|
Custom Search
******************************
|
 Listen
Right Here Online
From The 1930's Thru
1950's To The Real Original
"Reefer Madness" Radio
Shows & Programs
*************************
The Reefer Madness
Propaganda Teaching Museum Main Listing
Page #1
*************************
Page#2 Of Reefer Madness Teaching Museum
*************************
Reefer Madness Comic
Books All
Readable Online
*************************
The Ebers Papyrus The Oldest
(confirmed) Egyptian
Medical
Book Writing About Medical
Marihuana Useage, Dated From
Around 1,550 Years BC
*************************
Table Of Contents
Lists Every Page
*************************
OnlinePot
Home Page
Visit Our Sister Websites
www.
OnlinePot.org
The Complete Guide
To Medical Marijuana
And The Maine
Patients Coalition.org
****************************
Chris Kenoyer. Owner
MMJ Patient Activist
Online Patients Advocate
Online News Journalist
My Medical Bio
Email Us Here At
olpwebs(AT)yahoo.com
******************************
To translate text or
a web page go to:
Language Tools
Google Translations
*****************************
1999-2009 Copyright ©
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this site maybe used or reproduced in whole or in part without
the written consent of the Copyright Owner www.onlinepot.org
| |
The
Online Reefer Madness Teaching Museum
The Cornhill Magazine
- Vol. 156
- July to Dec. 1937 - page 588
THE
DRUG SMUGGLERS, OF EGYPT.
BY
C. S. JARVIS.
In the early part of the nineteenth century, during the
Napoleonic wars and for some thirty years afterwards, it is said that every
English Channel fisherman was a smuggler when the opportunity offered, and many
of them in fact made their own opportunities and were fishermen only as a blind
to their real calling. The
Preventive forces were faced with two very grave difficulties : the Deal and
other coast-town fishermen possessed such fast and handy craft that it was
impossible to devise anything propelled by wind to outsail them, and every
inhabitant of these fishing villages was definitely pro-smuggler and anti-Prevendon.
Very much the same state of affairs has existed in the
deserts of Egypt for the last thirty to forty years, as every nomad Arab of the
deserts is a potential smuggler and most of them possess exceedingly
fast-trotting 'nagas ' (she-camels) that can outstrip the Government animals ;
and it goes without saying that every member of the tribes is lock, stock, and
barrel with the contrabandists and not particularly helpful to the police.
The Arab also has a definite advantage over the Channel fisherman of a
hundred years ago, for the commodity in which -he deals is the light and easily
transported drug, hashish, and a ten-pound load of this is all that he need
carry to make a handsome profit, whereas the British smuggler, if the run was to
be a financial success, had to deal in heavy goods such as casks of brandy and
wine.
The hashish which the
inhabitants of the Nile Valley use is a product of the hemp and when
manufactured provides a narcotic that, smoked in a pipe or drunk mixed with
coffee, has both a stimulating and soporific effect. That is to say, the consumer experiences a feeling of
well-being and all his cares and fatigue slip away from his shoulders, while the
world for the time being seems a much brighter and more satisfactory place in
which to live. The following
morning there is, of course, the resulting 'hangover,' and the hashish head is
of a very much fatter and more painful variety than that provided by whisky or
champagne, or even a mixture of the two, which, on the principle of 'grape on
grape and malt on malt,' is the worst thing one can do; but the prospect of the
'hangover' has never yet proved efficacious as a deterrent.
Hashish in
moderation did very little permanent harm, but heavy smokers became affected in
time, the drug causing dullness and stupidity and in extreme cases insanity, and
so the Egyptian Government prohibited its import and use absolutely.
One of the results of this was that in the years immediately after the
War the 'white drugs,' cocaine, heroin, etc., were introduced into the country
and immediately became most popular, so that an alarming proportion of the
population became confirmed addicts. The
white drug is a very much easier commodity to smuggle than hashish as, being of
considerable value, a minute parcel only need be carried to make a trafficking
expedition a success, and most of this smuggling was carried out at the three
big ports of Egypt---Alexandria, Port Said, and Suez.
Every available device was employed, from the simple method of dropping a
package from a ship's side into a waiting, boat, to concealing the drug in
ordinary merchandise and passing it through Customs. Heroin was hidden in every known commodity, from the legs of
chairs to the heels of shoes, from sacks of rice to bottles of beer; a
particularly disgraceful episode being the arrest of a senior Consular official
of a Great Power attempting to land at Alexandria with a despatch-case, normally
immune from Customs inspection, which was found to be filled not with State
papers but with packages of drugs.
