CHAPTER FIVE The Dying Nomad

      On the road from Istanbul we were detained by a series of misadventures in Armenia. At Horasan, a small one-street town on the Aras river, instead of turning right for Agri and the Persian frontier, Hugh roared straight on. There was a long climb, followed by a descent on hairpin bends into a canyon of red, silver and green cliffs, with a castle perched on the top, down to a village where the air was cool under the trees and women were treading something underfoot in a river, and a level stretch under an overhanging cliff where gangs working on a narrow gauge railway were bringing down avalanches of stones. On the right was the same fast running river.

      We were tired and indescribably dirty. In the last of the sunlight we crossed a green meadow and bathed in a deep pool. It was very cold.

      ‘What river do you think this is?’ Bathed and shaved we sat in the meadow putting on clean socks. Behind a rock, further downstream Wanda was washing her hair.

      ‘It’s the Aras.’

      ‘But the Aras flows west to east; this one’s going in the opposite direction.’

      ‘How very peculiar. What do you make of it?’

      ‘It can’t be the Aras.’

      With night coming down we drove on beside the railway, over a wooden bridge that thundered and shuddered under our weight, through a half-ruined village built of great stone blocks where two men were battering one another to death and the women, black-skirted and wearing white head-scarves, minded their own business, up and up through a ravine with the railway always on our left, into pine forests where the light was blue and autumnal – partisan, Hemingway country, brooding and silent – past a sealed-up looking house, with Hugh’s dreadful radio blaring all the time louder and louder until suddenly we realized that what we were listening to was Russian, crystal clear and getting stronger every minute.

      Hugh stopped the car and switched on the light and we huddled over the map, which Wanda had been studying with a torch.

      ‘Do you know where we are?’ He looked very serious.

      ‘About sixty kilometres from Kars,’ she said.

      ‘But we’re on the wrong road. That’s on the Russian Frontier.’

      ‘Not quite on it. The frontier’s here’ – she pointed to the map – ‘on the river, a long way from the town.’

      ‘How long have you known this?’ I had never seen him so worried.

      ‘Since we had that swim: the current was going the wrong way. I thought you realized it.’

      At first I thought he was going to hit her. Finally, he said in a strangled sort of voice, ‘We must go back immediately.’

      ‘Whatever for? Look, there’s a road along the Turkish side of the river, south to Argadsh, just north of Ararat. It’s a wonderful chance. If we’re stopped all we’ve got to say is that we took the wrong road.’

      ‘It’s all very well for you. Do you realize my position? I’m a member of the Foreign Service but I haven’t got a diplomatic visa for Turkey. We have permission to cross Anatolia by the shortest possible route. In this vehicle we’ve got several cameras, one with a long-focus lens, a telescope, prismatic compasses, an aneroid and several large-scale maps.’

      ‘The maps are all of Afghanistan.’

      ‘Do you think they’ll know the difference at a road block? We’ve even got half a dozen daggers.’

      ‘They weren’t my idea. I always said daggers were crazy.’

      ‘That’s not the point. You saw what the Turks were like in Erzerum. We shall all be arrested. We may even get shot. It’s got all the makings of an incident. And you’re not even British.’

      ‘By marriage,’ said Wanda, ‘but I think you’re making it sound much worse than it really is.’

      We argued with him in the growing darkness, even made fun of him, but it was no use, he was beyond the reach of humour. On his face was a look that I had never seen. He spoke with an air of absolute certainty, like a man under the influence of drugs. Like the Mole in The Wind in the Willows picking up the scent of his old home, Hugh was in direct contact with the Foreign Office, S.W. 1, and the scent was breast-high.

      It took me some moments to remember where I had encountered this almost mad certainty before, then it came to me – at the memorable interview with the man from the Asian Desk.

      We were ninety kilometres from Horasan. Finally he agreed to continue to the next town, Sarikamis, and return the following day.

      But the next day had brought disaster and tragedy. Towards evening we had arrived at Bayazid. ‘Fortress town on the Persian Frontier; close to Ararat on the great caravan road from Tabriz to Erzerum with the Serail of Ezak Pasha on a rock.’ The ancient guide to Turkey had made it sound romantic, but the splendours of the caravan road had departed and several earthquakes and countless massacres had made of Bayazid a sad, shanty town without a skyline, full of soldiers clumping down the single street in great boots, and debased-looking civilians in tattered western suits and cloth caps.

      Determined to sleep in Persia we set off at breakneck speed towards the east. Night was coming on. The road was deserted; it ran through an arid plain; to the right were low mountains with, close under them, the black tents of the nomad people. All day, in the upland country about Ararat, we had seen bands of them on the march, driving their bullocks loaded with tent poles and big tribal cooking pots; vicious-looking donkeys with pack saddles, flocks of goats and sheep; the men and women on foot, the women in full red skirts with a sort of black surcoat and black balaclavas, the younger ones in pill-box hats and plaits, the boys wearing lambskin caps, the smallest children sitting, on white cushions, astride lean little horses; all moving westward along the line of the telegraph poles, each family enveloped in its own cloud of dust.

      Less than a mile from the Customs House on the Turkish side, travelling in the last of the light, something dark loomed up on the road in front. Wanda shouted but Hugh was already braking hard. There was going to be an accident and it was going to take a long time to happen. I wondered whether he would swerve off the road and whether we should turn over when he did. He shouted to us to hold on, the wheels locked and we went into a long tearing skid with the horn blaring and all our luggage falling on us, pressing us forward on to the windscreen, everything happening at once as we waited for the smash but instead coming to a standstill only a few feet from whatever it was in the road.

      There was a moment of silence broken only by awful groans. We were fearful of what we should see but the reality was worse than anything we imagined. Lying in the road, face downwards, a shapeless black bundle covered