6

Bushra al-Rifiya grew up in the Rif Mountains among the fields of marijuana that produced Morocco’s kif. As a girl, she loved school, and she excelled at mathematics to the point where she could help her father with the family’s finances. However, once she reached puberty, she was forced to drop out to help around the house—or get married. Like other virtuous Rifian girls, her virginity was her primary worth. At eighteen, she agreed to marry Mohamed bin Bushuayb, even though she barely knew anything about him. It didn’t even cross her mind to defy her father’s commands. She never questioned marrying someone from their tribe, who, like her father, was involved in growing and selling hash.

Kif farming and hashish production were seen by the locals as simple agricultural work, like cultivating any other plant, despite the fact that it was illegal and farmers would be arrested if bribes hadn’t been paid to the right governmental authorities. The farmers’ lives changed dramatically once international drug lords realized how profitable the region could be, and they developed strategies to outsmart the authorities. They brought in small planes that would fly at low altitudes, under the radar of air-traffic control. Sometimes they would transport pieces of planes, one part at a time, for assembly on site, before a massive harvest was ready. When they weren’t able to fly their product north to Europe, traffickers would drive a few hours along mountain roads down to the coast and load small amounts of hash onto speedboats that would shuttle their product to the nearest port in Spain. As the authorities caught on to these tactics they started improving their surveillance and outfitted customs agents with new gear and training. The drug lords countered with new schemes, using military-grade technologies and strategies. All the while, the price of hash on the global market soared and competitors swarmed, offering cheaper options from other countries—but the Rif Mountain region had secured its spot as the source of the best product in the world.

Mohamed bin Bushuayb was considered the perfect match for Bushra. He was handsome and mild-mannered and from a family known for their religiosity and simplicity that had deep roots in the mountains. Despite her initial aversion toward her husband, Bushra adapted to her new role as a wife. The real problem in their marriage became clear when, after three years, Bushra still had not gotten pregnant. In the Rif, a marriage wasn’t considered genuine unless the wife became pregnant—and she should be on her second three years in. Bushra hated having to listen to advice about what she was supposed to do in bed in order to conceive, especially when her mother talked about the specific positions she had to try to enable her to conceive. And she absolutely refused to subject herself to the quackery of the local women. They wanted her to eat something called masakhin—a dish full of herbs, grasses, and strong spices—and just the strong smell made her nauseous.

A dispute between the two families took root, with Bushra maligned and shamed for being barren. She was comforted that her husband stood by her and apologized for his family’s behavior. He promised her that one day she would get pregnant and become a mother. Bushra had no reason to doubt her husband’s kindness toward her, until a lab analysis of his sperm confirmed that he was the one responsible for their inability to have children. She now understood why he had previously refused to accompany her to the doctor, fearing that it would be confirmed that he was the one to blame.

Bushra kept the results to herself. She didn’t tell her husband that she knew the real cause of their problems. She didn’t even tell her mother, who knew all of her secrets. Instead, she endured the hell that was the gossip about her rather than ruining her husband’s reputation in his family and in their community. She knew that this could give her leverage if she ever asked him to leave Katama. He wasn’t surprised when she eventually made this request. He had been thinking about a move as well. With all the issues the couple faced in the mountain community, their families didn’t object when they announced their decision.

Her husband had been calculating this move for some time. Like generations before him, he started out as a simple farmer. For years he only sold the hash from his plot of land and his uncle’s plot. But recently, he had become motivated to do more with his life when he saw how some of the producers around him were profiting from the growing international interest in the Rif. He developed a new scheme: he’d buy the prospective harvests from other farmers in his community before the growing season even began, paying in full before anyone knew whether it would be a dry or rainy year. To start, he actually secured a loan from a bank. As the number of growers he acquired swelled, he gained the trust of a few international drug lords, and they in turn would pay him in advance. Through these deals he was able to secure his product and build up a stockpile.

Setting up this system led to his increased independence, and this was what allowed the couple to move to Spain, settling in Marbella. Here, he would no longer be Mohamed bin Bushuayb, the simple farmer. He changed his name to Mohamed “al-Sabliyuni.” He became a savvy capitalist, selling at whatever price he wanted when surveillance increased and the demand for hash intensified. He was able to steer clear of suspicion because his business dealings more closely resembled those of a currency broker. He didn’t leave a trail of incriminating evidence, even if the commodity he dealt in was green gold. He was able to secure his interests through a series of precautionary measures: he never met in person with his employees; he found a trusted representative in Katama who made advance purchases of the product; and he created a network of informants among the farmers who notified him when another farmer was going broke, being threatened with jail time, or simply falling on tough times. He would then offer the farmer a cash advance, as if he were offering a bank loan, even though it was completely biased in his favor.

