The Road to Oxiana (10 page)

R. B.
: I was going to suggest that if you wanted a companion, I might come with you and share expenses. It would suit me, because I can't afford to take a car of my own.

Farquharson
: I must admit I'm naht exactly pressed for money. At the same time I work, like everyone else in the States. With you in Europe it's different. But over there we have no leisured class. Everyone works, even if he hasn't gaht to. It would hurt you socially if you didn't. I've set aside four thousand dollars for this trip. But that doesn't mean I'm particularly anxious to throw money away. I expect I can
afford
to go to Afghanistan if I can spare the time. You see I'm here to make a
vurry
hurried trip.

R. B.
: If you could tell me exactly how long you do want to spend over the journey, perhaps we could work out a plan.

Farquharson
: That all depends. (
Repeats all he has previously said at greater length
.)

Eventually I went myself to the Afghan Embassy, to see whether I would assist Farquharson's application for a visa. Meanwhile, we had arranged to meet next day. He came to the Coq d'Or while Christopher and I were lunching with Herzfeld, who had just returned from Europe.

Farquharson
(
breathlessly
,
as he lopes across the dining-room
): I believe my plans have taken a turn for the better. I haven't actually gaht the visa yet. But I think I shall get it. Now there are one or two points I'm
vurry
anxious to discuss with you——

R. B.
: May I introduce Professor Herzfeld?

Farquharson
:… I'm vurry glad to meet you, sir. You see I'm here to make a
vurry
hurried trip and I was going to say——

Christopher
: Won't you sit down?

Farquharson
: I was going to say, first of all, that I'm vurry anxious to start tomorrow morning if pahssible. Of course it may naht be pahssible. But if it is, that's my plan.

Herzfeld
(
trying to dissipate the boredom
): I see you have a tame fox in the courtyard here.

Christopher
: There used to be a wild boar as well. But it had to be killed because it would get into the guests' beds when they were asleep. Why they should have minded, Madame Pitrau said, she couldn't imagine; it only wanted its stomach scratching. But they did, and that was the end of it.

R. B.
: The fox gets into the beds too, and wets them.

Farquharson
: Of course this is vurry amusing, though I'm afraid I don't get the joke. Now there are one or two points I'm
vurry
anxious to discuss with you.

Herzfield
: I keep a porcupine at Persepolis. It is very domesticated. If tea is one minute late it becomes furious, and its spikes, what do you call them, quills, stand up.

Farquharson
: There are one or two points I'm
vurry
——

Herzfield
: Also it uses the W.C. like a human being. Every morning I have to wait for it. We all have to wait for it.

Farquharson
(
wanly
): That's extremely interesting, though I'm afraid I don't quite get there. Now there are one or two——

R. B.
: We'd better go to my room. (
We go
.)

Farquharson
: There are one or two points I'm
vurry
anxious to discuss with you. I want to make it clear that if I do go to Afghanistan, I shall have to make a
vurry
hurried trip. Now I want to speak vurry frankly. You don't know me and I don't
know you. I think we'll get on. I hope we will. But we must try and get things clear beforehand. I've written down a few points on a bit of paper which I'll just read out. Number one I've called Personal Relationships. I've travelled a considerable amount. I know therefore that travelling brings out the worst in people. For instance I have a brother in Memphis. He's vurry fond of music. I am naht fond of music. We were together in Paris. After dinner he'd go to a concert. I did naht. I'm fond of my brother, but even so certain difficulties of this class are apt to arise. Now I don't know you and you don't know me. We may have hardships, we may fall sick. In sickness we can't expect to be cheerful. Otherwise I think we should remember this question of Personal Relationships. The second point I've called Political. I'm going to speak
vurry
frankly. I'm pressed for time over here, you understand, and if we go to Afghanistan together, as I hope we will, I want to make it clear that I must have the power on this trip. That's why I've called this second point Political. If I decide I don't want to go anywhere, well then we just shan't be able to go. I shall do my best to meet your wishes. I shall try and be fair. I think I shall be fair. Mr. Wadsworth, who also comes from Memphis, knows my family and I think he'll tell you I'm likely to be fair. But I must be the boss politically. The third point is Financial. Since I've taken so much power on this trip, I'm prepared to pay a little more than half the car. But you realise I'm pressed for time, I have to make a
vurry
hurried trip, and it's pahssible I may go right through to India and take a boat from there. Now I understand you're pressed for money, from what you said. I couldn't leave a fellow-traveller stranded in India. So before we start I've gaht to know you've enough money to get back
to Persia, and I've gaht to see the notes actually in your hand——

