THE OPIUM CRAWL
By MICHAEL LANGLEY THAT melancholic pastime of "pub' crawling," indulged as a rule by hilarious persons who creep from one haven to another just as fast as a very fast car can go, is practised in rather different form by ;the Per- sians. In Iran they have their "opium crawl," morally perhaps a sadder business than a few hours of seasonable merriment, physically and mentally no less disturbing ; for the opium pipe spreads a halo of illusion over the mind, building with kaleidoscopic ingenuity where an overdose of alcohol serves to destroy the delicate structure of restraint. • I had been walking for, a while through the alleys of one of those Persian bazaars which are arched in somewhat gothic style and 'pierced in the roof by octagonal holes. Sunlight poured in and the cloistered gloom was broken into a colonnade of white shafts. These rays lit up the shops of carpet dealers, gimcrack merchants and men who sit all day with hand-saws, cutting Out the teeth of wooden Combs. Then the shops came to an end. There were a lot of sacks about and, through a porchwaY, some donkeys laden with coloured wools. It was the sort of corner which should smell of the spices of the East. But that pervasive odour drifting, through the door of a little teashop—its tiny window blocked with a great brass samovar—was the sedative and slightly sickly balm of opium.
Inside this tchai khana I asked for a glass of tea. The proprietor poured it from a pot which stood on the top of the samovar. He took a handful of sugar and let the lumps tumble through his fingers until the tea overflowed into the saucer. I sipped this coddled drink, reflecting. . . . Opium is a perfectly legal habit in Iran. It is rationed out to the army, as to some Indian regiments like the Sikhs. In roadside and frontier posts it is smoked by the police and gendarmerie. It provides the Iran Government. with a considerable revenue and its export to China, although decreasing, is a source of income to POPPY farmers in about two-thirds of Iran's twenty-six provinces. The only restriction is an official seal, in some districts attached to pipes for purposes of taxation and to prevent addicts who open the bowl from taking out the opium to chew . .
Sitting on a rickety old stool I watched an olive-skinned Iranian of aquiline features puffing at his pipe with dreamy solicitude. He sat cross-legged on a wooden bench, wide enough for a man to Sprawl in sleep, or for two or three to form a little party round a charcoal brazier,. essential to the Persian style of smoking. The fumes spread across the room, so strong that one knew it must be true, as is said in Iran, that cats and dogs living in this drugged atmosphere themselves become victims. The pipe was about ten inches long. Its straight stem was made to pull apart, a small circular mouthpiece on the narrower half. The bowl was short, cylindrical and hollow, its only aperture a tiny one in the round porcelain wall. Hard-wood stem and delicately patterned bowl were bound together with a ring of polished copper. There Was a well- worn look about this pipe and the silver pin, which hung by a tiny chain from the black stern; was bent; The bowl, a fragile pink, had broken into a network of superficial cracks.
The smoker took the pin, cleared the hole of its sticky black residue, then cut a fresh piece of opium from a brown stick which exactly resembled a length of modelling plasticine. He pressed the opium into his pipe and warmed it over the glowing charcoals. . . Pierced a hole in the plastic substance, then blew. . . . Took up a tiny pair of tongs, picked a lump of glowing charcoal from the ornamental brazier and held it close to the pipe bowl. As he blew down the , stem and out through the tiny jet the brown opium began to boil ; • a black viscous fluid formed, its smoke pouring up the nozzle of the pipe into the man's mouth and lungs. , • Good • opium has a high morphine content, as much as 12, • per cent., and its first noticeable effect upon . the addict -is to make him hungry for more. Remoulding this treacly drug with the little pin the smoker repeatedly applied hot charcoal. The opium bubbled , up and the fumes, inhaled as easily as tobacco smoke, passed into the lungs and out through the nose. I watched him cut another piece, smoke another pipe and then throw back his head, the nerve controls of the brain relaxed. His lips flickered into a smile before the defiant attack of fantasy which raced in his mind. He sprang to his feet, stimulated to fresh effort in a fallow world where now grew vineyards, lush melons, cucumbers and the white and purple poppy flowers. He strode out into the bazaar with a light step, leaving his com- panions to go on smoking with that half-paralysed look upon their faces. I, too, left them to a dream-life among unwhitewashed walls and tumble-down tables, presided over by the hollow-eyed proprietor and his elephantine samovar.
I went away to catch a 'bus, the bi-weekly rattle-trap which climbs from the plain around Kermanshah to Senneh, high in the hills of Kurdistan. The seat beside the driver is best in these Vehicles and I had reserved it. I climbed in and waited. At last the driver came, cursed a little over his ineffectual struggle with the self-starter then burst into a smile of recognition which might well have vanished had he understood me when I asked him if he was really going to drive. "Could you find a better ? " the broad grin seemed to say. As if to confirm this look he slipped the engine into gear and bumped out of the garage yard to turn into an equally bumpy road. And so we raced away just as fast as a fairly fast 'bus could go ; stopping only to satisfy the curiosity of an occasional gendarme brooding by the wayside beneath a uniform of cornflower blue ; lurching round corners until one felt the mind of the driver .was miles away in that smoky tchai khana instead of being on the road some twenty yards ahead ; speeding perilously close to a precipitous drop to avoid the jagged edge of an overhanging rock.
" Do You always drive like this ? " I asked.
" When I am feeling well," I understood him to say. "But if I am tired and hungry and want a smoke I sometimes think I see a road where there is water or only space." • ; He rounded a hairpin bend, manipulating the gears with skill as a sharp gradient reared itself before us. Proceeding at a comparative crawl one had a chance to observe the countryside. I noticed a collection of dilapidated houses, their roofs fallen in, the whole village utterly deserted. Later I learned that it had • been a Russian refugee settlement where, some ten years ago, almost the whole population had died of famine. At the time I did not know. "Is that what comes of smoking opium ? " I asked.
The • driver failed to hear, or to understand. His one object was speed. A dizzy descent lay ahead and at the bottom a stream with several mud-faced houses bait hidden in a plantation of willow trees and poplars. , We drew up at one of them, for it was getting dark. • A little ,group of locals had collected on the roof and there, I gathered, we were to spend the night. The driver unlashed my camp bed and carried it up. Then he settled down to prepare a last pipe while I spread the blankets, stretching myself, that warm night, beneath the stars. And as I lay, trying to sleep, I noticed the driver, a policeman, one or two shepherds and the keeper of the house all nodding until they fell into ,a stupor and the silence was unbroken even by the crazy inner voices of their frenzied imaginings.
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