Palm trees swayed in the sand-filled breeze as Maxi fled the city atop the hastily flagged-down Elephantentaxi, the shouts of his pursuers fading in the distance.

“Sounds like you caused some real trouble, Sahib,” said the elephant, glancing back at his moustachioed customer. “What’d you do? Steal a jewel the size of a goose’s egg, swirling with the mystical light of the ages?”

“What? No, of course not,” Maxi replied.

“A magic lamp, then? The home of an ancient Djinni, source of the Grand Vizier’s power?”

“There’s no such thing!”

“Ah, so it was the Sultan’s prized golden peacock, bedecked with a thousand multicolored gems and so cunningly artificed in its mechanical complexity, that it flaps its wings and crows at daybreak as though it were a living creature?”

“Look, dammit, I object to the assumption that I’m a thief! What, just because I have a big moustache and a lazy eye that makes me look kind of shifty, I must be some kind of sly rogue? Because I have a swarthy complexion and a turban, that makes me an insidious desert bandit? That’s racist!“

“What’d you do, then? Because those guys are definitely chasing you.”

“…Let’s just say I’m not the harem’s usual pizza-delivery guy.”

(Note: Sorry if you’ve been getting giant-ass photos in your RSS readers, I’ve only just realized that Posterous wasn’t actually resizing things the way it looked like it was. I’ll be trimming the photos more from here out.)