The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia

by Peter Hopkirk

  During the two months since they had parted company at Nushki, much had happened to his brother officer. Without a map to guide him (none then existed), the 20-year-old subaltern had set off on a 900-mile journey across Baluchistan and Persia. He chose a route which for a further century no other European was to attempt, though earlier invaders had passed that way. The journey was to last three months and take him across two hazardous deserts, with only local guides to steer him between wells and the bands of murderous brigands.

  Despite sickness and other hardships, he maintained a surreptitious but detailed day-to-day record of all he saw and heard which could be of value to an invading army. He noted down wells and rivers, crops and other vegetation, rainfall and climate. He pinpointed the best defensive positions, described the fortifications of villages along the route, and detailed the idiosyncrasies and alliances of the local khans. He even recorded the ruins and monuments he passed, although not being an antiquarian he had to rely on the dubious stories of the locals as to their age and history. In addition, he secretly charted his route on a sketch map, which later was turned into the first military map of the approaches to India from the west. Just how he managed to do this without detection he did not disclose in his otherwise detailed account of the journey, perhaps wishing to retain his secret for subsequent use.

  On March 31, after skirting the south-eastern corner of the mighty Helmund desert, whose existence and approximate location were thus confirmed, Pottinger and his five-man party struck into the first of the two deserts they were now forced to cross. The presence of such vast natural obstacles astride an invader’s path, Pottinger knew, would be extremely welcome news to those responsible for the defence of India. He was soon to discover for himself why these deserts enjoyed so ill a reputation among the Baluchis, for within a few miles they ran into a succession of near-vertical dunes of fine red sand, some of them twenty feet high. ‘Most of these’, he recounts, ‘rise perpendicularly on the opposite side to that from which the prevailing wind blows . . . and might readily be fancied, at a distance, to resemble a new brick wall.’ The windward side, however, sloped gently to the base of the succeeding dune, leaving a pathway between them. ‘I kept as much in these paths as the direction I had to travel in would admit of,’ he added, ‘but had nevertheless exceeding difficulty and fatigue in urging the camels over the waves when it was requisite to do so, and more particularly where we had to clamber up the leeward face of them, in which attempt we were many times defeated.’ The next day conditions got worse. Their continuing battle with the sand dunes was, in Pottinger’s words, ‘trifling compared with the distress suffered, not only by myself and people, but even the camels, from the floating particles of sand.’ For a layer of abrasive red dust hovered over the desert, getting into their eyes, noses and mouths, and causing extreme discomfort, not to mention thirst, which was aggravated by the intense heat of the sun.

  Before long they reached the dry bed of a river, 500 yards wide, with a recently abandoned village beside it, its inhabitants driven out by the drought. Here they halted, and after much digging managed to obtain two skins of water. The nature of the desert now changed from sand to hard black gravel. Not long afterwards the air began to feel sultry and dust-devils or whirlwinds sprang up, followed shortly by a violent storm. ‘The rain fell in the largest drops I ever remember to have seen,’ Pottinger recounts. ‘The air was so completely darkened that I was absolutely unable to discern anything at the distance of even five yards.’ Yet this storm was mild, his guide told him, compared with those which sometimes struck the desert at the height of summer, when it was considered impassable to travellers. The furnace-hot wind which accompanied these storms was known to the Baluchis as the ‘flame’ or the ‘pestilence’. Not only could it kill camels with its violence, but it could flay alive an unprotected human being. According to Pottinger’s men, who claimed to have witnessed its effects, ‘the muscles of the unhappy sufferer become rigid, the skin shrivels, an agonising sensation, as if the flesh was on fire, pervades the whole frame . . .’ The victim’s skin, they assured him, cracked ‘into deep gashes, producing haemorrhage that quickly ends this misery’, although sometimes the sufferer might survive in agony for hours if not days. (That this was clearly a wild exaggeration may be obvious today, but in Pottinger’s time little was known about desert travel, and anything must have seemed possible in previously unexplored regions such as this.)

