Maiden Voyages

by Mary Morris

  A century later the priest of the celebrated fire-altar of Balkh was converted to Islam and his example was followed by the landowners. In 1221 Balkh was laid waste by Genghis Khan. At first, the town that had sheltered Muhammad of Khwarezm had simply been occupied. But when Genghis Khan heard that the son of Muhammad had raised an army of seventy thousand men in Southern Afghanistan, he destroyed the town, marched to Bamian and later defeated the young man by the river Indus.

  Fifty years later Marco Polo arrived at Balkh which he calls a large and magnificent city. “It was formerly more considerable but has sustained much injury from the Tartars who in their frequent attacks have partly demolished its buildings. It contained many palaces constructed of marble and spacious squares still visible, although in a ruinous state.”*

  Timur in the fourteenth century was the next invader and his example was followed by the Uzbeks who conquered Herat in 1506. It was one of their descendants, Abdul Aziz, who fought Prince Aurangzeb of Delhi, then governor of Balkh. The Moghul prince was brave, dismounting at sunset to pray during the battle, and winning the admiration of both armies. “To fight such a man is to court ruin” cried Abdul Aziz, and suspended battle. It was the last attempt of the Moghuls to retain these far-away provinces.

  We had no hope of emulating Renan and his Prière sur l’Acropole by meditating over the ruins of Balkh, comparing Asia with Europe: dreaming about the future of Paris, London or Berlin: our escort would have annoyed us, standing near, watching our movements, ready to forbid the use of our cameras as he had already done before. Photophobia was the latest affliction of Afghan officialdom—by contagion, probably, from Persia which tried to nip in the bud pictures that show her not yet entirely modern.

  But we planned to outdo our gaping man.

  Reaching the dead, bleached mounds of clay that had once been the ramparts of Balkh, Christina walked towards them, arming her camera and followed by the escort shouting Mafi! Mafi! Meanwhile, my gaze was fixed on a tall monument with a shiny blue dome that stood a few hundred paces away at the entrance of the living town. Jumping back into the car, I drove to it as quickly as possible, leaving behind me a man on the verge of being split between us.

  I had gained a few minutes during which I busied myself with my three cameras, taking coloured stills, black-and-white stills, and coloured “movie.” The sun shone harshly on the lofty ribbed dome and on the arched portal to which it was yoked. The dazzle of glazed tiles brought an unexpected touch of liveliness in a world that had fainted in the whiteness of the midday glare. Most of these tiles were too pale to please me, but that Green Mosque which stands by the side of the shrine of Khwaja Abdul Nasr Parsar stood proudly in the square and I liked the thick spiral minarets that framed the great portal.

  Khwaja is a name given to a sect of holy men who once acquired sovereign power over the Khans of Turkestan and whose tombs are found all over Central Asia. This name is perhaps derived from khojagian, a teacher. They belonged to the darvish order of the Naqshbandis and they developed the “Power of the Will” through perfect concentration: “It is impossible to conflict with an arif or ‘knowing person’ possessed of the ‘Power of the Will,’ is written in their books. The ‘Tarikh-i-Rashidi’ informs us that ‘they were workers of miracles and healers of the sick and in these capacities obtained a hold over the minds of the mass of the people.’ ” The Naqshbandis (painters) were so called because their founder Naqshband “drew incomparable pictures of the Divine Science and painted figures of the Eternal Invention which are not imperceptible.”*

  As soon as Christina joined me, shadowed by the policeman, we speeded toward Mazar-i-Sharif. To silence the expostulations of our man, I began to read aloud from the first booklet I happened on—Mr. Ford’s instructions to owners of his cars. But I soon stopped: it was too disquieting to read all we had done that we should not have done.

  The deep pot-holes of the road were a menace to our springs; but we forgot them more or less, in the question: “Is it possible for our time to produce such mystics as the Naqshbandis?” Born at Balkh, the most famous of them was Jalal-ud-din Rumi, founder of the darvish order of the Maulavis. Like his friend Shams-ud-Din of Tabriz known as the “Moving Spirit of the Order, the Sultan of the Mendicants, the Mystery of God on Earth, the Perfect in word and deed,” he lived at the beginning of the thirteenth century, the century during which Genghis Khan brought one world to an end by destroying all its great capitals—Balkh, Merv, Nishapur, Rey. Perhaps if a world-war—the modern equivalent to a Mongol invasion—was to destroy our present world, mystics would rise once more, eager to deal with facts more important and less sickening than the madness of men.

