A Man Crosses The Border Each Morning

A man crosses the border each morning on a donkey and each

day, his donkey is loaded with only bags of straw. When he

reaches the bridge marking the border, the tax collectors

search his bags to calculate what duty he must pay on his

exports. Every day, they find nothing. And yet, in the

evening, after their shift has finished and they are in the

tea houses or restaurants in the city, they see the same man

spending lots of money and boasting that he is in fact a

smuggler and that no one can catch him. Every day, incensed

at his bold claims, the tax collectors obsessively search

his bags of straw. They sift the straw, cut it into pieces,

rip open the fabric of his bags, attempt to burn the straw,

check his hat, his beard and even cut open his shoes in the

hope of finding coins between the leather. And yet, each

evening, he is seen back in the city growing ever more

prosperous and ever more brazen, even offering to pay for

the tax collectors meals and drinks while continuing to tell

stories of his wily smuggling. The tax collectors continue

their futile interrogations of the straw bags for years, to

no avail. This continues until, now a prosperous man, the

smuggler moves away to another city and settles down to

enjoy his wealth. Years pass and one day, in the market, one

of the retired tax collectors meets his old foe and asks,

‘Mister, many years have passed: I am no longer a tax

collector and we are just two old men. Please, you can tell

me, what was it you were smuggling all that time?’ The

smuggler replied, ‘Donkeys.’