مذكرة عن السيرة المهنية للسير توماس إدوارد روجرز [و‎‎١‎٨] (١١٨/٣٥)

thought resignedly, of otherwise law-abiding Englishmen caught taking serious
liberties with the public highway. But our unauthorised roadmending was not at
fault: we had strayed into a military zone and anyway unreadable passports
bearing Mr Anthony Eden's exhortation commending us to the good offices of foreign
powers did not at first avail us. We imagined cables reaching the elders of
the India Office who had perhaps nodded more doubtfully over our unusual adventure
than we knew. But in the end we were simply told to return to where we had
entered the prohibited zone and take another road. We still had to mend that
road too as we went along, and on the third day we broke a record for the trip:
working hard all day with several detours through fields, and more than one bridge
weakened by swollen streams to strengthen, we covered just twenty miles.
In central Turkey we did not see a single signpost, only living ones in the
shape of peasants who misled us by their natural inability to reckon distance
except in terms of hours by bullock-cart, and by directing us to what they called
roads but which were rough tracks with ruts and fords too deep for us. After a
week's difficult tortoise passage across Anatolia lightened only by the sight of
Ataturk's imposing new Ankara,we reached with relief the great east-west passage
of the Cilician Gates across the Taurus mountains. It was a thrill to recall that
at about the age of twenty-four Alexander the Great led his great army through
this pass bound for north-west India and Bukhara. We were also to pass Tarsus
and the ancient cave dwellings of Urkup with their finely carved lintels and windows.
When we reached Syria unusually heavy floods kept us to the coast road leading us
through Lebanon to Beyrouth before we could turn east towards Damascus.
We were overweight with extra petrol and water on the six hundred mile run
across the roadless desert from Damascus to Baghdad. The car had fourteen punctures
on the hot rough flints. It was also besieged by a busload of desperate Arabs
without water since their bus had broken down two days before. I had to parley in