DECOLONIZATION THEOLOGY

The metanarrative is moot; certainty is relegated to the dusty shelf of the antiquated oddities of the past. Truth is subjective and history is a story of contradiction. 

The last bastion of truth, the one certain axiom, can be formulated like this: If someone goes to great rhetorical lengths to convince you that they are not going to scam you, it is a fact that they are about to scam you. 

“Some of my colleagues brag about scamming tourists,” Abdullah said, “Not me. I could not sleep if I did that.” He led us through the sinuous alleys of Tangier, occasionally stopping to greet a family member or friend. “I’m going to get you guys the stuff that the locals smoke. No one here smokes hash - everyone sells that to the tourists. I’m going to get you guys keif.” This affable disclosure worked at a deeper level, affirming our deep seeded conviction that we were not like the other boys. 

We were unique, edgy, wise; we excluded some palpable essence synchronous with the mien of Tangier. 

One street slithered into the next, compounding and stretching out like a root. A gaggle of young children raced past us and down the street. 

“How long have you been working in Tangier,” I asked. 

“I’ve been doing this for fifty years. The first twenty independent and the last thirty for the ministry of tourism.” I paused and considered the logistics of working for a government that, though in name only, prohibited the sale and consumption of hash. It was all the more cryptic because he had been the one to ask us if we wanted hash, approaching us as we wandered from street to street, listless and lost. 

We were moving too fast to critically engage this information. Abdullah led us up a set of stairs and paused beside a series of balustrades. The thick salt smell of the sea mingled with sewage and savory meat smells of the market. 

“If you look that way you can see the lights of Spain.” We followed his finger and did in fact see a clump of lights twinkle across the gloom. “Let’s go, let’s go, almost there.” Abdullah took hold of Jack and asked him for help ascending the next flight of stairs, “My eyesight has become worse these past few years.” 

“Big L.” I said.

“A real bummer,” Jack concurred. Abdullah waved this off and took charge at the top of  the stairs. The alley narrowed; we walked single file, turning our shoulders whenever someone else passed.

“Only Real locals smoke this keif. I wouldn’t bring just anybody here.” 

I asked Abdullah if he had met any of the celebrities that spent time in tangier. He stopped and began to violently nod his head. He regaled us with a list of the names he had met: Burroughs, Bowels, Keith Richards… turning the list into a mantra, cementing the image of Tangier as the dwelling of poets and artists that wanted to escape the mundane. “I met them all.” 

But before I could follow up and learn more he was once again claiming that his character could not withstand the guilt of scamming a tourist  “for an extra twenty euros!” Jack and I exchanged a glance, in which, telepathically, we came to the conclusion that his sudden shift to a premature valorization of his character did not bode well for the project of purchasing hash. 

 Abdullah stopped in front of a squat house tucked in an alleway behind the Grand Socco. A uranium green spilled from the window. The alley was empty but I could still hear babel of horns and vendors from the main street. 

“This is the place. Here, give me thirty euros.” 

It was too late;  it was too late to excuse ourselves without it being uncouth. Here, in the midst of a polyphonic mire, we realized that to change our minds and leave would be to abandon this blind man with the lingering resonance of our mistrust. 

There was also the significance of this lack of faith: Were we not the exception? Were we the same as all the other smooth-brained tourists that through a surplus of trust or deficit in wisdom let themselves be scammed by the first person to offer them hash? Were we like the droves of Westerners shell shocked, too afraid to leave their hostel because they were afraid of those devious hagglers, licking their chops, salivating at the chance to rip you off and make twenty euors?

The real brilliance of this scam, for it was a scam, was that It had us in a double bind: either admit that we were not the esoteric globetrotters we thought, or put our faith in this blind man who seemed oftly eager to convince us we were not being scammed. 

 All this was summarized not so much in an insightful realization of human character but rather as a sigh; the realization put in a puerile concession that “game is game,” and that Abdullah had executed this scam with such panache that if it was a scam, it would be grammatically incorrect to talk about the scam in the present continuous tense (ie. we are being scammed) but rather in the past perfect (ie. he had successfully scammed us). 

….

With that in mind, we pulled out our wallets and each handed him fifteen euros. 

He counted the money and walked to the building. A tall middle aged man answered the door after the first knock. The two men conversed in Arabic. They appeared to come to some understanding and the man stepped back into the house. Abdullah returned and I could see the money still in his hand. “My friend is actually at his mothers house. It is nearby. I will return shortly.” He said and made haste toward the gran socco. 

