Howard Marks' Book of Dope Stories (34 page)

One day I was buying qat when a group of tourists walked past. Blue-eyed Muhammad said to me, ‘Why do people spend thousands of dollars rushing round the world, when they can chew qat?’
There is Africa and all her prodigies in us
.

I’ve chewed in taxis, on buses, on my motor cycle, on a truckload of firewood, in a military-transport plane, in an overturning jeep, on the 5.30 from Victoria to Sutton. In retrospect the movement was incidental. Back in the Oriental Institute, they didn’t teach us the meaning of
kayf
– they couldn’t have. Now, I would venture to call it a form of untravel.

In the room on the roof, sounds began to impinge: the rasp of a match, the noisy slurping of water, caged doves cooing; the snap of a twig to make a toothpick, someone buckling on his dagger. Then there was the click of the light switch. Everyone screwed up their eyes, blessed the Prophet, and went home.

There are a number of things you can do after chewing qat. You might start digging up the paving stones in your entrance hall to look for Solomon’s Seal, as a neighbour of mine used to do. Or, like the Turk early this century who had not seen his wife for sixteen years and was noted for his abstemiousness, you might involuntarily ejaculate. I tend to go home, have a glass of milky tea, and do some writing. Out of the corner of my eye I used to see my pencil sharpener move very slightly, around midnight, until I stopped buying that sort of qat.

Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land
, 1999

C
ATHINONE IS A
powerful psychoactive substance. And yet in Yemen qat cannot be separated from its social context – the drug is necessary, but only in the same way that frankincense has been needed at rituals for millennia. It is a prop, a token, something that symbolises more than it contains: the people have their faith in God and paradise and that He has sent them this leaf on which His name is written. Yemen, at least, would be secure form scientific ‘improvements’ to the flower of paradise. In
AD
1543, Abdullah ibn Sharaf al-Din, son of the Imam, who first banned qat then accepted it back, wrote:

The West could learn a great deal from the Yemen and its elegant ability to control a drug without recourse to laws, enforcement, or scientific fiddling.

Eating the Flowers of Paradise
, 1999

I
THINK IT
was about 7 p.m. on that mentally fatal Sunday evening that we dropped the first lot of LSD. The music blasting distorted sound from the speakers positioned on the floor. The room flooded with soft, dim lights. Candles created just enough extra light for your mind to really go to work on you. We sat about, smoked and ranted, waiting for the drugs to hit.

An hour passed. Boredom and frustration set in.

‘This was supposed to be strong,’ I said. ‘I say we do the rest, I’m just not getting anything.’

Now this statement was not entirely true, the arousal of faint double vision was there. And the copper-mouth too, lurking on the edge ready to bite you in the neck when you let your guard down.

The toilet trip was the ultimate test.

‘I’m going for a shit, okay?’

‘
Vale
, then we do the rest, no?’

It was uninspiring. This toilet was no good, I thought. No cheap tiles with patterns on, no stark light, just a maroon bath, chipped and flaking and me sat shitting. It came quick and fast, cleaning my insides. That’s always a good sign, more with Ecstasy though. The carpet began moving, faint Aztec and geometric patterns pulsing and turning into more of the same.

Check the mirror.

All seemed well. I looked normal.

Flush chain, wash hands, leave toilet, take more acid!

Within ten minutes the living-room took on orange and red hues. Red and green neon darted over the walls, furniture and people. There are people in the room, I thought.

Guapa Morena started to dance. That would be the last I saw of her for a while, things were rising pretty damn fast. I was on the floor. Attempting to move, I crumpled into a heap on the futon managing to acquire what could have been a strewn duvet in the process. My body felt like it weighed a ton, the legs weren’t going to take it. Talk was not happening either. My mouth was rebelling against me. Believe me, I tried, but it just came out the same. A strange slurping sound and foul words.

I checked the clock. It took a while to aim at it but my sight finally broke through the bubble that has formed around me.

