The Road to Oxiana (15 page)

Towards the end of his life, seeing the old Friday Mosque in ruins, and conscious of its historical importance, he got permission of the Sultan to restore it. The work was carried out in feverish haste, while he himself superintended it, with his robe tucked up and trowel in hand. On top of the arcades a screen-wall was added, pierced by arches corresponding with those below; and the surface of the two, as it faced the court, was unified by a coating of mosaic. Such at least was the plan. It was never completed, and survives intact only in the south-west corner. A new sanctuary was also built, and was embellished, according to Khondemir, with Chinese designs. This has entirely disappeared.

One other relic of the Timurids is preserved in the mosque: a bronze cauldron some four feet in diameter, covered with arabesques and inscriptions in relief. A similar cauldron was cast by order of Timur for the
Mosque of Hazrat Yassavi in Turkestan City, where it still is.
¹
The one at Herat, which is kept in a hutch on the steps of the main ivan, finds mention in the descriptions of the Chinese embassies.

On Friday, February 21st, 1427, Shah Rukh suffered an attempt on his life in this mosque, and his escape was the salvation of the Empire for another twenty years. The same day of the week and the same spot have just witnessed the frustration of another plot to upset the existing government.

Two days ago officials of the Russian Consulate spread a rumour in the bazaar that the new king had been assassinated as well as the old, their purpose being to foment a disturbance in Amanullah's favour. In this they reckoned without the Governor, who detests Amanullah, and having suppressed a mutiny in his interest a year ago, is respected by the troops accordingly. The Russians no doubt thought that if they cast their bait on a Thursday afternoon, on Friday the people would have leisure to swallow it. As it turned out, they swallowed the Governor's instead. Addressing himself to the congregation in the Friday Mosque, Abdul Rahim Khan denied the rumour and assured them that in any case order would be maintained. The last announcement depressed them. They cared nothing for the king, but were looking forward to a riot in which they could prosecute their quarrels and loot the Shiah merchants. This delightful dream is now postponed till the spring.

This afternoon a horde of turbaned infants dashed into my room, one carrying a hammer, another a nail, another a chisel, and put some glass in the windows. I
wish they had come earlier. The lorry must surely go tomorrow if it keeps fine.

A message arrived from the Hungarian to say he was ill. Last night he had been as white as a ghost. Now I found him flushed with fever and being sick. His only protection from the floor was a small mat, and his only covering a threadbare rug. I dosed him as best I could, gave him a blanket and said he must see the doctor. After half an hour's argument in the kitchen, the doctor was sent for. The answer came back that he was asleep. I then went to see him myself, forced my way into his house with some trepidation lest his women should be without their veils, and persuaded him to come. He diagnosed the fever as malaria and said the patient must go to the hospital; in answer to which the patient called him an Indian fool and said he would not go to hospital. After three hours a man came to take him to the hospital. At the same moment orders arrived from the Mudir-i-Kharija that he must not go to the hospital until the doctor had written a formal note requesting his admission. I sent my old fellow to fetch this note. Then a Turk walked in to say that since the Mudir-i-Kharija had already left his office, no order of admission could be issued till tomorrow. I gave it up.

The Parsis say the Hungarian is absolutely without money, and that the Afghan authorities have to nourish and transport him at their own expense. He certainly bites the hand that feeds him. Apparently the British Legation in Kabul refused him a visa for India; quite rightly in the Parsis' opinion, who, though they are no great loyalists, disapprove of “poor whites”. I have left him with a tin of soup-cubes and some cream cheese to help him on his journey back to Meshed.

Not knowing the Persian for hot-water bottle, I made the kitchen laugh tonight by asking for my khanum.

Herat
.
November 26th
dawned cloudless and warm, an ideal day for the time of year. At nine o'clock I met the lorry driver, who said we should be starting at eleven. At eleven the lorry was loading petrol vats, and the driver's assistant told me to be ready at one. At one I had my luggage brought down, to learn that we should not start today. The other passengers all went back to their villages yesterday, owing to the rain, and have not reappeared.

