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2
Hospitality of the Police
    TEHERAN TO THE AFGHAN FRONTIER
DEH-NAMAK, 31 MARCH
    Roz and I left Teheran at 6.30 a.m. and arrived here soon after 6 p.m. having covered 108 miles because of a strong following wind.
    The road remained reasonable by Persian standards, though if I had met it at home I would have taken one horrified look and gone the other way round; it’s amazing how quickly one becomes conditioned. It was such glorious cycling weather that I seemed to have boundless energy and did the last ten miles feeling positively fresh.
    This really is a beautiful country and every mile from Teheran was pure joy – as much the joy of space and silence as of visual loveliness. These extravagantly sweeping lines of plain and mountain are intoxicating to an islander and the blending of shades on the barren hillsides is a symphony of colour. Yet that’s only one aspect of the region; as a background to daily life it’s cruel and contemptuous country where cultivation is a fight all the way, with victory not worth much.
    The main crop is wheat and to come on a few little fields of it, looking so fresh and green, is a physical rest for the eyes after twenty or thirty miles of harsh, grey-brown desert, shuddering in the midday heat-haze. The mud villages of this area are much better designed than those of western Persia, where the houses are as primitive as you could find anywhere. Here they are most attractive, with domed roofs and miniature ‘Gothic’ windows and endless variations between one house and another. I longed to take a few photographs but Muslims being so sensitive on the subject it seemed wiser not to risk spoiling the good relations I’d achieved with the locals.
    Twice I left the road to explore villages formerly belonging to the Shah and now handed over to the peasants. These people are totally different to the Azerbaijan toughs: I found them friendly and polite and there were no ‘hands-out-for-baksheesh’ though they went to endless trouble showing me round the farms. It may sound silly, but I maintain that I know instinctively the temper of a place, after being five minutes with the inhabitants. So today I hadn’t the slightest qualm about abandoning Roz and my kit in the centre of the villages, and though on my return I found her surrounded by at least a hundred filthy, ragged children, nothing had been touched. In my experience this is the prevailing standard of honesty in Turkey and Persia at least towards guests and Azerbaijan was the unhappy exception.
    On one of these farms I saw my very first tractor since entering Persia – it was the common property of a village. Elsewhere oxen are still pulling the most primitive form of all-wooden plough. There are very few camels in this area, oddly enough, nor are there many horses or cattle. Hundreds of sturdy little donkeys provide transportation for both people and goods and a few herds of sheep and goats are grazed by each village.
    It was a most moving experience to see the pride and joy of those men and boys at owning their land. Some of the youths spoke a little English and repeatedly I heard the phrases ‘This is our land’, ‘ We own this’, ‘This belongs to us ’, as they all beamed with fond pride at their pathetic few fertile acres in the midst of hundreds of square miles of desert. Obviously they can’t quite believe it yet. Many of them carry photographs of the Shah in their pockets (I had to admire about thirty-five of these individually) and pictures of His Imperial Majesty and the Empress and the Crown Prince are in almost every home. They genuinely love their Shah – and would you blame them! Political commentators may question the motives behind his Land Reform but the effect for the peasants remains wholly good. When I think of those wretched Mullahs who try to persuade the villagers that it’s immoral and against the Koran for the masses to own land – just because they themselves own so much of it …! I suppose the