Jesus Christ, I thought, we only dropped the second lot twenty minutes ago. We must be in trouble. The music had become drunken, I think it was Ween, but I couldn’t be sure.

The TV spilled images of green and yellow women on to breathing floors. Stretched pallid skin with blue veins, spat golden sparks of ozone from ruptured warts. Wondrous squirts of stars absorbed by Arabic carvings. Pillars of gold and stone rose up to dark wooden structures. Vines and fruit clung to gazebos, high above North African buildings that framed the swirling clouds rolling high above the ceiling.

Primitive caves in terracotta stone restrained snarling Dobermanns held back by their ferocious owners on dirty ropes. Drooling froth and blood-filled mouths of twisted teeth, which lay beyond lips of broken wooden branches.

I was lying on the sofa, covered in the duvet that I had pulled up to my chin. I couldn’t see Guapa but I knew she was there somewhere.

There was a massive rush, I remember images of massive freight trains hurtling towards me and then everything was green and alive.

Spanish women danced in circles of green and red, three and four arms stretching out their blue hands. Black-skinned legs covered in elastic metal, twisted and spun. Legs swapped sides and melted into thorny structures glistening like eel skin. Red skies filled with green and purple swirling clouds. Foreign skies, strange planets rose just off the shore of crashing alien seas. Jesus God, a cracked Earth of plain, dried, sun-scorched yellow soil.

Green and white iced terrain spun off into space. Abandon ship, goddammit, every man for himself.

Then everything fell silent, hanging in a vast black hole pulling me into another vast universe, stars passed by at high velocity. I could see the void opening up before me, into our universe. I had seen this sky before. Dark asteroids passed on close by, smashing into discarded space junk. I wonder how long they have been there, I thought. Jesus, this place is a mess.

From behind me Earth rolled into view. Clouds clinging to its surface, hanging over North Africa casting a vast shadow down the continent.

Raining in North Africa.

It’s raining.

The music had stopped. The sudden realisation of such abrupt silence rocked me. Was this the point in the movie where you see the silhouette of the killer in the kitchen doorway, your own knife in his hand? There was no one in the room, or even the house, it seemed, but me.

The rain lashed down outside. I could hear it spilling over the gutters and splashing down to the concrete patio.

Guapa Morena walked back into the room with the biggest grin on her face I had ever seen. I was lying on the sofa still. The duvet and several layers of clothing had been discarded. I was sweating heavily.

The silence was shattered by an amazing chorus of redneck jive that spiralled me off into signs of burning crosses and Nazi swastikas, fast cars and booze-fuelled rides. Down dark country lanes at high speed, the stereo cranking out Robert Mitchum’s
Thunder Road
. It was around this time that the hopelessness of the situation became apparent. Then the uncontrollable laughter started. I remember babbling something like, ‘This is the strongest acid I’ve had since the Double Dipped Red Dragon of Christmas ninety-one,’ then realising what had happened that terrible night. A case of the shits had jolted me hard. What I left in the toilet I interpreted as my lower digestive system. Everywhere was splattered with blood and I had an incredibly empty feeling where my arsehole used to be. The rest of the evening became a hellish ride in a room that filled with hate and fear.

What the hell is that?

A figure stood on the mantelpiece, fat pink worms slipped around its body and over the long trench coat.

Neon, green, red, purple green, red, purple. The figure slumped to the side, catching its step. On its shoulder a crow flapped its wings frantically. The figure tried to move. It looked down. Two large nails, more like chisels, had been hammered through its feet, securing it to a large resin stand.

Undeterred, it wrenched itself free, propping itself on the Remington shotgun. It looked up at me. He’s a soldier, I thought, probably First World War. Injured too.

Blood covered his bandaged face and the gun was replaced with a cheap dirty wooden crutch. He managed to limp a few steps then fell forwards. But he never hit the ground. The motion reversed, he recoiled back revealing a white skeletal face. A heavy black robe hid the rest of his body. He was sat in a great chair, in his right hand a large scythe, five foot long. The mists cleared behind him revealing a landscape that could only appear on a
Yes
album cover. Roger Dean castles surrounded by rolling hills and blue skies.

