for another day. I jumped in the back of the partially filled van, and as it pulled away, the gravity of what had just happened hit me. I felt desperately lonely and wanted to talk to someone very badly. But of course not being a Turkish speaker, I remained in silence and just thought things over again and again and again.
As we approached the city, I said to the guy sitting next to me, “Hotel? Malatya?” He hadn’t a clue what I wanted, but a mid-twenties girl a couple of seats in front of me turned around and asked clearly if I spoke English. This was more like it. I explained that I was looking for a cheap hotel in the center of town. If there weren’t any cheap ones then to hell with my tight budget, I was going to spend whatever it cost tonight to get a good bed in a place I could get my head together.
She explained that she and her friend would walk me to a hotel. I thanked her many times and began to relax. As we pulled into a thriving bus station, her friend reached over to the driver and paid the fare for all three of us. I didn’t argue. We got out of the van and now in the light I saw them properly for the first time.
I was taken aback by the English speaker’s friend, whose eyes were almost identical to my ex-girlfriend’s. The similarity was uncanny and I’m sure it was the crazy incident in the field minutes earlier, but I desperately wanted to hold her. Of course I did nothing of the sort. I followed the girls like a lost puppy through the streets and began to think of them as my guardian angels.
The English-speaking girl explained that they were taking me to a hotel that was both cheap and beautiful—it was also full. On we walked through crowded city streets to a second establishment called the Hotel Aygun. She explained that she was leaving now but her friend would do the negotiations for me inside. Farewells and thank- yous were exchanged, and I headed inside with her friend. How well her negotiation skills worked I don’t know, but she got me a room and it seemed a reasonable enough price at the time, although I can’t remember the cost. In the few words of English she spoke, she said, “Goodbye” and “Nice to meet you.” I really didn’t want her to go as I desperately wanted company but, since she didn’t speak any English, it wasn’t like I could ask her to come for a drink or anything, and what’s more, all I really wanted was a hug. I said, “Goodbye.”
CHAPTER TWO
I made good initial progress after leaving Malatya, and had hoped to reach Iran by nightfall but had made the mistake of accepting a less-than-slow lift when hitching out of the Turkish town of Elazig. Here, I was picked up by a kindly old truck driver called Ilhan, whose vehicle was in a terrible state of repair and looked as old as he did. I stuck with him though, as Ilhan was traveling some 220 odd miles along my route to the small town of Horasan, which was only 130 miles from the Iranian border. We spent most of the day on the road but covered a fraction of the distance we should have, since the vehicle was overheating terribly with smoke billowing from the engine as we drove. The farther we traveled, the more fatigued the truck became. It was slow enough on flat straight roads, but when it got to hills, it really began to struggle and ascended these at next to walking pace. This took forever as there were numerous long twisting mountainous roads along our route and every time we approached one of these, we had to jump out and dowse the engine with water from a number of old plastic bottles in the cab.
Whenever we passed a stream or roadside water fountain, it was my job to sink the bottles in the cool water, filling them up for use later on. This procedure, as well as our speed, ate away at our time, and it soon became apparent that I wasn’t going to get to Iran anytime tonight. Realistically, I would probably get there by midday tomorrow. I resigned myself to this and wasn’t really bothered; it didn’t matter to me whether it was today, tomorrow, or even next week that I arrived there, so long as I did arrive.
The farther east we went, the better the landscape became, and we drove through some of the finest scenery I’d seen so far on my journey. Parts of it reminded me of the rugged Scottish Highlands, although there was a slightly different tinge to the color of the hills. Numerous nomadic people lived out here in this vast rolling landscape, as indicated by their tents visible from the road. Although I was hugely excited about being so close to my final destination of Iran, I was so impressed with the scenery in eastern Turkey that I flirted with the idea of stopping off for a few days and trying to befriend some nomads.
