The Russians are really trying hard at the moment to take over the whole of Afghanistan and there’s a terrific tug-of-war going on between them and the Americans.
I left the British Council at 2.45 p.m. after lunch with the Joneses. (Very nice – both lunch and Joneses – and the British Council premises, which used to be the Consulate quarters when Britain had a Consul in Meshed, are really magnificent, with gardens and grounds that seem like Paradise when one comes to them from the desert.) I had decided that Roz would have to go to hospital beforetackling Afghanistan so I took her to the city’s biggest cycle shop where a few jobs which should have taken half an hour took two and a half hours so that we didn’t get out of Meshed till 5.30 p.m. This sounds incredible but everyone who has lived here knows it’s true: Persians will not use a screwdriver – instead they hammer every screw into place, and all other repairs and readjustments are done with corresponding brutality. You can’t imagine what I suffered, sitting on a stool beside the patient, chain-smoking and drinking my emergency supply of Courvoisier through sheer nerves, while they attacked that unfortunate, long-suffering cycle with hammer and chisel. Eventually we left, having abandoned the back mudguard. I am now anticipating the worst, as no machine could survive an assault like that without dire repercussions.
It was dark, though with a bright moon from 6. p.m., and I would have enjoyed the ride through the cool evening but for being badly scared by five men (plus a rifle) in a car who kept stopping and trying to persuade me to go with them to Sang Bast. Maybe they meant well but twelve miles from anywhere after dark I didn’t relish their attentions and they disappeared with what looked like guilty haste when two gendarmes on horseback came patrolling up the road. I’m now safely back with my friends in the barracks here, who are all very worried about my arm (which at this stage looks a lot worse than it feels) and have just given me a soothing cream to apply – what they use for ‘Marchers’ Feet’. I notice it’s Swiss-made.
TIEABAD, 8 APRIL
This morning my flat length of breakfast bread (called none ) was covered with snail-tracks – much to my astonishment, as I wouldn’t have thought snails to be a feature of such a dry country. This seemed slightly off-putting at first but then I reminded myself that some people are outré enough to eat snails and as there can’t be much chemical difference between a snail and a snail-track I went on from there. It was rather disillusioning to discover that a gendarme – it couldn’t have been anyone else – stole sixty American cigarettes out of my saddle-bag last evening, but I suppose this isnot really astonishing in a country where the C-in-C of the Army is at present on trial at the Teheran High Court, for large-scale corruption. Anyway it was entirely my own fault: I know by now that American cigarettes are much coveted here (if you had smoked Persian ones you’d realise why!) and I should have kept them in my knapsack. On the whole, apart from a few incidents, I’ve found the gendarmerie a very decent, kind and reliable lot of boys; they are the Shah’s special interest and he does all he can to keep up the standard of the corps.
We left Sang Bast at 5.15 a.m. and had covered just over forty-five miles when, at 11 a.m., the inevitable happened and the back wheel came off; fortunately we were going very slowly up an incline at the time, so I wasn’t injured myself. Investigating the situation I discovered that the thread of the relevant screw had been ruined, which seemed a natural enough consequence to it having been hammered into place. At this point I was twenty-five miles from the last town and twenty miles from the next and Roz couldn’t be wheeled so I ate my lunch and went to sleep till such time as something might come to rescue me. (Since leaving Ireland I’ve acquired the
I left the British Council at 2.45 p.m. after lunch with the Joneses. (Very nice – both lunch and Joneses – and the British Council premises, which used to be the Consulate quarters when Britain had a Consul in Meshed, are really magnificent, with gardens and grounds that seem like Paradise when one comes to them from the desert.) I had decided that Roz would have to go to hospital beforetackling Afghanistan so I took her to the city’s biggest cycle shop where a few jobs which should have taken half an hour took two and a half hours so that we didn’t get out of Meshed till 5.30 p.m. This sounds incredible but everyone who has lived here knows it’s true: Persians will not use a screwdriver – instead they hammer every screw into place, and all other repairs and readjustments are done with corresponding brutality. You can’t imagine what I suffered, sitting on a stool beside the patient, chain-smoking and drinking my emergency supply of Courvoisier through sheer nerves, while they attacked that unfortunate, long-suffering cycle with hammer and chisel. Eventually we left, having abandoned the back mudguard. I am now anticipating the worst, as no machine could survive an assault like that without dire repercussions.
It was dark, though with a bright moon from 6. p.m., and I would have enjoyed the ride through the cool evening but for being badly scared by five men (plus a rifle) in a car who kept stopping and trying to persuade me to go with them to Sang Bast. Maybe they meant well but twelve miles from anywhere after dark I didn’t relish their attentions and they disappeared with what looked like guilty haste when two gendarmes on horseback came patrolling up the road. I’m now safely back with my friends in the barracks here, who are all very worried about my arm (which at this stage looks a lot worse than it feels) and have just given me a soothing cream to apply – what they use for ‘Marchers’ Feet’. I notice it’s Swiss-made.
TIEABAD, 8 APRIL
This morning my flat length of breakfast bread (called none ) was covered with snail-tracks – much to my astonishment, as I wouldn’t have thought snails to be a feature of such a dry country. This seemed slightly off-putting at first but then I reminded myself that some people are outré enough to eat snails and as there can’t be much chemical difference between a snail and a snail-track I went on from there. It was rather disillusioning to discover that a gendarme – it couldn’t have been anyone else – stole sixty American cigarettes out of my saddle-bag last evening, but I suppose this isnot really astonishing in a country where the C-in-C of the Army is at present on trial at the Teheran High Court, for large-scale corruption. Anyway it was entirely my own fault: I know by now that American cigarettes are much coveted here (if you had smoked Persian ones you’d realise why!) and I should have kept them in my knapsack. On the whole, apart from a few incidents, I’ve found the gendarmerie a very decent, kind and reliable lot of boys; they are the Shah’s special interest and he does all he can to keep up the standard of the corps.
We left Sang Bast at 5.15 a.m. and had covered just over forty-five miles when, at 11 a.m., the inevitable happened and the back wheel came off; fortunately we were going very slowly up an incline at the time, so I wasn’t injured myself. Investigating the situation I discovered that the thread of the relevant screw had been ruined, which seemed a natural enough consequence to it having been hammered into place. At this point I was twenty-five miles from the last town and twenty miles from the next and Roz couldn’t be wheeled so I ate my lunch and went to sleep till such time as something might come to rescue me. (Since leaving Ireland I’ve acquired the
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