A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (5 page)

‘You are not arrested yet. It is to protect you from incidents. Perhaps people will be angry.’

With a policeman outside the inn shooing away the passers-by, the three of us ate rice and kebab and some very odd vegetables and drank a whole bottle of raki. We were famished, having eaten nothing since the previous night.

At the next table was a medical officer in battledress. He was an Armenian and had the facility with languages of his race. ‘My name is Niki,’ he said. After dinner we sat with him on the roof under a rusty-looking moon. ‘This is a town of no-women,’ he said, pointing at the soldiery milling in the street below. ‘Look, there are thousands of them. They are all becoming mad because there is nothing here for them – or for me,’ he added more practically.

‘This is your country?’

‘This was my country. There is no Armenia any more. All those shops’ – pointing at the shop fronts now shuttered and barred – ‘Armenian – dead, dead, all dead. Tomorrow they will decide whether you will be tried or not,’ he went on to Hugh. ‘If you need me I will come. I think it is better that you should not be tried. I have heard that there is a German from Tehran here, a lorry driver who has cut off a child’s foot with his lorry. He has been three months awaiting a trial. They keep him without trousers so that he shall not escape.’

Next morning all three of us took pains with our appearance.
The internal arrangements at the inn were so loathsome that I shared a kerosene tin of water with Hugh and shaved on the roof, the cynosure of the entire population who were out in force. Wanda, debarred from public appearance, was condemned to the inside. As a final touch our shoes were cleaned by a boot-black who refused to charge. I was impressed but not Hugh.

‘I don’t suppose they charge anything at the Old Bailey.’ Nothing could shake his invincible gloom.

At nine o’clock, sweltering in our best clothes, we presented ourselves at the Courthouse and joined a queue of malefactors.

After a short wait we were called. The room was simple, whitewashed, with half a dozen chairs and a desk for the Prosecutor. On it was a telephone at which we looked lovingly. Behind the Prosecutor lurked his evil genius, the Interpreter.

The Prosecutor began to speak. It was obvious that one way or the other he had made his mind up. He was, he said, interested only in Justice and Justice would be done. It was unfortunate for M. Carless that he did not possess a Diplomatic Visa for Turkey otherwise it would be difficult to detain him. We now knew that Hugh was doomed. But, he went on, as his visa only applied to Iran, he proposed to ask for proceedings to be stayed for a week while he consulted the authorities in Ankara.

‘
Malheureusement, c’est pas possible pour M. Carless
,’ said the Interpreter winding up with relish, ‘
mais vous êtes libre d’aller en Iran
.’

For two hours we argued; when Hugh flagged I intervened; then Wanda took up the struggle; arguments shot backwards and forwards across the room like tennis balls: about diplomatic immunity, children languishing in Europe without their mother, ships and planes missed, expeditions ruined, the absence of witnesses.

‘Several beatings were given yesterday for the discouragement
of false witnesses and their evidence is inadmissible,’ said the Prosecutor, but he was remote, immovable.

‘
Malheureusement vous devez rester ici sept jours pour qu’arrive une réponse à notre telegramme
,’ said the Interpreter in his repulsive French.

‘
Monsieur le Procureur a envoyé une telegramme?
’

‘
Pas encore
,’ replied the Interpreter, leering triumphantly. I had never seen him look happier.

We implored Hugh to send a telegram to Ankara. He was adamant but he did agree to send for Niki, the Armenian doctor. It was not easy to find an un-named Armenian M.O. in a garrison town but he arrived in an hour, by jeep, round and fat but to us a knight in armour. The Interpreter was banished and Niki began translating sentence by sentence, English to Turkish, Turkish to English. Hugh spoke of N.A.T.O. and there was a flicker of interest, of how the two countries had fought together on the same side in Korea, of the great qualities of the Turkish Nation, of the political capital that the Russians would make when the news became known, that such a situation would not happen in England. Finally, Hugh said he wanted to send a telegram. We knew what agony this decision cost him.

‘It is extremely difficult. There is no direct communication. We shall first have to send to Erzerum.’

‘Then send it to Erzerum.’

‘It will take three days. You still wish?’

‘Yes, I wish.’

Hugh wrote the telegram. It looked terrible on paper. I began to understand why he had been so reluctant to send it.

‘Detained Bayazid en route Tehran awaiting formulation of charge killing civilian stop Diplomatic visa applicable Iran only.’

