My Dream to Be Free

by Juergen Stollin

  After they had fled from East Germany and had settled down in the “West that was suppressed by America”, he has now become a manager in a major energy company. His father had established a large bakery again and was even in the position to lend me four thousand marks, so I could send my wife to Ceylon.

  One day the people in the Eastern bloc would be free, at least I hoped so.

  I thought that it was not because of the people but due to the structure of the repressive system of government.

  Next we drove to Kapikule, to the Turkish border and to Edirne.

  I had forgotten a twenty-mark note in my passport, which was of course purely coincidental, as always, which the customs officials confiscated immediately.

  That helped to speed up the customs formalities. Istanbul with its oriental hustle and bustle, was a city that never slept and always exuded a hectic rush that you were glad when you had reached the Asian side. Since there was no bridge, we were able to cross only by ferry.

  On the way to Adana, there were many smaller and larger restaurants, which offered excellent food.

  We did not stop at the big restaurants, they were the bus restaurants. We stopped at the smaller restaurants mainly frequented by truck drivers. They guaranteed better food and were also cheaper. I had never eaten such good white bread, like here in Turkey. Without Ekmek, as the bread was called, I did not have any meal any more. In addition, there was mutton with tomato sauce and fresh green beans or chick peas with carrots, potatoes and beef or lamb cubes. There was a whole range of kebabs and Döners up to my favorite dish, the "Imam Bayaldi", which was halved eggplant filled with minced meat.

  To date, the Turkish and Indian cuisine are my absolute favorites. Above all, the restaurants, where the local guests eat, are good. This is because where it is cooked for the tourists, the food is already corrupted.

  An oriental dish with lamb or mutton must be prepared with garlic. And if it is such meat, it must be completely cooked or fried.

  You should be able to eat it with a spoon. The meat must fall of the bone on its own, only then the taste gets its full potential.

  Half-cooked beef, lamb or mutton as it is cooked in German, does not taste good. I can’t imagine an Indian "Mutton Curry" without the meat being cooked through, let alone eating it!

  Even what you get in the German kebab shops, is far from being Turkish food. It's not just the food - even the Turks in this country are better and friendlier than the somewhat Germanized Turks here in Germany.

  It's like with the Indians, all already Germanized.

  You also shouldn’t order Kasseler (Cured Pork) with Sauerkraut and bread dumplings in an Indian restaurant

  . On the other hand, I do not order any rice dish in a German restaurant because the washed-bag rice tastes like boiled sawdust.

  Chitra was thrilled by the Oriental cuisine and wanted to know why we Germans knew only know salt and pepper as seasoning. I never once thought that the eating could be so important that the well-being or the mental state could be so impaired due to it.

  At the Syrian border, we had to be prepared for real problems.

  Since absolutely nothing ran without the obligatory baksheesh.

  If something did not suit them, you could stand there for days waiting for some stamp, which was missing in a document, because the official responsible for it was not there.

  You could however proceed with your journey if you shell out twenty dollars.

  A Syrian border official also has a family to feed after all.

  The Lebanese saw everything in a much more relaxed manner and welcomed us. Already at the border, you got the first addresses for making purchase offer to the uncle, nephew or brother. Suddenly everyone had a relative with an auto repair shop and was into used car trade.

  Out of politeness, we accepted the addresses and so you had the name of the border official, so that this particular person could get his commission from a possible buyer. But because of Kurt’s circle of acquaintances, we had our own addresses.

  The Lebanese is an astute businessman and is just as good as the Jews. If you're not careful, he would fool you quickly. I was not ripped off by any Lebanese but that was because I have never bought anything from them so far. But I was fully prepared to cheat a Lebanese.

  My engine was about to give up its ghost. And that too, in such an expensively bought car. So I had to get rid of this car without fail. The knocking sounds worried me. A Lebanese man would not want to buy an engine with a woodpecker.

  I took pity and fed the knocker in the engine with coffee grounds.

  I poured the finely ground coffee grounds in the engine oil filler neck, even poured a pint of new oil afterwards, so that you could not see any grains of the coffee grounds, closed the lid and drove around the corner to my buyer.

  He gave me the charcoal and I disappeared by taxi to the nearest shopping center, so that they could not track me down eventually to the hotel.

  I probably would not be able to sell any cars to this dealer.

  It would be even better if I'd steer clear of this neighborhood of Beirut forever. Even Kurt had gotten rid of his car. It had been all right.

  Beirut, with its many bars and nightclubs, was also called the Paris of the Orient.

  Kurt's friends had invited us to a night stroll.

  We sat at the bar at the "King George Hotel" with a bottle of whiskey and some delicious mezze – these are small appetizing snacks, as in Spain, the tapas. There was "Baba Ghannouj", "Hunmus Bi Tahini", "Tabouleh", "Falafel" and "Kousa Mahshi Bi Bandura". Added to that, there was "Khoubiz", the delectable flatbread. Since Kurt spoke Arabic, which his friends could most probably understand, he enjoyed speaking with them in this language - my disadvantage because I did not understand anything. Turning to me, he declared that I had such a good contact with the Americans. I said yes and he continued yakking in his broken Arabic.

