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I was sitting in a pub in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, puffing on a Montecristo and watching some British, umm, expatriates watch a live soccer game. They were rooting for Barclayscard or Manchester United — I couldn't tell which. The ball kept getting sucked past the goalie standing in front of Barclayscard, revealing the attractive power of that perverse piece of plastic. I reflected that I sometimes used to smoke cigars on weekends in high school. Thereafter in my adult life I wasn't a smoker. The drug was no temptation. And I had never liked cigarettes — I don't care for the smell of burning paper. But recently I've acquired a taste for Cuban cigars. I have a friend I sometimes smoke cigars with. Halfway through a cigar he has to take a cigarette break. He's addicted to paper smoke alright. The whole cigar thing got started with a play called "The Monkey's Paw." The play is supposed to be a tragedy with a moral lesson: Be careful what you wish for, you may get it. In the story — a short story by W. W. Jacobs which was turned into various one-act play versions — the parents of a worker named Herbert White learn about the tradition of the monkey's paw brought by a visiting sergeant-major. Namely, that they are allowed three wishes. The father has a small debt he hasn't paid, so he wishes for the exact amount of money to settle the debt. Such a modest wish! The next day Herbert, the son (the character I played in the high school production), falls into machinery where he works, gets mangled and dies. The company disclaims any responsibility, but sends along a small sum as compensation to the parents. The sum turns out to be the precise amount of cash the father had wished for. The mournful parents are now afraid of the evil power of the monkey's paw. But . . . the mother insists Wish #2 be used to bring her son back to life. The father instinctively understands that the revivified son will be a ghoul — a physically mangled repulsive remnant of his son's former self. So while I insistently knock at the door in the final scene, the father finds the monkey's paw and (Wish #3) wishes me dead again. The script called for Herbert to roll and light a cigarette in the play's opening scene. Now smoking, even at recess, even off school property, was strictly prohibited at my high school. The English teacher supervising the play was the most up-tight teacher I had ever experienced, and I didn't care for her. So one day in play practice I impishly rolled a cigarette — just like the script said. To my astonishment she didn't object. She only suggested I might want to use a pipe since it would require less effort. Well, when I lit up a cigarette during the public presentation of the play, pandemonium broke loose in the Silverton High School auditorium. That's all the audience paid attention to: a sophomore smoking a cigarette. We managed to turn the entire fable into a farce. I remember Joe Self crawling around on the floor, facetiously seeking the monkey's paw, while (offstage) I kicked at the door and the audience howled in laughter. They thought it was the best comedy they had seen in a while. The result was I continued to smoke occasionally on weekends, but I abandoned the occasional cigarette for the occasional cigar. When I left Texas I left smoking, until recently when I discovered the joy of Cubans. So, sitting in a pub in Dubai, I sucked on a Montecristo while Barclayscard sucked soccer balls and expat Brits sucked ego. When I worked at Barclays, or BZW actually, bankers and clients liked to eat at the Smith and Wollensky steak house on Third Avenue.in Manhattan. You could usually get a Cuban cigar from the coat-check girl there. She might have a Cohiba for $10. Yes, they were illegal, but some drug customers are more equal than others. Being financially successful has its privileges. Nowadays you can get Cuban cigars here in the U.A.E., or over there in Costa Rica where I came from, no problem. In the U.S., Cuban cigars have to be smuggled in. They come across the Mexican border into California. You see, some tobacco is more equal than others. I once read that the Secret Service provided Cuban cigars to John Kennedy, despite the embargo on Cuban products. I reported what I read to a CIA fellow I knew. "They did not," he replied indignantly. "We did." It's a moral principle that I never dump on my sources. But I like to razz them sometimes. It was well known that he was the CIA agent who often provided John Kennedy with his presidential Cuban cigars. Some people get uptight about violations of legal prohibitions, as though legality necessarily has anything to do with morality. Many of those same people who slavishly obey rules are moral cowards and panty-waists with no character and no spine. Thinking of violations, a few days earlier a few of us had been watching Sparky baptize her toes in the Persian Gulf (known here locally as the Arabian Gulf — you don't really think Iran owns the thing, do you?). We had driven up the coast to have a picnic — at least a tail-gate picnic. It was still Ramadan, the Moslem time of fasting, and a good day for an outdoor picnic. We had been working hard. "We've got to keep John in bed," I had earlier said to Sparky. John likes to lie on his bed, Roman-style, while he works with his computer. Sometimes he tilts over and falls asleep from exhaustion. When he wakes up, his computer is still there, waiting for him like a devoted mistress. I know work is getting done as long as John stays in bed. But enough is enough. I had invited Sparky to Dubai from Costa Rica so she could experience a country where it doesn't rain all the time. Or ever, as far as I can tell. And as far as the excursion was concerned, sure, there is plenty of sand in Dubai, but I wanted to experience it piled higher and deeper. We would drive northeast, into the mountains nearer the Straits of Hormuz that separate the Arabian peninsula from Iran, and gaze at the waters of the gulf while having a picnic. Now, in the U.A.E. they expect non-Moslems to act like non-Moslems. All the hotels serve food and drink throughout the daytime Ramadan fast. (The only concession to Ramadan is that no alcohol is served during the day.) But they do discretely close the doors and pull the curtains. To paraphrase Queen Victoria, you can pretty much do what you like as long as you don't scare the camels out in the street. You can go to the grocery store, open during the day, buy food and beverage, and go home and consume mass quantities in the privacy of your own home. Most, however, fast during the day — not only because they are good Moslems, but also because doing so whets their appetite for the feast that will come after sundown. But I would be damned if I decreed a day off and we didn't have a picnic at our destination. So we pulled John out of bed and took off, loaded with victuals. But now Ramadan had departed and so had Sparky. The largest hotel in the city had erected a 30-foot Christmas tree in the lobby. Funny, didn't the Moslem owner of the hotel know how much he would offend fellow Moslems with this display of Western Civilization? My, my. The next thing you knew, the hotel would be accepting Barclayscard. (Reading the U.S. media these days is like reading comic books written by junior high school students from Turkey, Texas.) Much like the characters in "The Monkey's Paw," many Americans wish for easy solutions to their problems. Like security. They think they can get security from terrorism by giving up freedom, when in fact "terrorism" is neither more nor less than any attack on freedom. In Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that the people will readily give up their freedom for bread. Bread, hell. They'll give up their freedom because some local scumbag sends one of their scumbag politicians an anthrax letter a thousand miles away. Be careful when you wish for security. You may get what you wish for. A police state, where security patrols are everywhere. Anyway, I wish you a Happy New Year. (That's Wish #1.) Have a Montecristo on me. J. Orlin Grabbe is the author of International Financial Markets, and is an internationally recognized derivatives expert. He has recently branched out into cryptology, banking security, and digital cash. His home page is located at http://www.xs4all.nl/~kalliste/ .
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