‘No! I don’t want that. Is this all you can give me after all these years of loyalty, fucking
Yes
album covers!’

It was then I recognised the skeletal man. The image conjured up thoughts of childhood half-dreams, in the time between you going to sleep and being asleep. And this guy was there.

‘I’ve seen you before too . . . So don’t give me that!’

There was a joint, half smoked in my hand. I fumbled around for a lighter. Smoking could be the only answer, the general feeling was getting ugly.

I was sat on the floor, now wearing shorts, a T-shirt with cut sleeves and sports sandals, black.

When did I get into these? I thought. I don’t remember moving, but I must have ’cause I’m now down here.

There was a small glass bong in front of me. Had I smoked it already, or was I just planning to? I loaded the bong, smoked it and lay back on the floor. I could see the kitchen, a brown and dirty ashtray. The floor bubbled, spitting fat. It had turned into cheese and began browning under the huge ceiling grill.

It was getting hot again. I felt very light-headed. There seemed to be smoke everywhere. That copper taste was back in my mouth, a dirty old two-pence coin under the tongue

Music began to creep in again and so did the green and red, little darts of light. The music got louder, the darts of light grew in number and ferocity.

‘What music is that?’

‘If you don’t know now, you never will.’

Someone was laughing at me. I wanted to get up and find out who this evil person was. Who would laugh at a man in this depraved state? But before I could make my move my head filled with numbers, thousands of them. All of them, travelling downwards, almost like they were being pushed. Low-resolution images, photographs, electrical and digital diagrams.

Faster now, texts I had never seen before, in vibrant blues that turned into massive liquorice torpedo pills. Pieces of wire-frame geometry came from all sides, heading towards my central point of vision, smashing together to form some kind of weird machine. The motion got faster, pieces shot past me at a hundred miles an hour with trails of deep yellow everywhere. The thing in front of me began shaking violently, pieces still smashing into place. It better stop in a minute, I thought, or there’ll be hell to pay.

Then the last piece, what looked like a fifty-foot-long toilet brush, hurtled overhead and slammed into the vibrating mass. Sparks exploded everywhere.

‘My God, we’re on fire, do something.’

The thing in front of me exploded, filling all my vision with white light.

‘My head hurts,’ I blurted. ‘How do I get out of this thing, too much data, goddammit? You must have blown a fuse or something up there.’

The skeletal face appeared in front of me. Jesus, he looked pissed, I thought. Mouth open, he made a lunge for me, but I ducked.

‘Just a minute, you crazy bastard,’ I said. ‘How the hell do I get out of here?’

The skull drove his shiny white cranium straight at me. ‘Open your eyes, you arsehole!’

The room seemed stark. You could feel a vibe in the air. Something was coming. I remembered earlier in the evening Guapa Morena had said something like, ‘For the coming of it all.’ I didn’t pay much attention at the time but now it seemed like there was something there. Did it mean something? What made me remember that earlier point of the evening? I couldn’t remember anything else, just that one point in time. The more I thought about it, the more complicated it got. Heavy textured imprints spiralled across the walls that seemed to be dripping nicotine. Thick amber lung juice sliding down to the carpet, lumps dropping off.

Solid visible streams of music poured into the room, they looked like the reflections of a lake a foot above the ground. Someone else had seen this trip before, I remembered seeing it on TV. A bunch of university professors got two volunteers to take LSD so they could witness the responses the two men had.

One of the volunteers said he could see music coming out of the speaker. In my opinion this guy had done it before, he looked broken already.

Streams of this musical ribbon filled the front room.

There were four giant lizards on the wall playing cards over a crap table. They were all smoking and drinking cheap red wine. The cards were already on the table, all but the lizards at the top of the table.