When Nasif finally shows up, late on my second full day in Beirut, he tells me what I already know. “The war is bad today,” he says as though commenting on the weather. “Lots of metal in the air.” He’s tall, over six feet, heavy with thick thighs, though not as fat as his father. In his early twenties, he has a long, guileless, and chubby face. Nasif is charming, still boyish; he loves to laugh and joke around, and, unlike his father, he is seemingly incapable of duplicity. He tells me everything and often gets into trouble with the fat man. His abiding ambition is to go to college in America and chase long-legged, blond American girls. To that end I have been helping him apply to a number of universities. For now, his father’s business—the business that is the mainstay for much of the economy of this country—occupies us both.
“What about Pierre?” I ask Nasif. “Did you tell your father how this thief got his name and number?”
“Of course. Don’t worry. Everything is under control.”
“Is he still here?”
“Yes. You will see him. Tomorrow night… if the fighting is not so bad.”
“Where is he?”
“At the Summerland Hotel. His partner arrives today.”
“Nasif. Listen to me. You and your father must not do anything with this man. Do you understand? I will not be part of any business that includes Pierre.”
“Yes, of course, Mr. Richard. But he has money. Perhaps as much as $1 million. My father asks that you let him handle this business.”
“I’m going to break this fucking creep’s neck.”
“No, no, please. You must promise me you won’t do anything.”
It’s no good arguing with him. The possibility of getting cash out of the Wizard has clouded Mohammed’s judgment, and Nasif is merely his messenger. After I give him and his father my word that I will be on my best behavior, and during a lull in the war, we meet for dinner at a restaurant owned by rogue CIA agent Frank Terpil.
When I enter with Nasif and Saad, the Wizard is already seated at the table with his moneyman, a cocaine importer from Miami. Mohammed is there with a couple of government or military types—Christians, from their uniforms—and more bodyguards. The party is already festive, everyone drinking Johnny Walker Black or arrack, and with that sense of conspiracy afoot—the hint of big black market money in the mood. Mohammed stands and embraces me, claps me on the back. He gestures to the Wizard, who gives me a snide smile but does not stand or offer his hand. It irks me that Mohammed has been entertaining these guys while I was isolated in my luxurious penthouse prison.
“I want to make one thing clear,” I say to the men at the table after I’ve been seated and served a drink. “I—Nasif, please translate—I did not vouch for this man.”
“Mr. Richard, not now,” Nasif says. He refuses to translate.
Mohammed scowls at me.
“These men—” Nasif indicates the Falangist officers, “—are not connected to the business.” That, I know, is not true. Everyone is connected to the business or they wouldn’t be here. “These men come with Pierre,” Nasif continues.
“We can work this out,” the Wizard’s partner says. “No worries.”
He’s Canadian. We met before in Miami when he and the Wizard bought several hundred kilos of hash. The Wizard gives me that smug smile that serves to piss me off all the more. After I have a few more drinks and am feeling rowdy, I say to him, “I never vouched for you. You stole my briefcase.”
He shrugs, gives me a deprecating wave of his hand and dismisses me. “Yeah, so? You’re greedy. You don’t want to share the wealth.”
“You’re a fucking thief.”
He sneers. “But a good one.”
“I want my briefcase and everything that was in it returned.”
He shakes his head. “Can’t do it. I got rid of it.”
I turn to Mohammed and the others at the table. Suck it up, Stratton. “If you trust this man, you’re fools,” I tell them. That does not go over well. More glares. But I’m brazen with alcohol and hashish.
Nasif kicks me under the table. “Not now!” he insists.
It’s one of those moments when I seem to be outside myself, at once fascinated and appalled, watching the troublemaker stir shit up.
“No? Then when? I’m supposed to just go along with this? It’s not right, Nasif. This guy is—”
The Wizard is suddenly in my face.
“Shut the fuck up,” he hisses. “You’re gonna blow this whole thing.”
Threatened, I lose it. I haul off and smack him—an open-handed bitch-slap across his lantern-jawed face that knocks him over backwards and sends him sprawling. Glasses and bottles and plates tumble from the table and break on the tile floor. Half a dozen men jump up and reach for their weapons—including Saad, who is at my side. Someone grabs me from behind—Nasif. I am ushered out of the restaurant, put into a car with Nasif and Saad.
