[AGL] Re: Rory Stewart 's diary, the man who walked across Afghanistan and Iran, insightful

[michelemason]

It was a good 5:30am read. I thought my son might enjoy it and was 
surprised to find his mind closed and hostile. He did some time in the 
region in the Navy in the One(?) that came after desert(sp) storm. They 
transport the Marines and shot down some Iraq fighters. He had a dress 
made for me over there because he knows I'm very fond of mid-eastern 
clothing. But I could hardly imagine that his view could equal this 
man's. Never-the-less, it was, "Why would anybody do something so 
stupid." I left it at that—a little sad for him.  Of course he had 
driven out to feed for me after an all nite shift. Maybe he would be 
different with some sleep.  mm

On Aug 6, 2006, at 8:56 AM, Michael Eisenstadt wrote:

> Carolyn,
>
> This is a real fun read. We read all of it. It is better not to
> enter an unknown village in Iran with a mule. I had not known
> that and have made a note to self.
>
> The first 4 pages of Rory Stewart's $8.40 paperback The
> Places in Between can be read on one's computer at
> amazon.com
>
> Mike
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <globe at zipcon.net>
> To: "survivors' reminiscences about Austin Ghetto Daze in the 60s"
> <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>; "Michael Eisenstadt"
> <michaele at ando.pair.com>
> Cc: <austin-ghetto-list at pairlist.net>
> Sent: Saturday, August 05, 2006 5:15 PM
> Subject: Rory Stewart 's diary, the man who walked across Afghanistan 
> and
> Iran, insightful
>
>
>> His book the places in between and the Prince of the Marshes are very
>> insightful.  He repeats complicated anecdotes but has a simple good
>> solution to
>> Iraq
>> Carolyn
>>
>> Diary
>>      Rory Stewart
>>      All afternoon I watched three shadows moving beneath us. Mine in
>> front,
>> Akbar's at the rear and between us the mule's: its shadow legs, twenty
>> feet
>> long, jerking like a spider's over the glowing thorn scrub. I felt
>> happiest in
>> the afternoons. The flat glare of noon had gone but the day was not 
>> yet
>> over.
>> Staring at that shadow image of our motion and our isolation on the
>> 7000-foot
>> ridgeline, I said: 'Isn't it beautiful?'
>>
>>      'Not for me.'
>>
>>      'Why?'
>>
>>      Akbar did not reply. He often didn't reply.
>>
>>      I hadn't imagined that I would have Akbar with me when I crossed
>> Iran. I
>> planned to walk around the world, a journey which seemed to me to be 
>> very
>> simple. I was able to explain it to my five-year-old godson and he 
>> said he
>> would follow me on a map. I left my job and travelled on three 
>> dollars a
>> day,
>> like a backpacker. But I thought that my slow pace and physical 
>> contact
>> with
>> the ground would help me understand the Asian landscape better. Since 
>> I
>> would
>> be moving at an archaic speed on old pilgrimage and trade routes, or
>> passes
>> used by Alexander, and sleeping in remote villages, often 
>> inaccessible to
>> cars,
>> I hoped to develop a different view of local cultures from other
>> travellers. I
>> was also interested in what two years walking on my own would do to 
>> the
>> way I
>> thought.
>>
>>      An Iranian official met me at the Turkish border and said: 'It is
>> forbidden to walk across Iran.'
>>
>>      'But you can hitchhike, ride or cycle.'
>>
>>      'Yes, but you cannot walk.'
>>
>>      We debated the subject for a week and they finally agreed that I
>> could
>> walk, on condition that I took a Government escort. Akbar is older 
>> than
>> me. He
>> is half a civil servant and half a climber: he has reached the summit 
>> of
>> Everest. But he was not a guide because he did not know the way and 
>> he was
>> not
>> quite a companion because he walked a hundred yards in front of or 
>> behind
>> me. I
>> suspect he hated the walk. His Iranian gym shoes, with the label 
>> 'Nike by
>> Ralph
>> Lauren', rubbed his feet raw. He never complained but in the evenings 
>> I
>> saw him
>> trying various homeopathic remedies. He soaked his feet in henna until
>> they were
>> dyed purple. I can only guess why the Government wanted him with me 
>> but we
>> spent
>> every night together and he shaped my understanding of the journey. He
>> often
>> repeated the phrase: 'Iranians are famous for their hospitality and
>> generosity.'
