Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  Jenkins said, in this matter-of-fact voice, “No, he isn’t. He died that next winter. Coming home from a curling game. There’d been this freezing rain. He came over this hill and there was this big semi full of hay jack-knifed in the middle of the highway.”

  Yeah, there’s no doubt about it, I spoiled the mood with that stupid question. Not that they held it against me or anything. Kelly kept painting. Jenkins just looked down and fiddled with the little Kodak he had hanging around his neck.

  And I was almost relieved when Patrick and Dana and Charole and Suzie came knocking, wanting to know if anyone wanted to find some place to eat.

  Kelly and Jenkins said no thanks, but I was hungry and so I went along and we found this pastry shop and everyone but me pigged out on coffee and donuts and baklava and when we got back to the hotel, Patrick said he had a bottle of raki in his room, if I was up for a game of backgammon.

  And at that time I didn’t think much about that night, it was just another night on the Great Indian Trek, as Patrick called it, but now looking back on it, I wish I’d stayed in that little hotel room with Kelly and Jenkins and talked about all the things that mattered till morning came and it was time to hit the road again.

  from Kelly’s diary

  Nov. 13

  Malaria Monday, windy Monday. The wind so strong it blew over the transit bus in front of us. But it wasn’t as bad as it looked: a pregnant woman was worried about the condition of her unborn baby & that was about it. She hitched a ride into Erzurum with us. Another sad industrial city full of smoke & the disenfranchised. M got off at the hospital as well, for reasons he wouldn’t mention, & when he finally got to the hotel, he was acting strange & sounding stranger. He’s in a very self-destructive frame of mind these days, drinking raki from morning onwards. He got into a weird conversation with D & C. about bastard children, how Marilyn Monroe was one, & how it was Bobby Kennedy who killed both her & Jimmy Hoffa because Hoffa was wire-tapping the “love nest,” & then he & D went somewhere. He is, as C says, an independent spirit. We went out as well, in search of food. Pete has warned us that we won’t be stopping at very many restaurants on the way through Iran, & so we walked, me & C. & Pete, until we found a pie & chai shop still open, pigged out on baklava, got to keep our energy levels up, said C., the 1st shot of sugar hitting her bloodstream, her pupils dilating, her cheeks going flush, a graceless smile gracing her lips, while P. told us what it was like diving for bodies in cars off the Tasmanian shore, how the bodies bloat up & some explode. When it came time for the bill, C. said, what’s the difference between a Turkish transit bus & Canuck tourists? Pete bit. Turkish transit buses tip. Pete laughed. Too much, I thought. C then spent the last of her Turkish lire on 4 doz. donuts, for what Pat. is calling the Iranian trail.

  Mick

  Soon asked me this morning if she could read my book. I asked her where she learned to read English. She said her sister married an American soldier, and he taught her and her sister, with the help of a few Ross McDonald novels. So I gave her the first fifty pages. When she brought them back, she gave me a funny look and asked me if I’d found any mushrooms. I told her no, I hadn’t got around to that. She said, well, her brother-in-law grows whole fields of them on the other side of the island, he has lots, if I’m interested, after I get out of the hospital.

  I said great, it’s a date.

  So things are looking up.

  What’s the next town, Dave? Erzurum. Last town before the Iranian border. Dirty little city, a lot like Hamilton. On the way there, high wind. We were trucking along and right in front of us that fucking wind tipped this Turkish bus, piled high with furs and boxes, up on its wheels, right wheels, it teetered along for a long time, kind of like a racecar at the midway, before finally plunking itself down in the ditch.

  Of course, Pete being the good Samaritan that he is, stopped, had a look-see. Good thing the windows in Turkish buses are mostly all cardboard, wasn’t much broken glass, no major injuries that I could see. Maybe one broken arm, says Dave, but the guy was in shock and didn’t realize it until after we’d left. We did end up giving this pregnant woman a ride into Erzurum. Pete sat her down right across from Dana. When the bus got back on the road, Dana moved back to the tables, had a game of backgammon with Patrick.

