In Xanadu (51 page)

Sir Henry Yule, in his footnote to this passage, writes rather disapprovingly that this 'may refer to the custom of temporary marriages which seem to prevail in most towns of Central Asia which are the halting places of caravans, and the morals of which are much on a par with those of our own seaport towns, and from analagous causes. Kashgar is also noted in the East for its
chaukan,
young women with whom the traveller may readily form an alliance for the duration of his stay, be it long or short.'

As there seemed to be
no
chaukan
available at supper, Louisa and I were forced to sit next to the young expert in glaciation. He was an appalling bore.

German: My father is in semi-conductors. I too vood have gone into semi-conductors, had I not discovered moraines.

Louisa:   How interesting! What is a moraine?

German: Tzere are three principal kinds of moraine. Tze first is called a lateral moraine, tze second a medial moraine. Some people are interested in lateral and medial moraines. I am not. I am interested in
terminal moraines!

Louisa:   Gosh.

German: Terminal moraines are tze deposit left when tze rock fragments in a glacier are left stranded by tze melting ice pack. For tzis to happen it is very important zhat ze glacier is neither retreating nor advancing. It must be stationary! Stationary I say!

WD:      Some more tea?

German: However if tze ice advances
over
a terminal moraine, tze sediments become contorted and folded.
(Much gesticulation.)
Zis produces structures resembling tectonic deformation. Such a feature is known as a push moraine. Push moraines are BEAUTIFUL! BEAUTIFUL!

(Rambles on at great length and tedium.)

We were saved from more of this by an envoy of the governor who came in and announced that all our company was requested by the Keriya Communist Party at the Keriya People's Hall. It was, on this occasion at least, an invitation we could not refuse.

The governor was being characteristically modest when he called the performance that he laid on for us a dancing display. It was Kenya's answer to the Royal Variety Show, an extravaganza of local Uigur farming talent, comprising singing, dancing, strumming on balalaikas, a little light operetta, and some curious slapstick comedy sketches. It was rounded off by a little Uigur pantomime whose meaning remained obscure. The show was an interesting reflection of Sinkiang's position as a cultural crossroads: the gestures of the dance seemed to be drawn from India, the twanging balalaika from Russia, the costumes and facial features from China. But as entertaining as the performance itself was the audience of excited Uigurs who, led by a row of mentally handicapped children at the rear of the hall, expressed their enjoyment in a chorus of hoots, whistles and inarticulate (if appreciative) gargling noises. The governor seemed to be enjoying the show more than anyone and himself put on a splendid performance: he showered us with sweets, melons, nuts and drinks, asked us at the end of every act whether we were enjoying ourselves, and enthusiastically offered his wife around the junior German academics. After nearly three hours of this, the cast appeared for a last bow, the audience exploded into tumultuous applause, and the handicapped children began weeping. We filed out led by the governor, who invited us all back to the
han
dining hall for a quick glass of
mao tai.
We excused ourselves saying we were tired, and crossed the compound to our roon.

The door was open and the light was on. Two men were inside bending over my rucksack. I rushed in, then stopped. The men were not burglars as I had first assumed. They were Chinese Public Security guards.

There followed a very unenjoyable three hours at the Keriya Public Security Bureau. We played ignorant foreigners. We played outraged Englishmen. We played harmless idiots. We threatened and cajoled, flashed our letters, smiled and flirted. We outlined the nasty things that would happen to them all when our friend the District Governor came to hear about our arrest. We listed the honours that would be heaped on the officers for helping our expedition. I went and fetched an interpreter and we went through the whole rigmarole again, this time in Chinese. Despite now being mutually comprehensible, we made no visible progress. They repeated their position over and over again. We had illegally entered a forbidden area. We had no permit. We must be fined and sent back to Kashgar. But gradually, as our claims to influence grew, a seed of doubt lodged itself in their minds. Perhaps the imminent royal visit would be called off. Perhaps Britain really would break diplomatic relations. Sometime after midnight we wrung our first concession. Before they deported us they would telegraph their superiors in Urumchi. By one we got them to agree to a second concession. They would let us go to bed, and wait until the next morning before telegraphing or pursuing their inquiries any further. Everyone was tired. Everything could be sorted out amicably the following moming.

