The Road to Oxiana

Isfahan, I3 February - There is a lot of missionary effort here, of the muscular, wicked-to-smoke-or-drink type. Men in spectacles, tweed coats, and flannel trousers go striding down the Char Bagh accompanied by small boys and bearing the unmistakable imprint of the British schoolmaster; their behinds stick out as if their spines were too righteous to bend. Behind it all lurks an Anglican bishop, who has lately become an apostle of the Oxford Group Movement. Buchmanism in Isfahan! This is a cruel revenge for the Bahais in Chicago.

Quoted on March 26, 2025

The lights came out. A little breeze stirred, and for the first time in four months I felt a wind that had no chill in it. I smelt the spring, and the rising sap. One of those rare moments of absolute peace, when the body is loose, the mind asks no questions, and the world is a triumph, was mine. So much it meant to have escaped from Teheran.

Quoted on March 26, 2025

The carvings on the cliff at Naksh-i-Rustam range over twenty centuries, from Elamite to Achemenian to Sasanian. Below them stand two fire-altars of uncertain date and an Achemenian tomb-house. Only the last is beautiful. The rest are negative art or repel-lent. But while the mountains last, the rock-maniacs who commanded these things must be remembered - and they knew it. They were indifferent to the gratitude of posterity. No perishable aestheticism or legal benevolence for them! All they ask is attention, and they get it, like a child or Hitler, by brute insistence.

Quoted on March 28, 2025

Venice, 20 August 1933 Here as a joy-hog: a pleasant change after that pension on the Giudecca two years ago. We went to the Lido this morning, and the Doge's Palace looked more beautiful from a speed-boat than it ever did from a gondola. The bathing, on a calm day, must be the worst in Europe: water like hot saliva, cigar-ends floating into one's mouth, and shoals of jellyfish.

Lifar came to dinner. Bertie mentioned that all whales have syphilis.

Quoted on March 25, 2025

I remarked to Christopher on the indignity of the people's clothes:
'Why does the Shah make them wear those hats?'
'Sh. You mustn't mention the Shah out loud. Call him Mr Smith.'
'I always call Mussolini Mr Smith in Italy?
'Well, Mr Brown?
'No, that's Stalin's name in Russia?
'Mr Jones then.'
'Jones is no good either. Hitler has to have it now that Primo de Rivera is dead. And anyhow I get confused with these ordinary names. We had better call him Marjoribanks, if we want to remember whom we mean.'
'All right. And you had better write it too, in case they confiscate your diary?
I shall in future.

Quoted on March 25, 2025

Nishapur (4000 ff), I4 November One can become a connoisseur of anything. Never in all Persia was there such a lorry as I caught at Damghan: a brand new Reo Speed Waggon, on its maiden voyage, capable of thirty-five miles an hour on the flat, with double wheels, ever-cool radiator, and lights in the driver's cabin.

Quoted on March 25, 2025

[Finally in Afghanistan] Hawk-eyed and eagle-beaked, the swarthy loose-knit men swing through the dark bazaar with a devil-may-care self-confidence. They carry rifles to go shopping as Londoners carry umbrellas. Such ferocity is partly histrionic. The rifles may not go off. The physique is not so impressive in the close-fitting uniform of the soldiers. Even the glare of the eyes is often due to make-up. But it is a tradition; in a country where the law runs uncertainly, the mere appearance of force is half the battle of ordinary business. It may be an inconvenient tradition, from the point of view of government. But at least it has preserved the people's poise and their belief in themselves. They expect the European to conform to their standards, instead of themselves to his, a fact which came home to me this morning when I tried to buy some arak; there is not a drop of alcohol to be had in the whole town. Here at last is Asia without an inferiority complex.

Quoted on March 25, 2025