“Can I have some water?” he says.
I retrieve a bottle. Jon swishes some water in his mouth and spits out a pink stream. Then he stretches himself until there is an audible crack.
“Ah, that’s better!” he says.
He eases onto his side, muttering, “There has to be another way up there.”
“How about lunch?” I say.
“Yeah.”
I prop my back against a rock and munch my sandwich – Bulgarian sausage, bread made from American wheat, plus an orange from Israel. A typical meal in a country that has let its agriculture go to pot. The salami is low-grade, but in this invigorating air, it doesn’t taste half bad.
Jon produces a wicked-looking knife and carves his brain sandwich into small pieces. He eats carefully, keeping his head tilted back so as to avoid a recurrence of the nose bleed. Late afternoon progresses, bringing long shadows and a quickening breeze.
The inscription suddenly enters my mind, carried by the mountain wind. Before I know what I am doing, I write it on my sandwich wrapper and show it to Jon:
He looks at the characters, poker-faced.
“You know Korean?” he says.
“Some,” I say. “I was there fourteen months with the Peace Corps.”
“Yeah?” He nods, letting the topic die. “That looks like something from Asimov.”
“Asimov?”
I wrack my mental bookshelf for a connection. Of course! The Foundation trilogy – I don’t remember which book. Asimov wrote about some character:
“’He was a man of the people,’” I say.
“’by self acclamation,’” Jon finishes.
“So, this is only the first half of the quote, right?” I say with growing excitement.
Jon shrugs and turns back toward the cliff, terminating further conversation.
I am suddenly very tired and sprawl on my back along the rocky ground, contemplating the powerful blue sky shining between the peaks. I feel rooted to the spot, yet suspended between two worlds of earth and sky. I’d experienced a similar sensation floating in the row boat with Yun Hee at Choon Chun dam reservoir.
But now, it is the solid rock spine of Iran that braces me, not the vagaries of some artificial lake. Beneath me reposes the entire strength of the Asian continent. I’ll need this support, I realize, because my companion this day will not provide any. He is a slippery slope. If I allow it, he’ll take me down faster than the sooty incline of Mount Fuji.
Without asking permission, I remove the tent from Jon’s pack and pitch it on the most level ground available. I collapse inside, exhausted, even before darkness sets in.
***
Hours later, in the deepest part of night, an express train of wind crashes through. Cringing within my sleeping bag, I hear the gale roaring over the mountains. It strikes the tent a hammer blow, collapsing it around me.
“Jon!” I cry.
I thrash about, smothered in nylon, as the wind rages all about. Finally I thrust my head outside. The wind has passed down the valley leaving behind stillness and a crystalline, moonlit sky. Jon is gone.
51: The Unraveling Accelerates
“This crackdown on the demonstrators should keep things from getting out of hand to such a degree that they could present a threat to our community.” – Corporate Martial Law Advisory #1
“Chase out the Pahlavis and the Americans, and the rest will be given to you.” – Ayatollah Khomeini
Jon reappears with the daylight. He always does; it is standard procedure for our trips. Every weekend into the fall he takes me hiking – for three days when possible. First a phone call, then a “kick off meeting” at a bar, then the trip. The pattern never varies.
How could anyone have possibly mistaken me for Jon? We look nothing alike. I’m taller than him, I’ve got dark hair and blue eyes. His eyes are ... I don’t know what color his eyes are. I can hardly get a fix on him at all, come to think of it.
Whenever he’s around, the atmosphere is either too noisy, too dark, or too glaring for me to form a solid impression. He is either wearing that Middle Eastern wrap around thing or a puffy green cap pulled low over his face. And his beard is always different, varying from long and straggly to bare stubble.
From a short distance, he seems rather small and wiry. Up close, he looks enormous. His hands are oversized – hard, powerful things that look capable of punching through a brick wall. These and his rather longish arms distort his other proportions.
It’s like I’m always seeing him through various lenses on my Pentax – sometimes a fish eye, sometimes a telephoto.