“You promised!” Nasif exclaims. “You could have been killed. Those men are with him. Do you know who they are?”
Saad is laughing, smiling. He gives me a hug.
“I don’t care who they are. I’m telling you, Nasif, the guy is a crook. You can’t trust him. If you and your father do business with him, he’ll fuck you. Guaranteed.”
“Listen to me. My father—we can’t do anything without those men. They control the road from the Bekaa. They control the port. Pierre has done business with them before and has their trust. My father is going—” He breaks off, shakes his head. “I promised him you would not cause trouble.”
“Pierre has already caused trouble. I’m ready to kill this fucking guy.”
“But he has money! You must not upset this business. Pierre and his friend are bringing over one million dollars cash,” Nasif scolds, like that should make all the difference. His eyes light up. “Maybe we’ll take his money and fuck him.”
He translates and Saad nods eagerly. I begin to wonder if the whole setup is not simply an elaborate ruse to rip off the Wizard, which does nothing to ease my concern about having anything to do with this business. One bad deed does not necessarily deserve another.
We wind up the night at a supper club in a casino where we are entertained by a host of beautiful, plumed-and-costumed women in an elaborate floor show. Tits, hips, legs, and asses, exotic females adorned in feathers and spangles strutting before me—such a spectacle will take my mind off just about anything. One would never know there is a war raging outside.
* * *
A FEW DAYS later Nasif tells me Pierre and his partner the Canadian coke dealer have gone to Colombia to score a large amount of cocaine. There is an emerging coke market among wealthy Beirutis. Mohammed likes to do a blast from time to time. Their plan is to smuggle coke from Colombia to Beirut and trade it for hash.
“We will make a lot of money.” Nasif smiles, nods. “Yes?”
“We’re already making a lot of money,” I say. Wonderful, now they want to involve me in a cocaine transaction.
“So. We will make more!”
“No, not me. I told you how I feel about this guy. Whatever you do with him, count me out. I want nothing to do with the coke business and nothing to do with any business Pierre is part of. You must understand, this is personal, Nasif. The man stole from me. I can’t let that go. I want nothing to do with this thieving, low-life piece of shit.”
“Please,” Nasif begs, “speak to my father.”
WITH THE WIZARD out of the country, Mohammed at last appears ready to shift his attention to my business. It’s like the Wizard was never here. Mohammed refuses to discuss him or the outcome of his visit. He picks me up at the apartment, and we fly to Baghdad, check in to a hotel. The next few days Mohammed spends visiting various date merchants while I make calls to New York to finalize the letter of credit from Bordo Foods. I see little of Mohammed, and when we are together we hardly talk as there is no one to translate.
There is tension between Mohammed and me carried over from Beirut. He seems to have shifted
his trust from me to Pierre. Each day that the letter of credit is delayed, each time I try to impart that the dates must not exceed the specific infestation rate to assure they will pass inspection by the Department of Agriculture, that there cannot be too many dead bug carcasses or too much insecticide spray permeating the dates, and that Sammy in New York is demanding to have samples sent before he authorizes the letter of credit, with each new request Mohammed’s patience is tried and his frustration mounts. He clicks his worry beads furiously. I don’t know what Pierre and his partner promised him, but whatever it is has served to cause my cautions to appear at once trivial and burdensome.
Finally, the letter of credit is verified. Samples of the dates are sent to New York. Based on Mohammed’s word that the dates in the shipment will meet USDA standards, Mohammed uses the letter of credit to purchase half a million kilos of soft brown pitted dates—the kind of dates used in cake mixes and prepared foods. Mohammed shows me several samples of dates wrapped in waxed paper. His mood improves. I have no way of judging if the dates will pass muster with USDA inspectors. It’s not like I’m examining a sample of hashish. I look the dates over for dead bugs, chew on a handful. They seem fine to me. Sweet. Sticky. I nod my approval.
Mohammed smiles. I’m happy that he’s happy. He’s been upset with me for so long any little glimmer of joy in his murky dark eyes makes me feel better. I just want to get back to Lebanon and begin buying hashish. Iraq is at war with Iran, and though the fighting hasn’t reached Baghdad, we are both concerned that the load of dates gets packaged and shipped to Beirut before anything happens to delay this trip further.
