bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1986) — Spring/Summer 1986 // Printemps/Été 1986, p. 23
Two tales of interment, more adventures in Bolivia and two years’ salary goes down the toilet!
by David Edwards
T he consular portfolio in New Delhi has, over the years, earned a reputation for offering a variety of interesting experiences. Problems often arose requiring innovative responses to situations not anticipated in the Manual of Consular Instructions.
The story begins in mid morning on a hot Indian summer day in 1984. I was just finishing escorting a bible study group of visiting young Canadians on a tour of the chancery premises when I was called to the consular section. When I arrived I was told that one of our clients (not one of the bible study group) had just pulled out from below his mid-section, a grey plastic tube allegedly containing 50 grams of opium. The individual decided he no longer wanted the substance and wished to dispose of it.
The fellow was pleasant and soft spoken. He began by noting that the contents of the tube did not contain mere opium, but instead virtually pure, top quality heroin from the tribal regions on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Indeed, his thin frame suggested that he had had some first hand experience with the drug. He indicated that he had purchased the heroin in one of the bazaars in Lahore, Pakistan, and in order to transport it safely had fashioned a grey plastic tube which he had melted shut on either end. The tube was moulded into a shape which allowed it to be easily, if not comfortably, concealed in a ’natural’ hiding place.
He said that he had initially planned to return to Canada with the heroin but when crossing the land border between Pakistan and India he had been given an obviously not-too-intensive body search by Indian customs officials.
During the search the carefully hidden tube was almost discovered. This event had, not unexpectedly, rather unnerved him and over the course of the previous few days he had undergone a crisis of conscience over his planned course of action since the chance of being caught had suddenly been made real. However, as an admittedly avid consumer of the product, he simply did not have the strength or will to dispose of it himself. To do that, he claimed, he would have to consume a quantity of heroin that would have endangered his life. By bringing it out in the open in the High Commission, he felt he would have the support necessary to dispose of the now unwanted substance.
After some consultations and discussing various options, we decided that if our client wanted to get rid of the heroin, I would perform the consular officer’s noble duty and witness the disposal.
The two of us went from the consular waiting room into the men’s washroom on the ground floor of the chancery with a pair of scissors and the grey plastic tube. We went into one of the cubicles, lifted the seat and I duly watched as our client snipped the end off of the tube and carefully poured the whitish-brown powder into the toilet bowl. He spoke in rather fond and nostalgic terms of the heroin that he was now disposing of, estolling its fine quality and noting that gram for gram it was worth far more than gold or platinum.
As I watched the powder disappear I thought with some amusement that, at North American street value, I was watching the equivalent of almost two years of a junior foreign service officer’s paltry salary being flushed down a High Commission toilet.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1986) — Spring/Summer 1986 // Printemps/Été 1986, p. 23. Read the rest of this issue →