It is exceedingly difficult to deal with an evil of this
description when a successful run with one small suit-case is sufficient to
supply a city as large as Cairo with its normal demand for one week, and the
profits in the trade were further increased by the adulteration of the drug with
boracic or rice powder on arrival. One
of the few cases on record where adulteration, so far from being a misdemeanour,
becomes almost a righteous act. The
trade was finally stopped or reduced to quite reasonable proportions by the
Commandant of the Cairo Police who, being charged with the task of dealing with
the situation, did what no man has ever done before-he got up on his feet at
Geneva and told the League of Nations the stark and lamentable truth.
He said very plainly that certain countries, not addicted to white drugs
themselves, were producing enormous quantities of heroin and cocaine and
shipping them to smaller states regardless of the fact that they were utterly
ruining the people of those small states. He
not only named those countries responsible, but he produced documentary and
irrefutable evidence. It was all
very painful and regrettable, for this Police Officer did not understand the
correct technique to be observed at Geneva, where the rule is that the truth
should be so discreetly veiled and distorted that no one can recognise it.
He was, however, quite unrepentant and irreconcilable, and after two or
three more cold douches of the unvarnished truth the delegates concerned at the
League took such steps that further deplorable episodes were unnecessary, and
the white drug traffic to all intents and purposes ceased.
There
remained, however, the smuggling of hashish, and attempts to stop this are very
much like amateurish efforts at damming a stream with earth---immediately one
has stopped up one weak spot, the water breaks through in another place.
It is quite impossible for Egypt with her lengthy frontiers to maintain a
water-tight system of patrols and barriers on every length of coast or mile of
desert where hashish might be run, and so there is a constant game of chess
between the contrabandists and anti-contrabandists, the smugglers moving their
knights and pawns to any open spaces on the Government's chess-board of defence,
and the Police and Coastguards countering the moves by redistribution of their
pieces.
If
the Sinai Camel Police become too vigilant and energetic there is a sudden
cessation of runs across the Peninsula, but no falling off in the supply of the
drug in Cairo and the cities, and then it transpires that the smuggling
fraternity are sending hashish down the Gulf of Akaba by launch or sailing boat
and transhipping it to the boats of the Suez fishermen at the apex of the
Peninsula. Alternatively, small
steamers may carry a load to the desert west of Alexandria and hand it over to
camelmen there, or the deserted sea marshes of Damietta may be used for
landings, for which they are eminently suitable.
When
hashish is carried by sea it is usually placed in waterproof or rubber bags and
each parcel is made fast to a small sack of salt. The reason for this is that if the boat carrying the drug
should be chased by a coastguard cruiser or launch the cargo is dropped
overboard. The weight of the bag of
salt will cause it to sink at once, but in two days' time, when the salt has
disintegrated in the water, the bags will rise to the surface again, to be
picked up by the smugglers or their friends who will keep a close look-out in
the area.
The
most exciting smuggling episodes, however, occur in Sinai, where the
contrabandists have to run the drug by camel across a hundred and fifty miles of
desert, most of which is broken gravel and limestone plateau with thirty miles
of sand dunes immediately bordering on the Suez Canal.
The drug comes from Syria and is transported to Southern Palestine either
by boat, motor-car, or on camels or donkeys.
The Palestinians as a race are not addicted to hashish and therefore the
trade does not concern Palestine to any great extent.
The police of that country have their hands fairly full at all times and
cannot be expected to take a vast interest in the transport of a drug not
intended for their own country. Actually
many seizures are made, but as the Egyptian Government are too short-sighted to
encourage them by paying the same rewards to the Palestine Police as they do to
their own forces, there is really no reason why the authorities should exert
themselves in any way over a contraband trade that does not actively harm their
own country.
The
organisation concerned with hashish smuggling consists of three parties : the
Big Men, or 'Drug Barons,' who provide the funds and reap most of the profits ;
the middlemen who organise the runs and engage the Arabs. and the ordinary Arab
camelmen. The only people likely to
be caught are the Arab smugglers, who may possibly be able to identify the
middlemen later but who know nothing of the big financial powers at the head of
affairs. The result is that, though
evidence can sometimes be obtained to arrive at the conviction of one of the
liaison men, the real brains and backing of the trade are seldom if ever caught.
