{"id":147,"date":"2013-08-10T11:07:28","date_gmt":"2013-08-10T11:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/?p=147"},"modified":"2024-04-19T19:24:16","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T19:24:16","slug":"the-rif","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/?p=147","title":{"rendered":"The Rif"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat is this plant?\u201d James asks.\u00a0 It\u2019s everywhere we look, growing right up to the door of the gite\u2014a small rural guesthouse\u2014or up to the fence-line a few feet from the door of the gite.\u00a0 We brush against it on our way to the road; we look out over a sea of greenery
\n\"SONY<\/a>
\n\u201cOh, do you really not know it?\u201d Hayat asks (I’ve changed our host’s name, out of mild paranoia on her behalf).\u00a0 The words are neutral, but her tone says it all.\u00a0 Cannabis.\u00a0 James is embarrassed not to have known, but the problem is less one of recognition than of incredulity.\u00a0 Surely, this expanse of bio-matter could not possibly be marijuana.\u00a0 Surely, an illegal drug would be at least somewhat hidden, tucked away behind other crops, shielded by houses.\u00a0 The ubiquity of this plant beggars belief.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was little,\u201d Hayat tells us, \u201cthis whole area was orchard: fruit trees of all kinds, along with olives, and vegetables growing underneath. The trees have all been rooted out: nothing is allowed to compete with the cannabis.\u201d
\n\"SONY<\/a>Of course, everyone knows that the Rif is full of cannabis. The guidebooks tell you explicitly, naming certain cities as places to avoid unless you\u2019re there for the obvious reason.\u00a0 They suggest avoiding certain treks because the police or the military might think you were a dealer or an aspiring dealer.\u00a0 They warn that inhabitants of the Rif are unfriendly to outsiders because of the cannabis trade: some visitors have even been pelted with rocks to drive them away.<\/p>\n

But I had worked hard to avoid the cannabis regions of the Rif: who wants to bring their children into an area associated with illegal drugs?\u00a0 I thought I had found a Riffian cannabis-free zone.<\/p>\n

Time to think again.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>\u00a0\"SONY
\nIn the morning, we take a short hike. \u00a0As we follow the piste<\/i>\u2014the dirt road\u2014up the hillside, we walk alongside a dry riverbed.\u00a0 Snaking along the bottom of the gully are a series of hoses.\u00a0 \u201cAre people taking water from further upstream?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor their precious cannabis,\u201d Hayat confirms.\u00a0 \u201cThey treat it like a baby.\u00a0 Better.\u00a0 No one take water this way for their family: only for the cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes that create conflict? Battles over water?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hayat tips her head sideways in partial acknowledgment.\u00a0 \u201cThe big growers take their water where they like.\u00a0 No one really argues with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the wells here seem to be running dry:<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a> \"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

In the field southwest of the piste<\/i>, people are bringing in the harvest.\u00a0 This stage of farming is labor-intensive and precise: only the plants with slightly yellowing leaves are taken. Walking toward us down the road from a farther field, an old woman is bent double by the load of cannabis she carries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is the old life,\u201d says Hayat, referring to the weight of the woman\u2019s load.\u00a0 \u201cNow women tell their men, \u2018I won\u2019t be your mule.\u00a0 I won\u2019t marry you if you expect me to work like that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I feel I should be focused on gender politics, but I can\u2019t get over the fact that the old woman is bent double under a weight of cannabis<\/i>, specifically.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/p>\n

<\/a>There\u2019s a chapter in Michael Pollan\u2019s Botany of Desire<\/i> that has influenced my views on cannabis.\u00a0 Pollan focuses on the transformation of the cannabis plant in the United States, with the war on drugs and the subsequent move indoors, to light- and water-intensive growing systems.\u00a0 Pollan also includes a description of a marijuana caf\u00e9 in Amsterdam, but somehow I feel certain he has never seen a seventy-year-old Moroccan woman bent double under a load of cannabis.\u00a0 Pollan\u2019s meditation on pleasure and desire and socio-political efforts to control the pleasure and wildness associated with cannabis seems very distant from this purely economic calculus of backbreaking labor in exchange for cash.<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a>
\nWe pass a large pile of gathered firewood by the side of the road.\u00a0 \u201cIn the old days,\u201d says Hayat, \u201cyou could tell a lot about a woman and her family by the pile of wood she would build. Everyone would see and would judge you by the size of the pile, the tidiness, the structure of the pile.\u00a0 It\u2019s the women who go up onto the mountain and cut the wood and carry it down.\u00a0 Sometimes a man, but mostly the women.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t that cause trouble on the mountain, with deforestation and erosion?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a ban on cutting wood now, but people do it anyway.\u00a0 It\u2019s custom.\u00a0 In the old days, there were not so many people living here, so the wood harvesting made little difference to the mountain.\u00a0 Now there are too many people, and how will they all live?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