Mohammed stays behind in Iraq to see the dates on the road, transported overland by truck to a warehouse at the port of Beirut. I fly back to Lebanon. Nasif and Saad meet me at the airport and return me to my suite. That evening there is a small gathering in the penthouse. With his father still out of town, Nasif relaxes and parties. He invites a young lady who lives in the building to join us, and she brings a friend. The women are refined, educated. They speak fluent English and French, as well as Arabic. Beautiful and elegant young Lebanese ladies. It is a treat just to listen to them speak in their accented English. The woman who lives in the building, Laila, is married to a doctor, but she flirts openly with Nasif, who returns her affections. After a three-hour dinner, we repair to the living room for coffee and are entertained by the Saad daughters belly dancing to the enchanting Lebanese chanteuse, Fairuz. Soon the older women are up showing the girls how it is done. Artillery bombardment flashes behind the dark cityscape like lightning on the horizon. For a few hours I forget about the war and the hash business. Later, as the muezzin begin their timeless incantations, I drift off to sleep with a head full of images of dark-haired beauties and undulating belly buttons.
When Mohammed returns and learns his son is carrying on a dalliance with the doctor’s wife, he chases Nasif around the dinner table with a fork. He’s laughing, they are both laughing, but when he catches Nasif and stabs him in the ass with the fork it turns serious. Mohammed orders his son to quit the affair with Laila. The doctor is a respectable man even if he can’t control his woman.
* * *
WEEKS PASS. MY suitcase never arrives from the airport; fortunately all I lost was my clothing and toiletries. I spend my days lounging around the penthouse in a long, embroidered robe, eating, smoking hashish from a three-foot, floor-standing narghile. The eldest Saad daughter lays the bowl of the hookah with hot coals. I sprinkle fine, resinous hash on the burning coals, suck hot smoke down the stem of the pipe and up through the cooling water to fill my lungs with fragrant essence of Muse. My mind wanders, all right brain now. Anything is possible… if I can just imagine it with sufficient intensity. I will survive. I will get through this and leave Beirut, escape with the goods. I will find some safe haven and become an exiled godfather of the hippie mafia—a Lucky Luciano of hashish. If this endless war would just cease long enough for me to get the load out before the whole Middle East descends into mindless fratricide, I’ll be done. If we can get the load past US Customs and distribute it, get paid, if we can do all that without getting busted, I’ll be a millionaire several times over. In cash. The scheme sustains me.
Mornings I drink sweet, rich Turkish coffee and eat fresh croissants with butter and jam. I read books and newspapers Nasif brings me. I watch TV, episodes of Dallas with JR yammering away in Arabic. I listen to Fairuz and to the war seething all around me. West Beirut is under attack by Christian Falangist forces to the east, on the other side of the Green Line dividing the city. Some days it is too bad even for Nasif and Mohammed to venture out. On those nights I eat alone, served by Saad’s daughters. The evening meal begins in late afternoon with pistachio nuts, almonds, grapes, figs, and arrack. Then there is an array of mezze, dish after dish of pickled vegetables; tabbouleh, chopped-parsley salad with mint, tomato, and cracked bulgur wheat; hummus laced with garlic and glazed with a pool of olive oil; baba ghanouj, grilled eggplant with tahina, olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic puree; deep-fried falafel patties of spiced, ground chickpeas; kibbeh, stuffed fried lamb or kibbeh nayyeh, raw lamb eaten like steak tartare; labneh, strained yogurt eaten with pita bread; grape leaves stuffed with seasoned rice. Then comes the main course: fish, chicken, roasted lamb, dove. My veggie diet goes out the window. When in Rome… or Beirut. The meal goes on for hours. We drink arrak, local wines, and Johnnie Walker and withdraw to the living room for music, hash, more whiskey.
Such is the nature of this business: Hurry up and wait. Long spells of idleness and frustration interrupted with bursts of intense activity. During a lull in the fighting, Nasif takes me out shopping for a new wardrobe in the boutiques along Hamra Street. I’m not happy with how my waistline has expanded during my captivity. I must have gained fifteen pounds gorging on the delicious dishes prepared by Mrs. Saad. I feel fat and sluggish. We stop in a bunker-like long-distance phone center near the war’s front line. An armed and boisterous crowd of PLO militiamen barges in and commandeers the phones. I can see why the Lebanese want these people out of their country. At last I get through to Toranaga in New York and Val in Maui. They both have one question for me: “Are you okay?”
