M'Hashish by Mohammed Mrabet, taped and translated from the Mogrebi by Paul Bowles
San Franciso: City Lights Books, 1969
Long before there were Hippies, there were Beats. Both were counter-culture groups, on morphing into the other as the 1950s became the 1960s. The spiritual home of both groups was San Francisco, and the intellectual heart was City Light Books, which originally published the work of the Beats (most famously Ginsberg's Howl), but soon broadened it's scope to other counter-culture movements. It's fair to state that the output of the publishing house is of varying quality, as this book attests - it's no Howl.
Paul Bowles, multi-talented musician, author and bohemian, best known in literature for The Sheltering Sky, lived in Tangier for much of his adult life, hence his knowledge of, and ability to translate these short tales of Mohammed Mrabet, a famous artist and storyteller from the Rif tribes of Morocco.
M'Hashish is a collaboration between the two men. The tales are simple stories of incidents in the lives of Moroccans who indulge in smoking hashish (Kif in the local language). The stories are pleasingly exotic, and are a window into a different way of life. They don't pull back from the dangers of too great an indulgence in the drug, but also emphasise the peace and tranquillity that many users find in its use.
What was probably seen as risqué and exotic at the time of publication seems now, from a distance of more than fifty years, quaint and without real meaning. There is no deep literary or social value to these stories, and I get the impression (although I don't know for sure), that Mrabet was Bowles' pet project.
At just over fifty pages, you will not lose much time if you read these stories, and they are an amusing time-capsule.
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