The Monk and The Opium Medallion November 18 2012

 The Monk and The Opium Medallion

I well remember the occasion. It was supper at the local Basque restaurant. A top-notch firm of web-designers was in town delivering their final findings. I told the story of how one day at 18 or so while traveling from the Kharakhurram Pass I befriended a secret police officer for the frontier province where Osama is no more. He slipped a medallion of opium resin into my bag. I was an unwitting mule. Mercifully, I was bitten by an angry mob of mosquitos and had to get off the train and find shelter. Did not appear at the designated terminal in what he must have thought to be the appointed time and instead fell ill for several days, eventually discovering the medallion. Never found out the tail end of the story. The image of a cassock clad Sufi mendicant with a hood to boot carrying a narcotic medallion is too rib-tickling funny. Imagine him with the medallion, which was in desperate need to find its new owner down south where Alexander, the gay and the great met his Waterloo as he sailed with the ashes of his lover on the Indus. 

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