It's on the Meter

by Paul Archer

  'Wait, wha…' I trailed off as the door slammed.

  We waited around for hours, growing ever more frustrated. Craig in particular was taking things badly – every time he spoke to the young recruits manning the front gate, he was told, 'Yes, yes, five minutes.'

  I could see his internal temperature rising.

  There's something in the psyche of the British public that loves a story about plucky explorers risking their lives for a distant dream. As kids of the 1980s and 1990s, we missed out on the heroics – and grisly ends – of Scott of the Antarctic and Captain Cook, but there still seemed to be something in our blood that attracted us to these dangerous, and (in our case especially!) ultimately pointless, journeys.

  While it was undoubtedly reckless and a bit selfish to worry the folks at home just for the sake of our own kicks, the route and risks involved were very carefully thought out. What was perhaps less thought out was the fact that we were now putting the local escorts and police in extra danger for what was essentially our holiday. At the time we found it really hard to appreciate that they were actually there to help and look after us and we didn't show the patience or gratitude we perhaps should have done.

  In reality, the conscripts were probably just bored, angry young men, co-opted into a job they didn't want or enjoy, and just as fed up and out of the loop as us. This translated into them subtly winding us up and I could see that if I didn't do something soon then the previously calm Craig would blow his top.

  'Stay here and watch the passports,' I told Craig in a low voice, 'I'm going to get some fuel.'

  Before the recruits could stop me I jumped in the car and set off for the fuel station we had just passed.

  I was almost immediately flanked by a policeman on a motorbike, angrily signalling me to pull over. Against my better judgement I kept my eyes locked on the road for what seemed like an eternity, until we reached the gas station.

  Of course they had no gazole.

  Things were looking extremely bleak and I doubted we'd make it more than 30 miles with what was left in the tank, so I was reduced to pleading with the policeman on the forecourt to let me go to another station we had passed on the approach to his patch. I assured him it wasn't more than a mile and a half away and he finally relented.

  Four miles later, after two and a half miles of more angry pull-over signalling, we finally made it to a station that did have gazole, as evidenced by the huge queue of trucks that we pushed to the front of. Here we hit the next issue: we hadn't ever been issued a special fuel card that was needed for diesel and so we had been reduced to sweet-talking truckers into selling us 30 or 40 litres from the hundreds their semis were swallowing. So now here I was trying to negotiate the illegal use of a diesel fuel card in front of the local police chief. The truckers were, unsurprisingly, not feeling particularly helpful this time. Thankfully the policeman jumped in and ordered a driver to give me fuel, although I was charged the outrageous price of 25p per litre.

  When we were reunited with an immensely relieved Craig, I assumed that my newfound rapport with the police chief would mean he would quickly send us on our way but instead my insolence was rewarded with another hour sitting twiddling our thumbs. This was too much for Craig who finally boiled over and unleashed a tirade of choice four-letter words on the impassive young policemen.

  Eventually the new escort arrived and we raced towards the border, trying desperately to make it before it closed for the evening. Unfortunately, all of the excitement was too much for Hannah and the 'TEMP' needle leapt up once again, warning us that the cooling fan had failed. We limped up to the final checkpoint to change escorts one last time. As our guard trotted inside to record our details, we noticed the police compound was full of dirt-covered men kneeling in a line with their hands on their heads. A young uniformed man standing on the steps of the building was searching the ground for pebbles to halfheartedly lob at them and an armed guard stood lazily watching what we assumed to be captured smugglers.

  Thirteen long hours after we had started our day, we finally reached the Iran–Pakistan border. It was locked up and long deserted for the evening. The poor teenage escort – who had only been with us for the past five minutes of the journey – took the brunt of Craig's outburst and when the tirade was over he innocently informed us we would have to spend the night in the nearby border town of Mirjaveh, described by the British Foreign Office as 'particularly insecure'. This wasn't exactly shaping up to be the best day of our trip so far.

  CHAPTER 26

  POLICE CHASES IN THE WILD, WILD EAST

  I waited alone in my holding cell for five hours for my deportation flight, finally arriving into Dubai's 'Terrorist' Terminal Two – so known because it's the jumping-off point for places such as Kabul and Mogadishu. My phone had barely any credit and if Johno couldn't take Hannah through the border then the whole expedition was in jeopardy. I started doing the maths of us driving back to London from Iran. Would it be enough mileage to break the world record? Possibly. But how could I look anyone in the eye afterwards? Things looked bleak.

  In fact, things were bleak.

  I sent a message to Leigh asking if he could pick me up.

  Sorry mate, we're in the cinema watching Transformers 3 on the other side of the city, meet us here at the Emirates Mall, it won't finish for another two hours

  It wasn't Leigh's fault; he thought I was arriving the following day but I was furious, hopping mad.