  Since the desert was without landmarks of any kind, the guide plotted their course by means of a distant range of mountains. Once, however, when Pottinger decided to leave at midnight to avoid the terrible heat of the day, they quickly found themselves lost, not knowing in which direction to proceed. Concealed on him, Pottinger carried a compass. Unknown to his men, he surreptitiously produced this, and after forcing the glass from it, he managed to feel the needle with his thumb, thus establishing the direction they should be heading in. When at daylight this proved to be accurate, his men were astonished, and for days spoke of it ‘as wonderful proof of my wisdom’. Normally Pottinger only used his compass in secrecy to take bearings for his sketch map, but once or twice he was unable to prevent it from being seen. He would explain that it was a Kiblah nooma, or Mecca-pointer, which showed him the direction in which the Kiblah, or Muhammad’s tomb, lay so that he could prostrate himself towards it when praying.

  That day they rode for nineteen hours, travelling forty-eight miles and exhausting both men and camels. Food and water were now running dangerously low, and Pottinger wanted to continue until they reached the mountains where at least there would be water. However his men were too fatigued to go on, so they halted for the night, sharing the remains of the water between them, but eating nothing. The following afternoon they approached the village of Kullugan, in a region known as the Makran, which was notorious for its lawlessness. Pottinger’s guide, who turned out to be married to the daughter of the Sirdar, or headman, insisted on entering the village first, explaining that it was customary with strangers in this dangerous region. Shortly afterwards he returned to say that Pottinger would be welcome, but that the Sirdar had ordered that, for his own security, he should adopt the guise of a hadji, otherwise he could not be responsible for his safety, even in his own house.

  ‘You are no longer in the Khan of Kelat’s territories,’ it was explained to him. He must not expect the same good order and security that he had enjoyed there. ‘We are now in the Makran, where every individual is a robber by caste, and where they do not hesitate to plunder brothers and neighbours.’ As a horse-dealer employed by a rich merchant in India he would be particularly vulnerable, for it would be assumed that he must be carrying money, even if it was not his own. Pottinger had been warned of Makran’s ill reputation by the Sirdar of Nushki, so he immediately assumed ‘the religious air and mien’ appropriate to his new calling.

  On entering the village he halted and dismounted by the mosque where he was formally received by the Sirdar and other elders. Later he was conducted to his lodgings, a miserable hovel with two rooms, where food was brought for him and his men. This they fell upon with gusto and gratitude, not having eaten anything for thirty hours. Buying food for their onward journey proved more difficult. Because of the drought, it was explained, food was in very short supply and its price had risen astronomically as a result. All that could be spared, therefore, were a few dates and a little barley flour from the Sirdar’s own supplies.

  Pottinger was warned that the next village on his 700-mile ride to Kerman was at war with Kullugan, its inhabitants having raided and plundered them only three weeks previously. Not only would it be suicide for him to attempt to travel there, but he would be ill-advised to proceed any further westwards without additional armed men. Indeed, his guide told him he was not prepared to proceed without such protection, offering instead to escort him back to Nushki. Pottinger reluctantly agreed to hire six more men armed with matchlocks for the next leg of their journey, and a new route, bypassing the hostile n
eighbour, was worked out.

  That night the village elders, including the Sirdar himself, descended on Pottinger’s lodgings to discuss with him various topics including, to his alarm, religion. For as a holy man his views were eagerly canvassed and respectfully listened to. Despite an almost total ignorance of Muslim theology, he managed to bluff his way through without inviting suspicion. Not only did he avoid making elementary mistakes, but he also settled a number of points at issue. One of these was over the nature of the sun and moon. One of the villagers maintained that they were the same. But if that was so, queried another, why was it that sometimes both could be seen simultaneously? Ah, replied the first, one was merely the reflection of the other. At this point the view of Pottinger was sought. He was now beginning to get irritated by this uninvited audience, and moreover wished to get to sleep, so he adjudicated in favour of the latter view, thus definitively settling a debate which, he feared, would have continued for some hours, the villagers having little else to do.