  I knew I was drinking too much raki that day. Thanks to the tooth, thanks to the fact that I kind of missed Teach, the bus really wasn’t the same without her. But I knew what I was risking. And so I wasn’t surprised when I woke up from a nap I took in the Erzurum hotel, that I was scrunched down beside one of the filthier Turkish Delights I’d seen on the trip and Rockstar’s squatting right above me, looking like a pieeyed vulture, and he’s saying, “Hey, Muckle, you better get your bloody butt in gear, the bus’s leaving in five minutes.”

  My head was throbbing, my tooth was throbbing and something furry with claws was ping-ponging back and forth in my stomach. I managed to get my pants down and my ass over that black hole and make like Nagasaki in the nick of time.

  Rockstar was horrified.

  “Christ, Muckle,” he said. “Sounded like you lost half your personality there.”

  “Got any t.p.?” I said.

  “None to spare,” he said. He’d backed off a good ten feet through the door.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll pay you for it,” I said.

  “How much?” he said.

  “Whatever you want,” I said.

  It was a dark way to start a day, squatting over a filthy shitter that’d been visited by a few people with worse aim than me. Haggling with Rockstar over the price of toilet paper.

  We settled on fifty lire.

  I didn’t have much time to get my act together. Faces swam

  in from of me when I got on the bus, so I kept my eyes front and centre and made a beeline for the back seat, and I wasn’t there more than two minutes when Dana’s voice came knocking on my skull.

  “Do you need some Lomotil?” she said.

  “Probably,” I said.

  She had two pills in her hand, a plastic glass of water.

  I took the pills and water, said thanks.

  She said, “And I want to thank you too.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “Just for putting things in perspective for me last night.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “How so?”

  “About baby and all.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “No problem.”

  She smiled and touched my cheek. “Take it easy with the raki today, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  She floated out of view beyond the back of the seat in front of me, and I called up Dave.

  So what’s new? I said to him.

  He said not much. I asked him if he’d taken over the night before.

  He said he had. And he said he would in the future, without hesitation, whenever I was kind enough to give him the opportunity.

  I decided to let that pass. I just wanted to know what had happened.

  He said not much. He said he’d laid my little psychic spiel on Dana, and told her it was just as well she’d had an abortion because the baby would’ve been born without a brain had it gone to term.

  Which is likely a lie, right? I said.

  Right, he said. But lies have their functions, he said, and then hung up.

  I closed my eyes and listened to the rumble of wheels and tried to make my world stop turning with aspirins and 292s. I maybe took a few too many 292s. I should’ve spread them out little better.

  Whatever. I wasn’t the picture of a perfect tourist, the kind of tourist border agents are happy to see, when we got to the Iranian border.

  IRAN Erzurum—Tabriz

  Day 32

  Route: E 23; 336 km (possible long wait at Iranian border). Hotel: Movarid; tel.: 1442-1443.

  Points: 1. Unit of currency is the rial, subdivided into 100 dinars. Current rate of exchange: $1 = 75.75 rials.

  2. Remind your troupe that if an Iranian or a
n Afghani is caught smuggling drugs into Iran, he usually finds himself facing a firing squad in very short order, while a Westerner finds himself facing a long sentence in the Mashhad jail.

  3. Another reminder: in no way is the company at all responsible for loss of life or limb, then tell them about Iranian taxis. Advise extreme caution. These things are driven by frustrated camel jockeys who think nothing of driving on sidewalks, scattering pedestrians in all directions, if it means getting a leg up on the competition. If they insist upon having an adventure, however, let them know that they have to know how to yell real loud in order to get one of them to stop.

  4. Iran’s national dish is chelo kebab. It cannot be avoided. Chefll love you if you can manage a second helping. If not, well.... Careful with the veggies. They likely were washed with untreated water.

