A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Eric Newby
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country?’
‘This was my country. There is no Armenia any more. All those shops’ – pointing at the shop fronts now shuttered and barred – ‘Armenian – dead, dead, all dead. Tomorrow they will decide whether you will be tried or not,’ he went on to Hugh. ‘If you need me I will come. I think it is better that you should not be tried. I have heard that there is a German from Tehran here, a lorry driver who has cut off a child’s foot with his lorry. He has been three months awaiting a trial. They keep him without trousers so that he shall not escape.’
Next morning all three of us took pains with our appearance. The internal arrangements at the inn were so loathsome that I shared a kerosene tin of water with Hugh and shaved on the roof, the cynosure of the entire population who were out in force. Wanda, debarred from public appearance, was condemned to the inside. As a final touch our shoes were cleaned by a boot-black who refused to charge. I was impressed but not Hugh.
‘I don’t suppose they charge anything at the Old Bailey.’ Nothing could shake his invincible gloom.
At nine o’clock, sweltering in our best clothes, we presented ourselves at the Courthouse and joined a queue of malefactors.
After a short wait we were called. The room was simple, whitewashed, with half a dozen chairs and a desk for the Prosecutor. On it was a telephone at which we looked lovingly. Behind the Prosecutor lurked his evil genius, the Interpreter.
The Prosecutor began to speak. It was obvious that one way or the other he had made his mind up. He was, he said, interested only in Justice and Justice would be done. It was unfortunate for M. Carless that he did not possess a Diplomatic Visa for Turkey otherwise it would be difficult to detain him. We now knew that Hugh was doomed. But, he went on, as his visa only applied to Iran, he proposed to ask for proceedings to be stayed for a week while he consulted the authorities in Ankara.
‘Malheureusement, c’est pas possible pour M. Carless,’ said the Interpreter winding up with relish, ‘mais vous êtes libre d’aller en Iran.’
For two hours we argued; when Hugh flagged I intervened; then Wanda took up the struggle; arguments shot backwards and forwards across the room like tennis balls: about diplomatic immunity, children languishing in Europe without their mother, ships and planes missed, expeditions ruined, the absence of witnesses.
‘Several beatings were given yesterday for the discouragement of false witnesses and their evidence is inadmissible,’ said the Prosecutor, but he was remote, immovable.
‘Malheureusement vous devez rester ici sept jours pour qu’arrive une réponse à notre telegramme,’ said the Interpreter in his repulsive French.
‘Monsieur le Procureur a envoyé une telegramme?’
‘Pas encore,’ replied the Interpreter, leering triumphantly. I had never seen him look happier.
We implored Hugh to send a telegram to Ankara. He was adamant but he did agree to send for Niki, the Armenian doctor. It was not easy to find an un-named Armenian M.O. in a garrison town but he arrived in an hour, by jeep, round and fat but to us a knight in armour. The Interpreter was banished and Niki began translating sentence by sentence, English to Turkish, Turkish to English. Hugh spoke of N.A.T.O. and there was a flicker of interest, of how the two countries had fought together on the same side in Korea, of the great qualities of the Turkish Nation, of the political capital that the Russians would make when the news became known, that such a situation would not happen in England. Finally, Hugh said he wanted to send a telegram. We knew what agony this decision cost him.
‘It is extremely difficult. There is no direct communication. We shall first have to send to Erzerum.’
‘Then send it to Erzerum.’
‘It will take three days. You still wish?’
‘Yes, I wish.’
Hugh wrote the telegram. It looked terrible on paper. I began to understand why he had been so reluctant to send it.
‘Detained Bayazid en route Tehran awaiting formulation of charge killing civilian stop Diplomatic visa applicable Iran only.’
Niki translated it into Turkish; holding the message, the Prosecutor left the room. After a few minutes he returned with a heavily moustached clerk in shirt-sleeves. For more than ten minutes he dictated with great fluency. It was a long document. When it was finished Niki read it aloud. It gave an account of the entire affair and expressed Hugh’s complete innocence.
The last stamp was affixed; the Prosecutor clapped his hands, coffee was brought in.
It all happened so quickly that it was difficult to believe that it was all over.
‘But what made him change his mind?’ It was an incredible volte-face.
‘The Public Prosecutor asks me to say,’ said Niki, ‘that it is because M. Carless was gentlemanly in this thing, because you were all gentlemanly,’ bowing to Wanda, ‘that he has decided not to proceed with it.’
CHAPTER SIX Airing in a Closed Carriage
In Tehran Wanda left us to return to Europe.
On 30 June, eleven days from Istanbul, Hugh and I reached Meshed, the capital of the province of Khurasan, in north-east Persia, and drove through streets just dark to the British Consulate-General, abandoned since Mussadiq’s coup and the breaking off of diplomatic relations in 1953.
After a long wait at the garden gate we were admitted by an old, grey-bearded sepoy of the Hazarah Pioneers. He had a Mongolian face and was dressed in clean khaki drill with buttons polished. Here we were entertained kindly by the Hindu caretaker.
The place was a dream world behind high walls, like a property in the Deep South of the United States. Everywhere lush vegetation reached out long green arms to destroy what half a century of care had built up. The great bungalows with walls feet thick were collapsing room by room, the wire gauze fly nettings over the windows were torn and the five-year-old bath water stagnant in the bathrooms. In the living rooms were great Russian stoves, standing ceiling high, black and banded like cannon set in the walls, warming two rooms at once, needing whole forests of wood to keep them going.
The Consulate building itself was lost and forgotten; arcades of Corinthian columns supported an upper balcony, itself collapsing. The house was shaded by great trees, planted perhaps a century ago, now at their most magnificent. Behind barred windows were the big green safes with combination locks in the confidential registry. I asked Hugh how they got them there.
‘In the days of the Raj you could do anything.’
‘But they must weigh tons. There’s no railway.’
‘If Curzon had anything to do with it, they were probably dragged overland from India.’
On the wall in one of the offices we found a map of Central Asia. It was heavily marked in coloured pencil. One such annotation well inside Russian Territory, beyond a straggling river, on some sand dunes in the Kara-Kum desert read, ‘Captain X, July, ‘84’ and was followed by a cryptic question mark.
‘The Great Game,’ said Hugh. It was a sad moment for him, born nearly a century too late to participate in the struggle that had taken place between the two great powers in the no-man’s-land between the frontiers of Asiatic Russia and British India.
Apart from Hugh and myself, everyone inside the Consulate firmly believed that the British would return. In the morning when we met the old man from Khurasan who had been in the Guides Cavalry, the younger one who had been in a regiment of Punjabis and the old, old man who was the caretaker’s cook, I felt sad under their interrogation about my health and regiment. To them it was as though the Indian Army as they had known it still existed.
‘Apka misaj kaisa hai, Sahib?’
‘Bilkul