"مذكرات وذكريات مسؤول في الخدمة السياسية الهندية" [و‎‎٢‎٦] (١٥٦/٥١)

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Consul and Colonel Rooney, the Residency Medical Officer, who was a member of the
Indian Medical Service. The rest of the staff were Anglo-Indian or Indian. In my
time few of us were married and there were only one or two children. But, women
usually avoided the place in the hot weather. Apart from ourselves, there were half a
dozen Britishers at the Cable Station of the Eastern Telegraph Company, a married Bank
Manager and his bachelor English assistant. There was also a representative of Gray
Mackenzie, the firm acted as agents for the British ships of the BISN Company,
which called at Bushire. In addition there were two young Germans representing the
Hansa Line of Hamburg.
The BISN Line Ships providing services to and from the Gulf ports came from Bombay
through Karachi, and were of two kinds. The "fast mail" - rather grander ships - called
at Bushire once a fortnight on its way to Basra; the "slow mail" which stopped at all
the small intermediate ports called once a week. In our time, only the Resident had
a Fridgidaire - the rest of us managed with ice boxes. Each fortnight, the Residency
Launch would collect a pound of butter from the "fast mail", and this would have to
last us until the next arrival. Tinned stores and drinks we ordered from Karachi;
fresh vegetables, chickens' eggs, milk and meat of a kind were available locally.
The Political Resident in the Persian Gulf exercised a dual role. He was Resident
as such for the Arabian Side of the Gulf, and had working under him Political Agents
at Kuwait, Bahrain and Muscat (now Oman). All the Sultanates and the minor sheikh
doms of the Trucial Coast were in Treaty relations with the Government of India. The
Resident was also H.M. Consul General for the Southern Coast of Iran. His own Sec
retary was ex-officio Consul, and there was one other Foreign Office Vice Consul.
The Consul General had subordinate Vice Consulates in Khorramshahr (Abadan), Bandar
Abbas and Kernam. All these Consular posts were staffed by Officers of the Indian
Political Service.
Although it would seem that in a Residency like this, the work could be onerous, it
was not so for me at the beginning. I worked in the town office and had time to study
Persian but I did not get very far with it as the local Iranian Governorate discouraged
any national of theirs coming to teach me as a "Munshi". In fact in the years before
this relations between Iran and Britain in our part of Persia were at a low ebb. The
Shah of Iran, then H.M. Reza Shah Pahlevi (the father of the last Shah of all) was a
hard, ruthless bigoted man, who was extremely suspicious of the British in his country,
greatly resenting the fact that the Anglo-Persian Oil Company virtually controlled
the oil fields of Iran and the refineries of Abadan. The Shah's own share of the
profits ("royalties") he considered derisory. Every now and then an anti-British
"hate" would be organised. For instance, on more than one occasion strict but quite