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"Go away! Scram off!"
"One dirhem Meester."
"One cigarette."
"You want beeg one Meester?"
And the old settlers pass on the other
side. No they don't get through my cover. And I have a lot of special
numbers for emergency use... Character with wild eyes that spin in little
circles believes trepanning is the last answer pull you into a garage
and try to do the job with an electric drill straight away.
"Now if you'll kindly take a seat
here."
"Say what is this?"
"All over ina minute and you'll
be out of that rigid cranium."
So word goes out stay away from that
one. You need him like a hole in the head. I have deadly old-style bores
who are translating the Koran into Provençal or constructing a
new cosmology based on "brain breathing." And the animal lover
with exotic pets. The CIA man looks down with moist suspicious brow
at the animal in his lap. It is a large ocelat its claws pricking into
his flesh, and every time he tries to shove it away the animal growls
and digs in. I won't be seeing that Bay of Pigs again.
So I give myself a week on the build-up
and make contact. Colonel Bradly knows the wild boys better than any
man in Africa. In fact he has given his whole life to youth and, it
would seem, gotten something back. There is talk of the devil's bargain
and in fact he is indecently young looking for a man of sixty odd. As
the Colonel puts it with engaging candor:
"The world is not my home you understand
here on young people."
We have lunch on the terrace of his
mountain house. A heavily wooded garden with pools and paths stretches
down to a cliff over the sea. Lunch is turbot in cream sauce, grouse,
wild asparagus, peaches in wine. Quite a change from the grey cafeteria
food I have been subjected to in Western cities where I pass myself
off a one of the faceless apathetic citizens searched and questioned
by the police on every corner, set upon by brazen muggers, stumbling
home to my burglarized apartment to find the narcotics squad going through
my medicine chest again. We are served by a lithe young Malay with bright
red gums. Colonel Bradly jabs a fork at him.
"Had a job getting that dish through
immigration. The Consulate wasn't at all helpful." After lunch
we settle down to discuss my assignment.
"The wild boys are an overflow
from North African cities that started in 1969. The uneasy Spring of
1969 in Marrakech. Spring in Marrakech is always uneasy each day a little
hotter knowing what Marrakech can be in August. That Spring gasoline
gangs prowled the rubbish heaps, alleys, and squares of the city dousing
just anybody with gasoline and setting that person on fire. They rush
in anywhere nice young couple sitting in their chintzy middle-class
living room when hello yes hello the gas boys rush in douse them head
to foot with a pump fire extinguisher full of gasoline, and I got some
good pictures from a closet where I had prudently taken refuge. Shot
of the boy who lit the match he let the rank and file slosh his couple
then he lit a Swan match face young pure pitiless as the cleansing fire
brought the match close enough to catch the fumes. Then he lit a Player
with the same match sucked the smoke in and smiled he was listening
to the screams and I thought my God what a cigarette ad: Clam bake on
a beach the BOY there with a match. He is looking at two girls in bikinis.
As he lights the match they lean forward with a LUCKYSTRIKE CHESTERFIEIDOLDGOLDCAMELPLAYER
in the bim and give a pert little salute. The BOY turned out to be the
hottest property in advertising. Enigmatic smile on the delicate young
face. Just what is the BOY looking at? We had set out to sell cigarettes
or whatever else we were paid to sell. The BOY was too hot to handle.
Temples were erected to the BOY and there were posters of his face seventy
feet high and all the teenagers began acting like the BOY looking at
you with a dreamy look, lips parted over the Wheaties. They all bought
BOY shirts and BOY knives running around like wolf packs, burning looting
killing it spread everywhere all that summer in Marrakech the city would
light up at night human torches flickering on walls, trees, fountains
all very romantic you could map the dangerous areas sitting on your
balcony under the stars sipping a Scotch. I looked across the square
and watched a tourist burning in blue fire they had gasoline that burned
in all colors by them... (He turned on the projector and stepped to
the edge of the balcony)... Just look at them out there all those little
figures dissolving in light. Rather like fairy land isn't it except
for the smell of gasoline and burning flesh.
"Well they called in a strong man
Colonel Arachnid Ben Driss who cruised the city in trucks rounded up
the gas boys took them outside the walls shaved their heads and machine-gunned
them. Survivors went underground or took to the deserts and the mountains
where they evolved different ways of life and modes of combat."
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