A person crosses the border every morning on a donkey and every day, his donkey is loaded with solely baggage of straw.
When he reaches the bridge marking the border, the tax collectors search his baggage to calculate what obligation he should pay on his exports.
Every single day, they discover nothing.
And but, within the night, after their shift has completed and they’re within the tea homes or eating places within the metropolis, they see the identical man spending a lot of cash and boasting that he’s in truth a smuggler and that nobody can catch him.
Every single day, incensed at his daring claims, the tax collectors obsessively search his baggage of straw.
They sift the straw, lower it into items, rip open the material of his baggage, try to burn the straw, examine his hat, his beard and even lower open his sneakers within the hope of discovering cash between the leather-based.
And but, every night, he’s seen again within the metropolis rising ever extra affluent and ever extra brazen, even providing to pay for the tax collectors meals and drinks whereas persevering with to inform tales of his wily smuggling.
The tax collectors proceed their futile interrogations of the straw baggage for years, to no avail.
This continues till, now a affluent man, the smuggler strikes away to a different metropolis and settles all the way down to get pleasure from his wealth.
Years cross and someday, available in the market, one of many retired tax collectors meets his outdated foe and asks,
‘Mister, a few years have handed: I’m not a tax collector and we’re simply two outdated males.
Please, you may inform me, what was it you had been smuggling all that point?’
The smuggler replied, ‘Donkeys.’