Niki translated it into Turkish; holding the message, the Prosecutor left the room. After a few minutes he returned with a heavily moustached clerk in shirt-sleeves. For more than ten minutes he dictated with great fluency. It was a long document. When it was finished Niki read it aloud. It gave an account of the entire affair and expressed Hugh’s complete innocence.

The last stamp was affixed; the Prosecutor clapped his hands, coffee was brought in.

It all happened so quickly that it was difficult to believe that it was all over.

‘But what made him change his mind?’ It was an incredible volte-face.

‘The Public Prosecutor asks me to say,’ said Niki, ‘that it is because M. Carless was gentlemanly in this thing, because you were all gentlemanly,’ bowing to Wanda, ‘that he has decided not to proceed with it.’

In Tehran Wanda left us to return to Europe.

On 30 June, eleven days from Istanbul, Hugh and I reached Meshed, the capital of the province of Khurasan, in north-east Persia, and drove through streets just dark to the British Consulate-General, abandoned since Mussadiq’s coup and the breaking off of diplomatic relations in 1953.

After a long wait at the garden gate we were admitted by an old, grey-bearded sepoy of the Hazarah Pioneers. He had a Mongolian face and was dressed in clean khaki drill with buttons polished. Here we were entertained kindly by the Hindu caretaker.

The place was a dream world behind high walls, like a property in the Deep South of the United States. Everywhere lush vegetation reached out long green arms to destroy what half a century of care had built up. The great bungalows with walls feet thick were collapsing room by room, the wire gauze fly nettings over the windows were torn and the five-year-old bath water stagnant in the bathrooms. In the living rooms were great Russian stoves, standing ceiling high, black and banded like cannon set in the
walls, warming two rooms at once, needing whole forests of wood to keep them going.

The Consulate building itself was lost and forgotten; arcades of Corinthian columns supported an upper balcony, itself collapsing. The house was shaded by great trees, planted perhaps a century ago, now at their most magnificent. Behind barred windows were the big green safes with combination locks in the confidential registry. I asked Hugh how they got them there.

‘In the days of the
Raj
you could do anything.’

‘But they must weigh tons. There’s no railway.’

‘If Curzon had anything to do with it, they were probably dragged overland from India.’

On the wall in one of the offices we found a map of Central Asia. It was heavily marked in coloured pencil. One such annotation well inside Russian Territory, beyond a straggling river, on some sand dunes in the Kara-Kum desert read, ‘Captain X, July, ‘84’ and was followed by a cryptic question mark.

‘The Great Game,’ said Hugh. It was a sad moment for him, born nearly a century too late to participate in the struggle that had taken place between the two great powers in the no-man’s-land between the frontiers of Asiatic Russia and British India.

Apart from Hugh and myself, everyone inside the Consulate firmly believed that the British would return. In the morning when we met the old man from Khurasan who had been in the Guides Cavalry, the younger one who had been in a regiment of Punjabis and the old, old man who was the caretaker’s cook, I felt sad under their interrogation about my health and regiment. To them it was as though the Indian Army as they had known it still existed.

‘
Apka misaj kaisa hai, Sahib?
’

‘
Bilkul tik hai.
’

‘
Apka paltan kya hai?
’

I had acquired Urdu rapidly sixteen years before. It had vanished
as quickly as it came. Soon I dried up completely and was left mouthing affirmatives. ‘
Han, han.
’

‘For God’s sake don’t keep on saying, “
Han, han
”. They’ll think you’re crazy.’

‘I’ve said everything I can remember. What do you want me to say. That we’re not coming back, ever?’
¹

With all the various delights of Meshed to sample it was late when we set off. Driving in clouds of dust and darkness beyond the outer suburbs the self-starter began to smoke. Grovelling under the vehicle among the ants and young scorpions, fearful of losing our feet when the great American lorries roared past, we attained the feeling of comradeship that only comes in moments of adversity.

The starter motor was held in place by two inaccessible screws that must have been tightened by a giant. It was a masterpiece of British engineering. With the ants marching and counter-marching over me, I held a guttering candle while Hugh groped with the tinny spanner that was part of the manufacturers’ ‘tool-kit’.

‘What does the book say?’

It was difficult to read it with my nose jammed into the earth.

‘The starter is pre-packed with grease and requires no maintenance during the life of the vehicle.’