  We travelled with a bookshelf fixed above the back of our seat. The poor books were shaken madly during all these days, but we rejoiced to be able to lay our hand on the right volume at the right moment. Rubbing against each other were Marco Polo, Pelliot, Evans-Wentz, Vivekananda, Maritain, Jung, a life of Alexander the Great, Grousset, the Zend-Avesta. I picked The Darvishes by John P. Brown and H. A. Rose, and read aloud a passage about Jalal-ud-din Rumi. “When on a roof with other youngsters, he was asked if it were possible to jump to the next house-top. He answers: ‘Woe to the human being who should try to do what cats and dogs do. If you feel yourself competent to do it, let us jump towards heaven,’ and then he sprang and was lost from their sight. The youths all cried out as he disappeared, but a moment later he returned, altered in complexion, changed in figure, and said that a legion of beings clothed in green had seized him and carried him in a circle upwards. ‘They showed me strange things of a celestial character and on your cries reaching us they lowered me down to the earth.’ ”

  Later whenever he became absorbed in fervid love for Allah, he would rise from his seat and turn round; and on more than one occasion he began to recede upwards from the material world. Only by means of music could he be prevented from disappearing from among his devoted companions.

  Years afterwards I came to know of lines of his that might have been written for Christina:

  Knowing will, memory, thoughtfulness

  A hell, and life itself a snare,

  To put away self-consciousness;

  It is the soberest of men who bear

  The blame of Drugs and Drunkenness.

  —Jalal-un-din Rumi

  * Travels of Marco Polo.

  * John Brown and H. A. Rose: The Darvishes.

  ROSE MACAULAY

  (1881-1958)

  Rose Macaulay, the celebrated English author, wrote only one travel book, Fabled Shore, but few books have had a greater impact on the way people travel. Macaulay’s description of her automobile tour from Port Bou to Cape Vincent along the coast of Spain in 1948 enticed thousands to follow her lead and see for themselves. The coast has never been the same. Macaulay wrote several novels, including Abbots Verney, which established her literary reputation in 1906, and The Towers of Trebizond, which is often mistaken for a firsthand travel account, as well as poems, essays, and literary criticism. Macaulay was named Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1958.

  from THE FABLED SHORE

  Before the civil war broke, Málaga was a favourite winter resort of sun-seeking foreigners (perhaps it is so now again). The dirty streets complained of by nineteenth-century travellers have become clean, the hotels are improved. Possibly this is partly due to the winter visits of Queen Victoria (Ena) and her mother Princess Beatrice of Battenberg, who stayed there every year. I dare say even the lower orders are improved too. In 1830 a Mr. Inglis was warned (or so he believed) by the British consul that he could only ascend unaccompanied to the Alcázaba and the Gibralfera, the Phoenician-Moorish forts on the hill above the town, at risk of his life; when he did so one evening he was persuaded that a lurking Malagueño, whose dark face he descried watching him from the shadows of the ruins, meant to rob and assassinate him; he only escaped this fate by fleeing hot-foot and breathless down a path to the city. No such dangers to-day attend the visitor
to these now restored and tidied up forts, except the dangers attendant on a steep climb in the sun. If you brave this, you get a fine sweeping view of Málaga and its bay, the broad basin of its splendid harbour full of the ships of the world—cargo steamers, cruising steamers, Spanish battleships, white-sailed yachts, fleets of fishing boats—a lovely sight. Beyond it stretches the line of coast that curves south-west to the Straits, and it is true that you can faintly see Ceuta and the mountains of Africa.

  Walking down the steep narrow streets of the old town that climbs above the long alameda and park and modern frontage that lie along the harbour front, one passes an occasional broken gesture from the Arab past—part of a house, a gateway, an arch. There is, too, the cathedral, though this is not particularly interesting. It is, as Ford observed, a pastiche, since it was begun (on the site of a mosque and of the Gothic church run up just after the conquest, of which only a portal of the Sagrario remains) in 1538, and not finished until late in the eighteenth century. It was a good deal damaged in 1936, but still has a fine showy commonplace Corinthian façade and towers. I did not see the inside, which has, says Baedeker, pictures by Alonso Cano, Ribera and others (but I dare say they were burnt) and some good sculpture. There are other churches in Málaga, and an archæological museum, and a museum of fine arts, all shut. More interesting is the general lie and feeling of the town and port, this oldest Phoenician Mediterranean port of Spain, anciently so powerful and so opulent a fair for Tyre, for Carthage, for Rome, for the Moor, and now again for Spain. Málaga has its industrial quarter, its cotton mills, its sugar refineries, its factories, west of the Guadalmedina, and its port is full of ships carrying grapes, raisins, wine, sugar, cotton, and (one hopes) bananas, sweet potatoes and custard apples, out to sea.