R. B.
: What?

Farquharson
: I've gaht to see the notes actually in your hand——

R. B.
: Goodbye.

Farquharson
:… before leaving, so's I can be quite sure you can shift for yourself in the event of——

R. B.
: G
ET OUT
, if you're not deaf.

Farquharson fled. On the way out, he ran into Herzfeld and Christopher, and wrung their hands warmly. “I'm vurry glad to have met you. Goodbye. I must be getting along. You see I have to make a
vurry
hurried trip…”

He had. I was at his heels. Not that I would have touched him without rubber gloves and a bottle of disinfectant. But he was good to threaten. I had seen him dressing the day before, and had noted a
vurry
poor muscular development.

Teheran
,
November 9th
.—Still here.

King Nadir Shah has been assassinated in Kabul.

A bazaar rumour reached the Bank in the morning that King Ghazi of Iraq was dead. The Legation heard the truth at one o'clock. Reuter's confirmed it in the evening. The Government of India has hysterics. From Afghanistan itself there is no news whatever. But disturbance or not, such an event will hardly make my journey easier—if I ever manage to start on it.

One of the Bakhtiari chiefs, an old friend of Christopher's, came to dine with us in a private room. He asked for secrecy because intercourse with foreigners is dangerous to one who has inherited the position of tribal khan.
All these chiefs, in fact, are kept by Marjoribanks in a sort of unofficial captivity. They can live in Teheran and splash their money about. But they cannot return to their own Bakhtiari country. Marjoribanks is frightened of the tribes and is trying to break their power by settling them in villages under control of the police and depriving them of their leaders. They have been kingmakers in the past too often.

Our guest spoke with foreboding of the future. He was resigned to it, he said. Persia had always been like this. The only thing to do was to have patience till the tyrant died.

Teheran
,
November 11th
.—Saturday. Still here.

I decided to leave on Tuesday. On Monday I found a Morris car for sale at £30. This seemed a bargain. In fact I actually supposed it would enable me to leave next day.

The sequence, which then began, of getting possession of the car, getting a licence to drive it with, getting a permit to stay in Persia at all, getting a permit to go to Meshed, getting a letter to the Governor of Meshed, and getting other letters to the governors en route, obliterated four days. I was said to be “recalcitrant de la loi” for having no identity card. To obtain one, I furnished the state archives with the secret of my mother's birthplace, in triplicate. Meanwhile, the owner of the car had left Teheran, confiding his power of attorney to a very old lawyer in a pink tweed frock-coat. A bargain was struck; signatures were officially witnessed; but the police refused to register the transaction because, although the lawyer's power of attorney extended to all his employer's worldly goods, a Morris car was not mentioned in the list of those goods. This decision was reversed, on appeal to a higher police official, who
telephoned the fact to his subordinate. But when we returned to the other department, 300 yards away, they knew nothing of it. Neighbouring departments were asked if they had had the message. At last someone remembered that the person who must have answered the telephone had gone out. Heaven favoured us; we met him in the street, and followed him to his desk. This annoyed him. He would do nothing, he said, without a copy of the power of attorney. Till it was ready, perhaps we would be good enough to leave him in peace. The lawyer hobbled off to buy a clean sheet of paper. We, the owner's son, the garage proprietor and myself, sought asylum on the pavement of the main square, squatting round the crabbed old scribe while his spectacles fell off his nose, and his pen harpooned the paper till it looked like a stencil. A sentence was not finished before the police moved us on; another scarcely begun, before they did so again. Like a colony of disturbed toads, we scuttled round and round the square, jabbing down a word here and there, while dusk deepened into night. When the copy was presented, it had again to be copied, in the office. The square had been better than this; for the office electricity had failed, and matches had to be struck in such quantities that our fingers were burned to the quick. I laughed; the others laughed; the police laughed like madmen; but suddenly becoming serious, said the certificate of ownership could not after all be ready for three days. An hour's argument evoked a promise of next morning. Next morning I went in search of it; again they said three days. But now, being alone, I had the advantage, speaking enough Persian to say what I wanted, but not enough to understand a refusal. Once more we trooped off to the officer across the street. Men rushed from room to room. The telephone spluttered. The document was born. And all this, let me add, was only a tithe, a mere sample, of my fate during these last four days.