We went back to the
han,
packed our bags and went to sleep for four hours. At five we were up and creeping past the Public Security Bureau like naughty children off to raid a larder. Using the tickets the governor had bought us, we got aboard the dawn bus. The checkpoint the far side of Keriya was unmanned. Feeling very uncourageous and more than a little worried as to the consequences of our escape, we juddered off out of the oasis and back into the cold wastes of the Taklimakan.

I dreamt that I was swimming across a sea of golden syrup. The air overhead was a pleasing shade of orange and the syrup was warm and pleasantly sticky. At First I swam happily, but I slowly became aware that I was sinking, or rather being sucked down. Surprised and rather alarmed, it dawned on me that I had managed to swim into a whirlpool. I made a mental note: watch out for whirlpools the next time you go swimming in seas of golden syrup. Sadly there was little chance of doing anything constructive to save the situation. I was shooting downwards in a perfect swirling spiral, dizzy and sickly fast. Suddenly the swirling stopped and I realized that although I was still covered in golden syrup, I was now sitting trussed up in a dentist's chair. Everything was as a dentist's surgery should be, except that the dentist, whose back was turned to me, was dressed in a strangely familiar black cowl. The dentist turned around and came towards me clutching a huge pair of pliers. She said: 'Now William, this won't hurt,' and as the pliers plunged into the recesses of my mouth I suddenly realized that the dentist was Laura.

I woke up screaming. Feeling the front of my mouth with my tongue, I realized that the loose front tooth which had been worrying me since Kashgar was now very wobbly indeed.

'Are you all right?' asked Lou.

'What do you mean?'

'You've been whimpering for the last five minutes.'

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I just saw Laura.'

'Laura?'

'Yes. She was coming at me with a pair of pliers.'

Lou, bemused, shook her head, and returned to
The White Hotel.
Around us our fellow passengers were beginning to wake up. It was very cold and the Uigurs had come fully equipped with sheepskins and massive fur pelts
which
gave
the bus a rather neolithic look. Some of the Uigurs nibbled seeds, others cut slices of watermelon with savage-looking knives. All smoked fat cigarettes emitting a smell suspiciously like, hashish. The geography textbooks have us believe that hemp is cultivated in China exclusively for its rope-making qualities. This is nonsense. As our journey demonstrated, the Uigurs are far from blind to the ability of hashish to make a long, boring bus journey pass in a pleasant state of euphoric semi-dormancy. It is to the Sinkiang People's Autobus Company what McEwen's Export is to British Rail.

The disadvantages of travelling with a busload of stoned Uigurs only became apparent later. An hour after sunrise the early winter winds began to blow and by noon they had turned into quite respectable sandstorms. The windows were shut and everyone waited to see what would happen. Polo's
The Travels
contains descriptions of many of the horrors of the desert, but does not mention sandstorms. This is surprising as the
buran
of
the Taklimakan are some of the most ferocious of any desert in the world. Of the descriptions of
buran
left by those who experienced them, none is as evocative as the much-quoted passage in von Le Coq's
Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkistan:

Quite suddenly the sky grows dark
...
a moment later the storm bursts with appalling violence. Enormous masses of sand, mixed with pebbles, are forcibly lifted up, whirled around and dashed down on man and beast; the darkness increases and strange clashing noises mingle with the roar and howl of the storm. The whole happening is like hell let loose,...

Nothing quite as bad as von Le Coq's
buran
hit
us,
but
as
the
wind increased in strength the sand from the
dunes
began
to
drift onto the road.
At
first this simply
slowed
us
down,
but gradually
it
began
to
make
the
going
almost
impossible.
The bus
finally
drew
to
a
halt
in
front
of
a
huge
drift
thirty
miles outside
Keriya.
The
driver
covered
his
mouth
with
a
rag
and
disappeared outside with a shovel. A handful of the more
compos mentis
Uigurs and
I
went out to help him; the rest stayed in the bus puffing at their reefers. We shovelled away at the sand and placed wooden sleepers under the wheels to give the tyres some purchase. It worked. After an hour of hard labour the bus moved on, but drew to a halt only five miles further up the road. Again we all got out and shovelled.