Zesty Breakfast

Huseyin Avni, an ardent patriot of the small Turkish town of Seferihisar, loves his country and loves his hashish.* One day not long ago, after a zesty breakfast of coffee and hashish, Huseyin glanced out of his window and, to his horror, saw a detachment of Soviet soldiers standing menacingly in the garden of his neighbor. Without a moment's hesitation, he seized an axe, leaped the fence and began laying about with a will. He dropped three to the ground before the police, hastily summoned by the neighbor, at last subdued Huseyin long enough to point out that his enemies were nothing but olive trees. Huseyin would have none of it. The police, desperate for arguments, pointed to the olive trees in his own garden. What about those, they asked. Why didn't you kill them? Huseyin the patriot merely glared in contempt. "Those," he answered, "are Turkish soldiers."

* Hashish (from the Arabic word for dried herb), a narcotic made from the resin of female flowers of Indian hemp, is the Eastern version of marijuana. It was once the favorite stimulant of the Assassins (more properly Hashish-ins), a secret society of Shiite fanatics founded in the 11th century, whose drastic political actions led to the gradual adoption of their name as a synonym for killer.

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