In Xanadu (32 page)

'You do like bottom? You are bottom fan?'

'Yes.'

'All English people like bottom.'

'Oh yes,' said the second customs official. All Pakistani people like Imran Khan, all English people like Botham. He is your famous English cricketer.'

The guards let us change in their hut. I wore a blue
charwal chemise
that I had bought that morning in Zahedan, Laura her beloved pink T-shirt and flowery Laura Ashley trousers; she put on two pearl earrings and made a neat little bonfire of her
chador
and veil. When she was ready we set off with Ramesh, Nazir and Joe to find some transport. Thanks to the delays of the morning we had missed the weekly bus by seven hours and the next train did not run until Sunday, three days away. We agreed to club together and hire a taxi to take us the six hundred and fifty kilometres to Quetta.

The village of Taftan lay half a kilometre from the customs compound, and we smelt our way towards it following the odour of spicy cooking in the evening breeze. After the horror of the desert heat, that evening's reprieve was especially lovely. The sun sank huge and red over the Koh-i-Suhan, and in the villages the people were lighting their lamps and squatting outside their houses cooking over sweet-smelling dung fires.

The village was poorer than any we had seen in Persia, but to European eyes it was infinitely preferable. The faces of the men were craggy and rugged, and had none of the effeminacy of the Persians. There was a restrained dignity in their bearing. They regarded us with only casual curiosity and with none of the self-demeaning humility of most Indians. They wore long flowing
charwal chemise,
of a more generous and baggy cut than those of the Afghans, and many of the women had their heads uncovered.

Nazir led us through the alleyways of the village. While the women worked slaughtering chickens and thumping grain in great granite quems the size of boulders, the men sat around in groups of three or four smoking
bidi
cigarettes and staring silently into charcoal braziers. Others engaged in less peaceful pursuits. We were still in a Muslim country, governed by strict Islamic law, but judging from the shrieks of Baluchi laughter that emerged from some huts there was a lot more alcohol around than we ever saw in Iran.

Without warning Nazir dived ferret-like into one such hut and from within we could hear the sound of haggling. He emerged with a very wobbly-looking Baluchi youth. 'It is settled,' he said. The youth tottered off and we followed, intrigued as to quite what it was Nazir had succeeded in settling. We were led along several more dark pathways between groups of huts, and finally drew to a halt in an enclosure at the far end of the village.

In the middle something large and rectangular crouched beneath a covering sheet. Laura and I looked at each other, baffled. Then, with a single movement, the Baluchi hauled back the tarpaulin and unveiled a pristine new Toyota pick-up truck.

After days of venerable, crowded buses which had lost their last shock absorber long before the Revolution, the pick-up smacked of wicked luxury. The Baluchi caressed its bonnet lovingly, then produced a cloth from his
charwal chemise
and wiped clean the spot he had just touched. It was a magnificent vehicle. Its speedometer promised wild, illegal speeds, its two rows of oatmeal-covered seats looked more welcoming than any double bed. There was a cavernous boot. A heater which worked. A reliable-looking engine. A radio. We loaded up our luggage with the same excitement as a child putting batteries in a new toy at Christmas. The Baluchi hiccupped and turned the ignition. The pick-up purred into life. We set off.

There followed one of the most exhilarating hours of the eniire trip. We shot crazily through the crowded streets of Taftan, pursued by a pack of hobbling beggars, before tearing off into open country, raising half the Baluchistan desert into a thick cloud in our wake. The road was terrible, reflecting the state of Irano-Pak relations, but that only added to the excitement. The Toyota nose-dived into great potholes then lurched out again to the accompaniment of drunken cries from our driver and equally enthusiastic cheers from ourselves. We would cruise along for a few minutes, then down we would plunge into another wadi or a deep wind-eroded shell-hole before emerging into the open desert and the moonlight. All the time the radio blared loud music from Indian films which the Pakistanis enjoy just as much as their Hindu neighbours:

Verse
1:

Ek. do, wail, wail, wail

Teen, char, wail, wail, wail

(screeching instrumental interlude)

Chorus:

Shriek, shriek, HOOEE, HOOEE Shriek, shriek, HOOEE, HOOEE

(another painful instrumental interlude)

Verse
2:

Pange, che, wail, wail, wail

Sart, arht, wail, wail, wail

(third instrumental interlude)

Chorus:

Shriek, shriek, HOOEE, HOOEE Shriek, shriek, HOOEE, HOOEE

(more terrible instruments)

(Repeat for half an hour getting ever louder, and more piercing.)