>>
>>      In the course of three months we were differently mistrusted 
>> almost
>> every
>> night in every village. Villagers assumed that, as strangers on foot, 
>> we
>> were
>> dangerous men. So did the police. Sometimes we concealed Akbar's
>> Government
>> credentials, sometimes we emphasised them, but neither approach 
>> seemed to
>> overcome the hostility. People often said that his identity card and 
>> my
>> passport were forgeries. Nobody believed I was a foreigner. They 
>> thought I
>> was
>> only pretending to speak bad Farsi. Their fears are a reflection of 
>> the
>> violence of the Iranian countryside. A man from the north-east told us
>> that
>> four hundred Afghans with automatic weapons had kidnapped his father 
>> from
>> his
>> village a few months before and only released him for a ransom of a
>> thousand
>> dollars.
>>
>>      Many villagers assumed that we were smuggling drugs. One man, who
>> offered
>> us opium before dinner, said that in his village 70 per cent of the 
>> men
>> and
>> women smoked between two and twelve grams a day. He blamed the 
>> problem on
>> British sales of opium in the 19th century. The more aggressive 
>> aspects of
>> the
>> Government's anti-narcotics campaign have terrified villagers and some
>> would
>> not sell us bread because they were afraid they would be arrested for
>> aiding
>> drug-smugglers.
>>
>>      What we were accused of most often was digging for archaeological
>> treasures on a nearby tumulus, or in the village cemetery. A week 
>> after we
>> left
>> one village our host was arrested and charged with helping us look for
>> ancient
>> bronzes. This is a common activity. The last grave robbers in his 
>> village
>> had
>> turned up in police uniform. South of Lake Ormieh we climbed through a
>> cave in
>> which a Tehran gangster was found dead from methane asphyxiation 
>> earlier
>> in the
>> year. He had been tunnelling in secret for ten months, hoping to find
>> Scythian
>> gold.
>>
>>      In one cemetery we visited, every gravestone had been smashed. 
>> Among
>> the
>> mounds of earth were large stone rams and tigers, lying on their 
>> sides.
>> One of
>> the rams had a bow and a quiver of arrows carved on its back. 'These
>> probably
>> date from before Islam,' I said to Akbar. There was a rifle carved on 
>> the
>> other
>> side.
>>
>>      A group of four men had been slowly walking towards us and, as 
>> they
>> reached us, the leader, eyes heavy with opium, shouted in Farsi: 'You 
>> have
>> come
>> here to rob the graves. You are grave robbers. I will not let you take
>> this
>> gold. It is for us. If anyone digs here it is us. I will call the 
>> police.
>> Give
>> me your ID card.'
>>
>>      We ignored them and went back to get the mule before leaving the
>> village.
>> The men followed us shouting for a hundred yards and then 
>> disappeared. As
>> we
>> walked up the mud-slurry of the village streets, people stopped 
>> talking. I
>> saw
>> women staring at us through half-closed courtyard doors. One by one, 
>> they
>> slammed the metal gates shut as we approached. A group of young men,
>> pressing
>> themselves against a wall as the mule and the saddlebags squeezed 
>> past,
>> stared
>> into my eyes unblinking. When I was ten yards down the street one
>> muttered:
>> 'Kurdish smugglers, bringing things from Iraq.'
>>
>>      It is not the pessimism of these assumptions, or even what 
>> follows
>> from
>> them, that I found unsettling. It is particularly hard to define 
>> yourself
>> when
>> you have no fixed relationships. To be an Afghan drug dealer one day 
>> and a
>> Kurdish freedom fighter the next (not just in idle fantasy but all 
>> the way
>> to
>> the police station) troubled me.
>>
>>      Akbar told me not to speak when we arrived in a village. He 
>> concealed
>> the
>> fact that he is a Kurd and Sunni. He would bring out his mobile 
>> phone. A
>> reticent man, he would be forced by the situation to say, while 
>> pulling
>> out a
>> pile of substantiating documents: 'We are mountain climbers. I am an
>> official
>> of the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, studying for an MA in Tehran, 
>> and I
>> have
>> climbed to the summit of Everest.'
>>
>>      He did not want to be thought a smuggler. He was enraged to find 
>> that
>> no
>> one believed he was an official. He was sure that if we lost the mule 
>> and
>> changed our clothing our walking would be accepted as a modern sport.
