Smuggler's Blues

by Richard Stratton

  As they talk, both Mohammed and Abu Ali have their worry beads out. The soft clicking of the beads is hardly audible over the noise of the restaurant. But I can tell by the way their fingers work the beads—black obsidian in Mohammed’s hand and white coral with amber spacer beads in Abu Ali’s—thumb and forefinger drawing the beads along the string apace with the conversation, they are not discussing family or politics. This is business.

  The restaurant is crowded. I am the only ifrangy in the place. Everyone seems to know why I am here. The men who stop at our table to greet Abu Ali and Mohammed eye me knowingly. This town and most of its residents subsist on the dope trade. An estimated 10,000 tons of hashish are produced and shipped worldwide from this valley yearly. Not to mention the expanding heroin production—a growth industry. Turkish opium is refined in labs in the valley. Opium poppies sprout on the hills and mountainsides in the northern reaches of the Bekaa. A lush swath of land half the size of Rhode Island, this valley is one of the major drug-producing regions in the world.

  Outside, after a two-hour meal of mezze, local delicacies, and much heated discussion between Abu Ali and Mohammed, none of which I understand and which Nasif refuses to translate, saying only “business,” the worry beads go back into their pockets, and Nasif tells me it has been decided. I shall remain here in Baalbek as a guest of Abu Ali. I am to stay until I am satisfied with the quality of the goods and I sign off on the labels stamped on the sacks. Once I have worked out all the details for the preparation of merchandise, about which I am a constant source of irritation to Mohammed, and when the load is ready to be transported from the Bekaa to the port, then and only then will I be returned to Beirut.

  Nasif goes on to tell me that he and Mohammed must get back to Beirut immediately to receive the shipment of dates and “prepare everything,” or they would stay as well. But he assures me they will return for me “in a couple of days… as long it takes until everything is ready,” a Lebanese oxymoron.

  Mohammed nods, shakes my hand, kisses me on both cheeks. “No problem,” he says.

  “Besides,” Nasif adds with a smile, “here is more peaceful.”

  I haven’t planned on this. I brought nothing with me but the clothes I’m wearing. I have a momentary twinge of concern that I am being left here as some sort of hostage until whatever it is that seems to be at odds between Mohammed and Abu Ali is resolved. No doubt it has to do with money. But it makes no sense to protest. After all, I am here to do business, not to lounge around an apartment in Beirut getting fat. Nor do I give any indication that I am surprised or alarmed. Recall the smuggler’s motto: Go with the flow.

  Mohammed climbs in the Mercedes, Nasif gets behind the wheel, and they drive down the dusty road out of town. Abu Ali and I stand in the street and look at each other. “Mr. Richard,” he says, “come. You are my guest.” And he walks me over to his Land Rover.

  Abu Ali and his extended family live in a stately, old French Colonial villa on the outskirts of Baalbek. We turn up a tree-lined dirt road and come to the home and outbuildings set well back from the highway in the middle of a clearing surrounded by cypress and cedar trees, palms and fruit orchards. Fields of hashish plants blanket the foothills gently sloping away from the villa. The air is fragrant with cannabis pollen and jasmine. When we pull up in the Land Rover in front of the house, cousins and uncles, sons and grandsons sit on stone benches or stand around a charcoal grill drinking coffee or tea. There are no women in sight.

  All the men are armed, even the teenage boys have automatic weapons. I know some of the older men, who greet me with waves of the hand, slight bows of their covered heads. They wear traditional jibbah gowns and full headdresses or checkered keffiyehs. The younger boys, dressed in jeans and bright, polyester T-shirts, speak fluent English. They immediately want to know what I have brought them from America. I am embarrassed to admit I am empty-handed—close to a sin in this culture. Abu Ali explains that this is an unplanned visit. I tell them, please understand: Next time I will bring lots of gifts, jeans and T-shirts and sneakers and whatever else they want. Cassette tapes, they say. Rock and roll. Beatles and Rolling Stones. Jimi Hendrix. The Doors. “No problem,” I say. The answer to everything.

