemistry, and this whole other world that was opening to me. It was so alien to the play world of the theatre and dance. I had become pretentious. I was going to be a missionary doctor. I was going to save the world.
Baiba was wise to leave. I was an idiot to let her go. But then life carried on. I moved out of Maija’s basement, a very awkward experience, having to wait a month to get the rent to get my own place. Maija and Vecsmamin and the family were all so gracious. Disappointed in me as I was in myself , self centred as I was.
Unloving I’d driven Baiba away yet to study pre med and medicine is a most narcissistic endeavour like preparing for the Olympics. There can be no other gods. To dream the impossible dreams. I was climbing my own Mount Everest. I had had a calling and I was going to do ‘my utmost for his highest’. I was a thorough prick.
Alone in my austere bachelor apartment next door to University of Winnipeg the cafeteria became my kitchen, the lounge my living room and the library my study. I lived and breathed chemistry, biochemistry, biology, physics , mathematics and then moved onto medicine. I had left my old love and had a new love. I was fickle but this new mistress was so utterly demanding and infinitely rewarding.
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