Persia Disappeared

It's astonishing what sort of books you can find in free shops. Recently, I have found a great German book on the Hittites dating to the 1970s, a nicely poetic one on the Indian-Pakistani nuclear question in English, then one on gender in rural Anatolia (also English). You'd think you'd have to go to Paris, the capital city of a country, track down the Middle Eastern store of a specialized publisher (I am thinking of l'Harmattan, obviously), and rummage through their "Turkey" or "Pakistan" shelf for that sort of thing - before, of course, paying through the nose for it.
Instead you just walk up to the squat down the street and grab it from their boxes.

If I have enough time (and boredom) on my hands, I will blog about at least a couple of those found books. For now, let me impart on you some information about another one, handed to me by friends who found it among bulky rubbish on the street. It is a travelogue entitled "Adventures in Persia" by someone called Reginald Teague-Jones. Intriguingly, the name is a pseudonym, adopted by the writer in 1918, -so the short bio in the front instructs me-, after being accused by the Russians of the murder of 26 Baku commissars (one of the most bizarre and bloody incidents of the Russian Civil War).

His work getting published in 1988, Reginald Teague-Jones achieved notoriety as the oldest man ever to publish a first book. The actual story however dates to 1926, when the man was in his thirties, travelling from Beirut to Baloochistan by car. Bang on to apprise us of some first hand information about public opinion of the 1925 Constitutional Revolution in Iran, one would think. In 1921 the leader of the Persian Cossack brigade, Reza Khan, had started a rebellion, marching his troops to Teheran and overthrowing Government. In 1923 Ahmed Shah left for a prolonged holiday to Europe, a move which effectively ended the Qajar dynasty. And only in 1925 had the mejles decreed that the constitutional sovereignty of the realm was entrusted by the people to Prime Minister Reza Khan, thereby crowning him His Imperial Majesty Reza Shah, the first ruler of the last of Iranian dynasties, the Pahlavis.

Unfortunately Teague-Jones reports that people were skittish about talking about politics, and comments would rarely pass their lips. It is interesting to note that the atmosphere of fear described in the 1920s can still be sensed ninety years later - under a totally different regime.
Instead it was the advent of motorized transportation, supplanting camel and mule, which was on everyone's lips.
Probably the funniest thing he remarks on this frequent topic of his comes around fairly early on, in chapter two: "Motor transport is a transient thing, and one day, if there remain any human survivors from our scientific 'progress', men with bows and arrows may tell their children of ghostly horeselss chariots careering madly along the ancient coastal highway."
Teague-Jones could hardly have had foreseen the Islamic Revolution, of course, - instead he foresaw the Primitivist one.

Himself he travelled in a light-weight car marked 'Zobeida', like the queen of Palmyra, the desert town in Syria through which Teague-Jones also passed.

Before this, when still in Beirut, the following interesting bit of expat prattle is noted: "You should not hurry - Persia will not disappear overnight. You'd better spent a little more time here and buy a car, instead of in Baghdad." - "Well", Emil interjected, "Your friend may be right about Persia disappearing. I hear that Reza Shah is seriously planning to give the country back its ancient name of Iran, banning the use of the word Persia and Persian and expunging it from all maps and public notices".

Upon entering Persia, Teague-Jones has to pass through Iranian Kurdistan, a job he gets done woefully quickly, if you ask me. The reasons, however, are made pretty clear: "The friendly official at the Iranian customs post advised us not to loiter on the road, and to make sure of reaching Kermanshah before nightfall. 'Is there any trouble on the road?', I asked. 'Che arz konam, what can I say? This is not Europe, this is Kurdistan, and after all even a Kurd must live."
Later, in Kermanshah, we learnt that the official's concern for our safety had been justifiable. Only two days previously cars had been fired upon and passengers robbed, while a few days before that a whole party had been ambushed and several killed. Yes, indeed, the poor Kurds must live!"

At the end of the book, he comes back to street robbers, this time describing their punishment: "We stopped and reversed, got out and walked to the pillar. It was built of the usual sun-dried mud bricks, and originally it had been about the height and girth of a London letter-box, but had become weathered with the wind and rain of many seasons.
Abdul began to explain that these things were called adam-e getch (literally, 'plaster-man'). It was the good old way of dealing with highway robbers. [...] The Iranians immured them by building a brick wall round them up to their neck, and then cementing them in with quicklime, leaving only the head uncovered and thereby ensuring a slow and extremely unpleasant death.
The top of this particular pillar had crumbled away, but Abdul grubbed about with his fingers in the powdery dust and lime, and extracted what looked like a section of vertebrae. He held it out to me in the palm of his hand, then threw it on the ground and spat on it. 'Pider-i sukhte! He probably killed many people!'"

I could ramble on quoting other bits of the book, but I'll stop here.