In Xanadu (46 page)

Tell the old man that they are delicious.'

'And your chairman has many flocks of these dogs?'

'Very many.'

'Sir, the mullah says your chairman must be very rich. But he asks one more question. You must forgive him, sir, he does not know better. He wants to know why you dye your hair blond. He says it looks very stupid. He asks why you do not leave it black like it should be. If you do not like it he thinks you should shave it off or wear a hat like other men. Sir, he does not understand....'

The following day I met Salindi outside the Id Gah at one o'clock. He had promised to take me to a matinee. I had never been to an Asian cinema, and was anyway interested to check his claim that English-language films were on show in China. I had always understood that Western films were kept well away from the People's Republic to make sure no one ever got a hint of the life enjoyed on the affluent side of the Bamboo Curtain. This idea had been confirmed by my guidebook to China which maintained that the Chinese were kept going on a cinematic diet of
The Chuang Minority Loves Chairman Mao with a Burning Love
and
The Production Brigade Celebrates the Arrival in the Hills of the Manure Collectors.
But Salindi had been telling the truth. At the Kashgar Odeon (or whatever name it went by) two films were currently being shown. One was advertised by pictures of the familiar 'Happy Peasant' variety, and that film might well have been about manure collectors. But there was no mistaking the second film. It was
Dr No.
We bought two tickets and went inside. The film had just begun.

The auditorium was not large by English standards, but was
packed
full. The audience consisted entirely of Uigur men and all were in a great state of excitement. It seemed not to matter that very few had seats, and had to sit on a floor glazed with spittle. Going to the cinema was clearly a great treat, and everyone was determined to enjoy themselves whether or not conditions were perfect, indeed whether they could see or hear anything at all. I assume this because the Uigurs can in fact have understood almost nothing of what was going on. The film had been dubbed out of its original English, not into Turki but into French, which cannot have aided comprehension greatly. And, although there were subtitles, this also did not greatly help. The Uigur subtitles were placed at the bottom of the frame, beneath those in Tibetan and Chinese, and because of a technical error in the projecting box, all of these had disappeared below the screen and now rested on the backs of the heads of the people in the front two rows. This same error also deprived Sean Connery and Joseph Wiseman of their heads, which were projected beyond the screen and could just be seen, along with everything else from the top of the frame, wildly distorted at the front of the hall.

Despite all these irritations, the Uigurs were tolerant. There was an excited murmur every time a character bent down and his face could be fleetingly glimpsed on the screen, and the Muslim audience behaved with remarkable restraint during the sex scenes. Even Ursula Andress coming out of the sea, enough to craze the most worldly-wise Western audience, failed to move the Uigurs to any really dramatic behaviour, although this may have been because none of the audience had ever seen the sea (Kashgar is further from it than any other town in the world) and so were distracted from the more inflammatory aspects of the sequence. It may also have had something to do with the fact that the more inflammatory parts of Ursula Andress's body had missed the top of the screen and could only be seen indistinctly (if hugely enlarged) on the front wall.

There was, in fact, only one scene in the film which really impressed the Uigurs. This was when James Bond wakes up to find a large and very hairy tarantula crawling up his crotch and making for his torso. There cannot be many tarantulas in Kashgar, but the audience still got the gist of what was happening. They went berserk. As the spider crawled upwards the background murmur in the cinema got louder and louder. At the moment Bond tossed the beast off his chest and onto the floor, crushing it with his shoe, the cinema exploded. The Uigurs rose from their seats and bawled
'Allah-i-Akbar'
(God is all powerful). A very old man next to me took off his shoe and started thumping the floor with it. Hats were thrown in the air. Urchins made wolf whistles. It was like the winning goal in the Cup Final. After that, even the twenty megaton nuclear explosion in the SPECTRE headquarters came as bit of an anticlimax.

Coming out of the cinema, I noticed for the first time a winter nip in the air. The Kashgar nights had been cold ever since we arrived, but now the air was beginning to blow chill during the days as well. It was, after all, mid-September and summer had gone.

It was time to be thinking about moving on. We had been in Kashgar ten days. The Cambridge term was due to start in three weeks. I was supposed to be changing faculties and before I returned to university was expected to have spent at least a month in earnest study of Anglo-Saxon Gospel Books. It all seemed very far away and very unimportant, but nonetheless left me with a nagging feeling of guilt. Reminded of England by the chilly evening, I stopped by at the Kashgar Public Security Headquarters (the police station) on my way back to Chini Bagh.

