With the Persian Expedition

by Martin Henry Donohoe

I rode inside the great doorway of Shah Abbas' hostelry hoping to find quarters here, but my nose was in revolt at once. A stagnant pool covered with green slime, where myriads of mosquitoes and flies were undergoing a course of field training, occupied the centre of the courtyard, and this was flanked by festering heaps of garbage amongst which lean, hungry-looking dogs were fossicking for an evening meal.

Turning in disgust from the loathsome spot, I encountered a farrash (messenger) come from the Naib-ul-Hukumeh, or Deputy Governor, The latter had heard of our arrival, and sent to conduct us to quarters near his own dwelling. Our abode proved to be a smaller caravanserai, its living-rooms adjoining the stables and looking out on a manure heap. The Deputy Governor himself turned up presently, and in the usual flowery Persian speech bade General Byron welcome, and assured him that supplies of forage and fuel would be forthcoming.

He hinted that, as the prowling Kurds of the district were keen horse-fanciers, and not always able to discriminate between the niceties of meum and tuum, it would be advisable to mount a stable guard. For this purpose he sent us eight truculent-looking rascals, fairly bristling with weapons, who watched over our horses while we sought to snatch a few hours' repose.

Sleep we found to be out of the question. Our sleeping-bags, the latest of their kind from London, had no chance against the incursions of the nimble Mahidast flea, or his bigger parasitical brethren, whom pilgrim caravans had brought from the remote corners of Persia. Emerging angry and unrefreshed from an unequal combat, we quitted Mahidast at an early hour. The major portion of the inhabitants were present to see us off, and incidentally to demand a pishkash for services—chiefly imaginary—rendered us during our sojourn. Akhbar paid off the fuel and forage vendors, and ransomed our horses from the stable guard for a substantial sum in krans. He next gave a considered decision in respect to the claim of the Deputy Governor and his numerous retinue. The former modestly demanded an amount which would have provided him with a comfortable life annuity, pointing out that, as our throats were unsevered and our purses untouched, we could afford to be generous, and reward his protecting zeal. I did not wait for the end of the negotiations, but I heard afterwards that Akhbar, whose temper had been sorely tried, consigned the Deputy Governor to jahannam, and effected a compromise with his insistent retainers for the equivalent of ten shillings.

It is an eighteen-mile march to Kermanshah from Mahidast. The road was harder, and it was easier travelling for the horses and transport animals. There was a good deal of traffic too. We passed numerous caravans, the first being one of tobacco and general merchandise bound for Bagdad. To this a number of pilgrims had attached themselves for safety, and had hired an armed convoy to protect them against plundering Kurds and, in a minor sense, the exactions of the Persian road guards. These latter were supposed to police the route, and had posts along the road. By way of recompense they were allowed to levy baj (toll) upon travellers. But their rapacity was boundless. They were said to stand in with the freebooters of the district, and woe betide the simple traveller or merchant who, journeying without armed retainers, fell into their hands! Him they fleeced unmercifully, and if the victim were inclined to protest against this bare-faced spoliation, he might always be sure of receiving a sound beating in addition.

So much for Persian road guards and their methods! The British sought to remedy these abuses by subsidizing local chiefs to protect a section of road, but the chiefs took the cash and stuck to it, while the guards still dipped deeply into the pockets or into the bales of merchandise of those who came their way. It was considered a lucrative post, that of road guard, and much sought after by gentlemen who hated the attendant risks of ordinary highway robbery, and preferred the easier and surer means of growing rich by levying toll in a quasi-official capacity.

Presently we met a corpse-caravan bound for Kerbela with its lugubrious freight. A contingent of road guards had gathered round like so many human vultures, and there was much haggling between themselves and angry relatives of the defunct as to what a dead Persian ought or ought not to pay to pass free and unhindered over this section of the long and thorny road that led to the holy of holies of the Shi'ite Moslem.

On the banks of a stream by the roadside was a "hunger battalion" resting. Its members, men and boys, were in a state of semi-nudity; their few garments hung in tattered rags about their wasted bodies, and all looked to be in the last stage of physical exhaustion from starvation. For some the end had clearly come. They were incapable of further effort, and lay waiting for a merciful death to cut short their sufferings. Others there were who still clung despairingly to the enfeebled thread of life. They crouched on the ground, gnawing frantically at a handful of roots or coarse herbs with which they sought to assuage the terrible pangs of unsatisfied hunger. A little apart from the main body was a small group crooning a mournful dirge: it was the funeral requiem of a man whom famine had killed. The body was being prepared for burial and, before committal to earth, was being washed in the stream which supplied a near-by village with drinking water.

We divided some food amongst the sorely stricken survivors of the hunger battalion. It was all we could give. They were thankful, and one man said that he and five companions had originally started from Hamadan, where the people were dying by hundreds daily, in the hope of crossing the frontier to Khaniquin or Kizil Robat, at either of which places they might get work and food in the British Labour Corps. Of the six who had set out on this quest he was the sole survivor.