THE ROAD TO TEHERAN
By J. R. GLORNEY BOLTON HE Iranian doctor was adamant. He would not look at my certificate of vaccination or inoculation against plague typhoid. My ship had left Bombay only six days before- d. Within so short a time he could not tell what was rminating in my body. He would keep me incarcerated an island until he could convince the Shah's representative Bushire that a traveller from India was fit at last to set upon the mainland of Iran. So I made my final protest followed my gaoler into a chugging motor-boat. The Gulf s choppy. We had four miles to go.
"You should study Esperanto," said my gaoler. "If only Englishmen of Bombay studied Esperanto they would ye no difficulty in understanding the medical regulations Iran. We have seen your medical regulations, M'sieur. ey don't make sense. Here we are—all suspicious of each er because we have no common language, no Esperanto. t's an Arab dhow, and the big boat is a Russian trading the poppy. And the Russians, M'sieur, have no one to speak in Bushire. No one learns our beautiful Persian. Why ould they? You say that the motor-engine is making you -sick. But we have still a mile to go. You are sea-sick. e Esperanto for sea-sickness is . . .
“M'sieur, the water is shallow. The boat can go no further. U have only three hundred yards to wade. You will find a ck for the night. Perhaps you are right when you say that gs might be managed better. No beer, no light at night, four at bridge. We are backward in some ways, M'sieur.
t please forget that you can swim. The sea is full of sharks. e sentries in Bushire have orders to shoot.. I shall return (grow. But what an opportunity we two international perators have missed: I should have left you with my peranto grammar." in the morning I waded with my possessions to the chugging tor-boat. The doctor accompanied me to the Chief of ce. We exchanged flowery compliments and drank coffee. eft Bushire without an Esperanto grammar, but with im- ng documents which, the Chief of Police told me, would ensure an uninterrupted passage from the coast to Teheran. I was able to travel some thirty miles before I got into trouble with the authorities again. It was in the small hours of Easter Sunday, 1930, that my car drove through the deserted street of Shiraz on its way to Persepolis. At sunrise the vast pillars of a dead capital broke across the horizon. They had the indifferent silence of a New York skyscraper. In a valley stood the tomb of Darius, once called the Great. The land was rocky and bare.
A long low cloud, as of dust, hovered in the distance. It grew larger and took shape. A concourse of horsemen and camel-drivers approached Persepolis. Men walked with their burdens of goats or cages filled with fowl or hens. Women carried their young. Their pace was regular and quick. They were Kashgai tribesmen moving across the highlands of Iran in search of new pasture. A symphony of sound and move- ment swept along the road and left Persepolis to the perpetual care of the winds and the scorching sun. The Kashgai tribes- men cared nothing for a white-skinned, topee-hatted spectator at the ruins. They care nothing for Darius, nothing for Alexander. Conquerors come and go. To the end of their time on earth the Kashgai tribesmen will take their women and their cattle with them on seasonal migrations for grass and water.
After Persepolis came Isfahan, the mediaeval jewel of Iran, and I could not leave the city until I had pad my respects to an Armenian Archbishop, whose cathedral and palace were situated about four miles away. The Archbishop received me at the end of a large hall. His appearance was venerable, his beard flowing, his demeanour grave and fully archiepiscopal. He spoke in English ; a slow, sonorous, latinised English. He was glad, he said, to speak the language of a powerful people. He did not know which was the greater achievement—an English-speaking India or an English-speaking America—but he was sure that, in spite of the profound differences between them, language made it impossible for an Englishman ever to be at war with an American or an Indian. Yet he was glad that the educated Iranian spoke French and not English. Paris, he said, was far away. The less French policy intruded upon Iran the more anxious would be the educated people to perfect their French. "Here in Isfahan we shall never see a French soldier. But who knows when events will compel the British and the Russians to meet upon the soil of Iran?
Then the Archbishop—I thought reluctantly—led the con- versation away from politics. He questioned me about social conditions in Bombay. "Bombay is in my diocese," he said. "All India is in.my diocese." He drank a cup of coffee in silence. "It is possible," he said, "that you have visited Peking." "No, your ' 'race, I have never visited Peking." Again the Archbishop was silent. At last he said: "Peking is also in my diocese."
Teheran, even in the summer of 1930, was infected with a sense of insecurity. Near the foot of the Demavend are scattered the bungalows and compounds of the foreign legations. Teheran is the listening-post of Western Asia. Mightier even than the shadow of the Demavend was the shadow of Soviet Russia, the country I was about to visit for the first time. Men spoke of the day when Russians would advance from Azerbaizan and Englishmen from the Gulf, to meet as enemies in the highlands. They have met on the high- lands, but they have met in comradeship. The Shah's railway is completed at last, but there is no immediate fear that its bombing will imperil the golden dome of Qum. The people of Shiraz still pay their tribute to the spirit of poetry at the tomb of Hafiz. The Kashgai tribesmen wander un- molested across Iran. An Archbishop anticipates the day when he can visit his faithful co-religionists in Peking, and he has no reason, perhaps, to regret that British, Russian and Iranian officers are speaking to each other in the clear-minded French language.
And if a little doctor, my gaoler at Bushire, arrives at a British or Russian camp and waves an Esperanto grammar, I hope that he will be generously received. He had a passion for peace.
Previous page