  Abu Ali shows me to my quarters. We stand in the late-afternoon sun and soft-scented breeze washing in through large open French doors leading to a balcony where I can breathe fresh air without fear of being shot at by snipers. He hands me a chunk of fresh hashish. I tell him of my most recent visit with his son, the Captain. He nods solemnly. The weapons the Captain shipped from Texas arrived safely, he says, and were delivered to the militia of Amal, the Shi’ia Movement of the Disinherited. But we must not speak of this, Abu Ali insists. It must not be known that America is providing weapons to the Shi’ia militia—for a price, of course. Or that I have anything to do with this business. Amal opposes the PLO and is allied with Syria. Here, in Lebanon, Abu Ali reminds me, and particularly in the Bekaa, there are many factions. It is complicated. One can hardly keep up with the political upheavals, assassinations, massacres, and fickle, short-lived alliances. Everyone, however, respects the business of hashish—except the Israelis. But I must not worry. There are no Israelis in the Bekaa. He gives me a wistful smile. “Not yet…”

  “I’m not worried,” I tell him. “How can I be worried? I am your guest.”

  Abu Ali nods and shrugs his broad shoulders. “Yes. My home is your home.”

  I know there is something more he wants to tell me—and that he will—when he feels the time is right.

  Khalid, one of Abu Ali’s many nephews, is assigned to serve as my companion, driver, guide, interpreter, bodyguard, and all-around gofer. He’s a sweet kid, tall and in good shape, nineteen, on the verge of turning twenty. We celebrate his birthday while I am in residence at the villa. Khalid takes his Kalashnikov and Browning 9mm handgun on a drive into town to buy me some bare necessities. He tells me his father, mother, brothers, and sisters all live in Detroit while he travels back and forth. He has lived for years in the States and speaks perfect American English seasoned with the latest teenage slang. Though he does not come out and say so, it is clear he is involved in some aspect of the family business beyond simply acting as an armed errand boy for his uncle. He smokes hashish, as do several of the men who gather each day around the charcoal fire in the villa courtyard. He plays soccer when not busy driving me around. Khalid’s real interest, however, besides cars, guns, and rock and roll, is the female of the species, young women or girls, something we see very little of at the villa, usually only at meals when they appear to serve the males.

  The time-honored quest for top-grade hashish occupies most days of my idyll in the valley of Baal. Nasif was right about one thing: It is far more peaceful here in this fortified camp than in the war zone of Beirut. He was way wrong, however, in his estimate of how long it would take for us to gather and prepare the merchandise. Most days, after a light breakfast of coffee and fresh baked bread, Khalid drives me to various hashish plantations where I meet with Abu Ali and the local growers to inspect samples of their harvest. If we like what we see, a price is negotiated and bales of bulk hashish plants are trucked to a processing plant out behind Abu Ali’s villa. There masked young boys and a few teenage girls beat the female plants on screens, after which they squeeze and sift the buds to a fine golden dust collected in stainless steel bins placed beneath the screens. The loose hash is scooped into white canvas sacks, heated in steam chambers and pressed into 500-gram slabs. Resins seep through and stain the sacks amber. The whole place reeks of fresh hash plants and pollen. Even with the masks over their mouths and noses, the kids are stoned on fumes by the end of a few hours working in the processing plant.

  I tell Abu Ali that North America has been flooded with some huge loads of low-grade Lebanese hash, depressing the market. He nods knowingly, says it is the Christian Falangists, especially the family of Bachir Gemayel, who are responsible for these inferior shipments. Abu Ali claims the Americ
an government and Israeli military work hand-in-hand with the Falange to facilitate the big loads. They do not understand or care about the product and are only interested in maintaining Israel’s dominance of the region, which, Abu Ali laments, is turning the entire Arab world against America.

  We agree that for our shipment we will purchase only Number One, top commercial quality, or Zahara, zero, above the best, and Double Zahara, dealer’s choice—the sticky resinous nodules shaken and gathered from freshly harvested female plants. We must collect and prepare as many tons of the best quality that can be found in the entire valley; anything less, I tell Abu Ali, my partners and I will have a hard time selling in America. He nods solemnly and gives me a concerned look.