Some ten years ago
the smugglers were in the habit of running the hashish across Sinai with armed
parties of from ten to fifteen men. If
a police patrol was met with it seldom consisted of more than three privates
with a corporal in charge, and so eight smugglers would remain behind and keep
up a sustained fire with rifles on the patrol whilst the remainder of the party
hurried on towards the Canal, where the drug was buried till arrangements could
be made to swim it across. One
could hardly expect four men perched up on camels and moving at a jog-trot
across the open to advance very energetically through a hail of bullets fired at
them by marksmen hiding behind rocks. The
police were paid only £2 105. a month and the reward for the capture of hashish
was a miserable four shillings a kilo, the real value of which was in the
neighborhood of £25. Under these
conditions one did not look for ' deeds that made the Empire's name,' and the
police usually satisfied honour by following the party at a discreet distance
and doing their best later to locate the buried hashish on the Canal bank.
Then
the police force was reorganised and the majority of the men in the Peninsula
were stationed at various posts in Central Sinai, so that when the alarm was
rung up on the telephone upwards of eighty men could converge on the smugglers
from all points of the compass. At
this stage of the proceedings the smugglers' secret service must have been at
fault, or long inununity from serious attack had made them contemptuous of the
police, for a run of sixteen camels with ten men started out from the Palestine
frontier shortly after the new dispositions had been completed.
If the smugglers'
contempt of the new grouping of the police was justified, their omission to
acquaint themselves with another and more human factor affecting the elan of the
anti-contrabandist forces showed a very surprising ignorance of human nature on
their part. There happened to be
several vacancies for noncommissioned officers of all ranks in the police force
and word had gone forth that in making the necessary promotions the zeal shown
in action against the smugglers would be taken into consideration.
Moreover, the reward for hashish had been trebled and there was in
addition a special grant of £10 for every man captured and £5 for his camel.
This put an entirely different complexion on affairs and a policeman was
fully entitled to risk his life if three stripes and some £20 in cash was set
in the balance against it.
The smugglers, A
unconscious of the change in the situation, were met by a small patrol some
twenty miles north of Kosseima and received the shock of their lives when four
men charged their firing-line on racing camels, capturing two of their party and
three heavily laden camels after a hand-to-hand fight.
The remainder made off posthaste to the broken country north of Hellal
Mountain, but word had gone forth by telephone that smugglers were on the move
and their way to the Canal was barred. Wherever
they emerged from the cover of the mountain gorges they saw moving in the low
desert either the black head-ropes and white shawls of the, police or the khaki
turbans of the Camel Corps, and the Camel Corps were Sudanese ; not a match for
the Arabs in brain or cunning, perhaps, but very redoubtable fighters armed with
rifle and, unlike the police, with the bayonet also showing always a most
regrettable desire to get to close quarters and use that bayonet.
Finally
the remaining eight men took to the mountains, leaving their camels to be
captured by the police, and an epic fight took place among the boulders on the
hillsides, in which one policeman and one smuggler were killed and two policemen
wounded. The policeman who was
killed showed the most reckless courage; he and three others were lying among
the rocks firing at four of the smugglers who were under cover about seventy
yards away. The Corporal in charge
of the party, after an exchange of shots lasting a few minutes, was hit through
the arm and the policeman, a very black descendant of one of the erstwhile
slaves of the Arab tribes, saw away to the flank the man who had fired the
bullet. He sprang to his feet,
raced across the open, and shot the smuggler through the head at a distance of
five yards. As he did so he was bit
by three bullets from the remaining men, one of which severed his femoral
artery, and the gallant fellow died of loss of blood before help could reach
him.
The
whole of this party of Arabs, with their load of hashish, were captured and
brought into El Arish, where they were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment,
manslaughter figuring on the charges as well as smuggling, and this put an
effective end to all attempts to get hashish across Sinai by force of arms.
About this time also the traffic was made even more hazardous for the
smugglers by the invention by Dunlops of what is known as the 'Low-Pressure'
tyre. Previous to the invention the
car patrols of the Province had been equipped with the ordinary 411-inch covers
which were useless in sand, but the new tyres had a tread of 9 inches and were
pumped up to a pressure of ten pounds only.
This very simple device meant that the cars could now travel at speed
through the sand country east of the Canal where previously the smugglers had
had only camel patrols to contend with.
