The troops were already waiting in their lorries. Some had their backs to me, so I couldn’t see their faces. When I called Stefan’s name, some turned to look but no one answered, and they resumed their conversations.
The wind beat across the vehicle park, driving the rain through my thin headscarf and chilling my scalp. I walked up and down the individual lanes, which revealed hundreds of passengers already sitting in their vehicles surrounded by bundles, obscuring their faces. So many times throughout the interminable night, I’d imagined throwing myself into Stefan’s arms, but I hadn’t factored for people boarding various trucks simultaneously. I couldn’t be everywhere at once. Nor did I envisage that some trucks would be open-topped, others covered in tarpaulin, and others high-sided with slats obscuring their occupants.
Then there were the stretchers with the lying sick and the sitting sick transferring from the local hospital onto buses, trucks or army ambulance, not to mention the guides, loaders and luggage porters rushing back and forth.
The storm passed over leaving me wet and weary, but the sky was growing lighter. Engines burst into life and vehicles disappeared behind veils of belching fumes. The convoy pulled slowly away, forcing me to break into a trot alongside, jumping up and down to see through bus windows, shouting Stefan’s name.
A truck ahead stalled, holding up the others, then leap-frogged off down the road and stalled again. It was then I heard someone calling my name – a woman’s voice from the truck in front of the bus. I caught up and ran alongside. It was Olga, Stefan’s sister. Both his parents and his four sisters were there – but there was no sign of him.
Their truck was gaining speed now, and I was becoming out of breath. ‘Where’s Stefan?’ I yelled.
‘In the military field hospital outside Tehran – he’s got typhus. They took him straight there as soon as we arrived. Please go to him, Marishu. He was so insistent that you go…’ Olga’s words trailed away in a cloud of exhaust smoke.
I doubled over with a stitch as the convoy rumbled past me. Exhausted, I dropped to my knees and wept.
I couldn’t wait to get out of Pahlevi, but until that happened I devoted myself to my voluntary work at the hospital. I checked the many notices boards each day to see if my name was on them, but it never was.
If I wasn’t stuffing mattresses, I spent hours encouraging little children to eat. Their little tummies were all blown up, their skin embedded with lice. Bones protruded from their shrivelled faces and their enormous eyes stared into space. They were so ill they were too weak to cry, and I wondered if Stalin would feel any remorse if he saw what he had created.
Irena returned at night with horror stories of refugees arriving daily with malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis and frostbite – some with limbs almost dropping off with the disease, and typhus. She said typhus was now at its worst amongst children under four years old and the latest news was that sea crossings from Krasnovodsk to Pahlevi had ceased.
To my surprise, I enjoyed volunteering; my life had meaning again. The hospital was now my new family; it was somewhere I belonged.
38
It was 16th April – evacuation day for Irena and me, and we were waiting to board.
Lanes had been delineated with ropes on each side of the vehicle park, and as civilians arrived from the camps they were being formed up into groups of threes in each of these lanes and then led forwards in parties according to the size and capacity of individual vehicles. I was the last of one party – Irena was the first of the next.
‘We want to travel together,’ I protested, as they marched her off to towards a bus with a load of strangers.
‘Don’t worry,’ Irena called back, ‘we’ll meet up in Qazvin.’
The only remaining seat was at the front, besides the Polish guard. He was a man who gallantly suggested I take the window seat, then shattered the illusion by admitting it was because he had to monitor our Armenian driver, who was not very reliable and prone to speeding. He introduced himself as Pawel and said he came from Brest.
This constant talk of the Germans advancing towards us had been like a yoke of terror, but now we were being moved into the interior, there was nothing but relief. How was this young man feeling knowing he would soon face the deadliest peril somewhere on the front line?
There was a buzz of excitement on board as children jostled for places next to windows, their noses already pressed to the glass. Adults settled in their seats with their few packages and shouted to their offspring to behave, but everyone was optimistic.
The convoy set off at 0800 hours and clung to the coast for some time, before it veered inland and headed for Rasht. In the distance, the Elburz Mountains loomed bleak and daunting.
I took one last glance back at Pahlevi as it receded into the distance and thanked God for the British military. They came to our rescue when we were at our most helpless; they fed us, clothed us, built up our strength, and restored our faith in humanity and in ourselves.
With the town of Rasht behind us, we headed through arable land towards the mountains, and the convoy made a comfort stop when the greenery became scanty, so people could relieve themselves amongst the few bushes that still grew there.
The gradient increased, gently at first, but soon the driver had his foot down.
I gripped my seat, and my dry rations fell to the floor. We had all heard about the recent fatal accident caused by an overtaking bus where the truck ended up at the bottom of a ravine and burst into flames.
We followed the Hamadan Route along the most dangerous road imaginable. On one side of us, the steep rock face obliterated all sunlight. Shale and rubble covered the slopes, and I realised there was nothing to stop avalanches running down into the valleys on the other side of the road – with our transport caught in the middle.
Stefan would have passed this way too. I wondered if he was one of the ‘lying sick’ or the ‘sitting sick’ aboard his ambulance vehicle. Mercifully, he might have been lying down and spared this heart-stopping experience.
The gradient grew steeper, and the ledge on which we travelled appeared narrower. The driver changed down a gear to gather speed, but the gears crunched, failed to engage, and the vehicle slowed. He tried again and again, but now our bus was slipping backwards. The noise of grinding gears silenced even the noisiest passengers as everyone prayed and willed him to correct the situation because another truck was making up ground behind us, sounding its horn. Passengers began shouting it would crash into us when just in time he hit the right gear and continued at a slower pace.
I saw fear in Pawel’s eyes. ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t try that trick again.’
My mouth was dry. I peered over the edge to see where we might have landed. It was a very long way down. Many of the streams had caused deep gorges, and only the valley bottoms were lush. It was a harsh landscape of sublime beauty. However, when I looked up, I occasionally caught sight of another transport above us on a hairpin bend so steep that it looked as if it were travelling almost vertically.
We reached Qazvin at dusk and stopped outside a sizeable building. Everyone started chattering at once while getting out of their seats.
Pawel stood. ‘Everyone, could I please have your attention for a moment. This is a school building, and the Iranian authorities have allowed us to use it overnight. We ask that no one leave the building as we need to make a very early start in the morning. The children will use the school an hour after we vacate it, so please leave the place as you found it. There are plenty of latrines and washbasins, so use them. It might help if you left your baggage on the bus. It’s locked and guarded overnight.’