  It had been one of the worst days of my life. A day that had started with the promise of an end to the six-month long Pakistan-visa struggles and ended up with me being deported from a rogue state as a suspected Israeli spy, and to make it worse, I had little money left, after being made to pay for my own deportation, and Leigh couldn't pick me up because he was watching bloody Transformers.

  Eventually I met up with Leigh and we went to our temporary home. An old friend of my mum's, a geologist working out in Dubai and an all-round hero, had invited us to stay in his huge apartment on the 43rd floor of the Radisson Hotel, overlooking Dubai in all its gaudy finest. It had a pool on the roof, a gym and even a sauna (a pointless extravagance in the Dubai summer, but that didn't stop me from using it). An expert and passionate chef, Chris housed, fed and watered us in a manner that one could easily become accustomed to, especially after suffering camel stew in the desert and my terrible camp cooking.

  Hannah's health was dwindling, so while we were stuck at the border for the night I decided to try to find a mechanic to patch up the cooling fan. After driving to the town centre I popped open the bonnet and was almost immediately surrounded by curious white-robed men staring at Hannah's battered guts. The boldest one quickly grasped the problem so I nervously followed his pickup through smaller and smaller alleys and soon found myself sat outside a small garage with parts of the cooling system spread out on the dirt.

  As the sky reddened a drink was pressed into my hand and conversation flowed freely as I thought to myself, So, this is the place I need an armed escort?

  A young lad translated for me, 'No fix Mirjaveh, you go Zahedan for fix.'

  It seemed Hannah couldn't be repaired here but that we would have to travel 50 miles back to the city where we had spent most of the day frustrated and stuck.

  The only hotel in town was out of our budget, so we pitched our tents in their car park and after a fitful night's sleep we started the long journey back. It was an exact rerun of the previous day's bureaucratic bullshit, with all the same guard checkpoints putting us through all the same misery. By the time we reached the dreaded checkpoint, where we'd been held up for six hours the previous day, it was already mid-morning.

  We tried patiently to explain that we needed to find a mechanic and get back to the border as soon as possible but it was clear that we would have to be more assertive. As soon as the guards went on their first break I grabbed Hannah's knackered fan and jogged off down the street to look for someone who might know how to fix a London taxi in the middle of the dese
rt.

  Miraculously, the first guy I came across recognised the broken parts immediately, and had just written down the address of a place that would be able to help us, when the fuming guards caught up with me. As I was frogmarched back to the checkpoint, I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry – this whole situation was like something out of a pantomime.

  While Craig was having a not-so-calm debate with our escorts, the younger recruits seemed to be taking increasing issue with me.

  'Koola! Koola!' they kept saying, gesturing at a metal helmet, each time with more venom and less patience. It quickly became apparent that they thought we had stolen a helmet from them the previous day.

  I shrugged my shoulders at them to show that I didn't know what they were talking about, but the more I played dumb the angrier they got. For some reason they seemed convinced that we were the culprits. One of the guards even grabbed a random passer-by from the street and put handcuffs on him, shouting some more about the 'Koola!' – no doubt trying to tell us that if we didn't give the helmet back then we would be arrested.

  Their cursory search of the cab didn't uncover the elusive helmet, which deflated their theatrical display somewhat. With some angry gesticulating of my own I eventually convinced them that I didn't know where the bloody thing was, and after half an hour of harassment they finally left us alone.

  By early afternoon we had found the mechanic's place, handed over the princely sum of £20 from our emergency stash for the repairs and were all set to make a break for the border again. Now all that we needed to do was to top up the gazole we had used going to the border and back.

  We knew the fuel station we had used yesterday was close by, but the escorts wouldn't let us take another detour. This left us with two options: leave the already impatient cops and go to get fuel or follow them and sit around for hours more, probably missing out on the border crossing that day, and risk being stranded in the desert with no diesel. We blithely ignored their blatant directions and drove off. A few minutes later the police car screeched up by the side of us with sirens blaring. The driver looked like he was about to explode and his facial expression alone scared me into following them back towards the checkpoint.

  There was, however, another turning which would also take us back to the petrol station. If I drove a little faster this time, I reckoned I could reach the station before they could catch up a second time. I turned off and floored the cab, heading for the fuel. We were almost there when their car raced up to us, but the livid gesturing of the two officers tightened my stomach and brought me out in an immediate sweat. These guys were seriously angry. We were definitely in for it. We pulled over a tantalising mere few metres away from the diesel pump.

  It seemed that luck was on our side, because as soon as the guards stepped out of their car, they saw someone they knew and their faces broke into happy smiles as they walked over, embraced and started chatting. By the time they remembered why they were there, their anger had dissipated, and they waited while we filled up. It seemed that how to get your way with armed guards in Iran was to play chicken with them until they got distracted and gave up.