  For those who like parks (I do not) there is a handsome modern park along the sea front. For those who like nice crowded bathing beaches (I do not) there is a nice crowded bathing beach. I remembered how Mr. Joseph Townsend, visiting Málaga in 1786, had reported that all the young people bathed for hours by night in summer, and the female section of the sea, carefully segregated from the male, was defended from eager gentlemen by sentinels with loaded muskets. Deaths in such a cause were, no doubt, numerous among Malagueño señoritos. Strange things were in those days related to visiting Englishmen; Mr. Henry Swinburne, in 1775, was “assured that it was hardly possible to breathe in summer.” This sounds like the kind of assurance made by those patriots who desire to defend their city from any suspicions of chilliness, and was probably made to Mr. Swinburne on a day when the cool levante was blowing from the sea, or the icy terral from the mountains. Málaga, when I was there, was not too hot, but breezy and pleasant.

  But I felt no temptation to stay there: as Murray succinctly expressed it, “one day will suffice,” I went on in the evening to Torremolinos, about eight miles down the western side of Málaga bay. The mountains had withdrawn a little from the sea; the road ran a mile inland; the sunset burned on my right, over vines and canes and olive gardens. I came into Torremolinos, a pretty country place, with, close on the sea, the little Santa Clara hotel, white and tiled and rambling, with square arches and trellises and a white-walled garden dropping down by stages to the sea. One could bathe either from the beach below, or from the garden, where a steep, cobbled path twisted down the rocks to a little terrace, from which one dropped down into ten feet of green water heaving gently against a rocky wall. A round full moon rose corn-coloured behind a fringe of palms. Swimming out to sea, I saw the whole of the bay, and the Málaga lights twinkling in the middle of it, as if the wedge of cheese were being devoured by a thousand fireflies. Behind the bay the dark mountains reared, with here and there a light. It was an exquisite bathe. After it I dined on a terrace in the garden; near me three young Englishmen were enjoying themselves with two pretty Spanish girls they had picked up in Málaga; they knew no Spanish, the señoritas no English, but this made them all the merrier. They were the first English tourists I had seen since I entered Spain; they grew a little intoxicated, and they were also the first drunks I had seen in Spain. They were not very drunk, but one seldom sees Spaniards drunk at all.

  I got up early next morning and went down the garden path again to bathe. There were blue shadows on the white garden walls, and cactuses and aloes above them, and golden cucumbers and pumpkins and palms. I dropped into the green water and swam out; Málaga across the bay was golden pale like a pearl; the little playa of Torremolinos had fishing boats and nets on it and tiny lapping waves. Near me was a boat with fishermen, who were hacking mussels off the rocks and singing. The incredible beauty of the place and hour, of the smooth opal morning sea, shadowing to deep jade beneath the rocks, of the spread of the great bay, of the climbing, winding garden above with the blue shadows on its white walls, the golden pumpkins, the grey-green spears of the aloes, the arcaded terrace and rambling jumble of low buildings, was like the returning memory of a dream long forgotten. Lumpy cathedrals, tiresome modern parks, smartly laid out avenidas and alamedas, tented and populated beaches, passed out of mind, washed away in this quiet sea whispering against shadowed rocks. I climbed the ladder to the platform, and went up the vine-trellised garden to my annexe.

  I had to go again into Málaga, to cash a cheque and get my exhaust pipe mended at a garage. They sawed off its end, and told me there was nothing to pay. I gave them ten pesetas and some English cigarettes, and told them how kind they were; they said I was muy simpatica, and we parted in mutual esteem. I like most Spanish mechanics very much; they are both clever and obliging, and often witty too. For that matter, so are most British and French mechanics; but the Spanish (or is it only the Andalucian?) negligence about payment is attractive.

