Raiders of the Sarhad: Being an Account of the Campaign of Arms and Bluff Against the Brigands of the Persian-Baluchi Border during the Great WarDyer, R. E. H. (Reginald Edward Harry)
History
Raiders of the Sarhad: Being an Account of the Campaign of Arms and Bluff Against the Brigands of the Persian-Baluchi Border during the Great War
Dyer, R. E. H. (Reginald Edward Harry)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Middle East
By dint of ceaseless pulling and pushing, and digging the car out
again and again, we managed to reach the _rendezvous_ with Landon
before nightfall. He marched in a few minutes after we arrived,
and was as frankly pleased as astonished to see us. He had just
come through another section of those hills himself. He had not,
therefore, expected the car would get through, and was wondering how
on earth I should ever rejoin him and the army. So we all camped out
in the open, grateful for the coolness of the evening, for the heat
of the day had been terrific.
Before sunrise on the following morning Landon marched out, and, as
soon as we had lost sight of him, Idu, Allan, and myself set off in
the car.
I do not propose to give a detailed account of the remainder of our
journey. One day was very like another, and the bad surface only
differed in quality and degree. The heat was very great by day, and
the glare over the sandy wastes and hills almost blinding. Here and
there, especially in the Galugan valley, we came across groups of
human beings, mostly of a low type of humanity, who bolted in terror
at sight of the car.
One evening we halted at a settlement of Rekis, Idu's own tribe, and
received a very warm welcome, for one of Idu's wives was amongst
his people. The rascal always maintained that he had no interest in
women, but, nevertheless, seemed to me to be a very good understudy
to the proverbial sailor, for he appeared to have a wife in every
village and encampment.
This particular Mrs Idu was delighted at the unexpected reunion with
her husband, and did the honours of the camp right royally. Following
accepted custom, I, first of all, bought a few sheep from the
Jugi-dwellers, and then presented these to them so that they could
prepare a feast. Mrs Idu, a very unprepossessing-looking, but highly
amiable lady, acted as hostess, and we all squatted round the camp
fires while the meat was roasting.
Allan's face was a picture as he watched the tribesmen cook and eat
their meat. They hacked chunks of flesh from the dead carcasses of
the sheep with the knives they always carried, spitted them on the
cleaning rods of their rifles, and roasted them over the fire. These
they ate voraciously, as though very hungry, and, as a matter of
fact, food in that district is both scarce and monotonous. In any
case they devoured the meat whilst it was still nearly raw. Even Idu
ate his meat half-cooked, maintaining that it was far more tender in
such a state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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