Travel Reference
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smoke hashish. We nodded like pups, and he smiled in camaraderie. If we harbored distrust,
it was what we had learned, not what our instincts told us. Abraham said he would take us to
a tea parlor behind a café, both operated by his uncle. And we were off, down the yellow brick
road.
Abraham turned to face us near the café with a warning: we would be offered hashish to
buy, but we should decline, no matter how great the quality or the bargain, because the Arabs
offering were in cahoots with the Israeli police, who would arrest us. They would demand a
huge bail from our suburban parents and then deport us—and then return the hashish to the
sellers. What we smoked, on the other hand, could not be used against us.
Abraham at nineteen or twenty was one of us, an instant ally on the road to adventure,
a brother in the youth brigade, because that's how it was. Not so much as us against
them—though there was plenty of that—those times recollect as us united, based on the
simple virtues that will not go away: youth and idealism. Youth goes away on a personal level,
but it remains immortal as a font of idealism, and I think of Abraham steering us around
a certain disaster, because we were brothers in the bond in that holy bonding time. Oh, we
would have shopped that bargain! We may have changed since then, though I believe the fun-
damentals to be intact, and a peace pipe would be a lovely thing to share again.
Uncle Tenouse was a perfect host who led us through the café to the space in back, en-
closed by three short walls with a partial trellis and hanging vines for a ceiling over a sawdust
floor. On stools around the perimeter sat Israelis and Arabs in common society awaiting the
pipe. Abraham's cousin Farouk entered with a flourish, grasping the pipe in both hands. The
impressive hookah captured our fancy and fantasy. Would they ever believe this one back on
the farm? Ali Baba tassels and Arabesques dangled in festoons among the leads. Little brass
charms, figurines and cymbals clinked, as a briquette of hashish wisped in the oversized bowl.
Inhaling like a billows, Farouk stoked the briquette till it glowed red, till his eyeballs slumped
toward his warm smile, and the glow gained radiance with a life of its own. Farouk delivered,
rounding the patrons on their stools. To my left a geriatric Arab smoked and mumbled, “Hub-
bly bubbly. Hubbly bubbly.”
The other customers pulled like seasoned veterans, exhaling in billows. What was not to
waste? The briquette, about two by two by two of red ember—and I don't mean centimeters;
that was inches—wouldn't fit into the bowl for a while. To our left two middle-agers intro-
duced themselves as former pilots. That they were Israeli was foregone; nobody else had pilots
except the Egyptians, who wouldn't likely come to Jerusalem to smoke hash. I leaned over and
asked a pilot, “What is hubbly bubbly?”
He shrugged, “Good shit.” Was it true that we would be arrested if we bought any hash?
He said it couldn't be truer, because the Israeli government considered hashish a severe threat
and a great ally. That is, many Arabs were stoned—all the time stoned, and even though the
Soviets supplied advisors, explosives and guns, the Arabs could not figure out why setting a
