I have a little story about the time I I I was nearly taken for 1,000,000 in cash. Across the border into Pakistan.
It was the Fall of 1991, I think, and the weather in Punjab was pretty darn nice; with that extra special little difference you can notice when you sit in a rose garden all day doing nothing. [I just remembered, too, that the first day I was there, a very beautiful woman from Spain, in red and white and a long thick black braid, slipped up alongside my chair and whispered in my ear and her accent, "I'm sorry I missed you in the garden last night." She immediately turned and walked away, before I could say anything. "Jeez" I thought. "India is cool. No wonder people come here." "This is like the beginning of a book." I asked a guy what he thought I should do; we became friends. "I don't know" he says. "That's never happened to me."]
Exotic birds whooped and howled outside my window at night. Muslim prayers and ghouly wurlitzers boomed thru the city from monster PA towers at 4 am. Wedding parades filled the street some nights between midnight and 2 am ~ with weird music and lights ~ regular fluorescent 40-watt ones, handheld, like light sabers, connected to wires dragging back to an ox-drawn cart full of car batteries.
It's kooky.
I think I already told this story. Uh oh.
No?
We met a couple of nice "book-ladies", here in town, a few weeks ago, music night in the tavern, and they reminded me of this event, by saying I reminded them of someone. My techie had told them, "He doesn't get out. Pretty much ever."
They said, a-giggle (but intelligently, of course), "Are you famous? You look familiar."
"He hides a lot" says Gus.
"Are you a writer?"
"Uh-uh. Nope."
(But I was thinking, "I know one. You guys read Parents?")
Back in Hind: In the courtyard of the garden are wicker chairs galore, and a table over there with the day's newpapers, and some magazines. I'm standing under a tree, minding my own business, and two Indian guys who work there, are waiting for people to come and go, thumbing through the Time Magazine. There's a commotion that gets my attention, and I look over, and they're plenty excited and pointing over the top of their magazine at me. I'm thinking..... what the hell; same as I do here. A guy in a jacket comes out and gives them orders, and they zoom off. So I wander over there, casually, with my friend. The magazine's laying on the coffee table, open to a picture of Salmon Rushdie, and damn if it doesn't look exactly like moi. I mean, I'd seen his picture before, and never noticed, but this picture was me. Perfect, for how I looked. We couldn't believe it; laughing. We showed it to people who sat down with us, and everybody's impressed, and then somebody says, "You know, there's that million dollar cash reward for him, dead or alive. And it's payable on demand. A hundred miles from here."
I tore the page out.
I was going to burn it, but I tucked it deep inside some stuff and brought it home. It wasn't very smart; think iffn it had been discovered; and man, in India, those airport guys look.
"Salmon Rushdie!!" squealed the women with the beers.
"Yah. Been in Oregon. All this time."
Gus was pleased.
"How we doin?"
"Good. Good." he says; and we all laugh. |