  Now, there came point at which I realized what the discussion was all about. There were some words, which one can imagine through their correct interpretation, what subject matter was being dealt with. And here it was so, and so I chimed in into the conversation in English. Kurt was telling the Lebanese man that Henry, my black American friend, had asked me to bring him something of the Red, which was available in Baalbek.

  That was probably the clue for a further discussion regarding Baalbek and what was available to get from there.

  The great temptation

  From now on, we all spoke English and I understood more accurately what it was about. My little goblin was sitting on my left shoulder and advised me to get into the conversation.

  They could convince me only too quickly that it was "THE IDEA" and that there was no risk at all, to take a few kilos of Red Lebanese Hashish to Germany to sell it to the Americans. So 2 kilos of hashish came into Chitra’s prepared petticoat, which she wore underneath her sari. And 2 kilos came into my travel bag. We drove by taxi to Damascus, then by Inter-Flight to East Berlin, to West Berlin by transit bus and by Lufthansa to Frankfurt.

  At that time, it was really very easy to get through the lax checks. We were able to give my friend Henry the four kilos from Chitra and me and two kilos from Kurt without any disruptions. We got our money and everyone was happy. Kurt told me that he had often taken the stuff but he had not found any takers here and that he had sold it for less profit to the Palestinians in Germany.

  The money had come too easily and quickly. I did not worry about whether what I considered as business would be regarded as such by a judge. He would probably think that what I was doing was smuggling of drugs.

  I could not stop - until something happened, which brought me slightly back to reality. Chitra did not travel with us anymore. Only Kurt and I took did two more trips together.

  Then there was the last trip, after which Kurt did not come back from Baalbek. Nobody could tell me what had happened. He was not in prison. However Kurt’s friends told me that it had been in the newspapers that there had been a
shooting between drug dealers and the farmers.

  As fast as it was possible, I bought a ticket for Beirut-Frankfurt and refrained from taking the goods. I didn't have to make a detour via Syria and Berlin because of this.

  So my career as a drug business man came to an end. I had enough money put aside and the debts were cleared. So I was able to prepare for a civil work.

  But I had forgotten my wife and her mother, who had nightmares because of Kurt's sudden demise and insisted that we move to another city.

  But my leprechaun appeared again and did not want to simply move to another city. So I told that to my dear ones: We would travel to another country. Big eyes. Many questions. I announced that we would be driving to Ceylon.

  The word "driving" irritated them. Yes, I would buy a car and we would drive to Ceylon. We would start all over there, sell the car or even keep it, depending on what work or business I would do.

  So I bought a used white Mercedes 230 with air conditioning and got it checked thoroughly.

  At the insistence of my mother-in-law, I had to drive to Lourdes in France, so that she could get a blessing. I considered this as a test for my car.

  The car made the trip without problems. Only my mother-in-law had problems, she had to throw up a few times. She told me that it was due to my driving style and the curves on the roads. Back in Offenbach, we got ourselves ready for the journey. I told about my projects to a buddy of mine, whom I knew from the time of driving taxi. First he told me that I was crazy but then he came and announced that he wanted to come on the journey with us. So I had a co-driver and we could drive alternately. The passports were done and a "Carnet de Passage" was applied for at the Automobile Club. This document ensures that the car from a country after the entry could be taken out again; it also deals with a temporary duty-free import.

  My wife couldn't resist saying that she was happy to move from Germany because Germany was not a good country anyway, there was always a lot of trouble with the immigration police and employment office. The social welfare offices were also not good, there were poor apartments and people looked so nastily in the trams and in the supermarket." No one knew of such problems in Ceylon.

  This was because there was no employment office or social welfare office there, where people were received in an unfriendly manner anyway because they wanted to have something.

  There were not trams there as well, you traveled by taxi and gave the police some rupees and you could do whatever you wanted.

  And "people were always happy and laughed even if they didn't have much money as the Germans. Ceylon is a paradise!"

  She was probably right in that. When I asked her why she came with me to Germany in those days, she said that she had been stupid at that time. I thought differently about it:

  She had been calculating and had used me only for the trip to come into the golden West. She on the other hand, blamed me that she had missed the chance of marrying Salim from the gemstone stop because of me. Poor idiot - but I knew of course that that wouldn't have happened at all since Salim's family never would have accepted a "non-Muslim" woman.

  If Chitra had me asked why I had taken with me to Germany

  I would have answered that I had loved her and still did. I was probably the poor idiot - there is nothing to explain about this - there is nothing to explain here - the evidence is plain for all to see.

  It was also insane to have the idea of driving with my 62-year-old mother-in-law, my wife, our 2 year old daughter and my friend Dieter in a car from Offenbach to Colombo.

  The preparations were made, I bought travelers checks, hid s certain amount of cash in the car, the rest in the bag, packed the Mercedes and the journey began. I had a tenant for the apartment, to whom I gave the key. There was no going back. If I knew what I had to expect at this time, I would have never driven one meter in the direction of Ceylon.