  “What is it?” I ask him.

  He shrugs and says, “We shall see… Inshallah… God willing.”

  It takes weeks and drags on to over a month and a half and still we have only managed to acquire a little over two tons of Number One and a few hundred kilos of Zahara. I have designed the stamp to be affixed to the canvas sacks identifying the product as Flower of Bekaa, written in Arabic and English, with a picture of a rose—homage to my close friend and partner, Rosie, also known as Flower, the hippie godfather of Toronto.

  Finally, about the fifth or sixth time I notice the mistrustful looks I’m getting from some of the plantation owners, and try to decipher the meaning of their guttural objections, I decide to confront Abu Ali. Something is definitely wrong. There is an undisclosed friction between Abu Ali and Mohammed. Mohammed hasn’t been back since he and Nasif left me here, and he has only called two or three times. The dates aren’t getting any fresher sitting in a warehouse at the port. Sammy and his people in New York are getting frantic, and the stress has begun to affect me. I am not allowed to make calls from the Bekaa. Abu Ali claims that the CIA monitors all calls to America. I managed to get messages to Sammy via Nasif relayed through Biff that everything is moving forward, however slowly. Biff replied that Sammy warns the date deal will collapse if there is not a delivery soon. Meanwhile conditions in Beirut worsen by the hour.

  Khalid drives me to meet Abu Ali at the “lab.”

  “What lab?” I ask him.

  He shrugs. “Abu Ali’s lab.” He gives me a look like I should know what he’s talking about and not ask any more questions. We pull up to a cluster of semi-industrial looking buildings about fifteen kilometers outside of town. Brand-new Allis Chalmers tractors and British Leyland harvester-combines are parked in a big, metal shed. Half a dozen other vehicles are parked outside the main, two-story building—cars and trucks, Abu Ali’s Land Rover, a new Mercedes sedan—pulled up randomly as though the drivers all arrived at once and left their vehicles in a hurry. The walkway leading up to the building is lined with a hedgerow of stumpy hash plants. We enter a foyer, walk up a flight of stairs and into a large, open room on the second floor. From the moment I enter the building, I catch the strong odor of chemicals.

  Ten men—mostly in traditional Arab dress with billowy white trousers or khaki work pants—are seated on low stools or pillows around a large, brass tray table. All wear headdresses except one, a short, compact, and perfectly groomed young man dressed like a well-heeled European businessman in a Brioni suit and pale blue shirt with no tie. As soon as I walk in and see the men, I understand this is the Arab version of a sit-down. And it occurs to me what Khalid meant by the lab. We are in an opium processing plant, a junk factory. The entire ground floor of the building is used for refining heroin from raw opium. These guys are all in the heroin business—including Abu Ali.

  A few of the men I recognize as hash plantation owners Abu Ali and I have been meeting with over the past several weeks. Khalid introduces the guy in the suit as his cousin, Tamer. “Just in from the States. Tamer drove up from Beirut this morning,” Khalid tells me.

  “Hey, Rich,” Tamer says and we shake hands. “I heard a lot about you.”

  Abu Ali motions me to a seat next to him with Tamer directly across the table on Abu Ali’s other side.

  “What’s the problem, Abu Ali?” I ask after a few minutes of small talk as we sit sipping tea or Turkish coffee with the acrid smell of fresh heroin wafting up from the lab below. I look around at the other men, addressing them. “Why are these men not willing to fill our order?”

  Abu Ali nods, speaks to Tamer. “He says you are right,” Tamer explains after an exchange in Arabic with Abu Ali and a couple of the other growers adding their comments. “There is a problem. This is why Abu Ali has asked you here—to discuss this business with these men. It’s not that they are unwilling to give you what you want. They also want to do business. But first they want to know when they will be paid for the last shipment.”

  I am stunned. “What last shipment? Does he mean the airfreight load? That was paid in full seven months ago.” I speak directly to Abu Ali. “I paid everything right away. That business was finished in less than one month.”

