Harry BawBags Blurt

Are you ready for a tale of Murder In The Maghreb !!!

Its a long post so make sure you’re sitting comfortably!

Well, as ive mentioned in my blog previously, I have been doin the good Samaritan bit of late…Helping out the alky who lives downstairs through a bit of a rough patch (Well… a rougher than normal patch!). Just giving him a few meals out of the restaurant on the fly to save him from worrying about how he’s gonna feed himself.

Its nice tae be nice after all.

Anyway, I sat with him for a while the other night as he seemed to be in much better spirits and I think he fancied gettin a wee bit of the craic.

Poor auld cunt hadnt been oot the flat for nearly a fortnight … that malky he got has really shaken him up and I reckon he’ll still be suffering long after his ribs have healed … he deadbolts the door now and he never use to before.

Then again, Im fully aware that he is holding the pot dealers stash somewhere in his flat … so that may be the reason for the deadbolt.

Mad eh? … The webs we people weave.

So there I was sitting there trying to think of something tae spraff about but I just couldnae come up with anything …

I noticed that a large rip had occurred in the wallpaper just above the door of the living room. It had obviously began to peel from the damp as he had tried to repair it.

No with paper or paste … no no no … not with any o that shite.

With sellotape …

Aye! Just plain see-through sellotape … in big long strips with teeth marks at either end!!!

It made me feel hell of a miserable and I started to feel itchy all over … Id decided to finish my coffee, make my excuses and leave, then head up the stairs to return to my only marginally better decorated flat.

I was ready for the off.

But then a program came on the telly and it was about all they African immigrants risking their lives every day, trying to get across the Mediterranean in tiny flimsy wee rowing boats, just to escape the poverty.

I mentioned to him that I had spent some time backpacking alone in Morocco in the past.

“Aye? … Ive been oot that way masel” he said.

I was dubious about it to say the least.

“Fuckn Africa … shit-hole … wouldn’t ever go there again, even if ye paid me” … he was quite agitated at the mere mention of the continent and I was interested to find out why … it certainly wasn’t just a case of latent racism, the kind that most british people in their 50s have.

“How the fuck did ye end up oot that way?” I asked … and he went on to tell me this wee story.

In the mid 1970’s, when he was 20 odd, he had been a bit of a free spirit and had taken himself off to see a bit more of life, more than Glasgow could offer him anyway.

He ran off a list of countries to me and it felt a wee bit surreal hearing things like Fjord, The Dead Sea and Constantinople coming from this jakeys mouth.

10 minutes previously, I would have staked my life on him having never ventured further than the post office – to pick his giro up … and then a wee bit further down to the off licence – to put his giro down.

There you go eh! … Never judge a book by its cover BawBags! … No matter how disheveled it is!

I didn’t even know what Contstantinople was!

“Constantinople was Istanbul … before Istanbul became Istanbul”

“Aw … right!” … I live n learn eh!

He somehow managed to get a job “crewing” on yachts while he was in the Cote D’azure … just general duties like washing the decks down and preparing food.

He got in with the in crowd amongst the “crewing” fraternity and was offered a two month job on a yacht that was going on a tour all around the Med. It belonged to the son of some kind of big shot american oil executive and the pay and perks were great he told me.

“Cannes, Genoa, Corsica, Sardinia, all down the Italian coast and Sicily then over to Tunisia … fuckin magic so it was son!”

” … and the stuff the guests were getting up tae mate … you wouldnae believe it! … Pot, Cocaine, Women … and all the rest of it!!!”

There was a wee glint in his eyes that to me suggested cocaine fuelled orgies … I wanted him to divulge a bit more on that one but he was on a roll and he was obviously wanting to get to the crux of the story, sitting down and drawing out maps in the air for me with his fingers – no mention of his broken ribs now.

It was good to see … so I just let him flow.

Good craic so it was.

They had dropped all the guests of in Tunisia as they were all flying back to France. It was the 5 remaining crew members jobs to get the yacht to Valencia for a scheduled re-fit and from there they had flights to Nice all bought and paid for them as part of the deal.

They were on their way and everything was going as planned till they got hit by a freak storm one night, the yacht was damaged and they were taken seriously off-course to just of the coast of Algeria. All of them were seriously shaken up and the skipper decided to take the yacht as far into the coast as possible … find a suitable area to anchor in … and get onshore to consider their options.

This they did quite easily but the only thing was that it was in the back of beyond!

“Fucking nothing anywhere around! … couldn’t even see a way out of the cove we had landed in … steep as fuck it was!”

Then all of a sudden they saw a whole line of horses pouring down a path that snaked its way down from the cliffs above …

“Couldnae believe my eyes … there must’ve been about 20 of them all being ridden bareback by wee boys … the sun was shining on them and beautiful they were, like stallions, and they thundered past us with the wee boys just laughing at us … “

Along came an arab looking guy and he spoke perfect English. Turns out they had landed no far from a racehorse stud farm and this guy was in charge of the running of it. There was nothing else around for 40 or 50 miles he said and he invited them back to stay until they had decided what to do.

