I woke up startled in a cold sweat last night. I had just relived, in a vivid dream, a startling moment in Tehran Iran in 1962, I had long forgotten. The dream was even more vivid than the reality it seemed. I was dreaming about a drug incident of alarming consequences. And it was all true! I was on my way around the world in 1961 and had made it as far as Tehran for under a dollar for transportation and accommodation. Using my dad’s honorary Toronto police shield badge, I had inveigled my way across Iran by being passed by one city police chief after another all the way to the Tehran. Each police chief then, in the time of the Shah was also the Governor of their state and dressed accordingly with flamboyant uniforms with enormous gold epaulettes, flashing scabbards and swords and wedding cake hats. With my first letter of introduction from the Chief in Zahedan on the Baluchistan border, each chief passed me on to the next on free bus transportation. In my free hotel room I invited a couple of other fellow travellers to share the extra bed and floor. Johnathan was a road weary Dutchman from Amsterdam who had been on the road for 3 years! He had more stories than a hundred travellers.
One evening he rolled a fresh cigarette, but inside the tobacco on the paper he placed a muddy green ball the size of a small alley and rolled up the cigarette. He lit it, took a toke and passed it around. Within minutes I was unconscious, floating in a sea of bliss. At some point in this drugged state I remember I declared to the others I wanted a cream puff and with an insistence, despite their admonitions I stumbled out onto the streets of Tehran well after midnight. The street lights and shop lights streaked across the sky like a lazer light show blinding me with their brilliance. I next remember lying on my bed back at the hotel munching down on tender luscious cream puffs. Where I found them I’ll never know but I thought they may have been a mirage. It was like biting into a piece of heaven. No words can capture the rapturous experience of this drugged culinary experience. I didn’t question the veracity of this experience until I came down from my high and was alert again.
Further into my drug experience while still being virtually comatose, disaster struck and I began to defecate uncontrollably in a steady stream of diarrhea It wasn’t just one defecation, it went on, and on, and I seemly was floating in my own very liquid feces. My body was incapable of moving or getting up. I finally fell asleep afloat in my own shit!
Sometime in mid-morning I awoke, immediately remembering my nightmarish bowel movement. I reached to my sides and patted the bed. It was bone dry. I rolled over and patted my bottom. I was bone dry. It was all a drug hallucination. I remembered the cream puffs assuming they too were a hallucination after all where could anyone get cream puffs in Tehran at midnight. But as I cleaned up the room, I found two pastry papers with whipped cream on them. I had found cream puffs. Jonathon was gone but his backpack was still in the room.
I had to stay in Tehran for a few days. I had to go to the Canadian embassy to obtain an affidavit stating I was a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. My next major objective was Jerusalem and to get there I had to cross several Arab borders including Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. I needed to have conclusive proof I was not a Jew. The Canadian consul made me a very official one page document with wax imprint, a Canadian stamp and a fancy signature. I still ended up having problem at one border because the agent thumbed through my one guide for my world trip; A copy of the Oxford Canadian School Atlas, stamped, property of Richmond Hill High School. On a map of Asia I had tracked my trip from Singapore to Jerusalem. I managed to convince him that my line led to Jerusalem but did not cross over the border from Syrian Jerusalem into Israel.
All during this time Johnathon never showed up. When I left heading for Turkey his backpack was still in the room. I never ever saw or heard from him again. Very mysterious. The odds for his safety were slim.
In my dream last night I woke up at the point in my memory when I voided my intestines onto the bed. ( I’ve worn a diaper every since. Lol. )
Photo. My crossing of Iran in 1962 . Between Zahedan and Meshed, our rickety old bus had 2 well armed soldiers to protect the bus from roving pirate gangs. When our bus broke down one soldier climbed up to this hilltop to have better sightline for possible invaders. I joined him . He took my picture. ( well marked on current maps as Mt. Diakiw. LOL)
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