As I shall probably be here for the rest of my life (which won't last long at this rate), I have had my room cleaned out. I must describe it, and indeed the whole hotel. Downstairs three large rooms with glass fronts give on to the street. The first is the kitchen, indicated by a pool of blood and a decapitated cock's head on the pavement. The second and third are filled with marble-topped tables, and hung with European scenes painted on glass by an Indian familiar with the early numbers of the
Illustrated London News
. Here too are Seyid Mahmud's desk, a cabinet gramophone on legs from Bombay, and a pile of Indian records. Adjoining the kitchen, an outside staircase leads up to a long corridor lit by skylights, which has rooms on either side. My room is at the back, where it avoids part of the coppersmiths' din: a square box, with a ceiling of bare poles and laths, white walls, and a sky-blue dado. The floor is paved with tiles, whose interstices secrete a cloud of dust and straw; half of it is covered with a carpet, and half the rest with my bedding and waterproof sheets. Two Windsor chairs and a table draped in white American cloth are the furniture. On the table stands a vase of blue and white spirals adorned with a pink glass rose—the kind you win at hoop-la—in which Seyid Mahmud has placed a tight round posy of yellow chrysanthemums enclosing a ring of chocolate red ones enclosing a centre of yellow button daisies. A
pewter basin and a graceful ewer enable me to wash on the bare part of the floor. My bedding consists of a green flea-bag, yellow sheepskin coat, and an Afghan quilt of scarlet chintz. Beside it, my lamp, Boswell, clock, cigarettes, and a plate of grapes are conveniently disposed on a despatch-case. The khanum waits to be filled. I have had a nail put in for my ties, another for my hat, and a third for my looking-glass. If the door and the window were not opposite one another, if the door would shut and the window had its full complement of panes, I should be comfortable enough. But the draught is like a storm at sea. All the refuse goes out of the window into the garden of the Municipality.

I caught my breath just now as I stepped into the moonlit corridor. Four rifles menaced my stomach, aimed by four ghostly figures cloaked in white, who were squatting in the room opposite. I could see the glitter of their eyes in the dark beneath their dim white turbans. Four others had their backs to me and their rifles pointing out of the window. No doubt it was just a pleasant evening party. But the Muntazim-i-Telegraph had been croaking again this morning about the coming upheaval, and I wondered for a moment if Amanullah had actually arrived.

One monument here is even older than the Friday Mosque. Writing in the tenth century Mukadasi describes the Bridge of Malan, saying it was built by a Magian. For a thousand years it has carried the traffic to and from India over the Hari river. Today it still has 26 arches—there were 28 in Khondemir's time—and room for two lorries abreast. The arches are of different shapes, and since one or two generally collapse every year in the spring floods, the bridge must have been rebuilt many times over. But the piers probably rest on the old foundations.

The town is worth seeing from the south. As we drove back from the river in the blue landau, its grim grey battlements commanded plain and villages as though cannon were still in the future. There are three walls. The topmost is eighty feet high, and defended by a line of towers. The other two are pierced by a network of loopholes. Below them lies a broad reed-grown moat. Constantinople has the same system on the land side, except that there it is of stone, and here of mud.

On the road along the moat we met three gentlemen taking the air behind a high-stepping pony. They were seated on top of one another in a tiny brown governess cart, which bristled with enough weapons for a baronial hall.

Karokh
(4400
ft
.),
November 28th
.—Instead of packing this morning, I settled down to read. The ruse succeeded: at one o'clock the lorry left. I nearly missed it.

A wide macadam road runs due east up the valley of the Hari river, on its way over the mountains to Bamian—though it has yet to arrive there. Thirteen miles down this, at the village of Pala Piri, we turned up a narrow track to the north. “Ra Turkestan, Ra Turkestan”, cried the passengers in chorus. The road to Turkestan! It sounded too good to be true.

The next twenty miles involved repeated crossings of a river in a ravine, whose gradients, or rather the absence of them, showed that a motor can be as good as a mule if driven with enterprise. At half-past three we stopped for the night. A shrine stood near the road, screened by a grove of umbrella-pines, whose sweet smell has reminded me of the Pinetum at Ravenna. How vivid those memories of Italy remain! I might have been a dentist, or a public man, but for that first sight of a
larger world. The inner court is planted with the same trees;
korhju
they are called. At the top of the avenue stands a demure arch, whose tin cupolas flashed us welcome from a distance. This marks the tomb of a Sheikh-al-Islam who was killed—beheaded they say—while fighting the Persians in 1807. His son Abul Kasim erected the shrine, and planted the trees, to his memory.