“Like something out of a fairy tale it was son … it was an oasis, and it looked like how you imagine an oasis to look like! … apart from this big house and all the stables dotted around it”

They were made more than welcome and the hospitality they were shown was way over the top he said.

He got the impression that a lot of the people working there had never even seen a white European before … all the wee kids kept trying to touch their faces.

That night they were treated to a impromptu acrobatics display from the kids … “Happy wee souls they were”

They were all of Berber origin and the boss explained to him that the parents just give them over to the stables cause they cant hope to feed and look after them properly.

If theyre fit and healthy, they are put to work and learn all about looking after horses in return for food and accomodation.

It wasnt like an official adoption thing … this was Africa … none of them would ever see their parents again.

They put the five of them up in an outlying stable for the night … and they all slept on the hay without blankets happy as larry.

That night, however, something terrible happened.

One of the horses was killed when a stable caught fire … nobody knew how.

He was worried that they would turn the blame on the crew.

But they didnt.

The boss of the farm seemed ok about it the next day and he invited the whole group to join him while he visited his neighbour. It took about two hours in a land rover to get there and when they arrived they received the same reception as they did the night before. Loads of food and drink and there was also copious amounts of hashish this time.

“We were all smashed son … none of us had anything like it before … I couldnae feel anything from the neck doon!”

The neighbour insisted that they take a healthy bag of hashish back with them … he kept thinking they were gonna get forced into paying for it and it was all an elaborate ruse to get any money they had off them … but no, it was all for free – a gift of goodwill.

By the time they got back to the farm it was late and they were all very stoned, the boss even had to help them out of the land rover and into the stable so they could kip for the night.

But it was a different stable than before … much further away from the main farm.

“Christ! Why did you ever leave mate! … sounds like a good place to me!” I says to him.

“Aye?, wait n hear this though” he replied

Later that night he was beginning to feel really dodgy … his stomach was bad and he thinks he was just beginning to hullucinate a bit … it had never happened to him before.

He freaked out and left everyone sleeping where they were and made his way along the track to the farm in the pitch dark.

“Fuck knows why! … I was out of it!”

Eventually he got there but couldn’t find anybody. He didn’t want to bang on the door as it was so late so he began to walk round the back of the big house to see if there were any lights on.

Before he turned the corner he heard a racket coming from behind. He quietly laid down and crawled along till he could pop his head round and see what it was.

About 30 yards in the distance stood all the stable boys in a line crying … the boss and a few other adults he hadnt seen before were pacing up and down behind them shouting in Arabic.

“I couldnae move for fear mate … I got the feeling something bad was gonna happen … but I couldnae do fuck all aboot it … I still wisnae sure if I wasn’t just imagining the whole thing!”

He realised what they were standing in-front of – they had one of these wee boys pegged out by his ankles and wrists on the ground.

“He was screaming son … really screaming … but I couldnae hear it properly cause my ears were playing up … it was like they had water in them or something … everything kept fading in and oot”

They doused the wee boy in gasoline, took a few steps back, and threw a match at him.

“I never wanna see or hear anything like that again son … horrific it was … my bowels and bladder just let go at the same time and I was struggling to breath through fear … ah shat masel”

“… and the worst of it was – these adults seemed to be forcing all the boys to watch their wee pal burn to death.”

It must’ve been a punishment for the death of the horse.

Fucks Sake.

Suddenly he got a hold of himself and managed to stumble his way into the night and found the stable with the rest of the crew in. They were all still asleep.

He woke them up and tried to explain but they were all wasted.

The next thing he knows its daylight and he’s waking up back on the yacht with the rest of the crew.

They told him he was being fucking hysterical the night before, running around naked and screaming and making no sense.

They ended up tying his hands and feet together and that made it even worse … so they had to sedate him with fuck knows what.

They were on their way to Morrocco by keeping as close to the coastline as they could to put the yacht into a port for a tug to take it to Valencia.

“Two weeks later I was back in Glasgow and ahve no been oot of Scotland since, and ahve no touched any drugs since then either … ” he told me.

“So there ye go son … Fuckin Africa … Lifes cheap over there boy … Fuckn cheap”

I was blown away by the story …

I kept sayin … “…Fuckin Hell” and he kept saying … “…Aye”.

He said that he’s only ever told that to a handful of people in his life …

“Ahm no even sure wether ah just hallucinated the whole thing … Mad eh?”

Bloody Mad Alright!

Id been sitting there almost two hours with the guy so ah made ma excuses and left.

When he showed me to the door I couldn’t help but notice that his hands were all clammy and there were beads of perspiration on his face.

“Keep it tae yersel though son, eh?”

When I got back into BawBag Towers I went straight into the shower and then to bed. I lay awake just thinking about it all.

Lifes Rich Tapestry eh?

I love it so I do.

Then something else dawned on me.

That pot dealer who lives across from me aint got nothing to worry about!

That Jakey is NEVER gonna dip into his stash for a fly smoke!

Nae Bloody Chance!

Africa, Africa … so much tae answer for.