Hourly the earth grew poorer. The forests disappeared until the only shade came from occasional clumps of plantains or a poplar grove beside a small riverlet. Sometimes the road ran beside a railway track; at other times it would pass through a collection of dusty houses built around a miserable square, with the inevitable mosque, an occasional fountain and sometimes a police post. We passed poor farmers with heavily laden donkeys (or more frequently wives), two or three British army lorries, a car flying the flags of France, Italy and Britain, from which white, hard faces stared. I hoped we might be stopped by Allied police, but the deeper into Anatolia we went, the fewer Europeans we saw. At first the police posts had both Italian and Turkish officers; later only Turks could be seen. Once a detachment of Turkish cavalry went by, flying the standard of the Sultan. My companion scowled at this. ‘They believe they are patriots. In fact they support Turkey’s most vicious enemy.’ I wondered if this bimbashi had taken part in recent attempts to assassinate the ruling Sultan who, in my view, was more realistic than most of his predecessors. Now and then Hakir was saluted by a policeman who seemed to recognise him and I realised I must maintain caution everywhere. Superficially there was no telling who was a Kemalist and who was not.
We stopped only once, at a farmhouse, to buy some bread and olives and to relieve ourselves. By afternoon we were climbing again into cool hills while the road became steadily worse and more than once we had to stop or swerved to avoid a hole. The bimbashi would sometimes admonish the chauffeur, sometimes apologise to me. He sat upright throughout the journey, occasionally lighting a cigarette, or reaching out to hold the silk cord near the window. Twice he pronounced the name of a town which I did not recognise. He pointed out the ruins of a Classical temple, a Crusader tower, the more modern remnants of a recently demolished village. Towards evening we descended into a narrow rocky valley containing a river and some stunted oaks. The car was forced to halt at a narrow track. Through clouds of gnats, the bimbashi led me down beside a stream, then across a shuddering, creaking bridge to a wooden house resembling a rundown Russian dacha. Originally it had been white, but most of the paint had peeled. The boards of the veranda were as unstable as the bridge and I thought the whole thing must fall as we went inside. The dusty rooms were sparsely furnished; they had not been lived in for years. As we progressed we heard murmuring voices towards the back, then we came into a low covered courtyard surrounding a brick well. Beyond it were quarters occupied by several horses and close to the well itself sat or squatted three of the bimbashi’s henchmen. They were not unfamiliar to me. With slight variations of features and dress they might have been Hrihorieff’s bandits, the sort now calling themselves Cossacks. They had the same wolfish, aggressively challenging, appearance. They did not bother to stand as the bimbashi and I came into the courtyard, though they showed respect for a man who now crossed from the stables, grinning at Hakir, lifting an eyebrow at me as if we were old friends. From the way he held himself, this leader had obviously been a soldier; now he was almost as ragged as the others, who had never been anything more than third-rate brigands, self-styled ‘irregulars’: bazhi-bazouks. They wore sheepskin caps, bandoliers criss-crossed their bodies, cartridge pouches bulged at chest and hip. and their belts were crowded with knives, swords, pistols, most of which were rusty. Crouching like apes beside the well they tried to light a fire under a cooking pot. The leader grunted something, offering to share the congealed contents of the pot with us, but we shook our heads. Eventually we accepted some pieces of bread torn off a grey, communal loaf. Outside, the stream rushed over rocks with such a din, I thought it must flood and wash the house away, but this amplified sound was merely a feature of the courtyard. As soon as Major Hakir and the chief bazhi-bazouk led me into another room, there was relative silence. Hakir and the bandit talked for a while in their own language. I could only understand a few words, mainly to do with military matters. At last Hakir turned to me. ‘We shall rest for an hour or two, then press on, although there’s very little daylight left. Can you ride a horse, M’sieu Pyatnitski?’