For
some time after this the Sinai desert was singularly free from hashish runs,
which was partly due to the fact that Royalty was being entertained in the
Province. The connection between
Royalty and hashish smuggling may not be immediately obvious, but visits of the
'Great' in the special trains offer great opportunities, as on these occasions
prying officials are usually so excited about the propinquity of Royalty that
the customary close inspection of trains from Palestine is not carried out at
Kantara, the Canal terminus. Actually,
however, the lack of attention was not all that the smuggling fraternity hoped,
for, though the officials of King Fuad's special train got away with a vast
quantity of the smuggled drug, those of the Princess Royal of England and Lord
Lloyd, the High Commissioner of Egypt, were not so lucky and their consignments
were captured! As the discovery of
hashish in a train means the imprisonment of the man immediately responsible,
together with the discharge from the railway service of any official who might
in any way be connected with the attempt, the use of the Palestine Railways as a
means of conveying hashish never became very popular, though consignments have
been found from time to time in such places as the lining of refrigerator
waggons, the sand boxes of the engines, and in a small grease receptacle in the
vicinity of the buffers.
The obvious route across the high plateau of Sinai having
become unhealthy, and the rigid search to which all trains were subjected making
the use of the Palestine Railways an unprofitable proceeding, there was what one
might call a dead silence in the smuggling world, and when a dead silence ensues
one may be very certain that a new and easy route has been discovered.
Information came of cars running from Amman in Trans-Jordan to the
village of Akaba on the gulf of that name, for no apparent reason, and it
transpired that hashish was being shipped from Akaba in boats and landed on the
deserted shores on the Sinai side, where it was run through the deep gorges of
the granite mountains to the Gulf of Suez, to be handed over to fishermen who
transferred it to the western side. Here
a further party of Arabs ran it through the Red Sea mountains to the Nile Valley
in the vicinity of Helouan.
The
trade must have been very extensive, for immediately the patrolling system was
altered a large capture was made by the Camel Corps in the desert east of Cairo
and the Sinai Police had a very exciting little fight on the Gulf of Suez.
A patrol of six men moving along the shore at night came upon an Arab
dhow being laden with hashish; the load had just been placed on board, so the
fishermen made the most frantic attempts to push off their boat from the shore
whilst the Arabs, who had carried it across the Peninsula, scaled the cliff and
opened a heavy fire on the police.
The
police, knowing they had very little chance of hitting an Arab behind a rock
when they had nothing to aim at but the flashes from rifles, very wisely devoted
their attention to the boat, which had just been pushed off into deep water.
They fired a volley at it, killing the man who was hoisting the sail,
whereupon the crew surrendered and came ashore with over a hundred kilos of the
drug. Leaving two men to guard the boat and prisoners, the
remainder of the patrol pushed off after the Arabs and succeeded in capturing
two of them with their camels. The
only remarkable part about this episode was that according to the evidence given
by the police the Arabs were unarmed when captured but that two rifles were
found on the fishermen in the boat. The
police were all so emphatic and so very clear on this point that the real truth
was obvious; the fishermen in the boat were, of course, unarmed, and this being
so, according to the queer laws of the and-contraband service, the police were
only authorised to fire into the air, a fairly fatuous proceeding when the boat
full of contraband was pushing off from the shore.
Having disobeyed this order in a very good cause, the sensible thing to
do, to avoid any awkward questions, was to get hold of a recently discharged
rifle and put it in the boat. This
apparently explained the most energetic hunt after the Arab camelmen as soon as
the whole consignment of the drug had been captured, and the very emphatic and
oft-reiterated evidence from all the police that most of the firing had come
from the boat and not from the Arabs on the cliff-side.
Whatever the rights or wrongs of the case, this smugglers' route lost its
popularity after this episode, for the very simple reason that no fishermen
could be found who would risk their lives on the Sinai shores for the very
inadequate compensation of £1 a head for a boat's crew engaged in the dangerous
task of shipping hashish across the Gulf.
Then it
transpired that the Sinai Arabs were becoming what one might call 'dressy.'
As a race they normally go barefooted except when trekking over rough
granite or limestone mountains, when they wear home-made sandals of
goatskin---precisely the same form of footwear as that worn by the Patriarchs of
the Old Testament. Those who cherish all the old-time customs of the nomad Arab
will be horrified to learn that the goatskin sandal is now rapidly going out of
fashion and being replaced by a strip of worn-out Dunlop tyre cover.
It makes a most suitable sole for a nomad's shoe, but at first its use
caused a considerable amount of excitement owing to 'car tracks' being seen in
places where, by reason of scarps, cliffs and passes, no car could possibly run.
Until the mystery was explained one began to believe in some phantom
desert Ford that was haunting the uplands of Sinai and Trans-Jordan after its
disintegration on the rough going of the Wilderness.
