An Experience With the Customs Officials at Kermanshah.
In eastern lands the collecting of customs dues is attended with perhaps more than ordinary fraud. In his book, “‘From Batum to Baghdad,” Mr. W. B. Harris has told his experience with the customs officers of Kermanshah. The incident had Its comical feature as well as its serious lesson:
Two hours later than I had Intended we made a start and, proceeding through the long tunnel-like bazaars, emerged from the town. Here fate had annoyance in store for me. At the local custom house the guards wanted to search as and make us pay duty on our scanty baggage.
I had hired a mule to carry our saddlebags as far as Baghdad, using the owner of the mule, a wily old Arab who accompanied us, as a guide. These two, mule and man, the guards absolutely refused to let pass without my bestowing a perfectly Illegal and Illogical baksheesh. This I stoutly refused to do, and, knowing that in the east a show of temper is of no avail, I swallowed my wrath and argued coolly and collectedly with the soldiers.
Soon they confessed that they bad no right to touch either me or any animal of mine, but they maintained that the mule and the rider were both Arabs and that therefore I could not interfere. This was just what I wanted, and I solved the matter in a minute. I put the Arab on my horse and I rode his mule. There was no question about it then. The guards on their own confession could stop neither me nor my horse, and we rode quietly on amid the laughter of the men to change our mounts again fifty yards past the custom house.
Falmouth Enterprise, Falmouth, MA, June 10, 1911