It was two days since the concert and Klaus' foot was getting worse. I was afraid gangrene would set in if I didn't get him to Spain, where he could get decent care.
There was no way he could walk, much less carry his gear, and I couldn't carry both packs and him. I went down to the concert site and rummaged through the mountain of trash that was still sitting there. After an hour or so, I found exactly what I was looking for - a piece of cable trough about 40cm long. A bit more digging and I found a piece of board with a couple of nails poking out.
I returned to camp and fitted the cable trough to Klaus' leg. It was three boards screwed together in a "U" shape that just barely fit his leg. With a bit of work, I was able to pull the nails out of the smaller board with my pliers and hammer it to the bottom of the trough with a stone. This would let Klaus stand on his heel without the injured part of his foot touching the ground. I took one of his t-shirts, shredded it and used the strips to fix it to his leg. With a walking stick for balance, he could also carry his pack.
On the third day we broke camp and geared up. It was a fair hike to a bus route and Klaus was in pain, but my device at least got him mobile. After an hour in the the blazing heat, a bus finally came along going to Tetouan. It let us down in the same vacant lot as before, and we wandered through the other buses until we found one going to Tangier.
By the time we made Tangier, Klaus' foot was swollen and angry red. I bought some aspirin and restocked my antibiotic cream and bandages to wrap his foot again.
We were getting ready to find a bus to the border at Ceuta when two guys came by. They were cleanly dressed and obviously Moroccan. They spoke first in French, but when we did not understand, one of them spoke in English.
"Are you going to Ceuta tonight," he asked.
"Trying to, but there doesn't seem to be any buses," I replied.
"Not now, no. The last ferry already left, so the next bus is in the morning," he said. "Your friend looks in bad shape."
"Yes, he cut his foot and it's infected," I explained. "I'm trying to get him back to Spain to see a doctor."
"That's too bad," he didn't seem to empathetic, in hindsight. "We live not too far from here. Why don't you join us for cous-cous and mint tea?"
Klaus and I looked at each other. He was in no shape to refuse, and I had no better options at the moment, so we followed the pair about three blocks to a squat white-washed building that looked pretty much like all the others in the city.
Their flat was on the second floor, and Klaus struggled with the stairs, going one step at a time. I followed him in case he lost his balance. When we finally made the landing, the two guys were in their flat with the door open, inviting us in. It was a tiny and dingy one-room flat with two chairs and a bed. In the corner was a one-burner gas stove perched on top of a mini fridge, and a tattered sheet hanging over the only window.
they took the two chairs, so we gladly shed our packs and sat on the edge of the bed.
I hadn't noticed the door being padlocked, but if I had, it wouldn't have helped my sudden feeling of unease. The two of them sat there, grinning like bearkats, staring at us like starved cannibals.
"So how much do you want?" the English speaker asked.
"How much...cous-cous?" I responded.
He laughed disingenuously. "No, of course not. Hasheesh," he stated, as if we were fools for thinking anything else.
"Well, we didn't really..." I stopped talking as the silent guy reached down and pulled out an impossibly big knife. It was a bit larger than a Bowie knife and appeared to be inscribed with Arabic characters.
Klaus and I looked dumbly at each other, and then back at them. "We don't really have money to buy hash," I stated, not entirely lying - I knew Klaus was almost broke. "And we are leaving tomorrow, so I..."
The English speaker stood up and came towards us. Klaus and I moved apart on the bed. He reached down and flung up the bed cover to reveal dozens of slabs of hasheesh, neatly wrapped in plastic and taped together in one-kilo bundles, half a kilo per slab. He went back to his chair and asked again, "How much do you want?"
"We really don't have any money for that. Just enough to buy tickets on the ferry. My friend needs to get to a doctor soon."
"No problem," he grinned. "Maybe you have something to trade."
"Not really..." I was interrupted again when English speaker stood up and began going through our packs.
Klaus and I sat stupidly looking at each other and then at our two hosts, then back at each other. Meanwhile, English speaker was selecting items that interested him - my only pair of work jeans and my winter jacket (what would he ever need that for?), similar items from Klaus' pack.
"Now open your pockets," he ordered, not quite so friendly this time.
I turned out my pockets and Klaus did the same. Between us there was about $30 in greenbacks and crumpled up dinar, with a few German marks.
"Is that all?" he demanded. The silent guy shifted menacingly in his seat, still holding the knife.
"That's it for me. Like I said..." I was getting annoyed that I couldn't finish a sentence.
"Let's have a check, shall we?" He motioned us to stand and he patted us down looking for hidden money belts, but found none. "Thank you for your business," he practically snarled this time.
He reached under the bed and pulled out a kilo of Zero-Zero, the black gooey hash that Morocco was famous for. He tossed it in my pack and patted my on the shoulder. "I'm sure that will help your friend's foot."
The silent guy stood up. We were either about to be butchered, or business was done. There was obviously no cous-cous and mint tea forthcoming.
"Come! My friend will drop you at the border crossing," he announced, as if it were some big favor he was doing for us.
Klaus and I quickly gathered what was left of our gear and English speaker unlocked the door. We moved out onto the landing and suddenly Klaus could maneuver the stairs quite a bit faster than before. We got down to the street and English speaker waved to someone up the street. A beat up Mercedes taxi cab rolled up in front of us.
