The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron Page B

history; and when summer comes, they will rise again out of new mud bricks till history closes. Streams in purple spate swirl through the walled lanes into the fields, and out into the desert. The track itself becomes a watercourse. In a night, the poplars have lost their leaves, though the planes hold theirs for a day more. Strings of camels sway alongside us—boom goes the bull-camel’s bell—boom, and is gone. Shepherds in white tabards tack through the gale after pebble-grazing flocks. Black tents and black fleece-hats announce the Turcomans and the verge of Central Asia. So this is the Golden Road. Eight centuries ago, the minaret of Khosrugird watched the traffic as it watches us. Sabzevar is two miles further. The caravanserai produces kabob, curds, pomegranates, and a bottle of local claret.
    Soon after dark, the lorry’s lights went out. That feckless couple of record-breakers, Mahmud and Ismail, had not a match nor a wick between them. I had both, but the defect was not easily repaired, and instead of reaching Meshed, we have had to put up here.
    The home, curse it, of Omar Khayam.
    Meshed
(3100
ft
.),
November 16th
.—The distance from Nishapur to Meshed is ninety miles. I supposed I should be here by midday.
    But my beautiful Speed Waggon could not go, and it was nine o’clock before I found a seat in a British Bedford pilgrim bus. At Kadam Gah, sixteen milesdown the road, the driver obligingly stopped while I walked up to the shrine. This pretty little octagon, surmounted by a bulbous dome, was built in the middle of the XVIIth century, and commemorates a resting-place of the Imam Riza. It sits on a platform beneath a rocky cliff, surrounded by tall umbrella-pines and tinkling streams. The sun struck the tiles, which glittered blue and pink and yellow against the dark foliage and lowering sky. A bearded seyid in a black turban asked for money. Hopping and tapping, the halt and blind converged with terrible rapidity. I fled back to the bus.
    That vehicle was carrying twice its proper number of passengers, and their luggage as well. Exhilarated at the prospect of his journey’s end the driver tore downhill at forty miles an hour, lurched across a stream-bed, and had just rebounded against the opposite slope, when to my great surprise the off front wheel ran back towards me, buckled the running-board with a crunch, and escaped into the desert. “Are you English?” asked the driver in disgust. “Look at that.” An inch of British steel had broken clean through.
    It took an hour and a half to fit another joint. The pilgrims huddled down with their backs to the wind, men beneath their yellow sheepskins, women veiled in black shrouds. Three chickens, tied to each other by the leg, enjoyed a temporary freedom. But their clucking boded little hope. When we started again, the driver was seized with a palsy of caution. He proceeded at five miles an hour, stopping at every caravanserai to refresh his nerves with tea; till at last we reached a small pass and a new view.
    Tiers of firelit mountains encircled the horizon. Night, and a surf of clouds, were rolling in from the east. Down in the plain, a blur of smoke, trees, andhouses announced Meshed, the holy city of the Shiahs. A gold dome flashed, a blue dome loomed, out of the cold autumnal haze. Century by century, since the Imam Riza was interred beside the Caliph Harun-al-Rashid, this vision has refreshed the desert-weary sight of pilgrims, merchants, armies, kings, and travellers—to become the last hope of several dozen fretful passengers in a damaged motor-bus.
    A number of cairns marked the sacred vantage. The male pilgrims descended to pray, turning their backs on Meshed in favour of Mecca. The driver descended to collect his dues, and since the husbands were engaged, perforce approached their wives. A screech of protest, rising to a furious and sustained crescendo, blasted the moment of thanksgiving. On prayed the pious