Smuggling the Frontier

Everyone knew everyone in our small town. A Jewish stranger was warmly received by the community. About 120 kilometres away stood Urmia in Iran, which also had a Jewish community. When we were refugees, its people hosted families from among us, some of whom remained in the city.¹

A young man named Zion travelled from Urmia through Başkale and Diyarbakır to Istanbul and back. He brought goods from Iran, leaving packages at various points for us to collect. In short, he was a smuggler—though we liked him so much that at first we did not understand the nature of his business.

One day he arrived with three Jews from Urmia: Asher Demedi, Baba Michael, and Hakhshuri. Shmuel Chacho hosted two; Zion and Michael stayed with us. Next morning Asher said customs had detained their goods and might find prohibited items. They had brought forty bales of Iranian carpets and twenty sacks of henna; he feared that Zion had not told them everything.

At the edge of town, beside military warehouses, stood ten bales that had passed through customs at Gavar. The Başkale officer grew suspicious and wanted to open and weigh them again. Zion went pale and admitted that they contained Iranian silver coins. The real problem, he explained, was that at Gavar they had bribed an official and paid duty on a reduced weight. A full weighing would expose the difference and lead to confiscation of everything. He begged me to remove part of the load before inspection.

I went to my friend, an officer named Nuri Gürkan, and told him the truth: the owners were relatives; they had probably paid on a false weight at the frontier and now wanted to make the figures match. Nuri first invited me to coffee. After dark he gave me a long military coat and cap, and we went to the warehouses.

Nuri asked the guard his duty. When the man said he watched both warehouses and bales, Nuri frightened him. “Who entrusted them to you? How will you pay if one disappears? Guard the warehouses only; let the owners watch their goods.” The sentry saluted and obeyed.

We summoned Zion. Nuri loudly scolded him and said the owners must guard their own property, then whispered to me that they could take whichever bales they wished. They dragged them one by one into nearby ruins. The last was so heavy that even Nuri and I struggled to move it. Before the watch changed, we cleared it too. The men removed what they wished to hide and returned the packages.

To the new sentry Nuri gave the opposite order: “You are to guard the bales as well.” Customs officers arrived early, opened them, and found nothing unusual. One came to me, said bluntly that I had thoroughly outwitted them and that his day would come, then left.

I went to see what had been removed. Hidden inside the henna packages were dutiable silk and expensive silk head coverings. Zion begged me not to tell Asher and promised to give Nuri anything he asked.

I thanked Nuri and asked what the owners should give him. He flushed. “I do not know them. I did it for you and want nothing.” Only when I insisted did he mention a samovar he had admired in our home; if Zion travelled back and forth, he could bring one like it. He wanted nothing else from Iran.

The favour weighed on me. I immediately took our own samovar to Nuri and persuaded him to accept it. I asked Zion to replace it on his next visit. He swore he would bring one unlike any other—even of solid gold if he could find it—for any gift was small beside what we had done.

The carpets went to Diyarbakır and the silk to Van, where they sold at a handsome profit. Zion returned at least ten times afterwards, but the samovar never arrived.

Before that journey I had also given him my wife’s broken gold bracelet. Başkale had no jeweller, so I asked him to repair it in Urmia and turn it into a chain. “For Sinyor Efendi—on my head,” he promised. The gold followed the samovar. To this day I am waiting for both.