Turkey was full of history, but we were unaware of it. Even the mesmeric names of its cities and towns meant little to us. We had been on the road perhaps for two weeks since we left New Delhi, with no beds to sleep on, nowhere to have a shower.
As we travelled west, the terror of Mount Arrarat and the bleak unfriendliness of Eruzurum was a distant memory, although we were not much closer to Ankara. In Turkey distances are formidable. We ferried ourselves and our bags from town to town, selling a few Gillette blades I had to some curious youths for cash. I cannot recall how many days or how many hops it took for us to reach Ankara, nor where we took our nightly shelter. We used the same successful routine of turning up at the local constabulary and showing our placard identifying ourselves as journalists representing India.... the local cop would take us to the bus station and put us on a bus bound for the next big town and we repeated the routine. I think we often got thrown out of the bus once we were out of town. We had no money other than Subhash’s little remaining cache of dollars. This was the paradox of the state of our identity: strangers and our hosts assumed that we were senior Indian journalists doing a well funded journey by road to prove it could be done. In retrospect the image of two emaciated and tired Indian young men dragging heavy suitcases does not sit easily with the way we were perceived by our benefactors. Through piecemeal journeys, using the same formulae, the final part of our free journey into Ankara left us outside the city boundaries at a military camp where the driver was delivering a payload of chickens and what looked like geese and turkey and guinea fowls in crates. We had by now worked out that it was safer to sit cramped in a driver’s cab than being pecked or stampeded by farm animals.
It seemed like a massive army encampment with the traditional sentry box and a couple of soldiers lounging around smoking cigarettes. We had high hopes of food, shelter, a loan of money and good conversation in Ankara; Irashad Panjatan, whose own overland hitch hiking trip we were emulating, had a UN economist brother living in Ankara. We had been assured by Irshad that his brother would be only too pleased to have us as his guests for as long as we wanted. Since I cannot recall his name I shall call him Arshad and his wife Seema. Our calamitous experience in Teheran with Subhash’s diplomat friend made us apprehensive.
It was seven in the morning. The soldier on duty at the sentry box finally let us make the crucial phone call to our prospective host. Once again I pushed Subhash to the front. I knew his excellent honorific Urdu idioms would do the trick. A miracle was about to unfold. Our host Arshad Saab assumed that we were two friends of Irshad staying in a hotel somewhere in Ankara. Grandly, he invited us to join him for breakfast. He had several of his friends who happened to be some of the intellectual elite of Ankara joining him and would be delighted to meet us. How would he take it when we turned up on his door step, worse for wear, in mud caked shoes and clothes, evidently unwashed, with two battered suitcases in tow? Would he turn us away, outraged and shocked at having been misled, or offer his traditional hospitality without batting an eyelid? We persuaded an off duty soldier about to drive home to drop us off at Arshad’s apartment in one of the wealthy suburbs of Ankara.
Arshad opened the door: we could see five or so handsomely but casually dressed friends seated around a grand round table. They all showed remarkable composure at our bedraggled appearance. “Ajayi Ye” (Welcome. Come on in Sirs) Subhash Sab, Kini Saab,” Arshad said kindly, assessing the situation quickly. He then introduced us to his wife, an economist herself, an ex student of Sapru House in Delhi and the London School of Economics, young, dressed boyishly, casually in jeans and a short sleeved shirt. Arshad called his maid servant... “You must be tired after a long journey. We will wait for you to freshen up” He turned to his maid. ”Run a bath and a shower for them” he gestured. Legendary Hyderabadi hospitality was on display. We were given fresh kurta pyjamas (a size too big for my 8 stone frame) and Arshad, his wife and their guests waited, beaming bonhomie for us to be ready and join them. We wolfed down a king’s breakfast and slowly unravelled our story. There were squeals of laughter and disbelief from the guests when they heard parts of our story. They liked in particular our story about travelling in a lorry full of un-tethered horses and made us repeat it. Subhash and I had tears of gratitude pressing behind our eyes, which would have been appropriate but we were too polite to shed them. Conversation turned to arts and literature, social issues, the freedom of the press, and carried on for several hours.
We were stone broke and debated if we could bring ourselves to ask Arshad and Seema for a loan. There was no way we could do that to some one who had done so much for us already. We had another ace in our pack. I had a letter of introduction from a very senior journalist in my New Delhi newspaper to a Col. X. in Ankara. We casually mentioned to an alarmed Arshad that we intended to call of this Colonel “for a chat and to pass on the greetings and good wishes” of our friend in Delhi. Arshad looked grave and scratched his chin. “Are you aware”, he said in a low conspiratorial voice “that Col. X. is under house arrest?” He got up and pulled out a copy of John Gunther’s book Inside Asia, turned the pages and found the reference he was looking for. Col. X. it seemed from Gunther’s description was a key player in the coup which brought down Adnan Menderes’s Government and saw him hanged. He had now fallen out with his other military colleagues. We would be running the gauntlet of Turkish military intelligence if we attempted to call on the Colonel. It was not a risk worth taking, Arshad seemed to say. This was a classical Hobson’s Choice. We desperately needed new funds. What were we going to do?
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Previous related Blogs of B2B-K-K (Kini-Krishnan)
G.V.Krishnan, my gifted friend and his blogsite
A blog-to-blog chat with my friend Kini
Blogging It Out With My Friend Kini
B2B: Our Fleet St. Days'
Remembering Mr. Chandra in Fleet Street
Blog Magic: How Irfan Reconnected With Kini
B2B: Recover soon, Kini
The Sixties: A New Renaissance
B2B with K : My indebtedness, to Satish, Subash
B2B with K : Of crossover book and a cross-country trip
B2B with K: Kabul in the hippy, happier days
The Journey Begins
B2B with K: My take on the names you dropped...
B2B with K: Leaving London, home-bound
Name Dropping On Friends
B2B with K: Clueless in Germany, a tale of two visits
B2B: Kini hits a speed-breaker
Facing No man’s Land: End of the Journey?
End of an Era for India or A tryst with destiny?
B2B with K: Where we were the day Nehru died
The Wrath of Mount Ararat
Manna From Heaven
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