Eastern Approaches (20 page)

I could have spent months in Bokhara, seeking out fresh memories of its prodigious past, mingling with the bright crowds in the bazaar, or simply idling away my time under the apricot trees in the clear warm sunlight of Central Asia. But my position was precarious and my time limited. Reluctantly I decided that it was time for me to continue my journey to the Oxus.

My decision was greeted with enthusiasm by my two followers. They had never taken to Bokhara, finding the alfresco existence we led there particularly trying. Now that we were leaving, they were too tired even to walk to the station, and their Uzbek colleague had to make room for all three of us in a very small bus, already completely filled by rank-smelling local inhabitants in their padded chintz
khalats
. This took us to the point outside the walls where the Emir’s little train
was waiting with an antiquated engine and two or three open coaches. Up and down the train, wandered a very old blind man with a straggling white beard and an elaborate and very dirty turban, chanting prayers in a high nasal wail and gathering a large crop of kopeks from his fellow passengers.

Eventually the train started and eventually we arrived at Kagan. The next thing was to take the first train bound for Stalinabad, the capital of Tajikstan. This was not so easy. To have left a through train at a point which was not a terminus was a risky step in the, at times, rather painful game of railway travel in the Soviet Union. The trains which pass through such wayside stations generally come in completely full. If there are any vacant places, they are given to travelling officials or Red Army soldiers. The general public simply waits in the station, sometimes for days, until something turns up. This had happened to me in the past and I was determined that it should not happen to me now. I accordingly explained to my escort, with whom I was by now on quite intimate terms, though we kept up the polite fiction that we were simply travellers whose ways happened to coincide, where I wanted to go, adding casually that, if by any chance I should fail to obtain accommodation on the train, I should simply walk back to Bokhara, with which, I said, I had been most favourably impressed. This hint of more walking exercise did the trick. The stationmaster, that most elusive of Soviet officials, was found almost immediately. A word was whispered in his ear, and, when the next south-bound train came in, room was somehow made for us in a hard coach. It was, we were told, the best that could be done.

My intention had been to get some sleep on the way in order to be fresh for my impending struggle with the frontier authorities in the early hours of next morning and so I stretched myself on one of the hard wooden shelves, from which the ‘hard’ carriage gets its name. But this was not to be. ‘Hard’ carriages are always lively places. This was the liveliest I had ever experienced. My immediate neighbours were two dark-skinned, almond-eyed characters in
khalats
and skull-caps. I had no sooner got to sleep than they dug me in the ribs and introduced themselves as Tajiks. They had been in Kirghizstan, they said, and were going back to their native Tajikistan, which was a
much better place and they were sorry they had left it. Where had I come from and where was I going to? I explained that I had come from Frengistan (roughly: Europe) and was going to Afghanistan and possibly Hindustan. This did not seem to convey much to them, though they must have spent most of their lives within a hundred miles of the North-West Frontier of India, and though, as recently as ten years ago, the Tajiks were known to have been collecting sterling by devious means and smuggling it across the frontier to the Aga Khan, whom they still regard as their spiritual leader. But now, all possible contact with the outer world had been cut off and interest in outside affairs had waned correspondingly, at any rate amongst the uneducated classes, though a Russian I once met told me that Tajikstan was full of people who spoke English fluently.

Having found out all they wanted to know about me, and having observed that ‘anyone with so many belongings’ (I had a kitbag and a rather disreputable bundle) must be a rich man, the two Tajiks now proceeded to regale me with an account of their own affairs. They were, they said, laughing heartily, poor men, and badly treated at that. They had been sent to Kirghizia to build a road in some horrible mountains. (They were far from explicit, but must I think have meant the new road from Frunze to Osh.) They had been badly housed and only given eighty roubles (rather less than sixteen shillings) a month, which was not enough to live on. They were glad to have seen the last of Kirghizia.

They next proceeded, still laughing loudly (for they were irrepressibly cheerful), to pass round a bottle of bright pink vodka and then to take off the elaborate system of wrappings swathed round their feet in the place of socks. This, they explained to me, somewhat superfluously, was a thing they only very rarely did, but they thought it might interest me as a Frengi. I could not help wishing that they had postponed the operation a little longer.

Then we all went to sleep for a time, one of the Tajiks occasionally waking me, in order to tell me of some amusing thought which had occurred to him. This happy state of affairs did not last long. Soon, a Russian with a basket of vodka bottles and another basket of pink Soviet sausages appeared and announced that the shelves on which
we were lying were reserved for refreshments. We said that we had never heard of such a thing, but the consensus of opinion in the carriage seemed to be definitely on the side of the sausage seller, who had all the demagogic attributes of his classical prototype, and we eventually suffered ourselves to be moved, protesting, to some other shelves further up.