  5. Just about every Iranian you meet will try to sell you a carpet, or introduce you to his brother, who makes the best in the world. When buying a carpet make sure the tufts are well knotted. The closer the stitch, the more durable the carpet and the higher the value. Rub the design with the tip of your finger to test the tightness of the knotting, and to test the fastness of the colours, rub the carpet with a wet cloth. A good price is usually half of the original asking price.

  6. Islam is Iran’s official religion. Its followers are a group called Shi’ites, who split from the mainstream over a disagreement over who was the rightful successor to Mohammed. And they take it all very seriously.

  7. Mail service is erratic in Iran, given the fact that their written language resembles a child’s scribble. If they can’t decipher an envelope’s address, they’ll usually just throw the letter away.

  We got to the Iranian border around noon. The customs agents collected our passports, saw there were a few Yankees on board and decided to let us cool our heels for a couple hours. When they finally let us into the customs building, which was long and narrow and grey like a slaughter barn, there was a long line-up ahead of us, mostly truckers. But there were these three hippie types right ahead of us. As Patrick put it later, they looked distinctly Kerouacian. Two guys and a girl. Guys had long hair, beards, torn dirty clothes. The guy wearing a poncho right out of those Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns had glasses that were taped up, one lens missing. The other guy looked like he had a broken nose. The girl was a blonde with milk-white skin and big blue eyes on the verge of tears. She was wearing a tan corduroy jacket with a sleeve missing. Me and Kelly got into a conversation with them. Bongo George, Rob Fincati and the girl’s name was Felicity. They’d just come from Kabul and they told us that if we were smart we’d turn around and head back west because Iran was nuts. They’d been beat up twice and Felicity said she was raped. They said they saw banks and gas stations being burned and people being gunned down in Tehran. And then it was their turn to get their passports checked and when the agent saw they came from Iowa he hauled all three of them into a back room for body searches. Same thing happened to Jenkins, Kelly, Charole. When they came out, Kelly looked pretty upset. Bad scene.

  After that the agents went through the bus tearing stuff apart, and they dumped all our suitcases out on the wet ground, went through our clothes with a stick. They found a few things which they decided to keep. That camisole Kelly wore on Hallowe’en and a lacy pair of black silk panties in Dana’s suitcase. A Playboy with Dolly Parton on the cover and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label in Patrick’s. One of them asked Patrick what he thought he was trying to do, smuggling smut and booze into the land of Allah, and Patrick shrugged, said they were for the sole purpose of being sold should he happen to lose his wallet and be in dire need of emergency funds. He said he heard that such things fetched high prices on certain streets in Delhi. Which might’ve been funny if these agents hadn’t looked so much like heavies out of The Godfather.

  They made a big thing out of Jenkins’s suitcase. Dave says Jenkins didn’t take too kindly to the body search and told the guy who searched him to grab a brain when he was taking too long searching the rectum. When they found his jacket with the little Canadian flag on it, they asked him about it. Jenkins shrugged his shoulders, said he used to be a Canadian. They called him a liar.

  “Better that than being whatever you are,” said Jenkins. Which didn’t show a lot of clearheaded thinking on his part, because the agents asked to see his passport and medical book again and they went into a huddle and a few minutes later they hauled Jenkins over to join them.

  “What’s going on?” I said to Patrick.

  “Apparently there’s an irregularity in Mr. Jenkins’s visa,” he said. Next thing we know Jenkins is getting his duffel bag off the bus.

  “Hey, Jenkins,” I said, “what’s happening?”

  “Gotta make a few backtracks,” he said, in a sad voice. “So they tell me. But I’ll be catching up with you guys later, so don’t celebrate too quick.”

  The upshot was this. Pete had fucked up. When he was checking all our medical books he hadn’t noticed that Jenkins didn’t have his cholera shot. I think the problem was that Jenkins had a Yankee passport. That’s why they made him go back and get a cholera shot in Erzurum.

  The plan was that Jenkins would catch a bus across Iran and meet up with us in Herat.

  Pete told him we’d even wait for him a couple days if he didn’t show up right away.

