Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [63]
But the worst thing was the sun. It was incredibly hot, beating down on the white buildings. It was so hot and so fiery that even in normal circumstances it was uncomfortable.and dangerous for people who weren't used to it to walk about. For me, it was even worse. After the suicide attempt with Mellaril, Dr. Rockland had switched me back to Thorazine. I was taking huge doses of it, and one side effect was to make me hypersensitive to the sun. I had a tough time dealing with ordinary daylight. The fierce Moroccan desert sun was murder.
I used lotion on my skin, and wore long-sleeved shirts. But I couldn't do anything about the part in my hair. I lathered the part up with sun-tanning lotion. I couldn't find a hat anywhere, so I put a towel over my head. Even that didn't work. The sun fried my scalp through everything. I came home from my first day walking and sightseeing in tears from the scalp burn.
So I decided to stop the Thorazine.
I arrived in Morocco on Sunday. By Wednesday, I was actively psychotic. People were wailing around me. My room was filled with candles, burning all day and all night, on the bed, on the floor, on the walls. When I showered, I heard my father's voice screaming at me out of the shower head. He was using words I didn't understand, speaking in a language I couldn't comprehend. Then his voice became many voices and I couldn't understand them either. I tried to figure it out. I was in a foreign country. Maybe the voices were speaking in some other language. I doubted it though. I was going crazy. That was it. My Voices were being taken over by other voices. It was petrifying. I longed for the relief that street drugs could bring me. I tried to get some the first opportunity I could.
And opportunity presented itself almost immediately. As Raymond had before, Mohammed brought that opportunity to me. That afternoon in Morocco, I met Mohammed when I was looking for a leather jacket. I had heard leather was a good buy in Morocco, but everything I had seen was too expensive. I met Mohammed in front of my hotel. He said he was a guide. His fee seemed reasonable. He showed me his driver's license to show me he was legitimate. We took a trip just outside the main part of the city to a leather store he knew. They showed me a red leather jacket that I loved. I haggled a bit. They served me mint tea. And I left with a jacket that I thought was a good deal.
After that we shopped for some little things, did some sightseeing and he returned me to my hotel. He seemed respectable. So when, on parting, he asked me if I wanted to go out that evening to ride on his moped and smoke some real Moroccan hashish, I readily agreed.
That night, he showed up in a cab, not a moped. We drove around and before long I found myself lost. We were in a strange residential neighborhood. The buildings didn't look real. There were no lights on in any of them, nor was there any sign of life anywhere. Mohammed explained that he had to go home for a moment first, and courteously invited me up. I began to feel tense. I decided to stay in the car. He flung some instructions at the driver in a language I didn't understand, and then left.
Then I began to get scared. I tried to talk to the driver, to ask him to take me back to the hotel, but he spoke no English. I sat there telling myself that everything was going to be okay, when finally Mohammed returned. More instructions to the driver, and off we went. We hadn't driven far, when he said something else to the driver and the cab pulled over.
“We'll walk back to your hotel from here,” he said. The cab rattled off.
Everything was completely dark. We were by a huge field surrounded by big trees. Mohammed pulled me by the arm under some of the trees. He wrestled me to the ground, and pulled out a knife.
“If you make any noise, I'll kill you.”
I felt sick, and psychotic. I hadn't