The Road to Oxiana (18 page)

This feeling has been strengthened by an article de Bathe wrote in
The Times
on his return to England, in which he described Marjoribanks's assault on the Turcoman jockey under the eyes of the Diplomatic Corps. The Persian press retorted that in England the King dare not leave his palace without a guard of 3000 men, while the Prince of Wales keeps 100 dogs that climb on to his bed by a special ladder and sleep there. Intimidated by these outbursts, the London Foreign Office persuaded
The Times
to make amends in a leading article, which compared the state of modern Persia to that of Tudor England, and the achievement of Marjoribanks to that of Henry VIII. This only added vinegar to the Persian wound, since the Tudors are considered backward. Its interference has cost the Foreign Office several hundred pounds in telegrams, and has confirmed the Persians in their twin obsessions—painstakingly established by our previous Minister—that petulance on their part strikes terror in London, and that the English Foreign Office controls the English press. In this hell of English good intentions, the Persians find inexhaustible response to the tremors of affronted dignity. Thank God my letters of recommendation are American.

Teheran
,
January 17th
.—Another kink in the Persian mind is a mortal jealousy lest the Afghans should steal a march on them in the matter of Westernisation. On hearing I have been to Afghanistan, the educated Persian draws a deep breath, as though to restrain himself, expresses a polite interest in Afghan welfare, and enquires with feline suavity whether I found any railways, hospitals, or schools in the country. Hospitals and
schools of course, I answer; all Islam has them; as for railways, surely steam is old-fashioned in a motoring age. When I told Mirza Yantz that the Afghans discussed their political problems frankly, instead of in whispers as here, he answered: “Naturally; they are less cultured than we Persians”.

The Afghans return the dislike, but in different kind. Contempt, not jealousy, is all they feel.

I called on Shir Ahmad, the Afghan ambassador, yesterday, to tell him about my journey. Wrapped in a dressing-gown of iridescent velvet, stroking his egg-cosy beard, he looked more tigerish than ever.

R. B.
: If Your Excellency gives me permission, I shall go back to Afghanistan in the spring.

Shir Ahmad
(
p
): You will go back? (
Roaring ff
) OF COURSE you will go back.

R. B.
: And Sykes hopes to accompany me.

Shir Ahmad
(
m
): Hope? He need not hope. (
Roaring ff
) OF COURSE he will accompany you. (
pp
) I will give him visa.

R. B.
: I liked the Afghans because they speak loud and speak the truth. They are not full of intrigues.

Shir Ahmad
(
leering p
): Ha, ha, you are wrong. They have many intrigues, (
m
) many, (
cr
) many. You are not clever, (
p
) You have not seen them.

R. B. (crestfallen)
: At all events, Your Excellency, your people were hospitable to me. If I write anything about Afghanistan, I shall show it to you first.

Shir Ahmad
(
ff
): WHY?

R. B.
: In case it should offend you.

Shir Ahmad
(
m
): There is no need. (
cr
) No need. (
f
) I will not see it. I do not wish. If you write kindly, we are pleased that friend praise us. If you write not-kindly, we are pleased that friend give
advice. You shall write what you think, (
p
) You are honest man.

R. B.
: Your Excellency is too good.

Shir Ahmad
(
mf
): I am good, ha, ha. All Afghans good peoples. They have good lives. (
pp
) No wines, (
f
) no other men's wives. (
mf
) They believe God and religion. All Afghans good peoples, all fiddles.

R. B.
: Fiddles?

Shir Ahmad
(
mp
): Fiddles, no? Is it French? Faithfuls, yes?

R. B.
: Very different from the Persians.

Shir Ahmad
(
mf
): Not different. (
cr
) Not different. Persians also fiddles. (
pp
) I will tell you story:

(
m
) You know, Persians they are Shiahs, Afghans they are Sunnis. Persians love Ali. Afghans think Ali (
ff
) poof! (
m
) In Mohurram-time, Persians remember death of Ali and make feast. Last year they ask me to go feast at Baladiya, how you say, at Municipality. I go. (
cr
) I go. (
m
) I stand by Mayor. Round him stand all mullahs. There is big crowd. (
cr
) Very big crowd. (
m
) All crowd, all, yes, young mens, old mens, (
ff
) even officers from Persian army, (
pp
) weep and weep and (
f
) smack chest, so, for remember death of Ali. (
mp
) All fiddles. All love religion. I am Sunni. I do not like see such things, men weep, officers weep. (
Roaring ff
) I DO NOT LIKE. (
mp
) Mullahs say to me, “Your Excellency will make speech?” (
ff
) “WHY NOT?” I say, (
pp
) “I will make speech.” (
mp
) First I ask them question:

(
pp
) “Was Ali a Persian?” I ask.