For a while I toy with the idea that he is nothing more than a viewfinder image. But I dismiss the idea as being even more irrational than the reality is.
I don’t know where he lives, and I don’t know if he has a phone. No sense of comradeship develops between us. We each keep to our private spaces, barely talking. On the trail, he always dashes far ahead.
Quite a change from Eric, my easy-going tent mate in Wyoming. We were always joking and helping each other out, philosophizing over cups of cocoa at evening campfires. I even carried Eric’s pack over Windy Gap pass when he was ill.
What would Jon do if I got hurt – try to help or leave me for the vultures? Often, I feel as if I am hiking the empty wilderness by myself. With a dark part of myself.
I fill my knapsack with emergency provisions whenever we wander off from base camp, my “Granny pack” as Jon snidely calls it. He carries only a water bottle and the long, wicked knife which he calls his “toothpick.”
Why does he ask me along, anyway? He doesn’t seem interested in me, or to even like me very much. Does he just want a devotee following him around? A more important question: why the hell do I come?
I can’t say for sure.
I’d love to experience the wild abandon of a climb straight up a cliff, but how is that possible without taking needless risks? Jon is a risk taker, all right. At the same time that I disapprove of his foolish acts, I can’t help but envy his fierce passions.
By mid August, things have spun out of control in Esfahan. Mobs fight with the police, burning buildings, and stoning firemen trying to quench the blazes. The Shah puts Esfahan under martial law, and troops swarm in with tanks and huge, Russian-built, armored personnel carriers.
The first night of martial law curfew brings eerie silence, the bustle of a great city simply halting at 8:00 p.m. As the Iranian Kingdom, and with it our expatriate world, unravels, people try to go about their business as best they can, but it’s getting harder to evade the truth.
American Esfahan endures many attacks. The Park Pol restaurant, our after-work hang out, is burned to the ground. Revolutionaries showed up between the lunch and dinner crowds, booted the staff outside, and firebombed the place. The Shahr Farang cinema, which showed American movies, is also destroyed. The Mir liquor store, the New American Club, the Golden Key restaurant – all burned.
A mob attacked the huge, elegant Shah Abbas Hotel. Anthony Quinn was there last year filming Caravans. His autographed photo hung in the Park Pol restaurant. Even the Armenian quarter is not spared; the Jolfa Hotel and Pizza Hut are both attacked. Several other cities go under martial law – supposedly for just thirty days.
I’m more used to curfews and a militarized atmosphere than most of my coworkers, having been in South Korea. But Iran is the real thing. People are dying on the streets.
To allay our fears, Colonel Shanaz calls a general meeting. According to him, everything is gonna be just fine!
“If you have any special problems, contact me through the channels,” he says.
He offers us a contact phone number for the SAVAK secret police, in case we wish to become informers. A company official stands by nodding agreement to everything Shanaz says. Sitting in the captive audience, I feel as if I’ve been transported to an alternate universe where a guy pretending to be an army officer is speaking. He seems more like a lethal clown than a
military man.
Wild rumors are circulating – artillery killing 300 demonstrators, troops beating up a mullah. But one horrible event is no rumor: Terrorists burned a theater in the southern city of Abadan, killing 377 people.
My distinctive clothing finally arrives. Immediately afterward, a memo says we are no longer required to wear it, so as to “keep a low profile”
My trips with Jon are a welcome change from the increasing anxieties of Esfahan. We trek the wilderness, avoiding the cities. The country folk do not seem taken up with frenzies of urban areas.
Outside Kerman, we appear at a cemetery with weird tomb towers. I snap a surreptitious photo, as a sign warned that no cameras are allowed. Near Shiraz, we approach Persepolis at night. I am deterred by the high fencing, but Jon slips inside and wanders the ancient ruins. Wolves howl as I wait on the slope along the periphery. Ghosts of Alexander the Great’s army and of the ancient Persians swirl around me.
