The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron Page B

loving slave will endeavour to perform. This house is your house. May I be your sacrifice.”
    â€œMay the shadow of Your Excellency never grow less.”
    He is a grave old man, sitting in the ceremonial way, with his legs under him, his hands hid, and his eyelids dropped, while we sprawl about the carpets like babies out of arms. Seventeen years ago, he says, four Russians came here; before and since they have never seen a Frank. His son Ismail sits beside him, a delicate child, who was so ill a few years ago that his father went to Meshed to pray for him.
    For medicine Christopher has taken a dose of opium and a bowl of liquid black honey. It is the best we can do.
    Zinjan
,
October 22nd
.—“Grand Hotel—Town Hall” again.
    The long descent to Miana grew increasingly tedious as that place refused to appear. A shepherd-boy dressed like Darius asked us for a “papyrus”, meaning the Russian word for cigarette. We were often addressed in Russian at the tea-houses along the road, but it seemed strange to hear it up in these remote hills. The muleteers and Abbas smoked their midday pipe in a lonely blockhouse, which was the only house we passed in twenty miles. When Miana came in sight the horses quickened, though it was still two hours away. After crossing a broad river-bed, we entered the town from the west.
    We might have dropped from heaven. People rushedfrom their thresholds. A crowd besieged us. I took the brunt of the Civil Police. Christopher called on the Road Police, to which Abbas belongs, and returned with its captain. He was extremely suspicious.
    â€œDid you photograph anything on the road?”
    â€œYes,” answered Christopher blandly, “a delicious old stone, a ram in fact, at Saoma. Really, aga, you ought to go and look at it yourself.”
    His suspicions were not allayed when Abbas confirmed the truth of this statement.
    The muleteers of course had been told to collect more money than was due to them. Christopher gave them one of his Persian visiting cards, and suggested they should either knock their employer down or complain to the British Consul in Tabriz. We hopped into a lorry, reached here at one in the morning, and were given the box-room to sleep in. This morning I killed sixteen bugs, five fleas, and a louse in my sleeping-bag.
    Christopher is in a sad state. His legs are swollen up to the knee and covered with water blisters. We have taken seats in a car which leaves here this afternoon, and should reach Teheran by midnight.

PART III

    PART III
    Teheran, October 25th
.—A telegram from Rutter, which has been waiting for me, says the Charcoal-Burners were leaving Beyrut on the 21st. As this was sent off a week before the 21st, there is still no proof that they have even reached Marseilles. Now, I suppose, I ought to wait here till they arrive, or till I hear they never will. But it is a tantalising waste of time when winter is so close.
    We are living in the Coq d’Or, a pension kept by M. and Mme. Pitrau and overrun with their pets. Pitrau used to be chef to the Japanese ambassador; he started his career as kitchen-boy to Lord Derby in Paris. The de Bathes are here too, with Karagozlu, their Turkish sheep-dog.
    Christopher has gone to the nursing-home, where his legs are swathed in plaster bandages. These must not be moved for ten days, and even then it may take a month before the sores heal. The fleas of Azerbaijan are a formidable enemy.
    I went to the Gulistan, where the Shah gives public audience, a fantasy of eccentric XIXth-century tiles and cut-glass stalactites. The Peacock Throne is well suited to such an environment; only the jewelled and enamelled relief of a lion below the seat looks old enough to have formed part of the original throne from Delhi. There is also another throne, which the Kajars brought from Shiraz and which is kept in a sort of Durbar hall open to the garden. This takes the form of a platform supported on figures, and