(
m
) Mullahs they think I am stupid man. They say, (
f
) “Your Excellency is educated man. Your Excellency knows Ali was an Arab-man.”

(
mp
) I ask them second question: (
pp
) “Was Ali Aryan-man?”

(
m
) Mullahs they think I am more stupid man.
They say, (
f
) “Your Excellency knows that Arab-men are not Aryan-men ”.

(
mp
) I ask them third question: (
pp
) “Persians and Arab-men, are they same race?”

(
m
) Mullahs they think I am most stupid man. They are right. (
cr
) They are right. They say, (
f
) “Your Excellency is educated man. Your Excellency knows that Persians are Aryan-men and that Arabs are not Aryan-men.”

(
m
) I am fool. All mullahs, all crowd, think me fool. I ask them: (
pp
) “Ali was he not relation of Persians?”

(
m
) Mullahs say, (
f
) “He was not relation”.

(
mf
) “Thank you”, I tell them, (
ff
) “THANK YOU.”

(
m
) Then I ask if some peoples in crowd have passed Mohurram-time in Arabistan. When they tell me yes, I ask: (
pp
) “Arab-men do they weep for remember Ali?”

(
m
) They tell me no.

(
f
) “So”, I say, “Arab-men are relation of Ali, but do not weep for remember him. Persians weep, but they are not relation of Ali.”

(
m
) Mullahs they tell me I speak truth.

(
ff
) “It is strange”, I say. “It is very strange. I do not understand why Persians weep. (
Roaring
) In Afghanistan, if boy of six years weep, WE CALL HIM WOMAN.”

(
m
) Mullahs they very sorry, they have much shames. They tell me: “Your Excellency did not pass Mohurram-time in Persia twenty years ago. Then we weep more than today. In future, after ten years, we shall have Progress. We shall not weep and smack chest any more. Your Excellency shall see.”

(
mp
) Next week after that Mohurram-time, Shah he invite me to palace. I go. (
cr
) I go. (
m
) Shah
he say to me: “Your Excellency is friend of Persia”.

I tell him: (
pp
) “Your Majestee is too kind. I do not deserve. Of course Your Majestee speaks truth. Of course I am friend of Persia. But Your Majestee shall permit me ask how Your Majestee sees I am friend.”

(
mf
) “Your Excellency”, say Shah, (
cr
) “Your Excellency has forbid Persians weeping in Mohurram-time. I also forbid. (
Roaring ff
) Next year they shall NOT weep. I have given orders.”

(
pp
) Now Mohurram-time comes again. We shall see. (
cr
) We shall see.

Teheran
,
January 18th
.—Madame Nasr-al-Mulk gave a reception yesterday in the Karagozlu mansion. The Karagozlus are another tribal family, from Hamadan, but have so far escaped royal displeasure. Indeed Madame Nasr-al-Mulk is said to be the one person living who occasionally speaks her mind to Marjoribanks. I can believe it. She spoke her mind to me when she thought I was going to spill some lemonade over a brocade chair.

It lasted from five to eight. There were about 300 people and a jazz band. The rumour went round that Sardar Assad has “died” in prison.

A Russian architect named Markov has opened a rest-home here for newly escaped Russian refugees. In a small house near the Meshed Gate we found about fifty people exhaling that same old Russian smell—what does it come from? They all looked healthy enough, but for two wretched little girls; old clothes and toys for the children had been collected from various sources. One was a priest from Samarra, who spent three years getting jobs nearer and nearer the frontier before he could sneak across it. He had a fine old icon with him, but
those which the other families had so laboriously saved were hideous and worthless.