Bushra didn’t know anything about the business side of her husband’s life. She didn’t want to know anything, and turned her back on it. She was rewarded by a life of luxury, and her husband treated her extremely well. He complimented her incessantly, as if repaying her for her ability to bear life without children and never question his manhood.

They returned to Morocco abruptly, settling in Tangier on the heels of the Grand Campaign. It was at this point that Bushra started talking about adoption, thinking that this would make him happy. What Bushra didn’t know at the time was that their return to Morocco wasn’t just because of her husband’s desire to return home, as he had told her.

The real reason was a briefcase that contained a total of three million dollars in different currencies. The briefcase was supposed to be exchanged as part of a deal that Spanish drug traffickers had made with Moroccan intermediaries. But the campaign had confiscated the entire hash yield and the intermediaries were all thrown in jail, so al-Sabliyuni thought that he’d keep the money without handing over the product, and then withdraw from the drug world and settle down in Tan-gier. He was hoping to live in peace since the drug traffickers were all behind bars. Since he had been in Spain, the campaign hadn’t targeted him or put his name on the blacklist.

Bushra wasn’t excited to be in Tangier, as it lacked the glamour and sophistication of Marbella. She was lonely and bored. She didn’t have any friends and she dreaded the trip to see her family a few hours away. She knew that her husband was looking to settle down and spend less time on his work, so maybe now would be the time they could think about having a family.

When Bushra finally mustered the courage to talk with her husband about the possibility of adopting a child, she was stunned by his response. Instead of expressing his usual kindness and affection toward her, he told her he loved another woman and wanted a divorce. She couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. But what really shocked her wasn’t his desire to divorce and marry someone else, but his insistence that he was not responsible for their inability to have children. This comment sent her into a rage. After all she had done to protect him, he was now claiming that he was virile and just had to find the right woman.

She didn’t even try to challenge him. She knew that he was set on remarrying a lazy student named Maryam. She wasn’t even pretty, but was just a thin Barbie doll, all makeup and cheap glitz. Bushra knew that if she stood in his way he might beat her or come after her. No matter what she said, it wouldn’t matter. It was clear that she had made a mistake: she should have outed him back in the village in front of his family and the community, letting everyone know he wasn’t a real man.

After the initial shock and fits of anger wore off she thought about what she should do. She decided her husband would get her revenge “served cold.” So on that fateful day when he called her and begged her to not tell the police anything and give the briefcase to the guy coming for it, she decided to do the exact opposite. She hid the briefcase, filled with its millions, in a safe spot and headed to Detective Hanash’s office.

Her husband had mentioned Detective Hanash’s name quite often. What she knew was that he had led a massive, highly effective campaign against the drug cartels. The headlines in the papers featured the names of drug lords who were taken down, one after the other. Some of them fled the country; others were hiding out in the mountains. Their families were subject to all sorts of extortion and bargaining on their behalf—their wives’ jewelry was stolen during the raids, along with anything else that was small and valuable. Rumors swirled of deals totaling hundreds of millions of dirhams, and payoffs being offered to senior government officials that included homes in Tarifa, Marbella, and other coastal Spanish towns.

Her husband never left the house during the most intensive periods of the campaign, when manhunts were plastered all over the news. He was glued to his cell phones, gathering information, recording the sums of money confiscated, the bribes being paid, and the promises made. “Don’t worry,” he would say to Bushra when he noticed her concern. “I know what’s happening.” But he never added any details about how all of this might affect them. He never gave her any directives about what to do if he were imprisoned, and she knew nothing about his assets. He was just like others in this business: he used crooked means to evade taxes and stashed his reserves in places that only he knew. Bushra had no idea how much wealth he had, although she was quite content with her luxurious lifestyle—the elegant clothes and expensive perfumes.

When she set out for Detective Hanash’s office her intent was clear: pretend that she hadn’t found the briefcase and was coming to the police about her husband’s kidnapping. This would give the gang who kidnapped her husband all the incentive they needed to kill him. She’d then let the police in on the rest: that the man who called from her husband’s phone ordered her to take the briefcase from its hiding place, and then she was supposed to call her husband’s phone to receive her next instructions.