I now gave up all hope of sleep and spent the rest of the daylight looking out of the window. We were travelling through typical Central Asian country, occasional oases and stretches of pale, yellowish desert, broken by ranges of low red hills, across which the pilgrims used to make their Golden Journey. At intervals there were strange-looking tumuli. To pass the time I discussed their origin in a desultory manner with my neighbours. These now included an elderly and benevolent Russian couple, who seemed perpetually concerned at the discomfort in which they imagined me to be, and a rather weedy young man, travelling to Central Asia for the first time to take up an appointment in Stalinabad, who kept on comparing ‘all this sand’ most unfavourably with the forests and villages of European Russia. We did not come to any particular conclusion about the tumuli.

Meanwhile, the sausages and vodka had begun to have their effect. A little further up the carriage a group of travellers had formed themselves into what is known in the Soviet Union as an
ansambl
or concert party, and were giving spirited renderings of various folk-songs and dances. Vodka flowed more and more freely and soon pandemonium was let loose. Even the elderly couple’s benevolent smile broadened into a bleary grin. Several members of the party were entirely overcome by their exertions and we had to hoist them like sacks on to the top shelves, from which at intervals they crashed ten feet to the floor, without any apparent ill effects. When we reached my destination, Termez, an hour or two before dawn, the party was at its height.

For the last part of the journey the railway had followed the course of the Oxus (Amu Darya) passing through eastern Turkmenistan. The far bank of the river was Afghan territory. It only remained to get across the river. I foresaw that it would take a lot of doing.

I was right.

M
Y
first care, on alighting from the train at Termez, was to establish contact with the local authorities, who, I imagined would, as soon as they became aware of my presence, lose no time in getting me over the frontier and out of the way.

The Militia officer at the station was most accommodating. He put me on a lorry with a mixed escort of a dozen Militia and N.K.V.D. troops, somehow reminiscent, in the bleak half light that precedes the dawn, of a firing squad, and dispatched me to the centre of the town. If, he said, I would present myself at Militia Headquarters at eight, the necessary arrangements would immediately be made for me to cross the river.

At eight I was duly received by the local Chief of Militia, a corpulent Uzbek of great complacency, who explained amiably that he could do nothing until twelve o’clock because the frontier guards did not get up till then. I said that in the meanwhile I would do some shopping and have some food. I was provided with an official escort of one uniformed militiaman, who was told, in a loud aside, that there were to be ‘no personal conversations’, and, thus accompanied, I started out to explore Termez.

Like almost every other town between Tashkent and Kabul, Termez was founded by Alexander the Great, sacked by Genghis Khan in about 1220 and later visited by the Spanish traveller, Clavijo, in whose day it was so considerable a city that the noise made by its inhabitants could be heard at Balkh, sixty miles away across the Oxus. Now, nothing remains of its former splendour save a few ruins in the country to the north of the town, and it is like any other Russian settlement in Central Asia, the new town having been entirely built since 1894, when the Tsar took over the fortress of Termez from the Emir of Bokhara and made it the principal Russian military post on the Afghan frontier.

Accompanied by my militiaman, who carried my purchases and
whose presence greatly increased my prestige with the shopkeepers, I wandered up and down the broad dusty avenues of low white shops and houses and eventually succeeded in accumulating an enormous round loaf, some melons and some eggs. From this comparatively successful expedition, I returned to Militia Headquarters and, after further attempts at prevarication by the Commanding Officer, was eventually put into a car and sent down to the frontier post on the river bank, where, I was assured, all arrangements had been made for my passage across the river.

The frontier post is situated at Patta Hissar. Along the river, stretch for a mile or so in a narrow strip, the barracks of the frontier troops, the officers’ bungalows and piles of merchandise awaiting transshipment; then, as far as the eye can reach, a jungle of reeds ten or eleven feet high, reputed to harbour tigers as well as a great deal of smaller game. The Oxus must at this point be almost a mile wide, a vast muddy river full of mud flats and sandbanks, flowing between low mud banks. I have seen more exciting rivers, but its name and the knowledge that very few Europeans except Soviet frontier guards have ever seen it at this, or any other point of its course, made up for its rather drab appearance. In the distance there were some blue mountains.