The date of the car is 1926, and its engine has needed some attention. After testing it yesterday, I proposed to start at six this morning. But by the end of the test, the battery had failed. I shall leave at midday and hope to make Amiriya tonight, where the worst of the passes but one will be over.

The Noel party arrived last night in two Rolls-Royces. They threw the charcoal apparatus away at Dover. The original Charcoal-Burners, they say, spent five nights in the desert between Damascus and Baghdad, and broke two big-ends, which are now being repaired. I still have no certainty of their advent here. It is impossible to wait on chance. The passes may be blocked any day after the fifteenth.

Ayn Varzan
(c. 5000
ft
.),
later 7.30 p.m
.—The back axle has broken, sixty miles from Teheran.

“To Khorasan! To Khorasan!” shouted the policeman at the city gate. I felt a wonderful exhilaration as we chugged through the Elburz defiles. Up or down, the engine was always in bottom gear; only this could save us from being precipitated, backwards or forwards as the case might be, over the last or next hairpin bend.

Seven chanting peasants pushed the car uphill to a shed in this village. It is a total loss. But I won't go back to Teheran.

Shahrud
(4400
ft
.),
November 13th
.—A bus arrived next morning at Ayn Varzan, full of lady pilgrims on their way to Meshed. Their chatter in the yard below woke me up. Five minutes later I was beside the driver, and my luggage underneath the ladies.

From the pass above Amiriya we looked back over a mounting array of peaks, ranges, and buttresses to the white cone of Demavend in the top of the sky; and forward over a plain of boundless distances, where mountains rippled up and sighed away like the wash of a tide, dark here, shining there, while shadow and sunshine followed their masters the clouds across the earth's arena. Trees of autumn yellow embowered the lonely villages. Elsewhere, desert; the stony black-lustred desert of eastern Persia. At Samnan, while the ladies drank tea in a brick caravanserai, I heard of an old minaret, which I found before the police found me. When they did, I ate sorrow, as the expression is, that I could stay no longer in their beautiful city, and we drove away into the dusk. “Come with us to Meshed”, said the driver, who was a negro, offering a price which indicated friendship. Obstinately, I descended at Damghan.

There are two circular grave-towers in that place, which are inscribed and dated as built in the XIth century, and are constructed of fine but loosely mortared café-au-lait brick. A ruined mosque, known as the Tarikh Khana or “History House”, is even older; its round squat pillars recall an English village church of the Norman period, and must have inherited their unexpected Romanesque form from Sasanian tradition. The whole of Islamic architecture borrowed from this tradition, once Islam had conquered Persia. But it is interesting to see the process beginning thus crudely, before it attains artistic value.

The police, good-natured fellows, began to faint with hunger as I kept them out beyond their lunch-time. Late in the afternoon, a lorry came in from the west, and they bundled me on to it as the only hope of their getting a meal that day. We reached Shahrud at eight, and are to leave at midnight.