CHAPTER XV
LIFE IN MIANEH
Training local levies—A city of parasites and rogues—A knave turns philanthropist—Turks getting active—Osborne's comic opera force—Jelus appeal for help—An aeroplane to the rescue—The Democrats impressed—Women worried by aviator's "shorts"—Skirmishes on the Tabriz road—Reinforcements at last.
When the Wagstaff Mission finally reached Mianeh from Zinjan it began to collect grain supplies, by purchase, and set to work to raise and train irregulars. Although the Persian hates drill and discipline, there was no dearth of recruits for the local army. The pay was good, about £2 a month with rations and uniform, which meant affluence to the average Persian villager, who was usually too poor to buy enough bread to keep himself alive.
Mianeh, which is rightfully credited with being the most unhealthy spot in North-Western Persia, has a population of about 7,000. It is the chosen home of a poisonous bug (Argas Persicus) whose bite produces severe fever and occasionally death. There is also a set of parasites, human this time, whose sting is very deadly in a financial sense. They are the Merchants' and Grain-Growers' Guilds, and they were always attempting to dip deep and dishonestly into the British treasure chest. It would be doing this delectable spot no injustice to say that, in proportion to its population, it can boast a greater percentage of unchained rogues than any other town in the whole province of Azerbaijan.
One of these knaves turned "philanthropist" once. He begged the Mission to start relief works to help the starving poor of Mianeh, and offered to supply the British with spades for excavation work at cost price. The spades were paid for and the relief work started—and about a week later it was accidentally discovered that the "philanthropist" was collecting two krans a day as spade hire from the dole of the starving peasants! On another occasion he induced a too-confiding officer to sanction the payment of a sum of money for rendering less malodorous the streets of this pestiferous town. The money was drawn, and then its recipient discovered that the people were partial to noxious vapours, and had conscientious objections to any interfering and misguided foreigner meddling with their pet manure heap. So nothing was done, but the money disappeared. Such is morality as practised in this corner of the Shah's dominions!
The Telegraph Compound which, during our occupation of Mianeh, served as Wagstaff's headquarters, stood on the brink of a knoll overlooking the main street leading to the Bazaar Quarter. On the face of a corresponding eminence opposite, and divided by a bend of the road, was the local Potter's Field, where friendless peasants and penniless wanderers from afar who had paid the great debt of Nature within the inhospitable walls of Mianeh were interred (when the lazy townsfolk found time to give them sepulture) in a hastily dug and shallow grave. In the meantime the defunct ones were wont to be dumped down on a rude bier and left there, sometimes for a whole day, under the fierce rays of a mid-June sun. Mianeh was as uncomfortable for the dead as it was unhealthy for the living. Truly, few Persians seem to possess any olfactory sensitiveness. They would pass the Potter's Field hourly, showing no concern at the repulsiveness that must have assailed their eyes and noses.
News filtered down the road from Tabriz that the Turks there were displaying great activity. They were daily being reinforced, and made no secret of their intention to attempt, when sufficiently strong, the task of chasing the British from Azerbaijan. They established posts on the Tabriz road southwards as far as Haji Agha, about sixty miles from Mianeh.
The answer to all these Turkish preparations for breaking our slender hold upon Azerbaijan was for Wagstaff urgently to ask for reinforcements and especially mountain guns. In the meantime he sent Osborne back up the Tabriz road, with all the fighting men that could be spared, to watch the enemy and to attempt to prevent his breaking farther south. Osborne's chief reliance was placed on the few British N.C.O.'s who accompanied him. Beyond these, all he had to stem any Turkish advance was about half a squadron of newly enrolled irregular horse and a couple of platoons of native levies who had been taught the rudiments of musketry and elementary drill.