>> Dress was
>> the key because, he said, villagers see 'proper' clothes as proof of 
>> good
>> character. He made me buy new clothes every fortnight and after two 
>> months
>> of
>> argument I agreed to dispose of my hat and stick ('villagers have seen
>> that
>> kind of stick in films - it looks very sinister'). Akbar believed the
>> ideal
>> appearance was his own clean-shaven face over a bright blue Gore-Tex
>> jacket and
>> jeans. With this he hoped to pre-empt the roles which others might 
>> assign
>> him.
>> The clothing did have some effect. I twice saw him pulled out of 
>> crowds
>> for
>> police questioning, while I and others like me in drabber clothes were
>> ignored.
>> But no costume provoked a favourable reaction from the villagers.
>>
>>      Perhaps our objective was confused by our aspirations: 
>> travellers in
>> disguise often choose the role they have always wanted to play - when
>> Lawrence
>> dressed as an Arab he wore prince's clothes. The arguments Akbar used 
>> to
>> justify disposing of the mule were the same as I used to justify 
>> walking
>> in an
>> Islamic cloak with a tall staff. I no longer believe that anything 
>> stops
>> villagers being suspicious of strangers on foot.
>>
>>      I felt anchored to the journey when I had the mule's reins in my
>> hand. I
>> had become aware of his vulnerability when in the cold rain I had to
>> tighten
>> the slippery leather of his girth strap or, in the desert, when he 
>> drank
>> three
>> gallons from the bucket then looked up at me, dribbling the last water
>> onto the
>> sand. Calming him when the approach of wolves sent him into a frenzy 
>> at
>> night,
>> or checking his feet in the morning, often felt like a spectacle put 
>> on
>> for the
>> large village audience, but it was necessary. And finding slopes 
>> through
>> the
>> mountains which I could drag him up, unloading him when he sank up to 
>> his
>> hocks
>> on the salt flats, having him as a marker to return to when forced to 
>> take
>> a
>> side-trip by police car, had all added a sense of seriousness to the
>> route. He
>> linked me to the ancient caravan paths and to the historical 
>> travellers
>> who
>> could not go long distances in winter without a pack animal.
>>
>>      For Akbar, however, the mule was an unnecessary, incongruous and
>> embarrassing companion and a troublesome responsibility. Once, when 
>> we had
>> just
>> climbed out of a gorge where the leaves of the willows and walnut and
>> birch were
>> all different shades of yellow, we saw, ahead of us on the path, a 
>> broad
>> comb
>> and arching spine glistening in the sunlight - the branch of a coconut
>> palm,
>> you might have thought. It was the neck and ribcage of a donkey. A 
>> yard
>> further
>> on, two of its hooves were laid neatly beside each other, attached to 
>> most
>> of
>> its hide. I put my arm round the mule's neck to calm him, but he 
>> seemed
>> quite
>> unperturbed, only sighing grumpily at the gradient. We followed the 
>> wolf's
>> prints (deep and widely spaced, they suggested he was a big animal) 
>> up to
>> the
>> scentless air of the ridgeline.
>>
>>      As I was admiring our long shadows Akbar said: 'The mule is a big
>> problem
>> for us. The mule makes problems with the police . . . He is like a
>> centipede:
>> every evening the centipede takes off his two hundred shoes to go to 
>> bed,
>> and
>> when he has finished, he has to start putting them on again for the
>> morning.
>> Loading and unloading the mule is like that centipede . . . In the 
>> desert
>> we
>> cannot find food and water for him. The villagers say that white mark 
>> on
>> his
>> nose will bring bad luck. It will make us die.'
>>
>>      'But you are not superstitious.'
>>
>>      'No I'm not. We will be more free without the mule. You do not
>> understand
>> Iran. If people see us without the mule, they will treat us better.'
>>
>>      We saw a man coming towards us, leading a donkey to which he had 
>> tied
>> two
>> thin trees.
>>
>>      'You're going the wrong way,' the man said. 'You're two hours off
>> your
>> path. What are you selling?'
>>
>>      'Nothing, we're walking for fun.'
>>
>>      He laughed. 'With a mule? You're smuggling from Iraq - what have 
>> you
>> got
>> in the saddlebags?'