Once it appears the most recent ceasefire may prevail for more than a few hours, Mohammed orders me to be ready to leave Beirut. The next day we set out on the road to Damascus, traveling in Mohammed’s Mercedes. Nasif drives, I am in the rear; we leave the warmth of the coast and head up over the snow-clad Chuf Mountains into the Bekaa Valley. There is any number of roadblocks on the way, a checkpoint nearly every mile along the fifteen-mile stretch to Zahale on the western edge of the valley. The PLO checkpoints are adorned with the likeness of Yasser Arafat. Christian Falangist militia checkpoints are draped with patriotic banners and posters-size pictures of their dead martyrs and living leaders. The Druze hang their holy colors over their checkpoints in the Chuf. Maronite Christian gunmen nod their approval and wave our car through while the checkpoints manned by Shi’ia guardsmen display the glowering visage of Ayatollah Khomeini; at those stops we are questioned more thoroughly. The soldiers gaze at me like I am a prize. “American?” “No, Canadian.” “Hashish?” They nod and wave us on. No one fucks with the hash trade. The American dollars from the drug trade fund the various militias.
We stop in the Christian village of Zahale for lunch, dining on shawarma and local wine. Mohammed and his family are Shi’ia Muslim, though only his wife is devout. They hail from a village in the south, near the border with Israel, now occupied by Israeli forces. I know all this; still it makes for conversation. When I question Nasif and Mohammed about the conflict that is tearing their country apart, Mohammed is resigned, accepting war as part of life. Nasif grew up in the midst of war. War has been the only constant the people of Lebanon have known since the French created the state in 1920, he tells me. In 1948, when the Israelis drove the Palestinians from their land and established the state of Israel, the seeds of the current conflict were plan
ted. Mohammed says he is sympathetic to the Palestinians’ plight, but he doesn’t like them. He sees them as an unworthy foe: disorganized, rude, brutal, and yet feeble compared to the Israelis and their mighty ally, America. On only one point is he emphatic: the Syrians must be driven from Lebanon. As we descend into the Bekaa, it becomes apparent why Mohammed wants Syria out of his backyard. They threaten Lebanese hegemony over the drug trade. Syrian troops and Hezbollah Party of God militiamen and Iranian Revolutionary Guard dominate in the valley.
Entering the Bekaa is at once like driving into the cornfields of Iowa and traveling back in time. Vast expanses of emerald green stretch away from the highway in every direction. The ancient stone villages and towns, the old women in black burnooses inching along the roadway like beetles, speak of another time and place. The fields are not corn but the short, bushy, splay-fingered al-Kayf, cannabis plants of the indica variety arrayed in neat, orderly rows as far as the eye can see. A sea of green, millions of plants, mile upon mile of hashish fields quilted around Old Testament settlements.
We ride past the fields and up through the valley to the prehistoric village of Baalbek. Known to the ancients as Heliopolis, City of the Sun, Baalbek is the present-day commercial center of Lebanon’s hashish industry—and a stronghold of Hezbollah. If the Bekaa is outlaw country, Baalbek is its El Paso, a frontier town where everyone, it seems, is armed, including young boys and old women. They carry Kalashnikovs, Mac-10s, handguns.
Mohammed’s main man, the Captain’s father, Abu Ali, meets us at a restaurant in the center of town. He carries a Glock nine millimeter in a holster at his side. Tall and lanky, with a round potbelly, Abu Ali wears a traditional checkered headdress and has a full, bushy black mustache. He speaks a little English and some French. We are friends, old friends. In many ways I am more at ease with Abu Ali than I am with Mohammed and Nasif. He is a farmer, a man of the earth, has a hashish plantation of his own, many hectares of healthy plants, and he serves as an agent for some of the biggest growers in the region, so he understands my love for the plant and never questions my demands for quality control. Mohammed, the middleman, the businessman, the facilitator, is impatient with my insistence upon the best goods and all about maximizing profit. Abu Ali shares my belief that the better the quality of the hashish, the better the energy of the business, the easier the money follows. And, like Sammy, Abu Ali is a stickler for detail.
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