It had become clear that it was going to be difficult to follow the next stage of Polo's route. The Venetian took the southernmost of the two Silk Roads leading eastwards from Kashgar, that which skirted the northern flank of the Kunlun mountains, following the line of oasis towns between the hills and the Taklimakan desert. The northern route via Urumchi and Turfan is open to foreigners, but Polo's journey crossed much more sensitive country: land disputed with India, and now used by the Chinese for the testing of their nuclear weapons (although we did not know this at the time). Permits to the area are almost impossible to obtain. Nevertheless it seemed worth having a go. Against the odds we had got out of Israel, into Iran and over the Karakoram Highway, and I saw no reason not to try fate a fourth time.

My interview with the Chief of Police was surprising in every way except for its ultimate failure. The chief was a small, elfish Han Chinaman, who spoke good English, said he admired the British Constitution and offered me tea to prove it. We crippled each other with courtesies. I said how much I admired the triumphant achievements of the People's Republic, and he returned by complimenting in generous terms the achievements of Winston Churchill, who he seemed to believe was still our Prime Minister. I remarked how I was enjoying seeing Kashgar, and he replied by apologizing for the stubborn, ignorant natives of the Sinkiang Autonomous Region. He promised that by the time I next visited Kashgar the place would at long last have been modernized: the last of the old bazaars would have been swept away, cars and bicycles would be everywhere and camels and donkeys would be banished for ever I applauded the scheme with enthusiasm. How nice Kashgar would look with a bit more concrete and the odd flyover. Slowly
I
moved the conversation round to the possibility of a permit, I told him about Marco Polo. What a fine symbol he was of East-West cooperation!
I
showed him the Cambridge letters and echoed how the journey would bring China and Great Britain into ever closer fraternal relations. He nodded sagely. I hinted darkly that
I
might have a word with Winston when I got back, and we would see what we could do about a word of commendation to Peking.

The police chief evidently did not believe a word
I
said. He rose from his seat, shook my hand and wished me luck. Sadly, he said, unless I had relations along the road it was beyond his jurisdiction to grant a permit, but he knew that the Chinese International Travel Service would be delighted to help. He showed me the location of the CITS office on the map then showed me out. I caught the CITS just before closing time. The entire staff, which exists solely for aiding foreign tourists, boasted not one English speaker. I battled on in pidgin Turki. The CITS was unable to grant me a permit unless
I
first had a letter of introduction from the Chief of the Public Security Corps.
I
returned to the police station. I explained what
I
wanted. The officer at reception apologized. He was very sorry, but the police chief had just been taken ill and would be unable to see me. Had I thought of going to Urumchi and trying the police chief there?

I returned to Chini Bagh, defeated. It was clearly going to be impossible to get along the southern Silk Road legally.

It was a bad night.
I
was first woken by a loud clattering noise outside the window, and looking at my watch
I
saw that it was four a.m.

Crash-bang-crash-clatter-crash! Still three-quarters asleep I pulled on my
charwal chemise
and went out into the corridor. Mick was already halfway to the door.

'Did it wake you too?* I asked.

'Nah.
I
haven't gone to bed yet.'

Haven't gone to bed? It's four o'clock in the morning.' 'Yeh.'

'What were you up to?'

He flashed a glazed grin. Smokin' the pipe of peace.'

His pupils were the size of soup plates.

We padded outside and searched for the cause of the noise. Round the back of the consulate, immediately under my window, we found two pigs enthusiastically jumping up and down on top of an old rubbish bin.

'Some whacko's tabbed those goddamn pigs,' said Mick.

'What?'

That, fatso, is bacon on acid.'

We chased the pigs away then I went back to bed. Four o'clock in the morning was no time for freak jokes. Nor was six o'clock. Less than two hours after the pigs finally desisted from their snufflings. Madam Curd appeared on her morning visit. She hammered relentlessly on the door for five minutes, then began to break the thing down. Too tired to make even a token protest, I opened up and bought all the yoghurt she could sell me. It seemed a small price for being left in peace.

Beck in bed I found to my surprise that despite being shattered and semi-comatose I was still incapable of getting to sleep. I tossed and turned, counted sheep, counted pigs, listed vicious ways of incapacitating Madam Curd - but all to no avail. I gave up and went off to have a shower. But here lay only further frustration. The hotel was owned and run by an organ of the Central Government, and so (like everything else official) it worked on Peking Time. This ran two hours behind Sinkiang time, and was quite ill-suited to the region. According to Peking Time, dawn is at half past nine in the morning, and sunset takes place sometime towards midnight. In this manner the hands of the Central Committee, which manipulate everything in China, turn even the shower knobs of Chini Bagh. I arrived at the bath house to find it closed. In Peking it was still only five a.m. The showers were not due to open for another three hours.