The Road to Oxiana (11 page)

That admirable institution, the Persian caravanserai, has refused to be ousted by modern transport. Garages are everywhere, certainly. But they reproduce the old plan. This consists of a quadrangle, as big as an Oxford college, and defended by huge doors. Near the doors, beside the arched entrance, are rooms for cooking, eating, communal sleeping, and the transaction of business. Round the other three sides are rows of smaller rooms, which resemble monastic cells, and accommodation for horses and motors. Comfort varies. Here, in the Garage Massis, I have a spring bed, a carpet, and a stove; and have eaten a tender chicken, followed by some sweet grapes. At Damghan there was no furniture at all, and the food was lumps of tepid rice.

Nishapur
(4000
ft
.),
November 14th
.—One can become a connoisseur of anything. Never in all Persia was there such a lorry as I caught at Damghan: a brand new Reo Speed Waggon, on its maiden voyage, capable of thirty-five miles an hour on the flat, with double wheels, ever-cool radiator, and lights in the driver's cabin. Mahmud and Ismail are making record time from Teheran to the Indian frontier. They ask after my health every five minutes, and want me to go right down to Duzdab with them.

Dawn, like a smile from the gallows, pierced the gusty, drizzling night. I ate a bit of cheese, and the other side of the chicken's breast from Shahrud. Two stunted willows and a tea-house hove out of the murky desert. Mahmud and Ismail went inside, to greet other cronies of the road. I dozed where I sat.

At Abbasabad we huddled over a fire, while the people of the place tried to sell us beads, cigarette-holders, and dice, of a soft grey-green stone. They wore scarlet Russian blouses, and are descended from Georgian
colonists planted by Shah Abbas. Then on, against the wind and wet, over the grey hummocky wastes. The grey zeppelin clouds drive low and fast. The grey infrequent villages are desolate of people. Clustering round their ruined citadels, those ancient shapes, the bee-hive dome and ziggurat, are melting in the rain. They have melted thus since the dawn of history; and when summer comes, they will rise again out of new mud bricks till history closes. Streams in purple spate swirl through the walled lanes into the fields, and out into the desert. The track itself becomes a watercourse. In a night, the poplars have lost their leaves, though the planes hold theirs for a day more. Strings of camels sway alongside us—boom goes the bull-camel's bell—boom, and is gone. Shepherds in white tabards tack through the gale after pebble-grazing flocks. Black tents and black fleece-hats announce the Turcomans and the verge of Central Asia. So this is the Golden Road. Eight centuries ago, the minaret of Khosrugird watched the traffic as it watches us. Sabzevar is two miles further. The caravanserai produces kabob, curds, pomegranates, and a bottle of local claret.

Soon after dark, the lorry's lights went out. That feckless couple of record-breakers, Mahmud and Ismail, had not a match nor a wick between them. I had both, but the defect was not easily repaired, and instead of reaching Meshed, we have had to put up here.

The home, curse it, of Omar Khayam.

Meshed
(3100
ft
.),
November 16th
.—The distance from Nishapur to Meshed is ninety miles. I supposed I should be here by midday.

But my beautiful Speed Waggon could not go, and it was nine o'clock before I found a seat in a British Bedford pilgrim bus. At Kadam Gah, sixteen miles
down the road, the driver obligingly stopped while I walked up to the shrine. This pretty little octagon, surmounted by a bulbous dome, was built in the middle of the XVIIth century, and commemorates a resting-place of the Imam Riza. It sits on a platform beneath a rocky cliff, surrounded by tall umbrella-pines and tinkling streams. The sun struck the tiles, which glittered blue and pink and yellow against the dark foliage and lowering sky. A bearded seyid in a black turban asked for money. Hopping and tapping, the halt and blind converged with terrible rapidity. I fled back to the bus.

That vehicle was carrying twice its proper number of passengers, and their luggage as well. Exhilarated at the prospect of his journey's end the driver tore downhill at forty miles an hour, lurched across a stream-bed, and had just rebounded against the opposite slope, when to my great surprise the off front wheel ran back towards me, buckled the running-board with a crunch, and escaped into the desert. “Are you English?” asked the driver in disgust. “Look at that.” An inch of British steel had broken clean through.