‘That’s the part about lubrication but how do you GET IT OFF?’

It was like trying to read a first folio in a crowded train. I knocked over the candle and for a time we were in complete darkness.

‘It says: “Loosen the retaining screws and slide it.”’

‘There must be a place in hell for the man who wrote that.’

‘Perhaps you have to take the engine out first.’

Late at night we returned unsuccessful to the city and in the
Shāri Tehran,
the Warren Street of Meshed, devoted to the motor business, hammered on the wooden doors of what until recently
had been a caravanserai, until the night watchman came with stave and lantern and admitted us.

In the great court, surrounded by broken-down droshkies and the skeletons of German motor-buses, we spread our sleeping-bags on the oily ground beside our vehicle. For the first time since leaving Istanbul we had achieved Hugh’s ambition to sleep ‘under the stars’.

Early the next morning the work was put in hand at a workshop which backed on to the courtyard. It was the sort of place where engines are dismembered and never put together again. The walls of the shop were covered with the trophies of failure, which, together with the vast, inanimate skeletons outside, gave me the same curious feelings of fascination and horror that I still experience in that part of the Natural History Museum devoted to prehistoric monsters.

The proprietor Abdul, a broken-toothed demon of a man, conceived a violent passion for Hugh. We sat with him drinking coffee inside one of the skeletons while his assistant, a midget ten-year-old, set to work on the starter with a spanner as big as himself, shaming us by the ease with which he removed it.

‘Arrrh,
CAHARLESS
, soul of your father. You have ill-used your motor-car.’ He hit Hugh a violent blow of affection in the small of the back, just as he was drinking his coffee.

‘Urggh!’

‘What do you say,
O CAHARLESS
?’

Hugh was mopping thick black coffee from his last pair of clean trousers.

‘I say nothing.’

‘What shall I say?’

‘How should I know.’

‘You are angry with me. Let us go to my workshop and I shall make you happy.’

He led us into the shop. There he left us. In a few minutes he returned with a small blind boy, good-looking but with an air of corruption. Abdul threw down his spanner with a clang and began to fondle him.

‘
CAHARLESS
!’ he roared, beckoning Hugh.

‘
NO
!’

Presently Abdul pressed the boy into a cupboard and shut the door. There followed a succession of nasty stifled noises that drove us out of the shop.

Later, when we returned, Hugh was given a tremendous welcome.

‘
CAHARLESS
, I thought you were departed for ever. You have come back!’

‘You still have my motor-car.’

To me he was less demonstrative but also less polite, snatching my pipe from my mouth and clenching it between his awful broken teeth in parody of an Englishman.

‘
CAHARLESS
, when you take me to
Englestan
I shall smoke the pipe.’

All through the hot afternoon he worked like a demon with his midget assistant, every few minutes beseeching Hugh to take him to England. After two hours the repairs were finished. Now he wanted to show us how he had driven to Tehran in fourteen hours, a journey that had taken us two days and most of one night.

In breathless heat he whirled us through the streets, tyres screeching at the corners. We were anxious to pay the bill and be off. Never had we met anyone more horrible than Abdul, more energetic and more likely to succeed.

‘How much?’

‘
CAHARLESS
, my heart,
CAHARLESS
, my soul, you will transport me to
Englestan
?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘We shall drive together?’

What a pair they would make on the Kingston By-Pass.

‘Yes, of course, Bastard’ (in English). ‘How much?’

The machine almost knocked down a heavily swathed old lady descending from a droshky and screamed to a halt outside a café filled with evil-looking men, all of whom seemed to be smitten with double smallpox.

‘
CAHARLESS
, I am your slave. I will drive you to Tehran.’

‘Praise be to God for your kindness (and I hope you drop dead).
THE BILL
.’

‘
CAHARLESS
, soul of your father, I shall bring you water. Ho, there, Mohammed Gholi. Oh, bring water for
CAHARLESS
, my soul, my love. He is thirsty.’

He screamed at the robbers in the shop, who came stumbling out with a great
chatti
which they slopped over Carless.

‘Thank you, that is sufficient.’

‘
CAHARLESS
, I love you as my son.’

‘This bill is enormous.’

It was enormous but probably correct.