The captain of the frontier guards, a smart-looking young Russian officer, received me most politely, but on hearing that I wished to cross the river, looked surprised and distressed. Previous experience of Soviet methods prevented me from feeling much astonishment on now realizing that the Town Militia had made no attempt whatever to communicate with the frontier post. I said that it was admittedly unfortunate that he had not been warned of my arrival, but that I imagined that this need not delay matters. At this he looked more embarrassed than ever, and I was filled with gloomy forebodings.

They were fully justified. The frontier, he said, was not working. I said: Did he mean it was closed? He said: No, he would not go so far as to say that; it just wasn’t working. Nobody knew when it would start working again and in the circumstances he would advise me to return to Moscow and see if I could not take an aeroplane to Kabul. It would be much more comfortable. I saw that it was not going to be an easy matter to get across the river that day.

After an hour or two I had extracted from my interlocutor the admission that, while the frontier would in effect have been closed to anyone else, he would, in view of my official position, in principle have been prepared to let me cross it, if there had been any means of getting me across. Unfortunately there were no boats. I asked him whether he meant to tell me that there was not so much as a rowing boat on the whole of the Oxus? He replied that there were three paddle boats, but two were completely out of action and the third was undergoing a
kapitalny remont
or complete overhaul. If I waited a day or two, it might be possible to put her into commission.

This, I felt, was a distinct advance. At any rate I should get across the Oxus sooner or later. It now only remained to accelerate the
remont
of the third paddle boat. I observed that on a recent visit to the Chinese border I had gathered that foreigners were not allowed to linger in the frontier zones of the Soviet Union. Moreover, I had reasons of my own for wishing to be in Afghanistan that same day. From what I had heard of Soviet ‘shock’ methods a group of Stakhanovites or shock-workers should be able to put any paddle boat in order in an hour or two. He said: Possibly, but he must first get authority from his Commanding Officer.

This was a blow, as nobody knew where the Commanding Officer was. By about four in the afternoon, however, his authority having either been obtained or dispensed with, to my considerable surprise, a ‘brigade’ of somewhat half-hearted-looking ‘shock-workers’ appeared, and we went down to look at the craft at my disposal. Two paddle boats were obviously incapable of keeping afloat. The third, which rejoiced in the name of
Seventeenth Party Congress
, though, to judge by her antiquated appearance, she must have been built long before the Communist Party was ever thought of, was handicapped by the absence of an engine or motor of any kind. Eventually it was decided to take the motor out of one of the first two and transfer it to the third. It turned out to be an ordinary unadapted tractor motor from the Stalin Factory, and as it was heaved on the shoulders of the shock brigade I felt glad that I was not embarking on a more considerable voyage.

While the finishing touches were being put to the
Seventeenth Party
Congress
, I stood talking to the Captain of the frontier guards and his wife and children, all well dressed and good-looking in a stolid Soviet kind of way. Proudly displaying his dog, an amiable animal of uncertain parentage, which he explained was a cross between a pointer and a setter, the Captain told me that he was something of a shot and frequently went out, not only after the Trotskists and Diversionists, with which the frontiers of the Soviet Union were known to swarm, but also after pheasant and sometimes even wild pig and tigers. He told me, too, that he was learning English from a work entitled
London from the top of an Omnibus
which made him feel as if he had known Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace all his life. For purposes of conversation, however, his knowledge of the English language seemed to be limited to the one cryptic expression: ‘Very well by us!’ of which he was inordinately proud, and it was to repeated shouts of ‘Very well by us!’, heartily reciprocated by myself, that some time later I embarked on the
Seventeenth Party Congress
.

Once I was on board, the Red Flag was hoisted; the crew of seven counted and recounted in case any should try to escape; the tractor engine (an anxious moment) started up; and we set out on our somewhat unsteady course across the Oxus. On the river bank my plain-clothes escort stood and waved their handkerchiefs — somewhat ironically, I thought, but then our relations had been tinged with irony from the start.

The crossing took half an hour or more, the sandbanks making navigation rather complicated. From the upper floor of the two-storeyed cottage which combined the functions of bridge, engine-room and sleeping-quarters for the crew, I commanded an extensive view of the river and of the jungle on both shores, with, on the Soviet side, watch towers at intervals and a patrol of frontier troops setting out to look for Diversionists. On the Afghan side there was, as far as I could see, nothing except jungle.