  The following day the Sirdar suggested that before leaving Pottinger should attend prayers at the mosque. This was, Pottinger later wrote, ‘an act of duplicity I had hitherto evaded.’ But he was given little choice, for the Sirdar came to his lodgings to collect him. ‘I perceived there was no alternative,’ Pottinger relates, ‘so I simply went through the motions of prostration, keeping my eye fixed on the Sirdar, and muttering to myself.’ Amazingly, no one appears to have suspected him. The friendly Sirdar, who had suggested the new disguise, knew full well that he was not a holy man, but had no idea that he was a Christian and a British officer, assuming him to be a devout Muslim. Nor was this to be the last time that Pottinger’s disguise as a holy man would cause him intense anxiety. After riding all night they reached the village of Gull, where Pottinger was warmly welcomed by the mullah who invited him to breakfast. ‘I found four or five well-dressed and respectable men sitting on carpets spread under a shady tree, with bread and butter-milk in wooden dishes before them,’ Pottinger tells us. They rose to their feet to welcome him, and he found himself seated on the mullah’s right. After they had eaten, one of the men called upon Pottinger to say a prayer of thanksgiving. ‘This’, Pottinger recounts, ‘was as unexpected as it was unwelcome, and I was greatly perplexed for an instant.’ Fortunately, however, before leaving Bombay he had taken the trouble to learn a Muslim prayer or two from a servant, never dreaming that this would later save him from an unpleasant fate. He and Christie had intended to carry out their mission as horse-dealers, not as holy men, or he might have taken pains to learn these prayers more thoroughly. Desperately trying to remember one, Pottinger now stood up, uncomfortably aware that all eyes were fixed on him. ‘I assumed a very grave air,’ he recalled, ‘stroked down my beard with all imaginable significance, and muttered a few sentences.’ He was careful to pronounce – ‘rather distinctly’ – such words as Allah, Rusool (the Prophet) and Shookr (Thanks). These words were the most likely, he felt, to recur in a prayer of this kind. The risky subterfuge worked once again, for the unsuspecting mullah and his companions smiled benignly upon their pious visitor.

  Pottinger’s next close shave occurred the following day, in another village. He was buying a pair of shoes in the market (for one of his had been carried off by a jackal during the night) when an old man in the crowd which had gathered round him pointed to his feet. Pottinger, he declared, was clearly not a man accustomed to a life of toil or poverty. ‘I instantly went to my shoes and put them on,’ Pottinger recounts, ‘for notwithstanding I had persevered in exposing my feet to the sun, I could never get them to assume the weather-beaten colour of my hands and face.’ Wishing to avoid further interrogation, he returned to his camel, followed closely by the man, and left the village rather hastily.

  Two days later, Pottinger and his party entered the small, mud-walled village of Mughsee, where they had planned to halt for the night. But on discovering what was happening there, they decided not to linger. Only a few days earlier, they were told, a gang of armed brigands had murdered the Sirdar and his family and taken over the village. One of his sons had managed to escape, and at that very moment the brigands were laying siege to the house in which he was sheltering, and which was pointed out to Pottinger and his party. The unfortunate youth, whose father had refused to let the brigands cultivate land near the village, had been told that he might as well come out and be put to death like the rest of his family, for otherwise they would starve him out. None of the villagers attempted to go to his defence, and Pottinger’s small party was powerless to intercede. They had little choice but to continue on their way, leaving him to his fate.

  Three days later, Pottinger was to find himself wondering if his own last moment had not come. He had arrived at the village of Puhra bearing with him a letter of introduction from the Sirdar of a previous village. This he presented to the Khan of Puhra, who called upon his mirza, or clerk, to read it aloud. To Pottinger’s acute embarrassment, it expressed the writer’s suspicion that this holy man who was passing through their territories was really an individual of high birth, possibly a prince even, who had forsworn a life of privilege to become a humble holy man. That it had been written with the best of intentions, to ensure that he would be well received, Pottinger had no doubt. But it was to lead directly, and dramatically, to his being exposed not only as a bogus pilgrim – an infidel Christian, moreover – but also as an Englishman. And his exposure came from a totally unexpected quarter.

