with a little help from my friends

   It had been a difficult summer.  We had trudged up and down endless mountains of the Sierra Madre of Oaxaca in a futile search for teo-papalotl, the "butterfly god" of arcane Aztec medicinal treatises.  Ingesting the dried wings of this unique insect was said to render mortals as gods.  It was on a dusty byway of our search that we discovered the hasheesh factory.

   A dilapidated shack perched on the edge of a deep gorge, its thatched hut covered with colas of Oaxacan mota spread out to dry.  Gazing wistfully out of the shack's inner gloom, joint in hand, a stoned-eyed mariguano invited us to partake of this verdant treasure of the Sierra Madre.  "Man, that's bad-ass boo!" was all Don Jeremías could say.  Our host smiled proudly and informed us that more delectable fare was in store.  He was drying mota to make hasheesh; we were invited to sample the product!  Hasheesh -- that delicacy of the Near East -- in the high sierra of Mexico!  Our friend explained that a wandering Frenchman had brought the secret of hash-making from Morocco.

    Bushy, thick-stemmed plants of famed Oaxacan pelo rojo peeked from around trees as we walked to a clearing to observe the hash-making.  Building a small fire, our stoned friend spread a sheet of plastic on the ground and eagerly began to clean a pile of the dried mota.  Removing the sticks by hand, he then passed pot through a screen, which removed smaller sticks and seeds.  The screened mariguana was clean and fine. 

    Our friend then covered a small bowl with some gauze, overlaid with a pair of silk panties, and rubbed the clean pot into the bowl below.  The silk-filtered pot was light, tan, aromatic, powdery.  When a sufficient quantity was collected, it was left to dry thoroughly in the sun in an opened plastic bag.  The dry powder was poured into another bag, rolled into a ball and twisted tight in a handkerchief.

    Our friendly mariguano then wet his hands and squeezed the cloth-wrapped ball to moisten it.  Squatting close to the fire, he heated the ball in the flames, repeatedly wetting the cloth to ensure that it did not burn.  After five minutes, certain that the ball was fairly hard and solid, our host recovered it from the bag and the handkerchief.  He then rewrapped the naked, aromatic hash ball in the wet handkerchief alone, briefly reheating it to produce surface hardness and a nice textured finish.  We gaily sampled the final product.  Late that night, we crawled wearily into our sleeping bags, to dream sweet dreams of hasheesh balls and teo-papalotl, the butterfly god.