“He doesn’t work for the ministry of tourism.” I said.

“Nope.” Jack said

“We’re probably not going to see him again.” 

“Most likely not.”

“Shit.”

We waited and watched the clock on our phones tick forward. A skateboarder rolled down the street; the clack of her wheels on pavement sounded like a muffled chuckle. We followed each pair of footsteps with anticipation; each strange figure pushed us closer to resignation. I sifted through the typical banalities, trying to determine which one I would repeat the next three days: “my faith in humanity has been undermined;” “He needs the money more than me;” “This will be a funny story someday etc….”

After ten minutes I had decided to pledge myself to the church of cynicism: never again would my trust be violated; I would make an effort to broaden my horizons so that one day the world-weary traveler would not be a disingenuous posture, but rather an embodied existence. I could see this post-Abdullah life unfurl like a tapestry. It would be epic, there would not be another scam. 

But this was superficial and the scam was not complete; as Abdullah’s crooked frame limped around the corner, the mirage lifted and I realized that deep down I was a bleeding heart liberal with an irrevocable faith humanity. “He was at his mothers house!” Abdullah said, passing me a dime bag. “I threw in some tobacco! So you can smoke it like a real local!” Our faith rewarded, I happily gave Abdullah the twenty euros he requested as a finders fee. On the way to what he called his favorite restaurant, he told us about the rich relationship between America and Morocco:“Morocco was the first global power to recognize America as an independent nation. The first American embassy was in Morocco.” 

We talked about pointless things, the weather, the ocean, and the directional geography of Morocco, but the discussion faltered as we approached the coast. The sea was inside the murk; we could see the lights of Spain splattered in the dark, signalling the presence of that other world that sat just in sight, that sat just out of reach.

….

The next day we smoked the hash. The roof of our hostel provided a panoramic view of Tangier. From the roof we could see the bleached coral white of the downtown buildings and Spain, now visible, across the strait. The noise harmnized in the most organic and unconventional ways: women called out, children squealed, dogs barked and pigeons flapped their wings. The hostel had a communal nylon guitar and I spent some time writing a riff, moving down the fretboard in the Phyrgian mode. The riff was eerie, the half interval jump from the fourth to third was full of tension. I improvised lyrics chronicling a journey down the Andalusia and across the strait of Gilbrator. Jake passed me the joint and I stopped strumming. 

“I think I’m feeling it.” He said.

“Yeah, me too - I think.” The first joint approached classification of roach. I rolled another one, balancing the guitar on my lap while I licked the paper. We smoked this next joint faster, tugging at the improvised filter until it became soggy with spit and it ripped apart. “Yeah, I’m not getting high at all.” 

“Fuck.” We rolled another one just to have something to smoke. 

“This isn't a hash.”

“Probably not.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know… some other type of herb. Maybe just oregano stank up.”

“Shit.”

“Tobacco’s good, though,” I finished, wanting to remain positive. 

Somewhere in the surrounding city, a pair of speakers came alive with the crack of static. The call to prayer began, starting in a low monotonous drone, rose up an octave, undulating up and down. 

I took a deep breath, taking in the whole ambiance, the sea, the smell of piss and fish, the spices and incense. The call to prayer imbued everything with a shade of the divine. I wondered if this fake hash was a manifestation of cosmic balance; I wondered if the success of such a scam was the will of a God, diluted and with a heightened sense of the ironic. In such circumstances, with such a setting, it was easy to think of things in the terms of the religious: the scam was not just foolishness or chicanery, but indicative of a higher order, a higher order concerned with a quixotic scheme for vindicating a multitude of historical wrongs.

In this muky realm, the scam would take place ad infinitum: infinite Abdullahs scammed infinite me’s. Not turtles, but scams all the way down. 

In the theology of the scam, the ego and desire to be unique, so pervasive in the neoliberal economic systems of the west, scarred itself on the soul, preceding  everything as an original sin. In the theology of the scam, the original sin is the solpisistic belief that one is not like the others; that one is beyond the way of the world, too smart, too intimidating, too traveled.

The belated baptism was the ceacesles encounter with the awkward and foreign. One scam after the other, each one bringing you closer to the realization that despite the pain of admitting it, you are not the exception. Only through this denudement of these fundamental delusions can the world be seen in its true form: mercurial,  as more than an extension of yourself. 

The call to prayer dwindled, and the imam hit the last note, holding a slow vibrato before stopping. The speakers clicked off and I was left with the crumbs of this insight; the world slipped back to the material and I found myself lamenting my twenty euros.