King Hash Is Sure To Come

TANGIER – He shakes another pebble oul of the foot-long, coral-and silver-encrusted stash pouch, pokes an amber-ringed forefinger under the schlockedelic fake-silk ascot he has tucked into the collar of a blue- and brown-striped buttondown that sticks out from under a purple velvet, gold-threaded Afghani vest beneath the embroidered Moslem prayer blouse which he wears under a great black wool djellaba, and scratches his neck (Tangier is cold in January, all right, but there are still those goddam lice), and then he lights up, turns down the volume on Let it Bleed, gazes off reflectively – past the red velvet star-of-Islam banner, past the 35 framed photographs of British and American rock stars, and himself, and the king of Morocco, all lavishly studded with decals of bluejays and roses and robins and all those other neat stickers you used to put in your fifth-grade spelling workbook – and, in a stoned sotto voce, begins at the beginning of How It All Began: