Adventures in a world without trust

A traveller in 1840s Afghanistan

In 1844 a French officer set out to make his way across Persia and Afghanistan all the way from Baghdad for Lahore, where he hoped to join a Sikh army that was preparing a war with the British.

General Joseph Ferrier kept a detailed account of his adventures as he struggled through some of the most dangerous places on earth. It was translated in English by a British soldier who had also fought in Afghanistan and published in London before it was published in French. It has now been republished on Kindle and I find it fascinating.

The territories that he crosses have been ravaged by every conqueror since Alexander the Great. Persians, Mongols, Turkmen, Afghanis, and Arabs have all swept over it.

In the year of the Hegira 304 (A.D. 916), in the Caliphat of Mocktader, in digging for the foundation of a tower at Kandahar, a subterranean cave was discovered, in which were a thousand Arab heads, all attached to the same chain, which had evidently remained in good preservation since the year Heg. 70 (A.D. 689), for a paper with this date upon it was found attached by a silken thread to the ears of the twenty-nine most important skulls, with their proper names.” This would indicate that the Arabs at first met with no great success in their enterprise against this town:

Between the deserts there are ruined cities whose name no one is sure of; to be poor is to starve; if you are not starving, you live in constant danger of robbery:

Amongst the nomadic Eïmaks I have seen many old men who have never tasted meat, though their whole lives have been devoted to the rearing of flocks; they have never been able to afford to buy any: a coarse loaf, fruit, and a few grains of maize, are their only subsistence … The nomads know not the value of money, and it is sometimes impossible to purchase anything with it. Whatever articles they let you have they insist upon being paid for with something that they can wear, such as sashes, turbans, trowsers, or a piece of cotton cloth, called kerbas, for a shirt; or tea, coffee, sugar, or tobacco

Ferrier spoke Persian well enough to pass for a native although the village dogs could smell him out in Afghanistan. When he was seen as a European, he was always taken as an Englishman, and regarded with all the suspicion due to such a character. He hates, fears, and sometimes despises many of the tribes he moves among, and they give him plenty of reason for this. Since he is French, some of his sufferings were gastronomical, as when he was offered tea in Turkestan:

The wretched grocer had made it of equal parts of tea and rancid butter, which stood in the place of sugar. Taking courage, I held my breath, and proceeded with my disgusting dose as best I could. But this was not all; a ball of tea- leaves soaked and mixed with the same grease, was also placed before me, and this I was obliged to swallow with a gulp by way of a concluding relish.

Often he was treated very much worse. He is robbed, imprisoned, and threatened with death. His journey through Afghanistan was made tortuous by the need to avoid petty wars which close the passes he had planned to use.

It all has a rather Jack Vance flavour: the savage brigands wandering through endless ruins in societies which, it seems, will never change. But this is Vance with real blood and horror:

Vezir sentenced him to be blown from the mouth of a gun. It was a scene that I shall never forget—a horrid spectacle, and touched me to the very heart. The broken limbs of the unfortunate man were scattered in all directions, while his bowels, which had not been thrown to so great a distance, were in an instant devoured by the dogs that were loitering about the spot.

What I find fascinating is his picture of a world entirely without trust – one in which there really is no such thing as society, only individual men, not even their families. There is a wonderful passage in which he talks to Kohendil Khan, the ruler of Kandahar, when – after some weeks’ thought – the ruler has decided not to have him killed, and released him from the squalid little prison where he has been kept, half-starved, and robbed of all his belongings.

This conversation takes place three years after the British had been driven out of Afghanistan for the first time, but everyone knows they are coming back, and Kohendil Khan wants to know the secrets of European power:

I could not make easy to him the political economy of the nations of the West, nor enable him clearly to understand by what means the population had been brought under obedience to the laws without coercion by physical force. “I have confiscated, bastinadoed, tortured, and cut heads off,” said the wise and merciful Kohendil Khan, “but I have never yet been able to bring my savage Afghans to obey my decrees: and there is not a Sirdar in my principality, not excepting even my brothers, my sons, or my nephews, who would not seize with joy a chance of wrenching the sovereign power from my grasp, if they thought it at all probable they should succeed in the attempt. Here might is right; why is it otherwise in Europe?” “It is,” I answered, “because with us the governments act for the benefit of the people, without regard to their personal interest. All the acts of a government are subordinate to the law, while yours are regulated only by your good pleasure.” “But,” he replied, “what is the use of power if it is not to enable one to get rich? What is a government without absolute power? What is a king who cannot, when he pleases, bastinado one of his subjects and cut off his head? It is turning the world upside down, the most terrible thing that can be seen; it must be permanent anarchy.”

There will be more of this tomorrow. I feel that there is a lot of political science concealed in this book; and a certain amount of psychology, too. What would it be like to be brought up by such a father as Kohendil Khan?