Reluctantly, I told him I could, though my experience was limited. The car, said Hakir, must return to Scutari. It was too conspicuous now. Besides, it was not really capable of crossing this sort of terrain. An intense depression slowly crept through me as I realised I was severing yet another important connection with the civilised world. Now, as I had been in Ukraine, I was reduced to a pony. I consoled myself with remembered reports of Greek gains in Anatolia. There was a good chance Kemal and his bandits would be overrun in another day or so. I might soon be rescued. My main consideration therefore must be to avoid becoming mixed up in the shooting and accidentally killed. I forced myself to forget my worries and attain that sort of trance, almost a coma, which had served me well in the past. I was virtually able to anaesthetise my brain, becoming hardly conscious of what I said or did. Meanwhile I retained at all times the will and capacity to escape as soon as an opportunity arose. Soon I was like an automaton, mounting with the others, riding slowly up the valley floor, through a narrow defile and out again into that awful, barren landscape.
Under a desert moon, astride an ill-fed, badly smelling pony, I trotted across terrain so ugly, so unkempt and worthless, I could not believe anyone would wish to fight for it, let alone die for it. Perhaps, I thought, they were so deluded they could see lush fields where there was only lifeless dust.
In answer to my casual questions Bimbashi Hakir told me we were ‘some distance from Karagamous’, which was absolutely meaningless to me. In any case, my attention was soon divided for I recognised the bite of my first louse. I began to re-experience all the familiar miseries of bandit life. It remained ironic, I thought, that once again I had aimed for an enlightened future and landed in the ignorant past. In my document case my plans for a marvellous new flying machine could change the nature of twentieth-century life. Yet, here I was riding with men whose habits and attitudes had not progressed in a thousand years, who, in every detail save for more sophisticated weapons, resembled their savage ancestors. Plainly, Kemal had fallen into the same trap as Lenin, summoning up atavistic forces, peasants and bandits, to turn the battle in his favour. Consequently exaggerated power now belonged to the people most likely to resist change. I was reconciled a little by the observation that Bimbashi Hakir fared little better on horseback than I. He was horribly uncomfortable, attempting to keep up-wind of his ‘irregulars’, avoiding as much as possible direct contact with their unbelievably filthy bodies. They in turn were plainly amused by our discomfort, stroking their greasy moustaches, staring at us from beneath thick, black brows, mumbling and grinning. Once we stopped amongst gnarled dwarf pines and watched a big locomotive shriek through the night, lights blazing, only about a hundred yards below. I noticed they did not look directly at the train but slightly away from it, as if they felt it would only attack if they made eye contact.
By the small hours of the morning, when we rested the horses, I was reduced to hoping the promise of rebel gold meant more to these cutthroats than their curiosity about what I carried in my bag. We travelled a few more miles until dawn, when we came upon a small, mephitic village. Here we breakfasted off bread and kid’s meat, under the eyes of residents scarcely distinguishable from their dung-coloured houses and their straw-coloured streets. All, including dogs and goats, seemed designed to blend with the surrounding countryside. I was able to sleep in relative peace as the Osmanlis attended to their prayers, but we were soon on our way again. Now yellow grass and sticky mud clung to our ponies’ feet, sometimes making it almost impossible for them to walk. It drizzled for a while, then grew humid under a grey sky. Once or twice we passed an ancient ruin, weather-worn, its origins lost. The plain seemed infinite. We came upon lone herdsmen with flocks of black and white sheep. Big tawny dogs ran at us, barking and baring fangs, until they were called off. For a few hours that night we camped in the open, with nothing to eat but figs and olives. Then we were on our way again. Without a map or compass I could not understand how anyone could not get lost in this wilderness. Every so often we crossed the railway track, but the bandits were not using it to find direction. Rather, it seemed an inconvenience to them. The sight of the railway, however, always cheered me. It meant there was a link with civilisation after all, though the rebels evidently preferred to travel more discreetly. On the third day, as we watered our horses beside a small lake, a De Havilland with grubby markings, either French or American, flew low overhead, plainly interested in us. The bimbashi was barely able to stop his bandit companions from dragging out their rifles and firing at it. This, more than anything, reminded me we were in a country still at war.