Tangier by Angus Stewart Page B

Israelis with American rather than Russian weapons.
    The chopping of kif is a demanding task. A cutter will have a board, a sharp knife, and a sieve, usually a tin with fine holes punched in it. The action is similar to chopping parsley. As the right hand rocks the knife on the board the thumb and fingers of the left feed the plant beneath the blade. When I suggested a domestic coffee grinder to a friend who cuts a lot I got a dry look. A bunch of kif is a single twig from a female plant. Still on the stalk it is sage green, dried, shaped like a spear blade, and very tough to chop. The stalk is thrown away, being sbil ,or rubbish. The bunches of leaves are chopped and re-chopped until the result is fine enough to pass through the sieve. A leaf of tobacco is treated in the same way. Freshly chopped kif smells like cat'surine. Burning, the smoke is redolent of an autumn bonfire; and for anyone who loves Morocco produces instant nostalgia. Snobbery obtains among kif cutters as among vintners: their products' different consumers are equally discriminating. A good cutter will know the proportion of tobacco a given client likes in his mixture, or will provide the two ingredients separately,
    The potency of kif varies enormously. The little paper crescent you buy in a Tangier café or from a tout, is likely only to give you a mild headache and a dry throat: a single inhalation from the pipe Moroccans themselves are smoking may rocket you into euphoria.
    Cannabis is a mild hypnotic, not an hallucinogen. Its effects bear no resemblance to those of other hypnotics, alcohol or barbiturates. It is not physiologically addictive; psychologically perhaps to very few. There is a sense in which the drug is, or can be a pseudo-hallucinogen. With closed eyes a smoker may see images bright, absurd, seemingly as inconsequential as those in a dream. They are characterized by clarity, colour, but above all motion, usually rapid. The sequence of images disappears when the eyes are open. In my experience they were always benign. I say were because later, when smoking alone, I kept my eyes open and listened to the stories or ideas, equally brilliant and absurd, that raced through the mind similarly to the images which assaulted the closed eyes. It was rather like sweeping the world's radio stations with a powerful receiver as opposed to doing the same thing with the world's television transmissions. The difference, obviously, is that kif ideas have the subjective coherence of a single mind: the babble from Palo Alto to Bangkok is the product of many.
    Like sex or golf, the enjoyment of kif takes training. The intelligent smoker will train himself almost unconsciously. His education will evolve through smoking with sympathetic friends and by solitary experiment. Very soon he will know when to smoke and when not to - in terms less, obviously, of social environment than of his own mood. Kif exaggerates the tenor of an existing mood. I used it socially after dinner with friends: by myself if I wanted to wander in a splendidly ridiculous world, or alter time sense; selectively cancel functions of the higher brain. Ears on maximum for music: eyes for paintings. The practical uses in Tangier are considerable. It enables one not to care if mistress or maid hasn't turned up, or if one discovers one has ten pounds to last three weeks. Personally, it permitted me to gaze at beautiful people and things without wanting to photograph (i.e. possess) them for a millisecond. A drug of abdication, if one wills. And yet sensitizing receptivity.
    Kif can be the catalyst of a miniature psychosis. A flushing of the brain. This is the function of a dream. The legal night hypnotics, barbiturates, Mandrax, etc. inhibit this flushing: and result in blockage of a vital drainage system. Anyone who's been on sleeping pills for even a few weeks knows he has vivid, memorable dreams when he comes off them. The flushing is working again: the individual is mentally healthier. It