In Xanadu (34 page)

We
dropped
Ramesh
and
Nazir
at
a
hotel,
and
got
back
into
the pick-up.
Ramesh
went
in
to
look
for
a
room,
but
Nazir
came
up to
the
window,
and
clasped
our
hands.

He
said:
‘I
will
never
forget
you.'

'It
was
good
to
meet
you,
Nazir.'

‘You
do
not
know
what
it
is
to
me
to
have
met
you.
Really you
do
not.
Never
has
anyone
cared
so
much
about
my
life
and my
misfortune.'

'It
was
a
lot
of
fun
listening.'

'I
have
little
joy
now.'

"We'll
go
for
another
nightmare
drive
sometime,
don't
you worry.'

"You
cannot
know
how
much
I
enjoyed
talking
to
you.'
'I
enjoyed
it
too.' 'Always
I
will
remember.'

'We'll
organize
a
reunion
in
Zahedan
and
eat
some
more omelettes.' 'May
Allah
protect
you.'

'Good luck in Baluchistan.' "Write to me.'
I
promise.'

We shook hands one last time and Nazir kissed me on the cheeks. We drove to the station and paid off dear old Psycho. It was all curiously moving.

We bought tickets to Lahore. The train did not leave until mid-afternoon, but exploring Quetta was out of the question. All we were capable of was collapsing. But before I did so, I had another promise to fulfil. Leaving Laura and Joe in the waiting room, stretched out on Bombay Fornicators (ingenious Anglo-Indian wicker chairs with extended arms on which you can put up your feet), I set off to find the telegraph office. Here I sent two telegrams, one to my parents to tell them that I had left Iran, another to my great aunt to tell her I had arrived in Quetta. In the late twenties and early thirties Quetta had been her home for nearly a decade while her husband was the Commander of the Western Command, India. She had been swept off her feet by a General in the Coldstream Guards and after her marriage was suddenly transported from a large, cold country house in Norfolk to the wilds of Baluchistan.

She managed the transition effortlessly. She was in many ways the conventional English memsahib, but bothered to learn fluent Urdu, and, teaching herself to paint, began wandering around the bazaars in a long white muslin dress, with an easel and a box of water colours. For years she worked away and produced a whole series of small, precise paintings of tribesmen and traders, always against the same copper-green background, always the same handsome, rugged faces wrapped in great swathes of turban, rising from a grey
charwal chemise
or the stiff-necked jackets of the Muslim Lrague.

Before the war, she returned to England, and when her husband died she moved to the Suffolk coast, where I used to visit her from Cambridge. She would sit, engulfing a chintz-covered armchair, chins wobbling, and while describing her golden Quetta days and the breaks for the Simla season, she would quietly drink me under the table. She had pickled herself, and this was the secret of her great longevity. Before luncheon, sipping at glass after glass of very strong gin and Dubonnet, nibbling at Bombay Mix, she would sink into paroxysms of giggles from which it might take five minutes to disentangle her. Then without warning her head would suddenly drop to one side, and she would fall fast asleep, snoring loudly. Often she would not wake until teatime. She got my telegram, and wrote a letter home thanking me for it in large, spidery writing, but I never saw her again. She died a fortnight after I returned, and at her funeral they draped a Union Jack over the coffin. As the body left the church they played 'Land of Hope and Glory'.

By two-thirty, after a snooze, a shower and a curried mutton cutlet, we were ready to fight our way onto the train. We came out of the half-light of the waiting room, and blinked at the dazzling brightness of the platform. It was roofed with whitewashed planks and lined with elaborate fluted columns of Sheffield steel. The roofing cast a little shade onto the platform, but it was hot and light and noisy after the waiting room, and hard on the eyes. Everyone was on the move. Scarlet-coated coolies tottered past with great mountains of luggage on their heads.
Cay
wallahs pushed trolleys along the platform and shouted
'Garam Cay! Garam Cay!'
The trolleys contained great gleaming Thermos vats, and looked like the hair-growth shells from
Heath Robinson at War.
Men selling samosas passed along the windows shoving their greasy triangles through the bars, and other salesmen passed after them offering combs, Korans, digital watches, shaving brushes, worry beads, scissors and sunglasses. There were uniformed policemen swinging
lathi,
soldiers with bulging kitbags, boys with jars of water, mullahs, groups of their pupils, sleeping-car attendants with white jackets and gleaming brass buttons.

And in the middle stood the train. The carriages looked as if they were born long before Independence, perhaps in Crewe or Derby, and had seen better, grander days. But it was impossible to believe that they had seen busier ones. Laura, Joe and I had between us good experience of Third World rail travel, but none of us had ever seen anything like the 15.30 Lahore Mail. It was far worse than the usual, mildly irritating discomfort one expected: it called to mind the total chaos of the Partition trai ns. It wasn't a matter of finding a seat, that was a hopelessly optimistic dream. Nor was there any point in fantasizing about snuggling up in that last unused bit of luggage rack. On this occasion one simply hoped to get onto the train. Already the corridors, loos, doorways and running board were all packed. We walked up and down the length of the train looking for a point of entry, then spotted a single window which had lost its bars.