APRIL
There was quite a change in the landscape today, though none in the road surface. We covered seventy-two miles, some of them between wonderful mountains, and most through what, for thisarea, is fertile land – i.e. a village, surrounded by little irrigated fields, every twenty miles or so, and in between huge flocks of sheep and goats grazing on some invisible herbage. There are hundreds of tiny lambs and kids with the flocks now and they look absolutely adorable; the lambs have thick fleeces and enormous floppy ears like spaniels, and the kids are very dainty and frisky. I stopped to have lunch with a fierce-looking but actually very amiable shepherd and admired his flocks while eating: we solemnly exchanged bread and salt so are friends forever, according to local custom.
As if Persia wanted to show me what it could do in the way of fauna I saw seven more deer today and one big dog fox of a horrid yellow-grey colour. I also met a tortoise, two scorpions, a hamster and an eagle and along much of the way I was accompanied by lark-song, which made me feel quite homesick.
This village is at the junction of the Teheran–Meshed–Afghanistan road, so I’ll be returning to it tomorrow evening after a detour to see the sights of Meshed and to collect my mail. The local gendarmerie are exceptionally nice and sufficiently sophisticated to diagnose my sex so a flea-bag has been put on the office floor for me.
There was a strong east wind against us today – very wearing combined with the atrocious surface. It got quite cloudy too – there might be a nice bit of rain tomorrow, but that’s not likely, though last week they did have their first inch for four years in South Persia.
One of the things that most intrigues Persians about me is the fact that I have no brothers and sisters: obviously only children are quite unknown here and they have the greatest sympathy for me. They’re certainly a very family-minded people: brothers and sisters show tremendous mutual affection and in times of family trouble do all they can to help each other.
This was the first evening my expired visa was spotted, as a Lieutenant is in charge here; usually there’s only an NCO as illiterate as his men. But the Lieutenant is a nice young man who winked and took twenty American cigarettes and said I could be fined over £50 for having American cigarettes in Persia.
SANG BAST, 7 APRIL
We arrived outside the British Council office in Meshed at 7.50 a.m. – ten long minutes to wait for mail! It was a perfect metalled road for the twenty-five miles and I met with no hostility from the locals, who were friendlier than in many other places; but I had to avoid going to the shrine area alone, though I would have given a lot to explore it. Meshed is by far the nicest of the four Persian cities I’ve seen and it did rain this morning so all along the fine wide boulevards , which are lined with birches as big as our oaks, the new green leaves were freshly sparkling. A car was kindly laid on to take me round the city yet it was most frustrating just to glimpse the out- of-bounds beauties of the mosques and shrine and museum and library. That quarter was teeming with Mullahs; I saw three in green turbans, which means they are descended from the Prophet. An American girl who took herself off there two days ago against advice was badly hurt by stones when trying to get colour-shots of the domes and minarets.
One is told the most blood-curdling tales at each stop. Here the pièce de résistance is about three Americans who, when motoring from Meshed to the Afghan frontier, stopped for a picnic and were all shot dead by bandits, who then escaped into Afghanistan but were hunted, by the Afghan police, back into Persia, where they were captured by the Army and publicly hanged in the main square of Teheran. Mr Jones of the British Council said there’s no question of me going to Kabul via Mazar-i-Sharif as that area has lots of Communist-inspired trouble.
There was quite a change in the landscape today, though none in the road surface. We covered seventy-two miles, some of them between wonderful mountains, and most through what, for thisarea, is fertile land – i.e. a village, surrounded by little irrigated fields, every twenty miles or so, and in between huge flocks of sheep and goats grazing on some invisible herbage. There are hundreds of tiny lambs and kids with the flocks now and they look absolutely adorable; the lambs have thick fleeces and enormous floppy ears like spaniels, and the kids are very dainty and frisky. I stopped to have lunch with a fierce-looking but actually very amiable shepherd and admired his flocks while eating: we solemnly exchanged bread and salt so are friends forever, according to local custom.
As if Persia wanted to show me what it could do in the way of fauna I saw seven more deer today and one big dog fox of a horrid yellow-grey colour. I also met a tortoise, two scorpions, a hamster and an eagle and along much of the way I was accompanied by lark-song, which made me feel quite homesick.
This village is at the junction of the Teheran–Meshed–Afghanistan road, so I’ll be returning to it tomorrow evening after a detour to see the sights of Meshed and to collect my mail. The local gendarmerie are exceptionally nice and sufficiently sophisticated to diagnose my sex so a flea-bag has been put on the office floor for me.
There was a strong east wind against us today – very wearing combined with the atrocious surface. It got quite cloudy too – there might be a nice bit of rain tomorrow, but that’s not likely, though last week they did have their first inch for four years in South Persia.
One of the things that most intrigues Persians about me is the fact that I have no brothers and sisters: obviously only children are quite unknown here and they have the greatest sympathy for me. They’re certainly a very family-minded people: brothers and sisters show tremendous mutual affection and in times of family trouble do all they can to help each other.
This was the first evening my expired visa was spotted, as a Lieutenant is in charge here; usually there’s only an NCO as illiterate as his men. But the Lieutenant is a nice young man who winked and took twenty American cigarettes and said I could be fined over £50 for having American cigarettes in Persia.
SANG BAST, 7 APRIL
We arrived outside the British Council office in Meshed at 7.50 a.m. – ten long minutes to wait for mail! It was a perfect metalled road for the twenty-five miles and I met with no hostility from the locals, who were friendlier than in many other places; but I had to avoid going to the shrine area alone, though I would have given a lot to explore it. Meshed is by far the nicest of the four Persian cities I’ve seen and it did rain this morning so all along the fine wide boulevards , which are lined with birches as big as our oaks, the new green leaves were freshly sparkling. A car was kindly laid on to take me round the city yet it was most frustrating just to glimpse the out- of-bounds beauties of the mosques and shrine and museum and library. That quarter was teeming with Mullahs; I saw three in green turbans, which means they are descended from the Prophet. An American girl who took herself off there two days ago against advice was badly hurt by stones when trying to get colour-shots of the domes and minarets.
One is told the most blood-curdling tales at each stop. Here the pièce de résistance is about three Americans who, when motoring from Meshed to the Afghan frontier, stopped for a picnic and were all shot dead by bandits, who then escaped into Afghanistan but were hunted, by the Afghan police, back into Persia, where they were captured by the Army and publicly hanged in the main square of Teheran. Mr Jones of the British Council said there’s no question of me going to Kabul via Mazar-i-Sharif as that area has lots of Communist-inspired trouble.
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