My new Moroccan friend was clenching her left hand into a fist and smacking the inside of her elbow with her right. My Arabic was worse than my French, and being both very young and relatively unattractive, I didn’t know much about the vagaries of the opposite sex, let alone raven haired non-English speaking ones. What I did know however was the universal sign for an erection. What I had gleaned was that the opium poppies she had just scarred with a knife and placed in the small tea pot would, once infused and then digested, lead to an erection that due to the effects of the said opium be of unusual strength and increased duration. The fact that she did it so enthusiastically and with a sexy smile indicated also that she had plans for this future super erection. These were plans that I entirely and overwhelmingly was in complete agreement with.
The night, as they say, was looking good, a remarkable turn of events given how my first day in Morocco had started. I had awoken in a sleazy Moroccan apartment and with my traveling inexperience and mother’s warnings ringing in my ears had slept with a legrope around each ankle (attached to my two board quiver), a bumbag (yes I was traveling with one of those peculiar accessories) around my waist and had used my large backpack as a pillow. Suffice to say, it had been an uncomfortable night. I had little knowledge of the area, no contacts, no car and unfounded and deep paranoia of the dangers of traveling in Morocco.
The day broke bright, as Moroccan days often do, and not really knowing where I was was, or where the waves were, I decided to hop on a bus and head to the beach. The bus was packed with mix of toothless crones, dirt streaked kids and sombre fez-clad, chain-smoking men. There was one exception though; a 20-year-old surfer who sported a faded Rip Curl cord jacket from 1986 and a beaten up MR twin fin. Two stops down, the bus hissed to a halt and he rose and beckoned me to follow. Was it a trap? Did he know where the waves were for? With a split second to decide, I followed my instincts. How could you not trust a man with a MR twin fin?
We walked through a rocky beach track, past a sand blasted village of tin huts and faded Coca Cola ribbons, over a rocky headland outcrop and came across a boulder strewn point. Three foot righthanders, wobbled speedily, if unevenly, for a couple hundred metres down the point with not a soul in sight. We surfed all day only stopping for sweet mint tea and lamb tagines cooked over coals served in the aforementioned tin shacks. Through sign language and surfing we conversed and an understanding was found. His name was Omar and he surfed very badly but with limitless enthusiasm. Sunburnt and satisfied, as only one can be when your personal horizons have been expanded, we headed back to the road and the bus.
More sign language indicated a dinner plan and he wrote down a restaurant and the time. That was where I met the raven haired female, who was a friend of Omar’s girlfriend. Clearly my inability to speak the language was helping my cause (why hadn’t I thought of not talking before) and it was post dinner that I found myself back at her apartment sipping sweet warm opium tea. The rushing warmth and pins and needles came first, the relaxation second and the erection third. It wasn’t big (it couldn’t be), but it was there and it was apparent my new friend had handled such an opium strengthened apparatus before.
The next day broke bright, as Moroccan days often do. I had slept with woman and without a bumbag. I had a new friend who owned a MR twin fin. I was in Morocco. I had a future. Life was good.