  By 4.45 p.m. we had reached the final checkpoint just a few minutes from the fabled border we had been trying to cross for two days. It soon became clear they weren't going to let us cross this evening, and poor Craig's temper snapped, like a broken shoelace. He lunged towards the terrified escort, unleashing a uniquely Australian barrage of swearwords and demanded that we be let out of this 'fackin' shithole, you fackin' little caaant!'

  Though Craig is a big and somewhat intimidating guy, I would have thought that having an AK-47 and a gaggle of other armed guards just behind him would have meant a rifle butt to the face of the yelling Aussie, at the very least. For a moment I was scared for my life, imagining our bodies disappearing under a huddle of hand-me-down boots, khaki shirts and badly fitting berets. But somehow the torrent of abuse that poured out of Craig's mouth made the soldiers cower in pure terror, although not quite enough to get them to let us through that night.

  After another night in our car-park campground the next set of escorts suddenly became wonderfully helpful. We whizzed through with barely any trouble, even when the border guard realised that the taxi was registered in Paul's name and that my passport said Johnathan – in an area where smuggling is rife this was an understandable sticking point. Luckily we had thought this through, and the guard accepted Paul's letter giving me written permission to take his car through the border.

  The official peered at the letter, tracing over the strange squiggles of the Roman alphabet with a filthy fingertip and mumbling syllables slowly. When he got to Paul's name he carefully crosschecked it twice with the car document and seemed satisfied; he had ticked all of his required boxes and dutifully stamped and signed the documents before beckoning forward the next weary traveller.

  With a final, 'Yala!' the escort pointed us through the barbedwire-topped gates and we were free. We had finally escaped from Iran.

  The moment we pulled up next to the first Pakistani checkpoint, Craig popped the roof box open and pointed to the far corner with a mischievous smile.

  'What the hell is that?' I asked, shocked at what lay before my eyes.

  Partly hidden behind the piles of bags and spares was the policeman's metal helmet that had caused so much angst at the Zahedan checkpoint the previous day. It was a terrible thing, it had almost cost us the border but I couldn't help but let out a little chuckle.

  Craig smiled for the first time all week. 'That, mate, is karma.'

  CHAPTER 27

  KIDNAP!

  'Hello, how are you? I am fine thank you for asking!'

  The Pakistani border officials spoke a charmingly quaint version of English and immediately seemed warmer and more helpful than their neighbouring counterparts. There were bristling moustaches and wide smiles everywhere, and insistences that we took their seats as they helped us fill in the importation documentation under a battered old parasol that stood over a small plastic garden table, which constituted the Taftan border office.

  Despite being told that fuel was like gold dust on this side of the border, we soon came across a whole load of 55-gallon drums crowded by the side of the road and guarded by a grime-covered kid equipped with a hand-pump. A short exchange later we had all of our jerry cans and Hannah's main tank topped to the brim with diesel, as we set off parallel to the Afghanistan border, driving up towards the city infamous as the Taliban capital: Quetta.

  By the evening we had swapped escorts many more times, each time at one of the tiny levies posts (old British army buildings from the previous century that still even sported the old regimental crests). The logbooks in which we recorded our details showed us starkly just how few Westerners ever travelled through this area. We had driven along the swathe of nothingness that was cut by a new ribbon of smooth Tarmac. When we reached the halfway point of the town of Dalbandin we were almost starting to wonder what all the fuss was about.

  All this time, Leigh and I had been stuck in our luxury 43rd-storey flat, ignoring all the amenities, sitting at the computer, refreshing the browser and waiting for some scrap of news, unable to tear our eyes away in case something vital happened. We had been unsuccessfully surfing Google, news sites and blogs for any new info about Pakistan, as well as checking constantly for texts or emails.

  Then Leigh suddenly called me over to the laptop and showed me the Pakistani news website:

  Breaking news: Two Western tourists kidnapped from their car in Baluchistan

  No more details were known but there was probably no more than a small handful of tourists in that part of the world at once – it's not exactly one of the regular routes served by Thomson. It had to be them. This was it. The trip was finished: no expedition, no world record. I'd have to start writing a eulogy for Johno:

  Johno Ellison. An all-round good bloke. A traveller, a writer, the master of fancy dress with an unhealthy love for Bonnie Tyler and wearing Daisy Duke girl
s' denim shorts…

  All we knew about Craig was that he came from a made-upsounding place in Australia called Wagga Wagga.

  We kept pressing refresh for an hour and then a new story came up:

  Two Swiss tourists kidnapped in Baluchistan

  Johno and Craig aren't Swiss. There was hope!

  It was hard to be too overjoyed when we thought of the misfortunes of the Swiss couple, but we breathed a sigh of relief that our friends were safe. We later found out that the couple were held captive for eight months before eventually being freed.

  I was reading the latest in a series of increasingly desperate messages that were waiting for me when I finally got online at an Internet cafe in Quetta:

  * * *

  To: 'Johno Ellison'

  Subject: !!!!!