  After the Sirdar’s letter had been read out, the crowd of villagers surrounding Pottinger had looked at him with new interest. It was at this moment that a small boy aged 10 or 12 suddenly raised his voice. ‘If he hadn’t said that he was a holy man, I would swear that he is the brother of Grant, the European, who came to Bampur last year . . .’ The sharp-eyed youngster had come within an inch of the truth. The previous year Captain W. P. Grant of the Bengal Native Infantry had been sent to explore the coastline of the Makran to see whether a hostile army would be able to advance towards India by this route (he had reported that it would). During his reconnaissance he had journeyed some way inland to the town of Bampur, in eastern Persia, which Pottinger was now approaching. By sheer ill-chance, this boy – perhaps the only one present ever to have set eyes on a European – must have seen him and spotted some resemblance between the two men.

  Pottinger, badly shaken, tried to conceal his dismay. ‘I endeavoured to let the lad’s remark pass unnoticed,’ he wrote, ‘but the confusion of my looks betrayed me.’ Seeing this, the Khan asked him if it was true that he was really a European. To Pottinger’s relief, he went on to say that if he was he need not fear, for no harm would come to him. Realising that there was no point in further pretence, Pottinger confessed that he was indeed a European, but in the service of a rich Hindu merchant. Such a confession earlier in his journey would very likely have cost him his life, for it would immediately have been assumed that he was an English spy, but he was now quite close to the Persian frontier and consequently felt safer, although still not totally so. Moreover, his disguise had only been partially penetrated. His profession and the real purpose of his presence had not been detected.

  The Khan, fortunately, was amused by the subterfuge, finding no offence in an infidel posing as a Muslim holy man. But Pottinger’s guide, who had clearly been made a fool of, was incensed. At first he refused to accept Pottinger’s confession and regaled the Khan and the crowd with accounts of the theological debates he had engaged in with the holy man. The Khan laughed heartily when he described how Pottinger had even taken him to task over points of religion, a religion it now transpired that he did not believe in. The guide’s anger and discomfiture were exacerbated by the claim of another of Pottinger’s men that he had known all along that he was no holy man, although he had not suspected him of being a European.

  A furious argument now broke out, with the guide accusing the other man of being an accessory to Pottinger’s elaborate deception. In the end the good humour of the Kh
an, who pointed out that others including himself had also been deceived, saved the day, and by the time of their departure from the village forty-eight hours later Pottinger found that he had been forgiven by his guide. In the meantime he had become a celebrity, and his lodgings were besieged by what he described as ‘a concourse of idle and obstreperous Baluchis who harassed me with preposterous queries and remarks.’ That afternoon, however, a genuine holy man – this time a Hindu fakir – arrived, thus relieving Pottinger of ‘the task of entertaining the whole village’.

  Five days later Pottinger rode into the nondescript village of Basman, the last inhabited place in Baluchistan to the east of the great desert he would have to cross before reaching the safety of the Shah’s domains. On April 21, after halting overnight in the village, Pottinger and his men headed towards the desert which they entered in the early hours of the following morning. There was no water or vegetation of any kind, while the heat, Pottinger recounts, ‘was greater and more oppressive than I had hitherto experienced since leaving India.’ They were also taunted by mirages or – as the Baluchis called them – the suhrab, or ‘waters of the desert’.

  In the fashion of his day, Pottinger constantly underplays the hazards and discomforts of his journey, but in describing the desert crossing he for once allows the reader to share with him the hell of thirst. ‘A person may endure,’ he writes, ‘with patience and hope, the presence of fatigue or hunger, heat or cold, and even a total deprivation of natural rest for a considerable length of time.’ But to feel one’s throat ‘so parched and dry that you respire with difficulty, to dread moving your tongue in your mouth from the apprehensions of suffocation it causes, and not to have the means of allaying those dreadful sensations, are . . . the extreme pitch of a traveller’s calamities.’