Such knowledge as I possessed of the point for which we were making was derived from the narrative of Colonel Grodekov of the Imperial Army who in 1878 earned himself the name of ‘The Russian Burnaby’ by riding (in full uniform) from Samarkand to Mazar-i-Sharif and Herat, an exploit which appears to have caused considerable
amusement to the natives and no little alarm to Her Majesty’s Government, who were at that time perturbed by the situation in Afghanistan and suspicious, as indeed they had reason to be, of Russian policy in Central Asia. Colonel Grodekov, who had ridden from Bokhara to Patta Hissar, where he too crossed the Oxus, had not a good word to say for the point at which he landed on the Afghan side, which, as far as I could make out, is also called Patta Hissar. Any village which had ever been there had long since slid into the river and been washed away. All he found was three reed huts and a small group of rather hostile Afghans. It had been his intention to push on to Mazar-i-Sharif and thus avoid spending a night in a place where ‘it was clear to him that he would catch ague’. He was, however, forced by the Afghans to spend a night in one of the reed huts and almost lost his life next morning by explaining to an audience of devout Moslems, in his anxiety to impart knowledge, that the brush with which he was cleaning his teeth was made of the best hog’s bristles.

When we had approached close enough to the Afghan bank, I saw that there were perhaps a dozen Afghans standing on it, watching us come in. Two were soldiers in uniform; the remainder wore
khalats
and turbans. In the background there were three circular reed huts exactly like the
kibitkas
of Russian Central Asia. There were also two or three horses. Apart from these there was nothing except the jungle.

The
Seventeenth Party Congress
grounded with a bump, a plank was put down, my luggage was hastily tossed to me, the engines were reversed, and that remarkable craft started off stern first for the Soviet Union as if the whole capitalist world was infected with the plague. At this point it occurred to me rather forcibly that I knew not a word of Persian or Urdu and that my knowledge of Turki was limited to about a dozen not very useful phrases.

As a first step, the twelve Afghans, to whom I was later to become quite attached, picked my baggage out of the mud and deposited it in a neat heap near the huts. The sun now set. My luggage was abandoned; carpets were produced; a mullah appeared, and the whole twelve turned in what I imagine to have been the direction of Mecca and prostrated themselves. By the time they had completed their devotions it was quite dark. They next inspected my passport and
laissez-passer
, which did not seem to convey anything to them at all. As I spoke neither Persian nor Urdu, and they spoke no European language, while neither party spoke any Turki worth mentioning, we were, until I had acquired three or four useful words of Persian, entirely reduced to signs. I accordingly said ‘Mazar-i-Sharif’ very loud and clear and made as if to get on to one of the horses. In reply my audience gave me to understand that I had better have something to eat (gesture) and then go to sleep (gesture) and we would see about Mazar-i-Sharif tomorrow (series of gestures of extreme complication accompanied by shouts of Mazar-i-Sharif from all present).

From Colonel Grodekov’s narrative I had gathered that Mazar was about one hundred versts (roughly, 60 miles) away, through jungle and desert, so that this advice seemed on the whole sound. Some food was produced and tea made, one of the reed huts cleared out, carpets spread and a charpoy installed and, after an adequate meal, I retired to rest, while one of the soldiers took up his position on guard outside. I have seldom slept better.

Next morning at dawn a delegation came to watch me pack my few belongings. Everything pleased them enormously, but nothing so much as a copy of the
New Yorker
, thoughtfully provided by my American colleagues before my departure from Moscow, and which I now left behind, a morsel of American culture on the shores of the Oxus. Two horses were then led forward with high Turkoman saddles adorned with inconveniently situated brass bosses and enormous stirrups permanently and irremediably the wrong length. I mounted one and one of the Afghans mounted the other. My bundles were packed into saddle-bags and distributed between us and after cordial farewells we set off at a rapid, uncomfortable amble into the jungle.

After a few miles riding we emerged from the reeds of the jungle into the desert. It was very much like any other desert in Central Asia, with its dunes of drifting sand and shrivelled tamarisk bushes. Marmots with their short forelegs, long hindlegs and bushy tails whistled petulantly and scuttled in and out of their holes. From time to time we came or the bleached skeletons of horses and camels. Then, after some miles of crawling up sand dunes and slithering down the other side, we came out on to a flat, completely barren plain with absolutely nothing in
sight. Underfoot was hard white clay. There was no road, but something approaching a track had been worn by the caravans making their way down to the Oxus.

Finally, after riding for a good many miles we sighted a large
sarai
, or mud fort, standing on a slight rise. My companion signed to me to keep away from it, but I was anxious to see it from nearer and was riding towards it, when a horseman, a splendid figure, armed to the teeth, and riding a very much better horse than either of us could boast, emerged from the gate at full gallop and rounded us up. We were taken inside the crenellated walls of the
sarai
and made to dismount. A score of Afghans in turbans and
khalats
clustered round me, jabbering excitedly. Then I was led into a small room in which there were a great many flies and a rack of German service rifles.