volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

354 -4 Friend in Need.
officials and mysell were still quarrelling over the oranges.
At length the crate was opened and the oranges turned
out and counted, and the officials called upon me to pay
15 piastres (3s.) octroi, but I refused. They insisted,
and every few minutes they sent for some higher official
to come and enforce their demand. I resisted until I
saw Ahmad coming towards the office, and then 1 paid
and began to gather up the oranges and put them back
in the crate. When my friend, who was with him,
entered the office and came up to me and shook hands
and offered his cigarette case, the officials' faces became
troubled, and they began to explain away their performance
of what, after all, was their duty. But my
friend, who had lived in the East for many years, complimented
them on their zeal. He then assured them
that I had no intention of defrauding the octroi, and
framed his words in such a way as to suggest that the
oranges were brought specially by me for the sick in
the little hospital in the town. Then, beckoning to
Ahmad, he told him to take the oranges to certain
French Sisters in the town, and told the clerks of the
octroi to buy cigarettes with the 15 piastres I had paid
them for octroi on the oranges. Thus I got my papyrus
into safe keeping, the Sisters got the oranges, the clerks
got the 15 piastres, and my friend much amusement
over the incident, and so everybody was pleased.
My object in going to Suez was to embark on the
homeward-bound P. & 0. mail steamer, which a wellinformed
friend in Cairo told me would arrive there
between midnight and 3 a.m. the following day. But
there was a difficulty to be overcome, for the steamer
would stop at a place about three miles from the town
to have her " canal rudder " fitted on, and I did not
know how or where to get a boat to take me out to the
steamer at that early hour of the morning. In the course
of the evening I explained matters to my friend, and
why it was important for me to reach the steamer, and
to my great joy he said he would send me to her in his
own steam launch, and he promptly gave orders to the
engineer and crew of the launch to be ready for me at