Feel Better:Complain About Anything, page-11850

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pintohoo

81,246 Posts.

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18/08/19

13:35

Post #: 40028939
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Originally posted by Barg ↑

I remember my last in-flight cheroot like I remember my last taste of pie. Twoz back in the February winter of 2002. I'd boarded a Pakistan Airline flight out of Islamabad after a splendid few months dodging Taliban fighters and hill bandits on a failed humanitarian mission through the mountain passes en-route to Kabul and was looking forward to a well earned rest in good old Oz. The plane had just started to taxi down the runway when the man sitting next to me asked if I was happy to be returning to London. I raised an eyebrow and informed him that I was going to Bangkok and then on to Australia. "Not on this plane, Sahib," he responded. "This is a direct flight to London UK."

A drama ensued. Panicked Stewardess, panicked pilot. Plane already gathering speed for take-off was aborted. Twenty armed military escorted me back to the terminal where I was put under armed guard where we had a jolly good laugh over tea and gwarla while I explained in my broken Pashtu that it was an honest mistake and I was not a terrorist. Keep in mind that the airport had been bombed by insurgents the previous day, the Twin Towers attack was a recent event and I had just returned from the Pak/Afghan frontier. It also helped that the military were mostly Pashtuns from tribal areas where I was well acquainted with their khans, so I was afforded every hospitality.

Eventually, I was escorted to my correct flight, and feeling a little jaded after the experience, reached for my tobacco, forgetting I had shared my last pinch with the army boys. I ask the stewardess if they had any smokes for sale, but there was none to be had. A call was put out over the intercom in Urdu requesting the passengers donate cigarettes to the lone feringhi and I was soon inundated with a weeks supply of Camel cheroots. Very accommodating chaps the Pak's.

So it was that I smoked my last in-flight cigarettes in the year of 2002 as we passed over the Roof of the World and the Gobi desert. And the world was never the same again.

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"donate cigarettes to the lone feringhi"

thanks for the new word -- when I saw it I thought it might derive from the same as 'ferang' in Asia -- but, it's possibly totally different --

Ferang came from when the Asians couldn't prononce 'Francais'

possibly some similarity for the Arabs because the French have been bombing around there for ages as well ------------- but, I cannot see the history of it

??

do you know the history of the word?
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