>>
>>      We gave the mule away a week later. Perhaps it was the loss of 
>> the
>> mule
>> that later made me feel so insubstantial: the routines of walking, the
>> repetitive diet, the hours without interruption, underscored by the 
>> steady
>> beat
>> of my feet, seemed to emphasise the fragile, unstable and irregular
>> changes in
>> my thoughts and muscles. I was without books, and unable to write or 
>> talk
>> for
>> eight hours a day, since Akbar preferred to walk in silence. My 
>> thoughts
>> meandered in daydreams.
>>
>>      I wondered what different impressions Akbar, as an Iranian, had 
>> of
>> the
>> landscape and the villages. In the desert there are no trees to 
>> deliver
>> variety
>> of height and colour and texture. Gravel and sand do not alter with 
>> the
>> seasons
>> but emphasise the marks made by humans on the landscape. The only 
>> vertical
>> lines are formed by pylons or houses. The only animals, apart from the
>> drab
>> eagles and the sparrows on the electricity wires, are domesticated 
>> flocks.
>> The
>> only marks in the soil are made by the plough. I find things so 
>> obvious
>> and so
>> uniform difficult to interpret.
>>
>>      When we walked into the village of Goz Hasle by the Turkish 
>> border
>> and had
>> spent half an hour answering the familiar questions we were invited 
>> into
>> Masawali's house. As we sat down on the acrylic blankets a dust storm 
>> rose
>> and
>> Masawali closed the window through which the chickens had just been
>> chased. The
>> flies seemed to congregate around my dark jacket. I could smell the
>> cow-dung
>> which had been piled up to dry for winter fuel and through the 
>> doorway I
>> could
>> see the shadows of veiled women moving in the kitchen. Masawali left 
>> us
>> alone
>> to go and organise some food.
>>
>>      The only piece of furniture in the room was a glass-fronted
>> television
>> cabinet, containing a porcelain blonde princess, a gnome and some 
>> china
>> teacups. But we were drinking tea from glasses and there was no
>> television. We
>> sat on a woollen rug, woven by Masawali's mother on a narrow nomad's 
>> loom,
>> and
>> on a machine-made acrylic blanket with a red tiger pattern. There was 
>> a
>> small
>> photograph of our host on the wall and a chubby blonde doll in a short
>> skirt
>> hung by her neck from the ceiling.
>>
>>      An old man came in and we stood up to greet him. Instead of 
>> wearing
>> European trousers, a form of dress obligatory under the Shah's
>> modernisation
>> campaign and still almost universal, he had on a pair of Kurdish
>> bell-bottoms.
>> Akbar addressed him in Kurdish, but they spoke quite different 
>> dialects
>> and
>> could not understand each other. The man left and we sat down again.
>> Something
>> uncomfortable was lodged behind my cushion. I reached back and pulled 
>> out
>> a
>> dirty single-barrelled shotgun, its butt bound with yellow tape, and a
>> bandolier of empty cartridges. Masawali came back in.
>>
>>      'Goz Hasle is a very old village, God be praised,' he said, 
>> sitting
>> down
>> and refusing to take the place of precedence furthest from the door. 
>> 'My
>> father
>> was born here and my grandfather was born here. We were always here.'
>>
>>      'What does Goz Hasle mean?' I asked.
>>
>>      'It means "cross-wearing girl".'
>>
>>      'So it was an Armenian Christian village?'
>>
>>      'No. My grandparents did not live alongside Armenians. The 
>> Armenians
>> left
>> a very, very long time ago.'
>>
>>      'When?'
>>
>>      'When my father was a child.'
>>
>>      Faced with these contradictions I assumed, perhaps unfairly, 
>> that his
>> family had helped the Ottomans drive the Armenians out.
>>
>>      'Where was the Armenian church?'
>>
>>      'I don't know.'
>>
>>      Masawali's stable was a long building with a vast door, a base of
>> neatly
>> dressed masonry and a wooden roof that soared thirty feet high. In the
>> south
>> side was the trace of an arched window.
>>
>>      Three hundred miles further on, we stayed with Ali Reza in Sefid 
>> Han.
>> 'This is a very poor home,' Akbar said to me when we reached the unlit
>> sloping
>> courtyard. Two goats were kept in an old cave beneath the house.
>>
>>      Ali Reza took us into a small white-washed room. Here, too, the 
>> only
>> piece
>> of furniture was a television cabinet. Again, there was no television.
