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in a nearby villaqe where the Khan was seated on a rug on the
floor, and it turned out that he was a worried man. Drawn up
outside was a truck with a very large safe on it. "What do the
Rules of War say?" he asked "This safe is consigned to the
manager of the bank in Bujnurd. but I am certain that it is
packed with arms for the defenders, and the driver has no key.
Am I entitled to detain it?" Forbearing to point out the
irrelevance of the "Rules of War" in the circumstances, I opined
that no harm would be done if he held the safe until someone
appeared to open it for inspection. His next question was more
difficult. "Was Mr. Churchill in favour of his rising, or not?"
There was no point in telling him that Vice-Consuls in foreign
parts were not empowered to state categorica 11y the views of the
Prime Minister, so I suggested that, since Britain and Russia
were at war with Nazi Germany, our main interest in the area was
that nothing should interfere with the smooth transit of war
supplies through Persia,and that for this reason Mr. Churchill
would be unlikely to look favourably on local rebellions and such
like disturbances. I left him looking glum and shortly after he
called off his rebellion.
It proved an interesting trip, because it was into mountains
previously unknown to me but which were fairly central to the
area in which I should have to operate. We started off on ponies
which we extracted with difficulty from the Bashi Bazouk's
stable. The difficulty arose because the stable had not been
mucked out for months and the ponies' heads were almost touching
the roof, so that we had to dig them out to get them through the
door! However, the manure had been desiccated by the dry air and
was quite inoffensive. The ponies, although they had not been
exercised for months, carried us nobly up 3 to 4 thousand feet of
mountain to a nomad camp in deep snow. The black goats-hair tent
was too low to stand up in, and so full of smoke from the fire in
the middle that one had to keep one's head as close to the ground
as possible to breathe - and breathing involved inhaling
quantities of opium smoke. The Bashi Bazouk, having plenty of
vodka, amused himself by making fun of the smokers : "The world",
he told them, "has three sorts of dog. There is the small,'
squeaky, excitable sort that yaps 'duzd', duzd, duzd' (thief!
thieH thief!), and the big, tough, burly dog which~"6arks 'Ku,
ku, j^u ' (Where? where? where?) and finally the lean, sad, mangy
opium-smoking dog, and that barks 'raft, raft, raff (Gone!
gone! gone!) The smokers protested that they needed their opium
and it gave them strength. "Yes" said the B.B. "When you've had
your pipe you go wood-cutting, and you climb twice as far up the
mountain as anyone else, and cut twice the load of wood : on the
way down you meet a tiger, kill it with your axe and throw it up
on top of the load!" "Well..." said the smokers, looking
sheepish, "Yes, you do" said the B.B. "but you do it all sitting
down!"