We drove late into the night before pulling up next to a deserted gas station in the Turkish town of Erzurum. Ilhan took the bed at the back of the cab, whilst I tried to nestle down in front. This was none too easy since there was a huge gap between the seats with the gear stick protruding in the middle. To make matters worse, as soon as Ilhan’s head hit the pillow, he began to snore. Not your normal snoring, mind you, but strong enough to give the local seismologists a scare.
My industrial-strength wax earplugs wouldn’t touch it, and being a very light sleeper, I knew I was in for a ghastly tormented night. I rolled about uncomfortably trying to sleep, but it was no good, and I decided to cut my losses and head outside with my sleeping bag. Even with the doors shut and several feet away from the truck, the snores resonated at a ridiculous level.
Outside was a complete mess, strewn with piles of broken glass and trash, and illuminated by a big red light near the deserted garage, and a bright white light out on the road. Next to the garage was a small slope leading down to a patch of waste ground, which backed onto several houses. From these the vicious barking of dogs emanated.
Looking down the slope, I surveyed the waste ground, which appeared slightly flatter and less carpeted with glass than the area immediately outside the truck. I decided it was home. Lying on my side to minimize the effect of the streetlight, I got as good a rest as could be expected under the circumstances—bugger all. After a while, though, I went into that state where you’re neither fully awake nor fully asleep, although you are getting some limited benefit. This semi-peaceful state shattered like a falling mirror in an instant. I awoke to the sound of dogs barking wildly and opened my eyes to a waking nightmare. To my horror, I saw through sleep-blurred eyes four bloodthirsty-looking dogs running out of the darkness at me, less than forty feet away. In a nanosecond, my adrenaline hit fever pitch and I scrambled madly to my feet, only to fall straight back down again since my legs were still in my sleeping bag. The dogs closed the gap, their barking now chillingly close.
I got up again and ripped off the sleeping bag in a panicked flurry, throwing it behind me as I ran like a man possessed toward the slope and the safety of the truck. I powered up the hill, stumbling on the rocky surface and smashing my shin against a boulder in the process. Finally, I reached the top. I spun around, panting like my pursuers, and looked down at them whilst my heart thundered away in my chest. They were going crazy at the bottom of the slope, growling and barking away, but although they could have scaled it, they seemed to have reached an invisible boundary that they wouldn’t venture past. The waste ground was clearly their domain and not to be invaded. I backed off farther, not wanting to test this theory out, and not long afterward they did the same, disappearing into the darkness from which they had come.
My sleeping bag was still down there, but the thought of going to retrieve it didn’t exactly appeal right now. It took a while before I plucked up the courage, and when I did so, I was on hyper alert and at running speed in and out. The prospect of the truck’s cab and Ilhan’s snoring seemed strangely appealing now. I climbed back inside the warmth of the cab and resigned myself to a disrupted night. The snoring was still deafening but it was far preferable to a mad dog attack. It was one of the worst night’s “sleep” I’ve ever had.
In the morning, Ilhan arose with a contented smile looking well-rested and ready to face the day ahead. We arrived at Horasan, which was a small rural place, by midmorning and bade each other farewell, since Ilhan was heading north. I stood out like a sore thumb here and received many strange looks from the locals who clearly weren’t used to seeing European hitchhikers this far east. Some young lads, one of whom spoke a few words of English, came over to where I was standing and tried to persuade me to catch a bus to Iran instead. I hadn’t hitched this far through mad dog and psychopath attack to cheat on the last section and pay for a ride, so I shook my head with a smile.
Opposite where I waited was a load of livestock being transferred from one truck to another. It wasn’t a nice sight: in the process one poor cow stumbled and fell to the ground, where it was beaten repeatedly with a stick. It just made it harder for the animal to get back up again and was sickening to watch; the blows came in thick and fast, and echoed off its body.
Half an hour later, I got a lift in a very modern and fast truck. It drove along at speeds Ilhan’s poor vehicle could only have dreamt about, which felt worrying given the huge size of the truck and the small width of the roads.