>> Again, we
>> sat on folded acrylic blankets with red tiger patterns, looking at a
>> blonde doll
>> suspended from the ceiling. Ali Reza was due to play his mandolin that
>> evening
>> at a wedding ceremony so he sat with his old nine-string instrument 
>> on his
>> lap,
>> sticking strips of gold paper over the mother of pearl inlay. He 
>> talked to
>> Akbar
>> in Turkish rather than Farsi and I couldn't follow.
>>
>>      'Please ask him about the history of the village,' I said to 
>> Akbar.
>>
>>      'He doesn't know.'
>>
>>      'Please ask him.'
>>
>>      Akbar asked. 'He says this is the oldest village in the region, 
>> that
>> there
>> is a very old graveyard on the hill, that when a tractor was working 
>> in
>> the
>> next-door field, it turned up three levels of settlement going back
>> thousands
>> of years. That the villagers have got very rich from gold they have 
>> found
>> in
>> the grave-mounds. There was an inscribed stone stele on the graveyard
>> hill,
>> which they broke up for building material.'
>>
>>      'What else did he say?'
>>
>>      'I don't care.'
>>
>>      The architectural traces of an Armenian past and the trousers of 
>> the
>> Kurd
>> were the only things that seemed visibly to differentiate Masawali's 
>> house
>> at
>> Goz Hasle from Ali Reza's house at Sefid Han. One man was a Kurd, the
>> other a
>> Shahsevan Turk, one spoke an Indo-European language, the other an 
>> Altaic
>> language. But Masawali's house had the same television cabinet, with 
>> the
>> same
>> stickers, saying 'Sony', stuck on the glass, the same clock ('Sieko
>> Quarts')
>> with plastic flowers in its case and a photograph of the host. Both
>> families
>> were weaving $2000 carpets to a Tabriz design for the Saudi market. 
>> Inside
>> sixty village houses belonging to different ethnic groups (Bakhtiari,
>> Qashgai,
>> Kurd, Azeri-Turk, Lur and Fars) spread over a thousand-mile area, I
>> observed a
>> bewildering similarity in manners, clothing, interior decoration and 
>> food.
>> This
>> was not my experience of walking in Pakistan, Indonesia or China.
>>
>>      In every house people were very concerned with who entered first 
>> and
>> who
>> sat furthest from the door and with standing up when a man entered 
>> but not
>> when
>> a woman came in. Every host served bread in the same way from a folded
>> tablecloth on the ground and was thanked with precisely the same
>> expressions
>> translated word for word into Farsi, Kurdish and Turkish: 'Strength to
>> your
>> arm, God be praised, long life to you, may you not be tired.'
>>
>>      I can't explain this uniformity. I assume that blonde dolls may 
>> be
>> popular
>> as decoration because they are the only available legal depiction of
>> unveiled
>> women. (Though I'm not certain that the doll's short skirt is more
>> significant
>> than the noose round her neck.) In a middle-class house I saw a poster
>> depicting houris reclining on tiger skins, and wondered if the tiger 
>> on
>> the
>> acrylic blankets was a reference to the archetypal rug, long after the
>> last
>> Caspian tiger had been shot. That repetitive spartan interiors could 
>> be
>> the
>> result of the combined pressures of mass production, a closed economy,
>> pastoral
>> migrations, poverty, religious distaste for ostentation and social
>> conformity
>> was conceivable. But nothing quite explained that particular 
>> glass-fronted
>> plastic television cabinet.
>>
>>      I found it stranger still that so much was made of differences
>> between
>> local popular cultures in Iran. President Khatami claims to be 
>> fighting
>> American influences to preserve them. This is in part why pop music,
>> Hollywood
>> films and McDonald's are banned. (So too, until recently, were 
>> billiards
>> and
>> Nietzsche.) The current rulers are opposed to their predecessors'
>> enthusiasm
>> for alien cultural forms. It's as though Iran's most significant 
>> frontier
>> is
>> with America. A country marked by its physical centrality has turned 
>> into
>> one
>> of the most marginalised in the world: diplomatically, culturally and
>> economically.
