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MacKINNON: I am a Middle Eastern cigarette smuggler 

I left Zakho, a dusty border town, and ascended into the jagged mountains of southeastern Anatolia in a Turkish taxi, a white Ford Focus driven by a gruff man named Kemal. It would cost me $150, he said, for the four-plus hour drive between the predominantly from Zakho to Diyarbakir in Turkey. . . .

Kemal pulled me aside at the border crossing and showed me a black garbage bag stuffed with several cartons of Gauloises cigarettes.

"For you," he told me with a please-understand-this-or-we're-both-in-trouble look in his eyes. "Not for driver."

I got the message. If anyone asked, I smoke six packs a day (despite my asthma) and came to Iraq for the cut-rate ciggies. Got it.

Thankfully, the question never came up, and Kemal, the Gauloises and I glided through to the land of Ataturk.

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