It took an hour and a half to fit another joint. The pilgrims huddled down with their backs to the wind, men beneath their yellow sheepskins, women veiled in black shrouds. Three chickens, tied to each other by the leg, enjoyed a temporary freedom. But their clucking boded little hope. When we started again, the driver was seized with a palsy of caution. He proceeded at five miles an hour, stopping at every caravanserai to refresh his nerves with tea; till at last we reached a small pass and a new view.

Tiers of firelit mountains encircled the horizon. Night, and a surf of clouds, were rolling in from the east. Down in the plain, a blur of smoke, trees, and
houses announced Meshed, the holy city of the Shiahs. A gold dome flashed, a blue dome loomed, out of the cold autumnal haze. Century by century, since the Imam Riza was interred beside the Caliph Harun-al-Rashid, this vision has refreshed the desert-weary sight of pilgrims, merchants, armies, kings, and travellers—to become the last hope of several dozen fretful passengers in a damaged motor-bus.

A number of cairns marked the sacred vantage. The male pilgrims descended to pray, turning their backs on Meshed in favour of Mecca. The driver descended to collect his dues, and since the husbands were engaged, perforce approached their wives. A screech of protest, rising to a furious and sustained crescendo, blasted the moment of thanksgiving. On prayed the pious husbands, bashing their foreheads on the cairns, lacerating their stockinged feet, heaving sighs and rolling eyes to heaven, in their resolve to postpone the inevitable reckoning. Round the bus danced the driver and his assistant, repulsed by the hooded harpies in their wire cage. One by one the husbands tried to dodge back to their places unseen. One by one the chauffeurs caught them. Each protested for a separate quarter of an hour. But only three refused to pay in the end, and these, snarling and cursing, were ejected from the company with blows and kicks. Led by a whining pharisee, the most active of the devotees, who had been my neighbour on the front seat of the bus, they started away down the hill at a lolloping trot.

The bus had hardly begun to follow them, before the women at the back set up a threefold clamour. With their fists and household implements they would soon have demolished the thin wooden partition that separated them from the driver and myself. Once more we stopped. Letting fall their veils, the foaming viragos
appealed to me to retrieve their three men. By now I had no interest save to reach a hotel before dark. “Either take the men back”, I told the driver, “or go on. You'll lose my fare too, if we stay here any longer.” This argument prevailed. He caught up the men, who were still tearing down the road, and invited them to return. They refused. Backing into the gutter, they refused point-blank thus to favour the monster who had defiled the most hallowed moment of their lives. Again the women shrieked and battered. Again the partition cracked. The whole bus began to creak. “
GO ON!
” I yelled, stamping till the floor-boards were entangled in the brake. Jumping out, the driver seized the deserters, belaboured them till they groaned for mercy, and dragged them back to the bus. The pharisee sought his old place in front, by me. But now it was my turn to go mad. I would not have him near me, I said. In reply, he seized my hand, and pressing it to his prickly, saliva-trickling beard, sprayed it with kisses. A shove sent him sprawling, while I leapt out on the other side, declaring to the now befogged, exhausted, and unhappy driver that rather than suffer further contact with the man, I would walk into Meshed on my own feet and keep what I owed him in my pocket. At this, the women turned their abuse to the pharisee. The cringing brute was hoisted into the back. And we set off for the holy city at a pace fit to smash a gun-carriage.

The driver and I looked at one another. We laughed.

Meshed
,
November 17th
.—The Shrine dominates the town. Turcomans, Kazaks, Afghans, Tajiks, and Hazaras throng its approaches, mingling with the dingy crowd of pseudo-European Persians. The police are frightened of these fanatics; so that access to the Shrine is still denied to infidels, despite the official anti-clerical
policy which is opening the mosques elsewhere. “If you really want to go in,” said the man in the hotel, “you can borrow my hat. That's all you need.” I looked with distaste on that battered symbol of Marjoribanks's rule, parody of a French képi, and concluded that it would hardly pass muster with blue eyes and a fair moustache.