>>
>>      Kurdish villages around Goz Hasle, despite their superficial
>> resemblance
>> to the Azeri villages, do have very different religious and political
>> attitudes. Many Sunni Kurds did not fight in the Iran-Iraq war (a war 
>> that
>> played a key part in creating the new political culture) and continue 
>> to
>> fight
>> the state and Azeri militia. They are poorer. The Government does not 
>> give
>> them
>> substantial subsidies or senior jobs and they are not provided with
>> automatic
>> weapons such as the Kalashnikov I found behind a cushion in an Azeri
>> village
>> near Hamadan. My host was the weapons instructor for the village 
>> militia,
>> which
>> had fought for the Government in Iraq and Kurdistan. The state repaid 
>> his
>> loyalty with subsidies and investment in the village and senior 
>> positions
>> for
>> Azeris in business and the civil service.
>>
>>      After two months we reached Gilli, a hundred miles north-west of
>> Isfahan.
>> We had been following pylons through the desert, carrying everything
>> ourselves.
>> The fog was so low that we couldn't see the cables and we were cold 
>> and
>> tired. I
>> was hoping to be welcomed, to meet some people over a meal, to find a 
>> safe
>> place
>> to sleep.
>>
>>      Just before dusk we walked down an avenue of bare, pollarded 
>> willows.
>> Two
>> women were staring at us over a mud wall.
>>
>>      'Salaam aleikum,' we shouted. They did not reply.
>>
>>      We turned down empty lanes between blank courtyard walls. It was 
>> a
>> small
>> village. We found the mosque unlocked and went in, leaving our boots 
>> at
>> the
>> door, dragging our backpacks with us. Five old men in woollen hats 
>> were
>> warming
>> themselves at a big iron stove and we walked over to sit beside them 
>> on
>> the
>> carpet. One man shook our hands. His were wet from religious 
>> ablutions. To
>> my
>> surprise he did not say anything. The others ignored us entirely and
>> continued
>> to discuss the price of sheep. Akbar and I waited in silence. 
>> Occasionally
>> I
>> saw one of them glance in our direction. Along the gallery was a row 
>> of
>> black
>> and white photographs of young men. They had all died fighting in the 
>> Iraq
>> war
>> and they were numbered from one to 26. Among them was a ten-year-old 
>> boy.
>>
>>      'Excuse me. Who was that boy?' I said to the man with wet hands.
>>
>>      'My nephew. He wasn't that age when he died - it was just the 
>> last
>> picture
>> we had of him.'
>>
>>      'How old was he when he was killed?'
>>
>>      'Fourteen. Excuse me.'
>>
>>      The sun had set and the call to evening prayers began. The men 
>> moved
>> away
>> from the stove. There were now about thirty old men in the mosque and 
>> they
>> all
>> began to pray, but not in unison, kneeling and standing-up again,
>> grumbling and
>> whispering. An eighty-year-old was studying us sideways between his
>> prostrations. He was looking at two men in wet clothes, with stinking 
>> feet
>> and
>> large, clumsy rucksacks beside them, leaning their backs against the 
>> wall
>> to
>> recover from the last hurried miles. But when he stood, he kept his 
>> eyes
>> forward, his chin up and his shoulders back as though he were 
>> standing to
>> attention at a remembrance parade. Through the thin green curtain of 
>> the
>> women's section I watched the silent white shrouds, rising and 
>> falling.
>> For the
>> next half-hour no one spoke to us.
>>
>>      But when the old man had finished his prayers, he came over, 
>> shook
>> our
>> hands and said: 'Hello. May God bless you. I hope you are well. Where 
>> have
>> you
>> come from?'
>>
>>      We started to explain about the journey. There was a pause, then 
>> the
>> man
>> sounded more troubled: 'Why have you come here? . . . Where are you 
>> going?
>> . .
>> . How did you come here? . . . But why don't you have a car? . . . 
>> Have
>> you
>> spoken to the police?' He seemed hardly to hear our answers. A crowd
>> gathered
>> round him, whispering. From the medley of muttered words, I could 
>> hear:
>> 'grave
>> robbers', 'PKK', 'walking to avoid the checkpoints on the roads',
>> 'drug-dealers', 'rape', 'whisky'.
>>
>>      Men pressed forward and shouted questions that we had already
>> answered.
>> For half an hour we said the same things over and over again, showing 
>> our
>> documents to different people. We kept telling them we were walking 
>> across
>> Iran
>> as tourists. Nobody believed us. To have walked two thousand miles 
>> sounded
>> absurd to them.
>>
>>      'You cannot sleep here,' the old man concluded.