We visit Arab Khuzestan in southwest Iran. We descend into an ancient tomb complex, now empty. My camera flash provides the only illumination. I fire a blast of light to the far corners, then total darkness. The flash recycles and I fire again. Jon vanishes before the third flash.
We come up to the border with Iraq and peer across the billiard table landscape.
“People think the Shah is bad,” Jon says, “but that Saddam Hussein guy in Iraq is a real bastard.”
He says this with admiration almost, as if he regrets not having the chance to meet the bastard in Iraq.
We visit the eerie ziggurat at Choga Zanbil.
We find strange, highly eroded landscape where a network of rivulets cuts deep wounds into the reddish earth. A waterfall dumps into a stream which abruptly disappears.
One night I wander out alone in this tortured landscape. An angry dog charges, but one of the gashes separates the animal from me.
We discuss lowering down ropes and exploring some Kanats – underground irrigation tunnels. Nothing comes of that idea, or at least I don’t go. Who knows what Jon does on his nocturnal ramblings?
We scale “Death Mountain,” a sizable peak standing alone on the plain. We roam the shores of the Caspian Sea and hear the hyenas cackling. Another time, we enter the Zagros Mountains and find a group of Baktiari nomadic sheep herders.
The trips start blending together in my mind. A common theme runs through them – a sort of haunted rhythm thumping just below the level of hearing. Jon is searching for something that is just beyond his reach, as that great horned animal on the cliff had been. He is wandering from one end of Iran to the other until he finds it.
What then? I understand with increasing clarity that I have to get away from him, and away from Iran, before it is too late.
The Mechanic’s school is being closed temporarily for maintenance – plumbing, electrical, whatever. I wonder what Jon has planned for this time period?
52: Desert Trek
“There have always been people who could be stirred up easily.” – Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran
From the DAS ROAD diary, by Bob West
I can’t believe I let Tyler talk me into visiting Afghanistan!
Our dump of a school building is shutting down for a few days to make emergency repairs. Why bother? Blow the place up, I say. So, Tyler suggested a little Afghanistan “vacation” to fill the time.
“It’s dangerous there,” I said.
Tyler shrugged. “What place isn’t these days?”
“Didn’t you hear about those three American hikers in Afghanistan?” I said. “Two guys and a girl. They were sleeping outside one night with the girl in the middle. When she woke up, she discovered that somebody had cut off the guys’ heads and switched them.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Tyler said. “Besides, who’s to say she didn’t do it herself? Maybe the guys were snoring too much. We won’t be camping, anyway.”
I tried a different approach.
“The school building probably won’t be closed long,” I said. “If we’re not back in time, we could get fired.”
“What’s your point, Bob?” Tyler said. “Come on, it should be interesting.”
I got the impression that he wouldn’t have minded getting fired too much. I probably wouldn’t either. I tried one further objection.
“Jon’s not going, is he?” I said.
“No!”
He sounded like I’d asked if he was bringing a cobra in his luggage.
I didn’t want to go, but the idea of staying behind in Esfahan without Tyler was even worse. There’s too much hashish and opium around here. Too much boredom, loneliness, and fear.
Seems like everybody is carrying a sheet of hash in their pocket these days. If you owe somebody a few bucks, you just rip off a piece and hand it over instead of money.
Nobody has to tell me that I’m on the skids. And without Tyler I’m likely to go completely over the cliff.
I didn’t want Tyler out of my sight, either. I think he’s also getting dangerously close to the edge. Not with drugs or booze (perish the thought!) but with his own brand of madness. We need to look out for each other.
Tabas
We left right after work Friday so as to “hit the ground running” and rode a bus hell bent for leather across the Great Sand Desert toward Tabas. The landscape was completely bare. The army base is a rain forest in comparison. Then night came and I couldn’t see much any more.
Our driver whipped the old bus around the winding, hilly road like a Corvette. I’d nod off, then jerk awake at the next big dip or jostle. When another vehicle approached us head on, both drivers flashed their bright lights until they passed each other.