  Abu Ali sips his coffee, shakes his head, replies to Tamer. I am already beginning to suspect what “last shipment” they are talking about and it is roiling my insides. Tamer translates. “He says, not the shipment from last summer. He means the goods from two months ago, the three-and-a-half tons of Number One. For that, they have received nothing.”

  Oh, fuck, no. Now I get it. Some part of me knew all along, going back to the first day I arrived in Baalbek, sensing the tension between Mohammed and Abu Ali—once again that conniving Wizard got over on me. Not only did Mohammed do business with him, but Abu Ali and the other growers are holding me responsible for the shipment.

  “That was not my shipment,” I tell them, struggling to appear calm. “I have nothing to do with that business.”

  My heart is pounding, my mouth dry. It’s all clear to me now. Mohammed and the Wizard put together a load and shipped it to the States using my name as pledge for payment. Abu Ali and the other growers believe I owe them somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million for something I wanted no part of, a trip I warned Mohammed was doomed. There is more discussion among the men. Clucking of tongues and clicking of worry beads. Heads shake. Shoulders shrug. Coffee is sipped. Meanwhile downstairs, heroin cooks. What the fuck am I doing here?

  I speak directly to Tamer now. “Explain to them. This is wrong, Tamer. With all respect, I told Mohammed, I said it at a table with several others present—Nasif was there, Saad was there; they know the whole story. That guy is a fucking thief!”

  “What guy?” Tamer asks.

  “Pierre, the guy Mohammed made that business with. I was not part of it.” I go on to tell him how Pierre suckered me, got Mohammed’s name and number, and used my name without my knowing. I tell him about the night in the restaurant when I slapped Pierre. And that when Nasif told me about their proposed scam, how Pierre was going to send cocaine to Beirut in exchange for hashish, I insisted I was not part of that deal. I made it clear to Mohammed and Nasif I did not vouch for Pierre and I refused to be held accountable for goods consigned to him. “Ask Abu Ali: Does he really think I would be here trying to put together another load if I had not paid for the last one? He knows me better than that. How many years have we been doing business? Have I ever cheated him?”

  As Tamer translates, Abu Ali nods, speaks to some of the other growers. Then he begins a long explanation of where it all stands. “He says he believes you. He trusts you. That is why you are here,” Tamer explains. “Abu Ali knew there was something wrong the day you arrived with Mohammed, because Mohammed refused to discuss the other business with you present. But Mohammed assured Abu Ali that while you are here, while you make this new business, everything would be taken care of from the last shipment before you receive your goods. And still no money has arrived. These other men,” he indicates the growers, “they do not want to extend any more credit. Not until they are paid. There are buyers in Beirut and here in the valley willing to pay cash. These are not rich men. Their families depend on the money from the goods.”

  So I am
a fucking hostage.

  “I understand,” I say, speaking directly to Abu Ali. “I wish you had told me this sooner. It’s been almost two months. My partners and I have invested a lot of money in this business. We have over a million pounds of dates sitting in a warehouse in Beirut. I would not have wasted everyone’s time if I had known about this problem.”

  Tamer says, “Abu Ali was told the money was coming. Or the cocaine. And that it would be sold and then they would get paid.”

  “I know nothing about any of that,” I say, feeling the utter lack of standing for my position. The Wizard—and Mohammed—used my name. No matter what I say, these men hold me responsible. Tamer nods. A long discussion in Arabic ensues, with several of the growers expressing their opinions. I’m thinking about the quarter of a million

  dollars, maybe as much as three hundred grand we have already invested in this trip, most of it went to Mohammed as down payment for the new load, and at least another forty or fifty grand in expenses. And the letter of credit, all the shit we had to go through to get that. The half-million kilos of dates in a warehouse at the port. Bordo Foods expecting to receive the dates in exchange for the money pledged using their bank’s letter of credit. And me here in Baalbek, a guest in Abu Ali’s home, yes, but also a hostage of a sort, being held in lieu of $2 million owed by some slick fucker whose real name I don’t even know, a master of false identification, a thief—“but a good one.”