"Good travel to you, my friend," English speaker grinned. I wanted to respond in less than polite terms, especially to being called "friend," but I bit my tongue and we got in the taxi. English speaker rattled off someting in Arabic and the taxi lurched away up the street.
In a few minutes, we came to a halt, the brakes squealing like metal on metal.
"Fronteras," the driver croaked, pointing with his index finger at the border crossing.
"We don't have any money. The guy back there...," I was interrupted again.
"No problema. Fronteras," he croaked again, still pointing.
Klaus and I scrambled from the taxi and walked as briskly as we could to the crossing. It was already well into the night and though we had our passports and immigration cards ready, there was no one manning the booth. We looked around and saw no signs of life, so we dashed across and made for the ferry terminal as fast as we could.
The terminal was empty but for a handful of packers scattered around sleeping on the hard wooden benches. Klaus and I found a spot, shed our packs and sat down at near free-fall speed.
Now what do we do?
We sat there silently for a while, staring into space. My mind was racing through all the events that had left us at this point. Finally, I spoke up.
"Do you need to use the toilet?" I asked. Klaus looked at me as if I had just asked to borrow a thousand dollars.
"Uh, yes, I think so," he muttered.
"OK, you go first and I'll watch the gear," I said.
He hobbled off to the toilets, while I pondered my next moves. I needed to restock and pick up some gigs. That meant going back to Ireland, which was more or less my base of operations. In any case, I knew people there and I figured I could make a little money before setting out again.
Klaus came back and I slid his pack over to him.
"Do you want half of the hash?" I asked.
"Are you kidding? With my luck I will be arrested in this godforsaken place."
"OK, I dump it in the toilet...somehow."
I picked up my gear and headed for the toilet. It was worse than I imagined. It had a squat toilet in the floor and a tub of water with a bucket for cleaning up. Fortunately, there was a rusted nail driven into the back of the door to hand my pack on.
I went to work. First, I dropped my shorts and carefully opened the seam down the inside of the left leg. I pulled out two $100 bills and a $50 bill and put them in my pocket. Next, I removed my tent and opened the bag. I pulled out the tent poles - hollow aluminum tubes about a meter long.
I took out the hash. Fortunately, it was quite soft and flexible. I began breaking off strips and rolling them into logs and sliding them into the tent poles. I plugged the ends with some of my precious toilet paper and took out a candle, lit it and sealed the ends with wax. When I had done this with all of the hash, I repacked everything and stood there for a moment, enjoying my last moments of freedom. I carefully took out my crumpled pack of cigarettes, removed one, straightened it, and smoked it, wondering what the hell I was doing here.
I tossed the butt in the squat toilet and grabbed my gear. I rejoined Klaus, who was rubbing his leg in serious pain. I handed him a small ball of hash.
"Here, suck on this. It should help a little."
He popped it in his mouth and within minutes was sound asleep. I was too rattled to sleep, and the past few hours had put my brain on hyperalert. I couldn't sleep if I wanted to.
The hours passed like days, but at last the sky began to brighten and there was activity in the terminal. Klaus stirred and looked around trying to readjust his bearings. At about 6am, by my reckoning, a heavy metal door creaked open at the end of the room and customs officers were taking their places.
Klaus and I got in line. He was a few spaces ahead of me. I stepped to the side, as if waiting for someone, and watched the proceedings. The officers conducted brief interviews, then either marked the bags with a chalk "X" or started rifling them I couldn't determine any pattern to any of it, and finally I made up my mind to dive in.
When I finally came to the counter, I dropped my pack in front of the officer and held out my passport.
"Do you smoke?" he asked me.
I was completely caught off guard. "Um, yes," I said.
"What brand?" he asked.
I fished in my pocket and pulled out my crumpled pack of Marlboros.
"You smoke hasheesh, yes?" he asked bruskly.
It was the thing to roll hash with tobacco, and Marlboro was the preferred brand.
"Uh...no, I'm American. This is my brand," I said, trying desperately to keep a blank face.
The officer ran his hand inside some of the pockets of my pack, and pulled open the top flap and looked inside. Then he looked at me for what seemed like an hour.
Suddenly, he closed the flap and put a chalk "X" on my pack and shoved it aside. I grabbed my pack and all but ran for the exit.
I caught up to Klaus just as the ferry horn blasted as the boat came in to dock. He looked in somewhat less pain, and if nothing else, the ferry was a welcome link to home for him.
When we disembarked in Algeciras, I saw him to the emergency room at the nearest hospital. It was a quiet day and they immediately got to work on his foot.
"I've got to move on. Are you going to be OK?" I asked.
"Yes, thank you very much. I can't tell you how grateful I am for your help these past few days," he looked on the verge of tears.
"Hey, without you, I never would have known about the concert, or met Uwe, or had a night I'll never forget," I said, speaking from the heart. I handed him my contact book opened to a blank page. "I'll check in on you when I pass through Dusseldorf."
He rummaged in his pack and gave me his book, as well. We put our contact information in the books and swapped them back.
"I hope you will," he said earnestly, 'I want to buy you a beer."
We both smiled broadly and shook hands, pausing for a moment to stare at each other like two soldiers who had just survived battle. Then I gathered my gear and headed for the door.
The nurse stopped me at the admitting desk.
"Do you want this?" she asked, holding out the cable trough.
I laughed. "No, that's alright. It served its purpose."
"Very ingenious," she smiled. "We'll put it in our collection."
We both smiled and I stepped out into the heat.
"What next?" I said to no one in particular.