A range of buildings separates the two courts, in which we were allotted an upstairs room. The other passengers, who are soldiers, at once took advantage of this to exchange their uniforms for turbans, long coats and loose trousers. Disturbed by the rain of puttees and tunics, I ensconced my bedding on a balcony, and was unrolling it when a procession of portly middle-aged gentlemen entered the court below. Taking off their gowns and turbans, they stopped before a cleft tree, and each in turn tried to squeeze himself through it. Those that succeeded, I was told, might expect salvation hereafter. They were in a minority.

“Do you happen to have any arak with you?” whispered the gate-keeper when they had gone.

He led me up the avenue to the tomb. As I stood on the roof of the arch, watching the cranes wheel overhead and a ruddy glow suffuse the horizon of snow-covered mountains, another procession, portlier still, began to approach. At its head strode a lordly figure in black top-boots and a green quilted gown, beneath whose vast turban a white beard projected horizontally over a chest as big as a pouter pigeon's. “The Hazrat Sahib”, vouchsafed the gate-keeper, “comes to greet Your Excellency the Frankish traveller.”

“What big fish you have in the pond down there”, I opened politely.

“Those!” answered the Hazrat Sahib with contempt. “You should see the ones in the madrassa.”

The people stood up and bowed as we walked in
procession to the village school. Beneath a verandah hung with texts from the Koran sat a mullah in a ring of little boys, who were repeating their lessons to him. Willow trees and other groups were dotted round a square pond. The Hazrat Sahib called for bread and threw it on the water. A flock of ducks made a dash for it, but a shoal of leviathan carp rose to the surface and beat them off. The ducks went hungry.

The trunks of the pines throw long shadows across the moonlit avenue. A breeze stirs the flame inside the hurricane lantern. Nur Mohammad, a soldier who has attached himself to me, is asleep in a corner of the balcony. His head is on his rifle which is pointing at my nose. We have just had a feast; the Hazrat Sahib returned after dinner, preceded by a pewter tray of nuts and pomegranates. Tea followed him, in bowls instead of glasses, which made me feel nearer to China.

“What Government do you belong to?” asked the Hazrat Sahib.

“The Government of Inglistan.”

“Inglistan? What is that?”

“It is the same as Hindostan.”

“Is Inglistan part of Hindostan?”

“Yes.”

A caravan is coming up the road. Boom, boom, the bull-camel's bell fills the night. The treble bells grow louder in spite of Nur Mohammad's snores. My pen is making signs of its own. It is time to sleep.

Kala Nao
(2900
ft
.),
November 30th
.—We arrived here at half-past nine this morning and have stopped to rest.

The road from Karokh proceeded over an undulating grass country, cleft by the river in its canyon. A tribe
of Kazaks passed by, pudding-faced people riding horses, donkeys, and oxen. At a lonely caravanserai two lorries on their way down from Andkhoi gave us news of the road; it was not reassuring. At length the river, now reduced to a stream, led us into one of those endless twisting valleys where the spurs on either side project alternately, in the manner of two cog-wheels. After twenty miles, we climbed out of this on the north. When we reached the snow-line, the lorry stopped, while the wheels went round like egg-whisks.

We were well prepared. Bunches of chains, three spades, a pick, and stout ropes to prevent the lorry falling over the edge, were quickly in action. The next mile took four hours. Some dug; some hung on to the ropes; some cast down branches of a peppermint-smelling herb as though before the Saviour's ass. The day was almost gone when a zigzag spurt and cheers brought us to the narrow saddle of the Sauzak pass.

Fifty miles away through the failing light stood the ramparts of the promised land: the Band-i-Turkestan, a flat-topped mountain wall reaching out towards the Hindu Kush. Plumes of golden cloud floated up the storm-stored sky. Sheaves and pinnacles of bare red rock kept guard over the pass itself. The moisture of its northern face was announced by juniper trees, solitary battered sentinels, converging into woods on the hummocks far below.