The purpose of the home is to receive the refugees as they arrive, give them a rest and good food after the journey, and fit them out with boots and clothes before they are distributed to Isfahan, Kirman, and other places in the middle of the country. Apart from Turcomans, of whom 25,000 crossed the border last year alone, people are escaping from Russia to Persia at the rate of 1000 a year. Most of them are not anti-Bolshevik; they simply flee from starvation. If their accounts are true of the heaps of empty tortoise-shells that surround the workmen's houses in some places, tortoises being their staple food, it is no wonder that foreigners are discouraged from visiting Russian Central Asia.

To discover if this discouragement amounts to denial, I have been hobnobbing with M. Datiev, the Russian consul. He is not so austere as some comrades, dresses in loud tweeds like Bloomsbury in the country, and wears a hat instead of a cap. The first time I went to see him, he regaled me with a cherry tart, the second time with crème de menthe.

Teheran
,
January 22nd
.—Christopher has bought a car, and we intended to leave for Isfahan yesterday. But the road is blocked by snow. The bag and its messenger are lost between here and Hamadan.

To increase the tedium, there has been a performance of
Othello
in Armenian. The chief part was taken by Papatzian, a Moscow star, who certainly upheld the Muscovite reputation for finished acting. The rest were local amateurs, and knowing no other models of our bygone costumes, had dressed themselves after the Europeans in the frescoes at Isfahan.

On top of this, Blücher the German Minister gave a party in a cinema to see the Nazi propaganda film
Deutschland Erwacht
. Hitler, Goebbels, and the rest of them roared away. Tea and cakes in the interval. Datiev in his hat, his ambassador in a cap. I felt sorry for Blücher and thankful I was not a German.

Teheran
,
January 25th
.—Still here. Still snow. The bag and its messenger still lost.

Walking into the local stationer's to buy some drawing paper, I found the Papal Nuncio at the counter, and could think of nothing to say outside my own train of thought.

“Bonjour, Monseigneur.”

“Bonjour, Monsieur.”

Silence.

“Vous êtes artiste, Monseigneur?”

“Quoi?”

“Vous êtes peintre? Vous achetez des crayons, des couleurs?”

Horror ravaged his saintly countenance.

“Certainement non. J'achète des cartes d'invitation.”

Shir Ahmad and Tommy Jacks, the resident director of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, came to dinner at the club. It was a good dinner: caviare, beetroot, bortsch, grilled salmon, roast partridge with mushrooms, potato chips and salad, hot meringue pudding with an ice in the middle, and mulled claret.

Shir Ahmad
(
mf
): Madame Jacks where she is? (
dim
) She is pretty lady.

Jacks
: She could not come.

Shir Ahmad
(
roaring ff
): WHY NOT? (
Purring furiously mf
) I am very angree, (
cr
) very angree.

We played bridge afterwards, but could not finish a rubber, as Shir Ahmad continually left the table to illustrate his stories by acting. The history of the Afghan royal family took half an hour, in which it transpired that Shir Ahmad's cousinship to both Amanullah and the present king was due to its founder's having had 120 children. After the next hand, he proceeded to Amanullah's tour of Europe. Attended by various noble Italians they were in a box at the Roman opera.

(
m
) Italian lady she sit beside me. She is (
eyes blazing ff
) big lady, yah! great? no, fat. (
mf
) She more fat than Madame Egypt [the Egyptian Ministress] and her breast is (
cr
) too big. (
mf
) It fall out of box, so. Much diamonds and gold on it. (
pp
) I am frightened. I see if it shall be in my face (
f
) I suffocate.

The scene moved to the State Banquet at Buckingham Palace.

(
m
) Prince of Wales he talk to me. (
p
) I tell him, “Your Royal High-ness (
ff
) you are fool! (
roaring
) You are FOOL!” (
m
) Prince of Wales he say, (
p
) “Why am I fool?” (
m
) I tell him, “Sir, because you steeple-jump. It is dangerous, (
cr
) dangerous, (
p
) English peoples not pleased if Your Royal Highness die.” (
m
) King he hear. He tell Queen, “Mary, His Excellency call our son fool”. He very angree, (
cr
) very angree. (
mf
) Queen she ask me why her son fool. I say because he steeple-jump. Queen say to me, (
dim
) “Your Excellency, Your Excellency, you are right”. (
cr
) you are right”, (
m
) Queen thank me. King thank me.