SHARP! Flicknife Records and Other Adventures - A Sample - Flicknife Records
Monday, 05 September 2016 17:07

SHARP! Flicknife Records and Other Adventures - A Sample

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HEY FLICKERS!

It's that time again, and boy do we have a treat for you today. To celebrate this month’s release of "SHARP! Flicknife Records and Other Adventures", we're bringing you a sneak peek at one of the more hair raising sections of the book:

Set in the hazy days of 1976 this chapter sees Frenchy getting into a little bit of trouble, deep in Iran.

Want to know what happens? Well read on and you'll see... After all, the first taste is always free!

While in Istanbul an opportunity arose to make a lot of money. It seemed straight forwards enough: all we had to do was go to Iran and bring back 450 grams of smack. All expenses paid and a grand on top for each of us, it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

It was clear I was not ready for a return to normal life. Filled, once again, with the desire to travel and make some easy money, I was soon on a plane to Iran. Flying into Tehran, Mike, Aria and I were met by an Australian guy who I took an instant dislike to. Nobody else seemed to feel the bad vibes I was getting off him so I went along, though with heavy reservations, when he drove us 150 kms south west from Tehran to the city of Gohm (Qom). Fanatically religious, it was the most unlikely place for a smack deal to go down. My gut told me things weren’t right and with hindsight I know I should’ve listened to those instincts.

Mike decided that he should carry the passports and I should carry the cash, so that if anything happened to one of us we wouldn’t lose everything. Due to a passport technicality I’d spent a week in the Sagmalcilar prison, made infamous by Midnight Express. Although it didn’t look anything like the movies and the guards were not sadists it was still a horrid place and not an experience I wanted to repeat. All I could think, as we drove to Gohm, was how much worse prisons in Iran would be if we got caught.

We got hold of the gear and decided that it would be both easier and more discrete if we went back to Istanbul by magic bus. In the 1970s in Asia anyone who owned a bus and had a few seats to spare would put an ad in local cafes. These ads would run along the lines of: “Going to Peshawar on Monday. Three seats available at $250 each.” All the buses, from small three seaters up to big old Pullman coaches were called magic buses. It wasn’t the Magic Bus, but everyone knew that when they saw the words it meant cheap travel with like-minded people. I travelled all over Asia in those beat up freak-mobiles. It was by far the best, cheapest and most laid back way to travel and you made friends quickly with everyone on board. Sometimes fellow magic bus passengers would stick together and go on traveling. I even know a couple who met on a bus, stayed together and now have seven grandchildren.

Hitching was far too dodgy once you got past Istanbul. Even hitching in Greece wasn’t easy. So, for a couple of hundred dollars you could get a seat, load up your stuff and get to where you wanted to be. When you heard a freak saying “I went to Delhi by magic bus, you knew what they meant. They used all kinds of old vehicles. I once went from Istanbul to Athens in an old Birmingham City Travel Bus. Stripped of its seats, the inside was decked out in big cushions, mattresses and rugs. To this day I still believe that our one big mistake was to make our travel plans in front of the Australian. Arriving back in Tehran from Gohm, we went to check out all the various buses going back to Istanbul, to see which one looked most comfortable.

Thus far we’d not had any problems and we paid for our tickets. Departure was in about three or four hours so we opted to have a meal with the Aussie. The gear was in his car and would be right up until the last minute before the bus set off. Making our way back to the bus station we boarded and shortly afterwards departed for Istanbul with us on board feeling pretty smug and happy that we’d pulled it off. About two hours into the journey, without reason or warning, the bus was pulled over and stopped by the military police. They wanted to do a drugs search! We couldn’t believe it. Military Police? Drugs search? With dogs? How could this be happening? It took them all of two minutes to find the gear.

This was very strange and certainly felt like a set up. The next two days felt like a nightmare. This was no normal arrest. Not only was it handled by the military, which was scary in itself, but we knew that, if you were found carrying in smack in Iran the penalty was death. Luckily Mike was Austrian and his embassy managed to persuade the authorities that it was a domestic, civilian matter that should be handled by the normal police. They also made sure that we didn’t simply “disappear”, which had been known to happen. Terrified does not even begin to describe how I felt. Even if I managed to evade the gallows I believed that I would be the wrong side of sixty five before I got out - if I ever got out.

After spending three days in a police cell I was transferred, with no explanation, to a small rural jail near the Iranian border with Turkey. This struck me as potentially being positive, something that might indicate release. My two other companions were taken to different prisons and I never saw them again after that. By good fortune the police and the prison guards had not found the money I was carrying. A forward thinking friend had fitted a false heel into my boot and it was in this special, cleverly concealed compartment that the cash was stored. It was only around five hundred U.S. dollars, but in Iran in 1976, where a guard would only earn the equivalent of about two hundred and fifty dollars in a year, it was a lot. After about four or five days of languishing I saw the sergeant and was able to blurt out the only word that might save me: “Baksheesh”.

Anyone who has travelled in Asia will know this word. Meaning anything from tip or charitable gift to a bribe, this word is a what the French call a passe-partout, a pass key. Nuanced and reflecting the circumstances in which it is said, the interpretation of this Persian derived word varies greatly.

Looking from me to my charge sheet and back again he was silent for what seemed an age. He knew what I meant. I was offering a bribe. Carrying heroin in Iran was punishable by the death penalty, though, as Europeans, it was more likely we’d have our sentences commuted to a twenty five to thirty year stretch. I had to escape this fate. When he finally spoke he did so to ask: “how much?” I told him he could have everything I had, five hundred American dollars, the real McCoy. At this time dollars were really sought after. Turkish and Iranian money was worth nothing in comparison and had less stability, so most deals were conducted in greenbacks. He didn’t say a word and simply indicated to the guards that I should be taken back to my holding cell. In front of me all I could see, stretching off beyond my youth and into old age, was twenty five years or more in an Iranian prison. The sergeant had made himself clear by refusing to answer, there was to be no baksheesh. All I could pray for now was a slim hope that I might be moved to a prison in Italy.

About two hours later the sergeant appeared at my cell door and called my name. In a few quick, whispered words in French he told me to be ready at midnight and then rushed away. Astonished, hopeful, dumbfounded, suspicious, fearful, confused, contradictory emotions ran through me. I was either going to be freed or be killed for my money. Whatever the outcome, I felt sure even the worst of these would be preferable to thirty long and grinding years in an Iranian prison.

At the witching hour he came, as he promised, and called my name. Speaking loudly and in English he told me that, by the grace of Allah, scum like me got everything they deserved and that I was being transferred to a secure jail. All the blood in my body seemed to drain away and with it any hope I had. I thought I was going to faint. Demonstrating his disgust he marched me, with two accompanying guards to a waiting car and told me to get in. The four of us squeezed in and we set off to my uncertain and bleak future.

There we have it! If you want to know how Frenchy survived then you'll have to read the rest when the book is released on the 26th!

If you haven't already, you can preorder here:

SHARP!
Buy it at Amazon
Buy it at Waterstones

Catch you on the flipside!

The Flicknife Kru.

Before you leave... We have a little bonus for you, our loyal reader. In the first of a potential series, we have a video from Greg Healey, the co-author of this grand tale, talking about his first meeting with Frenchy, enjoy:

https://youtu.be/pGFCVKTAcIM

Read 4630 times Last modified on Monday, 05 September 2016 17:25
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