A little beyond Meshed we stopped at a police post in a miserable hamlet to ask the way to the Afghan Frontier and Herat. I was already afflicted with the gastric disorders that were to hang like a cloud over our venture, a pale ghost of the man who had climbed the
Spiral Stairs
on Dinas Cromlech less than a month before. Hugh seemed impervious to bacilli and, as I sat in the vehicle waiting for him to emerge from the police station, I munched sulphaguanadine tablets gloomily and thought of the infected ice-cream he had insisted on buying at Kazvin on the road from Tabriz to Tehran.

‘We must accustom our stomachs to this sort of thing,’ he had said and had shared it with Wanda, who had no need to accustom herself to anything as she was returning to Italy.

The germs had been so virulent that she had been struck down almost at once; only after three days in bed at the Embassy with a high temperature had she been able to totter to the plane on the unwilling arm of a Queen’s Messenger. I had rejected the ice-cream. Hugh had eaten it and survived. It was unjust; I hated him; now I wondered whether my wife was dead, and who would look after my children.

I had succumbed much later. In the fertile plain between Neishapur and Meshed we had stopped at a
qanat
for water. The
qanat
, a subterranean canal, was in a grove of trees and this was the place where it finally came to the surface after its journey underground. It was a magical spot, cool and green in the middle of sunburnt fields. There was a mound grown with grass like a tumulus with a mill room hollowed out of it and a leat into which the water gushed from a brick conduit, the
qanat
itself flowing under the mill. In several different spouts the water issued from the far side of the mound. It was as complex as a telephone exchange.

‘Bound to be good,’ Hugh said, confronted by the crystal jets. ‘
Qanat
water. Comes from the hills.’

It was delicious. After we had drunk a couple of pints each we discovered that the water didn’t come from the
qanat
but from the conduit which came overland from a dirty-looking village less than a mile away.

‘I can’t understand why you’re so fussy,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t affect me.’

Now, as I sat outside the police station brooding over these misfortunes, there was a sudden outburst of screams and moans from the other side of the road, becoming more and more insistent and finally mounting to such a crescendo that I went to investigate.

Gathered round a well or shaft full of the most loathsome
sewage was a crowd of gendarmes in their ugly sky-blue uniforms and several women in a state of happy hysteria, one screaming more loudly than the rest.

‘What is it?’

‘
Bābā
,’ said one of the policemen, pointing to the seething mess at our feet and measuring the length of quite a small baby. He began to keen; presumably he was the father. I waited a little, no one did anything.

This was the moment I had managed to avoid all my life; the rescue of the comrade under fire, the death-leaper from Hammersmith Bridge saved by Newby, the tussle with the lunatic with the cut-throat razor.

Feeling absurd and sick with anticipation I plunged head first into the muck. It was only four feet deep and quite warm but unbelievable, a real eastern sewer. The first time I got hold of something cold and clammy that was part of an American packing case. The second time I found nothing and came up spluttering and sick to find the mother beating a serene little boy of five who had watched the whole performance from the house next door into which he had strayed. The crowd was already dispersing; the policeman gave me tea and let me change in the station house but the taste and smell remained.

Five miles beyond the police post the road forked left for the Afghan Frontier. It crossed a dry river bed with banks of gravel and went up past a large fortified building set on a low hill. After my pointless immersion I had become cold and my teeth were chattering. It seemed a good enough reason to stop the vehicle and have a look. Only some excuse such as this could halt our mad career, for whoever was driving seemed possessed of a demon who made it impossible ever to stop. Locked in the cab we were prisoners. We could see the country we passed through but not
feel it and the only smells, unless we put our heads out of the window (a hazardous business if we both did it at the same time), were the fumes of the exhaust and our foul pipes; vistas we would gladly have lingered over had we been alone were gone in an instant and for ever. If there is any way of seeing less of a country than from a motor-car I have yet to experience it.

The building was a caravanserai, ruined and deserted, built of thin flat bricks. The walls were more than twenty feet high, decorated on the side where the gate was with blind, pointed arches. Each corner was defended by a smooth round tower with a crumbling lip.

Standing alone in a wilderness of scrub, it was an eerie place. The wind was strong and under the high gateway, flanked by embrasures, it whistled in the machicolations. Inside it was a warren of dark, echoing tunnels and galleries round a central court, open to the sky, with the same pointed arches as on the outer wall but here leading into small cells for the accommodation of more important travellers. In time of need this was a place that might shelter a thousand men and their animals.