The
Arabs of Northern Sinai, however, very seldom wear anything on their feet, as
practically the whole of the area in which they move is soft sand or clay, and
when, therefore, it was noticed that a large number of
very innocent looking nomads were crossing the ferry at Kantara on the Canal
wearing rather smart Damascus-made sandals, people began to wonder.
From wondering they advanced to examination, when it was disclosed that
the soles of these sandals were not made of leather but of a specially shaped
slab of hashish weighing about 3/4 lb., which meant that for some time every
individual wearing shoes had been passing the Customs barrier with 1½ lb. of
the drug on his feet. Apparently the 'drug barons' expected this clever ruse to
hold good for considerably longer than it did, as
hashish, fashioned in the shape of the sole of a sandal, figured in
captures for years after the device had been exposed.
After
the sandal method had failed there was another period of ominous silence on the
Sinai front, accompanied by a big drop in the price of the drug in Cairo.
The current price of hashish is easily ascertained, and when there is
what financiers call a weakening in the price it is a very sure sign that there
is no shortage on the market, and these fluctuations act as a barometer to the
anti-contraband officials.
Then one day a highly
delighted patrol of Sinai Police came in to El Arish, the Province Headquarters,
with a large drove of camels and tethered to each mounted patrolman were three
Arabs with ropes round their necks.' The
ladies of the village swarmed up on the housetops and, hearing from their police
husbands as they passed that three would be 'mukhaffas' (rewards) that day and
fat sheep to eat that night, with possibly a gold ornament for a pretty and
recent wife, set up their shrill ululations of joy.
It
appeared that a big drove of 'meat' camels consigned to the butchers of Cairo,
had passed the frontier at Rafa as all correct, but at Sheikh Zowaid twelve
miles farther on had met a police patrol who had ridden among the drove of
camels to make certain there were no parcels of hashish hidden in their loads.
One man, struck by the fine white wool of one of the camels, had gripped
a handful of hair by the hump and there had come away in his hand a slab of
hashish! A hole in the thick wool had been carefully clipped out by
hair clippers, on to the bare skin of the camel a slab of hashish had been
affixed by glue, and on the outer side of the slab the hair had been attached by
the same method, the patch being carefully combed over so that no outward signs
were visible.
Every
camel in the drove was carrying six slabs of half a Ho each and, with a reward
of £10 a head for every drover, the sale price of the confiscated camels, plus
the ordinary monetary payment for the hashish, the small patrol of three men
were definitely in the Croesus class for the time being, and there were sounds
of great merriment and dancing that night.
Nowadays the
smuggling fraternity, until they discover some new and cunning device, are
running the hashish by means of fast-trotting camels ridden at night with a
light load. By day the smuggler
turns his camel loose to graze, while he himself, with the saddle and
consignment of hashish, is hidden under a bush.
As there are grazing camels over the greater part of Central Sinai, the
idea is that the smuggler's animal will pass as one of the herd.
Against this is the fact that the Sinai Police all have an ' eye for a
camel' and can detect the breedy blood-stock type used by the smugglers at a
distance of a mile. If one of these animals is noticed a close examination is
made to see if there are recent saddle-marks on the hump and, if there are, a
close search of the surrounding bushes will disclose the presence of a very
innocent and plausible gentleman sitting on a consignment of the drug.
The
Arabs who swim the Suez Canal with the hashish are not from the same tribes as
those that make the run across the Peninsula.
They are specially selected men from the Ayada tribe whose ' darak '
(area) is on the Canal bank, and they are all very fine and very silent
swimmers. On the western bank of
the Canal are stationed Egyptian Coastguards who patrol the whole hundred-mile
length, but the swimmers have little difficulty in evading these slow-moving
infantrymen. The smuggler hides in
the east bank fill the big searchlight from a passing steamer shows up the
patrol waiting on the far side and then, having located the danger-spot, slips
into the water and swims across in the wash of the vessel, the noise of the
waves drowning any sound he may make.
The
feeling that exists between the officers of the anti-contraband forces and the
smugglers might almost be described as cordial, and their attitude one to the
other is rather similar to that which existed between the French and English
officers during the Peninsular War. When
there is work afoot it is war to the knife, but between runs a famous Arab
smuggler will bandy jokes with members of the police over their failure to
capture some big consignment.
At
the local Agricultural Show which is held at El Arish every year I had
complained about the quality of the camels in the 'Hageen' or fast-trotting
class and had said they were not up to the standard I had expected.