Not long ago, Marjoribanks paid a first visit to Sistan. To gratify his appetite for modern street-planning, the terrified local authorities built a whole new town, Potemkin-wise, whose walls, though festooned with electricity, enclosed nothing but fields. A lorry preceded him by a day, bearing children's clothes. Next morning, the school assembled dressed like a French kindergarten. The monarch drove up, stopped long enough to sack the schoolmaster because the children's clothes were backward, and drove on; but not before the clothes had been whisked off the children and bundled back into the lorry, to precede him at the next place. Persia is still the country of
Haji Baba
.

The Noel party arrived yesterday. I have taken a seat for Herat in an Afghan lorry painted all over with roses. It aspires to leave the day after tomorrow.

Meshed
,
November 18th
.—Tus, the home of Firdaussi, existed before Meshed, which grew up round the bones of the Imam Riza. It lies eighteen miles to the northwest, just off the road to Askabad on the Russian frontier.

Mounds and ridges betray the outlines of the old city. An antique bridge of eight arches spans the river. And a massive domed mausoleum, whose brick is the colour of dead rose-leaves, stands up against the blue mountains. No one knows whom this commemorated; though from its resemblance to the mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar
at Merv, it seems to have been built in the XIIth century. It alone survives of the splendours of Tus.

However, next year will see the thousandth anniversary of Firdaussi's birth. Foreigners have heard of Firdaussi. They esteem him as only a poet can be esteemed whom no one has ever read. And it is expected, therefore, that their tributes will flatter not his work so much as his nationality. Such at least is the Persian hope. A programme of celebrations is already announced. Governments whose frontiers or other interests march with Persia's, are sending delegations to remind Marjoribanks that while his compatriots were making epics, theirs were wearing woad. Nor, they will observe, is the comparison inappropriate today. His Majesty's new railway, his impartial and open justice, his passion for lounge suits, offer hope to a distracted world. In fact, Shah Riza Pahlevi has left Firdaussi standing.

Tus, long silent between the mountains and the desert, will be the stage of these fragrant utterances. A cenotaph will be unveiled, situated with approximate probability on the site of the poet's grave. This object, which is almost built, proved a pleasant surprise. A square cone, to be covered with white stone, stands on a broad flight of steps. In front of it lies a long pool, framed by lines of trees and announced by a pair of classical pavilions. Given the limitations of Oriental taste when confronted with a Western idea, the design is admirable. The Western part of it, the cenotaph, is as simple as can be; the Persian part, the garden, is beautiful as always; and the two are blended by good proportions. When the ceremonies are over, and only the tinkling goat-bells are heard again, the Firdaussi-lover may find a grateful peace in this unpretentious shrine.

There was a tea-party at the Consulate this afternoon, followed by games. The Chief of Police, who looks like, and possibly is, an executioner, presented a curious
spectacle tied by the arm to an American missionary lady in a hunt-the-thimble competition. I met Mr. Donaldson, the head of the American mission, who instead of—or perhaps besides—bothering about converts, has just published a book on the Shiah religion.

A telegram from Teheran says the Charcoal-Burners have arrived there and are coming on here as soon as the customs release their guns. There is no sense in waiting for them. We must meet in Mazar-i-Sherif if we meet at all. Even now the road may be closed by snow.

Noel now thinks he will try and get visas for Afghanistan too.

AFGHANISTAN
:
Herat
(3000
ft
.),
November 21st
—Noel got visas and brought me here; or rather, I brought him. Having driven the whole way from London, he was glad to give the wheel to someone else. He left this afternoon by the southern road to Kandahar.

But for the staff of the Russian Consulate, who lead the life of prisoners, I am the only European in the place, and am on my best behaviour; the public stare demands it. There is company at the hotel in three Parsi Indians, who are riding round the world on bicycles and have come from Mazar-i-Sherif by the new road opened this summer. They met various Russians on the way, who had escaped over the Oxus and were proceeding under escort to Chinese Turkestan by the Wakhan-Pamir road. One of these was a journalist, who gave them a letter describing his sufferings. His boots were already in holes, but he was intending to walk to Pekin.

Herat has its own Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who
is known as the Mudir-i-Kharija and says that if I can find transport, I may proceed to Turkestan. I also had audience of the Governor, Abdul Rahim Khan, a handsome old fellow wearing a tall black astrakhan hat and grey Hindenburg moustaches. He too gives me leave to go where I want, and will furnish me with letters to the authorities en route.