Before heading to the station, Bushra thought about her husband, and their life together. He hadn’t treated her like his wife for a few months now. He could no longer stand to be with her, and was about to divorce her for another woman. She searched her soul for an ounce of sympathy for him, but found none. There was nothing left that bound them together—no love, no friendship, no companionship. What separated them was as clear as day: treachery, infidelity, mutual hatred, and lack of honest communication, not to mention his wanting a cheap divorce.

When the kidnappers called back, she told them that she had dug in the place her husband told her and hadn’t found a briefcase. She was on the phone with them as she was driving to her family’s house in Katama, with the briefcase next to her on the passenger’s seat. They called back, and this time her husband was on the line.

“My life is in your hands, my love,” he said, his voice shaking, weak from the torture the gang had subjected him to. “I won’t leave you, I promise . . .”

“You were just about to leave me,” she interrupted, feigning grief. “And now you say you won’t leave me! I didn’t find the briefcase. Try to remember better where it is. Maybe you left it at your new fiancée’s place.”

He knew she was ridiculing him. He went silent, as if he were taking his final breath.

“Say something.” She mocked him further. “Did something bad happen to you?”

“I can’t explain now. Please forgive me . . . If you help me now, I’ll pay you back double, anything you ask. The sooner, the better . . . before they disfigure me, or kill me.”

She could hear his scream echoing as if he were in a cavernous basement, and the call cut off suddenly. After a few minutes they called back, but she didn’t answer.

After she hid the briefcase in a safe place in her hometown, her next step was to transform herself into a different woman before going to see Hanash. She first considered playing the role of a scared, forlorn woman—eyes teary and bloodshot, face pale, and trying to talk through her sobbing. This woman would wear any old jalabiya, cover her hair with a scarf, and rush to the detective crying, wailing, and screaming—“Help me, please! My husband was kidnapped!”—and she wouldn’t be able to explain what had happened. This woman would only be able to add that an evil gang had hunted him, kidnapped him, and then asked for something she didn’t have. But she thought that she would have difficulty keeping up this role of a grieving wife.

Once Bushra left his office, Hanash made a couple of phone calls and was able to verify that she was telling the truth about her husband’s kidnapping and the gang who had taken him. Over the course of the following week the press devoted considerable space to what they called “the Sabliyuni affair.” Detective Hanash enlisted all his informants and waged an all-out pursuit of al-Sabliyuni in Tangier and its environs. His men killed one gang member, injured several others severely, and imprisoned dozens who were connected peripherally. But Bushra’s husband was killed by the gang members before Hanash could get his hands on him.

In the news of al-Sabliyuni’s death, information indicating the presence of a briefcase that contained three million dollars never appeared and was completely erased from any official report. Even though this investigation was not as big as previous operations in which senior state officials were complicit, with the media being utilized as a mouthpiece to spread propaganda about how the government was “cleaning house,” Hanash tried to make the Sabliyuni affair the investigation of the year. He leaked information to the press to exaggerate its scope, and used it as a pretext to ensnare other notorious bosses.

*

Bushra had thought that visiting Detective Hanash was going to be an exciting adventure. Yes, it meant taking some risks, but surely all would end well. But there was no turning back the clock, and a stifling sense of remorse overcame her as she considered the fact that she had been indirectly involved in a murder. When she decided to confess her role in hiding the briefcase to Hanash, he insisted that the true source of evil was the drug traffickers, gang leaders, and so-called ‘businessmen’ who were responsible for destroying families, poisoning the youth, and tarnishing the country’s reputation. He explained that bringing these dangerous individuals to justice was a national duty that surely would be rewarded by God.

When future historians research the events of the Grand Campaign and carefully comb through all the news reports and other analyses, they will find all sorts of explanations and motives, but they won’t find a single mention of Bushra and the briefcase.

Despite some ups and downs in the couple of years that followed, and despite Detective Hanash’s transfer to Casablanca, Bushra’s relationship with him blossomed and never lost its intensity. Whenever the detective got a chance, he would visit her in Tangier, and in turn she would visit Casablanca and stay at his secret apartment. When she visited, he would cut himself off from the outside world to be
with her.

*

It was the second night in a row that Hanash had spent with Bushra in Casablanca (although his family thought he was in Fez), and he had barely slept more than a couple of hours. So when his phone rang and awoke him, it felt like an assault on his ears. He recognized the number and knew immediately that something serious had happened.

“Yes, sir,” he answered with the utmost respect.

As soon as he finished the call, he put the phone down and turned to Bushra.

“That was the head of state security himself. He’s requested that I lead the investigation of some heinous crime. . . . We’ll continue this when I return.”

Before she could answer, his phone started ringing again.