Border Crossing

Our luck had changed. After a few unsuccessful attempts, we managed to jump the queue and cross the checkpoint into the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing between Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey.
In the process, two things became clear: it was better not to test the patience of Kurdish border guards and Masod, the driver who was taking me to the airport, was tenacious.
He also had the virtue of driving everybody mad with his mere presence.
However, good luck didn’t last long.
Standing in an endless line of vans, which inched forward a few meters at a time, there was little refuge from the scorching heat. People clustered around the thin shadows that a few concrete pillars cast on the sidewalk. A running water hose that a teenager had brought from the other side of the fence provided a brief instant of solidarity in hardship.
However, as soon as the last drops of fresh water turned into sweat, the mood darkened. Conversations ceased. Patience wore thin. Irritated drivers returned to their vans, walking in procession to the rhythm of vein-cutting music, and solemnly turned on their ACs.
Masod decided that the time had come to make his move.
His sense of timing was questionable.
He took a seat next to me and, out of nowhere, produced four plastic bags full of cartons of cigarettes He smiled at me slyly.
Using signs and speaking in Kurdish, he asked me to put some cartons in my backpack and tell the Turkish border police they were mine. “No problem, no problem,” he insisted.
Envisioning dozens of soap-dropping inmates at a Midnight Express-style jail, I politely refused.
But Masod was undeterred and kept trying to talk some sense into me, pointing alternately to my backpack and the cigarettes, so that I would eventually do the math and give in.
For 15 minutes, we engaged in an absurd dialogue where communication was all but possible.
The AC didn't work properly, time was ticking, the line was not moving, I was afraid of missing my flight, and had said no in all the languages I knew. I was about to lose my cool.
“No problem,” Masod repeated the two only English words he knew.
I couldn't stand it any longer.
And then the F word came to the rescue. There is something you can be sure of: If there is one word in this world everybody understands, it is the F word, especially when uttered in anger. Decades of US action movies hadn't been in vain. His tenacity faltered. He gave up and hid packs of cigarettes all over the van.
Thanks Dirty Harry. Thanks Tarantino