Opus Dopus: An Excerpt

Jon Horn OPUS DOPUS: An Excerpt

...I remember the first time I hit Tangier, coming across from Spain on the Ibn Batutta ferry. It was a beautiful day, where the Atlantic meets the Med, and the ferry’s prow calmly cut spumes of sea which glittered under the big sun in a cloudless sky… and a big Brit backpacker next to me, whom I hadn’t really noticed, said, “Looks quite magical from a distance, dunnit?” He had a shaved head, one earring, and an ironic grin. I said I’d never been to Tangier before, and he spat out half a laugh. “Well, watch yourself… I’ve been here too many times. The white city rising up the hillside there looks to be a storybook citadel, but if you stay too long you’ll swear it’s the bloody bunghole of the world!” “Then why do you keep coming back?” “Ah, I can’t get enough of that kif from the Rif, the hills where the fresh air is scented with cannabis and it’s all open and above-board since they’ve quit cracking down on the growers, the new laissez-faire policy, long may it last!”

92 | HONEYSUCKLE MAGAZINE ...Mellow cannabis was always my fave everyday high. Opium was heavy, and if you used to too much it would get you down. Coke and meth and other “hard” drugs had big downers in store. Not so pot. And here before us was a whole hillside thick with tall, full, green-turning-golden hemp stalks bursting with buds, leaves waving gently in the breeze. All I could say was “Wow!”