I was assured by a warrant officer of the police that if I would give my
word to c play the game' all the leading smugglers of Sinai would be delighted
to come in and show their camels in this class.
In due course a foxy-looking Arab, who had served five years in the local
prison for smuggling, was produced and, having assured him that no underhand
tricks would be played, there was as the result the most marvellous entry of
camels that year. It was most
interesting to see the beautiful breedy animals that were produced and still
more interesting to meet their owners, many of whom were old friends, as they
had 'done time' in the prison and probably would do so again in the near future. It struck me as distinctly Gilbertian when at the
prize-giving many of the leading smugglers of Egypt came up and received a
monetary reward for possessing an animal used exclusively for law-breaking!
The only occasion on which a 'drug baron' was convicted for
smuggling in Sinai was when a middleman was arrested on the strength of his
footprints being detected among a crowd of fishermen and Arabs on the sand of
the seashore. A very big
consignment of hashish from Syria had been landed and sixteen Arabs and twelve
fishermen were concerned in the run. The
whole load was captured by the police some two days' trek from the coast, and
there was nothing really remarkable about the run beyond the fact that the
trackers became most excited because among the many footprints at the spot where
the hashish was landed were those of a man who always wore shoes.
To an ordinary man this muddled mass of tracks made by bare feet all
looked precisely the same, but to the ski trackers the prints left by the
Effendi---the gentleman who wore European clothes and shoes normally-stood out
as if they had been painted vermilion. He
was not wearing shoes at the time, be it noted, but the fact that he was in the
habit of doing so was obvious as the sun in the sky.
In due course the gentleman in question was arrested, and
proved to be a well-to-do resident of El Arish who always seemed to be in funds
although he had no visible means of existence.
The evidence against him was not particularly strong, but there was not
the slightest doubt of his guilt as the middleman who had arranged all details
of the run. A senior Egyptian
officer of the police, realising that here was a chance to get at the big men of
the drug traffic, had this prisoner up to his house on several nights whilst
awaiting trial and, having dwelt on the extreme severity of the sentence he
would receive, ultimately obtained a full confession and also a promise to
assist in the conviction of the real owners of the drug.
A letter was
written by the middleman to his employer in Cairo stating---untruthfully---that,
although the majority of the hashish had been captured by the police, the
smugglers had managed to bury about a hundred kilos, and instructions as to how
this was to be disposed of were asked. This
letter the middleman smuggled out of prison in the ordinary way and was in due
course delivered to the ' drug baron' in Cairo.
He was a member of the El Azhar mosque, a man of unblemished character
and great sanctity, but he was also as artful as a fox and seldom if ever wrote
a letter himself. Luckily for the anti-contrabandist forces, however, this
scribbled note from El Arish prison appeared to be so absolutely genuine that he
allowed his avarice to get the better of his caution.
He wrote a reply upbraiding his henchman for losing so much of his
hashish and gave minute instructions as to the disposal of the remainder. Three days later, as he sat in his accustomed seat at his
favourite cafe, holding forth on religious observances, he was tapped on the
shoulder and immediately surrounded by half a dozen armed police officers who
hustled him into a waiting motor-car.
The
incriminating letter was quite sufficient to obtain a conviction and he was
awarded three years' imprisonment and a fine of £3,000.
One had very little sympathy for the fat, oily creature, for, though
loyalty is the keynote of the smuggling fraternity and unhappy, impoverished
Arabs who earn but a pound or two for a successful run will go to prison
cheerfully for three years rather than turn King's evidence and earn a remission
of their sentences, this wealthy drug merchant, who had been living on the trade
for twenty years, willingly gave away the remainder of the gang on the promise
of a slight reduction of his sentence. By
this means six more leading lights of Cairo and Alexandria were arrested and
sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. and heavy fines, and for some time
there was a definite shortage on the hashish market in the capital.
The
trade in the drug, which started immediately the law prohibited its import some
fifty years ago, will probably continue for all time unless the League of
Nations can bring pressure to bear on the hashish-producing countries.
It costs little or nothing to grow and will sell at from £30 to £60 a
kilo in Cairo; so that with profits such as these obtainable there will always
be contrabandists prepared to run a very small risk for a large sum, and the
deserts will always provide the Arabs who will run a much greater risk for
little more than a day's wage. They
possess no property to be sold up to pay a fine, and as to them time means
nothing, a sentence of penal servitude holds no terrors and no sense of
irremediable waste of fife's short span
| |
|