Why? The tactic blinded them both.
We made Tabas in the wee hours and checked in at the shabbiest inn I’d ever seen. Third world chic at its finest! The Nam Goong yogwan in Seoul seemed like a real palace in comparison.
I should add that our coworker, Elaine, came with us. Tyler invited her. She has a reputation of being pretty active sexually. She’s screwed just about every straight guy in the company, I’ve been told.
It was obvious she wanted to get it on with Tyler, but he wasn’t buying. Mr. Loyalty with his girlfriend back home and all that. I’m only a second stringer, so Elaine didn’t throw a pass my direction.
Tell me this, if things are so serious with Tyler and his girlfriend, why is he here while she’s in the States?
I expected to have a room to myself while the two of them got it on, and I was surprised when Tyler moved in with me. Elaine was ticked and tried to stiff us. Since she was the only female and couldn’t share with anybody, she complained, we should subsidize her single room!
“She’s your friend, Tyler,” I said. “You can pick up her tab if you want.”
Why did he bring her along if he wasn’t interested in hanky panky?
When the sun came up, Tabas was revealed as a beautiful, traditional type town with adobe walls and palm trees. Like something out of National Geographic. Tyler went nuts with his camera. I started getting antsy, and Elaine was bored out of her mind. I pointed off toward what I thought was east.
“Afghanistan is that way, Tyler. Are we going or not?”
He looked at that compass he wears around his neck.
“Actually, Afghanistan is the opposite direction, Bob.”
We’d already missed the bus to Mashad, so we had to catch a ride on a tanker truck. All of us jammed together. The driver copped feels on Elaine’s leg. Served her right.
Mashad
The next night we stayed at a decent hotel in the Mashad area and hopped a cab to go out for dinner some miles away. We met a prosperous Iranian gentleman at the restaurant / bar who bought us a round. He offered to drive us back to our hotel.
We got in the car with him, Tyler in front, me and Elaine in back. Trouble was, we didn’t realize how drunk the guy was. He roared down the road, moving dangerously close to the traffic ahead of us. Tyler spoke
to the guy, trying to control the situation.
“Oh, look at those pretty red lights,” he said as we barreled up behind a truck, “just like a Christmas tree!”
Tyler looked ready to seize the steering wheel any moment. I prepared to grab the Iranian guy from behind so that Tyler could, somehow, stop the car without killing us all. Elaine was terrified.
Now I knew why Tyler brought her along, and me, too. He wanted an audience. Me, the side kick, and Elaine the damsel in distress. So he could play the hero – like Napoleon ready to take command. Like Jon Glass.
Fortunately, the driver began to sober up. We got to the hotel in one piece.
53: Afghanistan
We took care not to arouse the demons that were sleeping within us. – Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis
From the DAS ROAD diary, by Bob West
At the border, an Afghan official in a white coat examined my booklet and announced that one of my shots was expired. I’d have to be inoculated here before I could enter Afghanistan.
Great! Who wouldn’t want to get a shot out here in the middle of nowhere? Hepatitis anyone?
Another slight problem, the guy in white said. The vaccine would not be available for a week. I contemplated a solo return to Esfahan. Tyler was very upset. He must have been scared at the idea of traveling with Elaine unaided.
Another American walked up. He was more experienced in the ways of baksheesh.
“I’m in the same boat,” he said. “Do you have any Afghanis?”
I pulled out my wad, and he selected a couple bills. Then a discussion between him and the white coat. Money changed hands. Next thing I knew, I was over the border!
Herat
The dusty city of Herat was our first stop. We rode a horse cart decorated with pom poms and got rooms at an inn. The place was a mud brick version of the dive motels you see along Dix-Toledo Road back home. We went to a restaurant and ate at low tables, like in Korea. I liked the colorful hanging rugs and the squiggly writing on the Coke bottles.
A musician began singing and playing a stringed instrument, another guy banged a drum. I guess Afghan music is an acquired taste. Hashish pipes made the rounds.