مذكرة عن السيرة المهنية للسير توماس إدوارد روجرز [و‎‎١‎٩] (١١٨/٣٧)

German with the only European among them, a Pole, and explain that even one
more passenger would make sure we broke down altogether. But I promised solemnly
to send back water and help from the mid-desert post at Rutba. There we did
not leave until we had seen a relief team of Iraqi levies drive off waving their
rifles to the rescue.
In Persia we made seemingly endless dusty passage of high mountain, bare
upland valley and salt desert. There was no life visible between scarce straw-
coloured settlements with long low mud walls silently shielding the villagers
from sun and desert wind and strangers' eyes. Between Teheran and Meshed we were
on the Golden Road to Samarkand of Flecker's 'Hassan' which had delighted me
since my father brought me a copy after seeing the play in London. But there was
little golden or romantic about the swirling dust of the roads and we missed
through ignorance the colour of seeing Omar Khayyam's birthplace not far from our
route at Nishapur. Unknown to me then I was to meet at Meshed a future colleague
in the Indian Political, Giles Squire serving as Consul-General in a post always
staffed by the Service. We had originally planned to pass on to India through
Afghanistan but had been advised against it, so that we now turned south to
another post staffed by the Political, Zahedan where Alan Dredge had just arrived
with his newly married wife.
Our high expectations of India were dimmed when we found no road worth the
name for the first hundred miles or more. The car made our protest by promptly
breaking a leaf in the front spring on the rough rock and sand that we thought
might be designed to repel invaders rather than welcome travellers. We had only
a spare main leaf for the rear spring which was a little longer than the front one
Our small hand file took a good few hours to cut to size the tough steel of the
leaf which we then bound up and re-mounted. At night we did not need to put up