>>
>>      'Where can we sleep?'
>>
>>      'Anywhere except here.'
>>
>>      The headman entered. He was wearing a rust-stained yellow jumper
>> beneath
>> his jacket and his pinstripe trousers were torn at the thigh. He held
>> Akbar's
>> Government identity card in front of him while a teenager read out 
>> what it
>> said. 'What is your name?' the head man asked when the boy had 
>> finished.
>>
>>      'Isn't it written on my identity card?' Akbar asked.
>>
>>      'No.'
>>
>>      'Are you sure?'
>>
>>      'You must go to the police.'
>>
>>      We refused.
>>
>>      A little later a Government pick-up truck was driven fast into 
>> the
>> square.
>> One policeman remained in the car revving the engine, the other ran 
>> to the
>> doorway and shouted at us to come to the station. In the 
>> superintendent's
>> overheated office, listening to his loud jokes, I half-admired the 
>> clear
>> image
>> that the policemen seemed to have of themselves. They had entered the
>> police
>> station as though they were humming the theme tune of a cop film and
>> jumped
>> down the front steps as if just abreast of a crisis. When the
>> superintendent
>> tired of us he let us go.
>>
>>      By day, I sometimes experienced a fragile coincidence of mind,
>> landscape
>> and muscle which made me feel more substantial. I might look back at a
>> peak I
>> had crossed three days before. My footsteps left prints in the earth
>> behind me,
>> stretching back over the thousand miles I had walked in the past 
>> months.
>> The
>> lack of music, sex, conversation, literature, alcohol, or much food 
>> beyond
>> bread and goat's cheese, seemed irrelevant or even beneficial. I was 
>> aware
>> of
>> the breadth of the sky, the angle of the ridges falling away. I 
>> looked at
>> the
>> geometry of a desert thorn curling in on itself like a wicker ball, 
>> or the
>> trace of bright cobbles beneath the white salt surface of the soil. 
>> Akbar
>> was
>> forgotten. Inaccessibility and solitude became a delight. My vast, 
>> vague
>> shadow
>> on a desolate Iranian hillside seemed almost to resemble that of a 
>> hero.
>> But
>> that conceit vanished by the mosque stove. There, questions began that
>> expressed and refined the roles that others gave me - roles that were
>> never
>> heroic. Spending a lot of time on my own, I was unsettled by the
>> inconsistency
>> and instability of the identities which others gave me. As a stranger,
>> confronting this every evening, I worried that the only way to 
>> compensate
>> for
>> the narratives that other people created for me was to invent my own.
>> Perhaps
>> this is why travel writers always lie.
>>
>>      Rory Stewart's The Places in Between describes his walk across
>> Afghanistan
>> in 2001. He has worked for the British government in Indonesia, the
>> Balkans and
>> Iraq, and is now a fellow of the Carr Centre at Harvard.
>>
>>      From the LRB letters page: [ 20 September 2001 ] Bachman Reza [ 
>> 18
>> October
>> 2001 ] Robert Wilson.
>>
>>
>>      Other articles available from the 6 September 2001 issue
>>
>>      Oh, Andrea Dworkin
>>      Jenny Diski on Misogyny: The Male Malady by David Gilmore
>>
>>      Nuremberg Rally, Invasion of Poland, Dunkirk . . .
>>      James Meek considers the never-ending wish to write about the 
>> Second
>> World
>> War
>>
>>      At the Musée Galliera
>>      Peter Campbell : Children's clothes
>>
>>      Short Cuts
>>      John Sturrock at the Test Match
>>
>>
>>
>>      From the archive
>>
>>      Bitter Chill of Winter
>>      Tariq Ali : Kashmir
>>
>>      The 'People's War'
>>      Pankaj Mishra on the Maoists of Nepal
>>
>>      Japan goes Dutch
>>      Murray Sayle on Japan's economic troubles
>>
>>      Out of the Hadhramaut
>>      Michael Gilsenan on Being 'Arab'
>>
>>      In North Korea
>>      Jon Cannon visits the Chinese - North Korean border
>>
>>      'Comrade Jiang Zemin does indeed seem a proper choice'
>>      Jasper Becker : Tiananmen Square
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>      Other articles by this contributor:
>>
>>      Degrees of Not Knowing
>>      Rory Stewart: Does anyone know how to govern Iraq?
>>
>>
>>
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