  Going back again through Torremolinos, I picked up a stout and agreeable woman laden with bundles and baskets, who asked me if I could take her to Marbella, twenty-eight miles on, as she had missed the bus. I said yes by all means, if she was not in a hurry and would not mind my stopping to bathe somewhere on the way. She said that she would not mind at all, but strongly advised me to wait till we reached Marbella, which had the best beach in the world. She was a Marbella enthusiast; whenever I showed signs of admiring some sequestered cove or beach she assured me, with much fervour and gesticulation, that it was nothing to Marbella, which had the best beach in the world, and that when I saw Marbella I should never again want to bathe anywhere else. She had me in such a state of pleasant anticipation about Marbella that I sped quickly on. We talked agreeably all the way about her family, the coffee she was taking them, the beauty of her married daughter, the terrible price of food, why I had come to Spain, why I was alone, why Spanish women did not drive cars nor Spanish little girls ride donkeys in the streets like their brothers; that is to say, she did not really know why, only that it was “costumbre española,” and the other “costumbre extranjera.” She was rather a delightful woman, handsome, stout, loquacious, beautifully mannered, comfortably off; either a peasant or a small Málaga bourgeoise; I liked her a great deal.

  We got to Marbella, which had a large, hot, quiet beach with a river running into it. The house which my companion was visiting was down by the shore; she invited me into it for refreshment, but I refused. Instead I drove down a track to the sands, undressed in the car, and bathed. The beach and sea were pleasant enough, but, after all my anticipations, I was disappointed, and did not think Marbella all it had been cracked up to be. It was once important both as trading port and coast stronghold, and in the days when, as old engravings show, it was ringed about with towered Moorish walls, gradually falling to ruin, it must have been a very picturesque city, standing before the sea with the fruitful mountains behind it. It was then full of convents and churches, had a fine alameda of trees watered by fountains; and its port was full of ships being loaded with wines, figs and raisins. But “the present inhabitants,” wrote a traveller of the 1770’s, “bear the character of an uncivil, inhospitable people, many of them descendants of the Moors, who s
till seem to resent the ill treatment of their forefathers; hence the Spanish proverb ‘Marbella es bella, pero no entrar en ella.’ ” The Marbellians seem in these days to have improved in civility, so perhaps they have now forgotten the ill treatment of their forefathers. The town is guarded by two forts, but in vain, for African barbarians crossed the sea in A.D. 170 and devastated it, with Málaga and the other towns on the Bætican shore, and the Moors took it quite easily in the eighth century, and the Catholic Monarchs, though with more difficulty, in the fifteenth. It was after that peopled with Christians. The Moriscos made some trouble there later, but were expelled, and after that, says the Crónica, the inhabitants of Marbella devoted themselves to art, industry and agriculture, leading lives happy and tranquil, rich in the abundant fruits of their soil and sea. Fishermen drew from the liquid element nets laden with the most savoury and delicious fish in Spain; the sardines in particular are of exquisite taste. In few ports does one enjoy such beautiful sea, and such a variety of admirable objects. Opposite one may observe the mountains of the Riff, on the right the Rock of Gibraltar. The countryside (the description continues) is covered with vines and olives, oranges, pomegranates, wine presses, farmhouses, orchards. In the Plaza de la Constitución is a magnificent stone fountain. There is much trade and manufacture, and iron mines in the hills, and Marbella flourishes greatly. Obviously a remarkable place. On first seeing it, Isabella the Catholic threw up her hands and exclaimed, “Que mar tan bella!” like my companion of the road. But the mar, anyhow the Mediterranean mar, is always bella.

  I drove three kilometres on, to the half-ruined hamlet of San Pedro Alcantara, where a steep stony road turned up into the mountains for Ronda, thirty-five miles away. For the first twenty miles this track was covered with loose flints; apparently it was being mended. It climbed up in steep zigzags above tremendous ravines; a great basin of pine-clad mountains opened out, range beyond range, on my left, brown and indigo and purple and softly mauve, stretching into hyacinth-blue distance. Over the ravine great birds flew with wide wings. On my right the rocky precipice rose sheer. They were silent mountains, and a silent track, till, as I rounded a sharp bend, three roadmenders hailed me, black-a-vised, unshaven, wanting a lift to “dieciocho,” the eighteenth-kilometre stone, ten miles on. They got in: I thought their weight would make it bad for the tyres over the sharp flints, but it proved all right. They were very kind roadmenders. One of them got out at a spring he knew of and filled my earthen pot with fresh water; they kept collecting things they had hidden behind bushes along the track. They left me at dieciocho, where a path to their village went down into the ravine. If ever in the future, one of them said, they could do anything to repay me for my kindness, I was to let them know at once. I said that I would; I hope that an opportunity may offer. Meanwhile, I went on through the mountains. The road became good for the last ten or fifteen miles before Ronda. The mountains presently levelled out into a spacious amphitheatre, in which Ronda stood high on a sheer rock.