We pass a tethered goat.\u00a0 \u201cWomen would have to go and gather forage for the animals, too.\u00a0 Life is easier now than it was then.\u00a0 Many people have no animals, so there\u2019s no need to gather forage.\u00a0 Some people heat their homes with gas.\u00a0 People can buy what they need with the money from the cannabis.\u00a0 These days, a mother will say to her son, \u2018Let us find you a strong woman to help you,\u2019 and the son will say, \u2018My wife doesn\u2019t have to help me, she can sit at the mirror all day and make herself beautiful.\u2019\u201d (!)<\/p>\n

“Is the cannabis so bad, then?” I ask. \u00a0“If it makes people\u2019s lives easier?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people have done well out of cannabis,\u201d Hayat acknowledges. \u201cThey have been able to build houses, buy cars.\u00a0 Others have not done so well.\u00a0 My brothers\u2014” (Hayat’s brothers grow cannabis, a fact she was reluctant to own straight out: \u201cMy brothers do what everyone else does,\u201d she finally conceded, \u201cthough I am ashamed of this.\u201d) \u201cOnce we were examining family finances, to pool our resources to care for my mother in her illness, so I know how much my brothers make, and it comes out to about 100 dirhams a day, which is not that much money when you think about it.\u201d\u00a0 Roughly $12 per day, $84 per week (assuming a seven day work week), not quite $4,500 per year.\u00a0 Not that much indeed.\u00a0 \u201cMy brothers still can\u2019t afford to build themselves a house, though they\u2019ve been trying for three years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cannabis drying on rooftops:
\n\"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

A recent UN report on drugs and crime lists Morocco and Afghanistan as \u201cthe foremost source countries for cannabis resin\u201d in the world.\u00a0 Morocco has 47,000 hectares devoted to cannabis cultivation; Afghanistan has only 12,000 hectares.\u00a0 Moroccan cannabis goes to Europe through Spain\u2014so my old woman loaded with cannabis might well be supplying Michael Pollan\u2019s marijuana caf\u00e9 in Amsterdam.\u00a0 Spain evidently manages to confiscate 34% of the hashish smuggled through its borders while Morocco stops only 12% of the cannabis moving across its territories.\u00a0 (How exactly do they come up with these percentages, I wonder.\u00a0 Is someone counting total quantity somewhere?\u00a0 Is there a gentleman\u2019s agreement about how much cannabis will be confiscated? \u201cOK, give me 12% of that and then move on.\u201d)<\/p>\n

The government used to carpet bomb the Rif in an attempt to limit the cannabis crop.\u00a0 What Hayat describes sounds alarmingly similar to napalm or agent orange: every plant touched by the spray dies; people are left coughing and ill.<\/p>\n

But since the February 20th<\/sup> movement\u2014the “Arab spring,” Moroccan style\u2014the carpet bombing has ceased.\u00a0 The sense I get from conversations with a number of people is that the government, alarmed by the protests, pulled back from active conflict in the Rif.\u00a0 Now, the government lets the cannabis provide the social support it cannot afford to offer.\u00a0 Cannabis provides jobs and brings cash to the region.\u00a0 There are no other crops that Europe is so happy to purchase.
\n\"SONY\u00a0\"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe government did try a pilot program growing saffron here, and it was successful, but it was not well publicized,\u201d says Hayat.\u00a0 \u201cI told my father and brothers that we should try growing saffron, but they laughed at me.\u00a0 My father said we would need hectares of land to grow that crop successfully, but we only have tiny plots.\u00a0 It would never work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Micro-cropping: cork tree with cannabis (the bark is stripped from the bottom of the tree and used to make stools and other useful things).
\n\"SONY<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, others complain that teenagers go to work for these big growers, for the dealers, and they don\u2019t finish school.\u00a0 \u201cMaybe they start smoking themselves, and then they\u2019re trapped in a world where they will never really matter.\u00a0 Their lives are wasted.\u00a0 This is not support; this is abandonment.\u201d<\/p>\n

But no one says this very loudly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat is this plant?\u201d James asks.\u00a0 It\u2019s everywhere we look, growing right up to the door of the gite\u2014a small rural guesthouse\u2014or up to the fence-line a few feet from the door of the gite.\u00a0 We brush against it on our way to the road; we look out over a sea of greenery \u201cOh, do … Continue reading The Rif<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6,3,9],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4JDdJ-2n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":357,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maghrebi-voices.swarthmore.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}