Already the tedious wastes of southern Iran seemed worlds away. There the tarmac roads, the regular bus services and the taped sermons which are played during them, had largely anaesthetized any sense of adventure. This was very different. Careering at breakneck speed along a route distinguished from the open desert only by the odd, ambiguous marker-stone and the faint tyre-tracks of previous vehicles, with our safety in the hands of a drunken psychopath, we felt just as much at the mercy of fate, fortune and the elements as any Bedu caravan of Doughty.

This was, however, more of a recommendation to Laura and me than it was to the others, and after a few hours they looked distinctly raddled. Ramesh and Nazir had both made the journey many times before, and for them, as Nazir frequently pointed out in funereal tones, the journey was not an adventure, merely an irksome necessity. He treated us to a long monologue on the subject of Pakistani backwardness and corruption - there was some story of millions of Iranian rials given by the Shah for the rebuilding of the road disappearing after the Revolution. Ramesh took offence and sunk into an irritable nationalistic grump. Perhaps it was just more uncomfortable in the back. Joe's spirits had sunk, too, which was not really surprising as his head kept hitting the roof, and his growing misery channelled itself into a violent dislike of Psycho. He became convinced that 'dat mun is snoozin' at de wheel' and to keep him awake began insulting him and poking him in the ribs. The driver took revenge in the only way he could, by speeding up and making the going as rough as possible, swerving into potholes, bumping over marker-stones, and turning up the din on his radio.

Laura tried to soothe them by suggesting they look forward to the delights of Nek Kundi, the first settlement marked on the map. It was, she said, probably full of charming little restaurants offering the very best in Baluchi cuisine. That only made it worse when we arrived. As the only settlement for four hundred kilometres, the cartographer who created our map had given it the status of a provincial capital with print bold enough to imply a thriving town with hospitals, schools, cinemas and shops. Nek Kundi in fact consists of six sheds, one tea house and a
charpoy.
There was no restaurant and the inhabitants refused to sell us any food. We sat in a circle on the carpet of the tea house and dipped some bread we had bought in Taftan into a tin of cold baked beans belonging to Ramesh. A little boy threw stones at us. It wasn't quite the feast we had hoped for. Laura called to Psycho that he should join us for
cay
.

'Leave him’ said Ramesh. 'He is bastard.'

'He is driving, he needs
cay.'

'He is bastard. Really he thinks something dirty.'

'Mun's a bum,' agreed Joe. 'He snoozin' at de wheel.'

'Really bastard,' said Nazir. 'When we say go fast, he go slow. We say go slow, he go fast We say drink
cay,
he go piss.'

'Really something bastard.'

They got back into the pick-up with the same enthusiasm as three convicted criminals being led to the scaffold. Although sleep was impossible, Laura and I sank into a state of exhausted, befuddled semi-consciousness, and thereafter the night took on a confused and even surreal quality. Sometime soon after midnight, we ran into a herd of camels. There must have been nearly a hundred of them and the first thing we saw was the dust cloud they raised looming ahead of us in the headlights like a bank of swirling sea fog. They were running towards us along the road and when we slowed down, you could hear the thundering of their hooves on the ground long before you could see the camels themselves. Then they were all around us, banging into the pick-up, muzzling its sides, lolloping along aimlessly with the whole desert to wander in, yet pressing around us as closely as a herd of cows in a Dorset lane.

Then, at about three o'clock in the morning, in the middle of the Baluchistan desert, we ran into a speed trap. Psycho was jolting along at one hundred kilometres an hour when from behind a sand bank a police Jeep pulled out and drove into the middle of the road. We braked and the pick-up skidded to a halt only a few inches from the police vehicle. There was no question of a speeding ticket and a telling off; while we sat watching, helpless, four policemen seized Psycho and set about him with
lathi.
They beat him down onto his knees, delivering terrible blows to his ribs, his shoulders and his hands, which he clasped about his head. The violence took place in complete silence; there was no explanation from the policemen, no cry from Psycho, no protestations from us. Then they doffed their caps at Laura and I and returned to their Jeep. Psycho was on the ground, sobbing. Then as we looked on, he got up, wiped away the tears with the back of his hand and drove on. For two minutes no one said anything, then Laura, through Ramesh, asked whether he was all right.

'Why did they do that to you?'

'Because
I
am a Baluchi.'