  Kelly and Charole had their cholera shots but that wasn’t because they were told to get them, they just got them to be on the safe side. Charole’s mother was a worry wart about germs, Kelly told me later, and she told them to get them. Dave says the whole cholera thing was completely arbitrary, but Charole figured Pete should’ve been up on it.

  And so it was that we pulled away from the border without Jenkins on board.

  When I looked back, I didn’t see him. I just saw two of those hippies, the guys, walking out of the customs office. The girl wasn’t in sight.

  I settled back and lit up one of my last Marleys. I didn’t have a good feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it wasn’t thanks to the dysentery germ. It was a little deeper than that.

  It occurred to me that maybe I should’ve talked more to Jenkins. He was a real nice guy. Real easy to get along with. He wasn’t always checking you out, sizing you up by some personal high moral standard no one else has a clue about. Like a lot of people do.

  Dave says I should mention something else. I wasn’t around but Dave says Charole asked Pete if he could just stay at the border and wait until Jenkins got back from Erzurum, but Pete said that would take two days and by that time the revolution might’ve spread to the north. He said he was sorry but we couldn’t afford to take the chance. Charole said well, the next time you should be more careful looking through the medical books. Pete said there is going to be no next time and then he turned around and walked towards the bus. Then Charole ran into the customs office, to talk to Jenkins I guess, but Dave says she wasn’t able to find him.

  She was the last person to get on the bus. Her face as grey and gloomy as the sky.

  It was real quiet on the bus as Pete picked up speed. The music was low.

  A few miles down the road it started raining.

  I tried to make that Marley last as long as possible, I smoked it right down to the butt.

  After that I stared out at the bleak Iranian landscape. We were headed towards mountains. The tops of them lost in mist.

  Suzie’s daybook entry

  Nov. 14

  We’re in Iran. I knew it was going to be bloody awful. Kelly talked to some Yank dope addicts at the border who kept getting beat up and raped all the time in Iran. Kelly and Charole better look out. Look what happened to Frank. I bet they won’t even let him go back into Turkey. Patrick said he probably bribed the customs agent into finding something wrong so he could meet up with some mail-order sheila without the rest of us knowing about it. My opinion is they’re going to throw him in jail just because he’s a Yank and this is going to be the start of an oil war. I said this daybook’s impor
tant so from now on everyone make sure they take their turns every day, this is history. I know one thing. I’m going to be staying on the bus. Except when I go to the loo of course. I wish they hadn’t taken Patrick’s Scotch back there. I could use a shot right now and Mick’s such a piker he’s keeping his raki to himself. He claims he needs it for his tooth. His tooth probably doesn’t hurt at all. It’s just an excuse so he can get good and sauced. Those customs agents also confiscated some other things from Patrick, by the way. Porno magazines. He claims they were for emergency funds. They looked like pretty suspect emergency funds to me. Maybe emergency funds means something different to a limey. Hey, it’s snowing. We don’t see much snow in South Australia. They must see a lot of it in Nova Scotia because Dana’s more interested in doing her nails. But maybe she’s just upset about what they took away from her back at the border.

  from Kelly’s diary

  Nov. 15

  We’re in Iran. Definitely can’t wait to leave. C & I have a vague idea of what it’s like to be raped, thanks to our visit to the Iranian border. F. was sent back to Erzurum because of some visa snafu that Pete missed. C. would like to tie Pete up & shove barbed wire down his throat. Him & a certain border agent. So would I. But there’s no barbed wire in sight, just the Miami Hotel across the street, its red neon flashing a gap-toothed vampire smile my way. We’re in Gorgan, waiting for some “kin.” Pete’s grabbing a catnap on the back seat. D & Pat. had a few things taken away from them at the border. We’ve taken to stealing diesel from truck stops in retaliation. R’s taken to throwing hard-packed snowballs at S. Everyone seems to be slowly talking leave of their senses. But now they’re sleeping, knocked out by Valium that C., in a generous and/ or drunken moment, passed out to everyone around 4 this morning. I declined. You never know what moment might be the last & I wouldn’t want to miss it.