  My friend Dieter was worried that the Mercedes would not be able to withstand this tour. I reassured him and explained that I had enough money to take a flight if needed to continue with the journey. I was much more worried about my little daughter because I would have to cancel my plans and would fly back to Germany if she had the slightest sickness.

  The "Big Money" and a trip to freedom

  I could say goodbye to my parents only in Austria, at the Mondsee. They had driven there with our older daughter on holiday.

  Since it was not a big detour, we visited them and it wasn't a bad surprise. Surprised to see us along with my friend and my mother-in-law, my Mother thought that it was a joke that we wanted to drive to Ceylon. But during my second attempt to convince her, she realized that I meant it seriously.

  From experience, she knew that I already had done a lot of impossible things. Somehow Father and Mother were glad that Chitra and her mother were moving to a country “where the pepper grew” i.e. very far away. Father took me aside and confirmed this to me. He also told me that it is probably the best for everyone.

  Mother only feared that she would miss the little one. She was also worried about this trip. Was it clear to me what kind of a responsibility I had taken on myself here? I could not calm her down but promised her that I would be very prudent.

  I put an end to all this by rushing to make a departure and we drove on. Since I knew the route very well, we made rapid progress. We remained in the car till Istanbul but there we treated ourselves by staying in a hotel, which did us all very good. It was at the Sultan Ahmed Plaza.

  We also visited the famous Hagia Sofia, the mosque, which used to be a cathedral.

  Then it was time for a really good Turkish meal and then immediately to go to bed. I was asleep immediately. I got a surprise the next morning when I discovered that my Mercedes on the on the brick paving was jacked up.

  I had to look twice before I could believe it.

  There were still relatively many things in the car. But it was not been broken in, "only" the wheels were missing.

  Of course the hotel staff didn't know anything about it, no one had even heard any sound and had also not seen anything. Someone had removed the tires from the Mercedes without anyone having noticed it; it was hard to believe this.

  A boy came over from the other side of the road to us and said that he knew where I could buy these wheels.

  The little boy even spoke some German and made signs to me to follow him. Which I did inevitably. He guided me through some streets and showed me a car repair shop. Then he disappeared as quietly as he had come.

  The Turk, who was probably the owner of the workshop, showed me four tires with aluminum rims stacked up. These wheels did not only look like mine, they were mine, I saw that immediately.

  I made the mistake of saying loudly want I had detected. Now the owner became loud and got upset that I thought that he was a thief. He said that those tires were his property and he would sell them to me for 50 dollars a piece. He told me to give him 200 dollars and he would bring the tires to the hotel and they would also mount the tires for 5 dollars a piece.

  If I didn't do that and only caused him trouble, he would call the police immediately. The nearest police station was just around the corner and his brother was the chief of police there, he told me. How did the guy know in which hotel I was staying? I had understood him and we came to a mutual agreement that I would pay 200 dollars for the wheels, if he would mount them again free of charge.

  His English was not very good that he could have understood that I had said "again". He said that he was so generous since he would forgo the charges for mounting.

  We were all glad when we were on the way again and were driving through the Bosporus to the other side. I knew the first part of the route but later we had to take the road leading to Ankara.

  We were now officially in Asia.

  You could argue about this; for me it was still the Orient. They also called it Near East or Asia Minor - for me all this didn't have anything to do with Asia.

  For me Asia began only much further in the Ea
st. And then there is Central Asia. There is then the term East Asia. Some called East Asia also as Far East, what the heck, we were in Turkey.

  You could take two different routes, on the one hand through Samsun near the Black Sea and then to Trabzon and Erzrum. Or on the other hand, the somewhat adventurous route directly through the mountains to Siva and Erzrum.

  I suggested to the shorter route. Generally everyone needed an entry visa for almost every country, except for some countries, which have an agreement that you were allowed to travel without a visa. According to my automobile club, I did not need a visa to Persia as a German.

  My little wife knew that a Ceylonese also did not need a visa since Persians were a powerful trade partner in the matter of tea.

  Without stopping at Ankara, we drove directly to the Persian border. We stayed in hotels in Erzrum and Siva and had delicious Turkish food. The hotels here were all 'Otels", because the Turks did not know "H", they said.

  East Turkey is totally a different Turkey. The people here are poor but very warm and friendly.

  We were never allowed to pay in our tea-stops. Someone else had already paid for our tea. Shortly after Erzrum, my mother-in-law complained of back pain.

  That was probably because of the bad road before and after Siva. The pain would definitely leave after a taking a bigger break, which I wanted to take in Tehran.

  But it was a bigger problem when I found out that my daughter had diarrhea and fever.

  After making the announcement, I wanted to travel as quickly as I could to Tehran because I knew that the Shah had very good hospitals.

  But here, just before the border it was very unlikely that we would find a doctor.

  We drove through Dogubayazit, the last town in Turkey. The signpost of the Persian city Macu was appeared in front of us. At least we had survived the streets with holes in East Turkey. Even though the people are very simple but were warm, I was happy that we had this behind us.