The Silk Road and Beyond. Ivor Whitall

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СКАЧАТЬ it felt quite normal that if one of the guys had to stop and do something, we all stopped. I’ve since realised this was a type of first trip nerves, where safety in numbers was the order of the day. Morrie was right; get up, shake hands and say goodbye!

      Not getting any response from Mick or Bert in the morning, I left a message on their windscreens and headed out of town, glad to get away from the abysmal standard of driving displayed by the local residents. If this is what we’d have to put up with in this dusty and fly-infested part of the world, I’d better keep a weather eye out for myself. Daraa, Syria’s border crossing into Jordan, was about an hour down the road. Arriving into the bedlam of ancient battered old trucks, piled high with various types of fruit, I could see right away that driving here was definitely not a non-contact ‘sport’.

      What a shambles! It was a case of everyone for themselves, as the idea of queuing was obviously alien to them. So with the thought that if you can’t beat them, join them, I eased my way forward, allowing no one to squeeze even a coat of paint into the gap between me and the vehicle in front. Allow one in and suddenly he had three mates that ‘needed’ to get in. After around 2 hours of verbal and physical ‘jousting’ with this herd of demented ex camel jockeys, I was finally near the front of the queue. Then, out of nowhere an ‘agent’, dressed in a white kaftan type of robe appeared by my door, asking for my papers. Who was he? I didn’t know him from Adam, but such was the chaotic situation going on around me, I passed them through the open window in total trustworthiness.

      It was uncomfortably hot and I was starting to get a little concerned about my decision to hand over my passport and all my documents to a total stranger. Seriously contemplating going to look for him, there was a tap on the door. He was back, speaking in perfect BBC English.

      ‘When you return from Kuwait Mr Ivor, come to see me about the Arabic translation of your triptiques (carnet de passages), and I will complete your paperwork.’

      “What a shambles! It was a case of everyone for themselves, as the idea of queuing was obviously alien to them.”

      I certainly will, I thought, and with a ‘thank you’ I was off and heading across another stretch of no-man’s-land to Ramtha, the Jordanian border. Here I’d got a nominated agent, Mohammed el Katib, and finding his office, I was offered the prerequisite chi before he took my documents. He noted straight away that I’d not got a Saudi visa. ‘Now it is too late,’ he informed me. ‘It will all be completed in the morning.’

      Outside, I slumped down against the concrete wall, rolled myself a perennial soother and took a deep drag. What the hell am I doing here? Perched against a grubby wall in the middle of nowhere. What a godforsaken place.

      ‘Hello mate.’

      I looked up.

      ‘You in this afternoon’s convoy?’ he asked.

      ‘What!’ I exhaled sharply. ‘What convoy? What you on about mate?’

      ‘Ah, first trip eh?’ he smiled. ‘It’s the convoy to H4. There are two a day, morning and afternoon. Look, I’ll have to be off, mine’s due to leave shortly, check with your agent.’

      With that he was gone, no name, just asking me about a convoy I’d never even heard about!

      My God, this job was an opencast minefield of potential disasters waiting to trip you up. There was nothing to be done now. I decided I’d do as he suggested and ask the agent in the morning. Sitting in the afternoon sun, I slowly cooked as I watched it drift across the cloudless sky. Other than the border post, agents’ offices and ‘toilets’, there was nothing else here.

      Ah, toilet. Two syllables that are understood the world over as providing sanctuary for man in his time of need. For us long-haul truck drivers, the usual means of evacuating our souls was to bop down between the front and rear axles of our trailer, and after seeing the disgusting horror that entertained the name ‘toilet’ here, I wish I’d done just that! It abused the word in all respects. My one serious attempt at hoping it would fulfil its design function was rebuffed when I strolled across, book in hand, hoping to relax and pass the time of day communing with nature, to be met with an ancient chipped bit of Arabic style porcelain that had an absolute Ben Nevis of multi-coloured turds protruding from its innards. Even the plague of flies attending it couldn’t make any inroads. Retching heavily, I made a rapid retreat, only to watch as other men happily sauntered in and out.

      “It was time to put the kettle on and roll a ciggie. I might as well boil my brains in the unrelenting heat.”

      It was time to put the kettle on and roll a ciggie. I might as well boil my brains in the unrelenting heat.

      ‘Hello Ivor, thought you’d be long gone,’ said Mick, as he and Bert strolled around the front of the cab.

      My spirits were lifted immediately.

      ‘Am I pleased to see you two,’ I laughed. ‘Aye, I thought I’d be long gone as well Mick, death by boredom was about to overcome me. I can’t get my visa till the morning, then apparently I’ve got to go in a convoy to H4. Luckily some bloke told me! Anyway, where’re the rest of the guys?’

      ‘Well you know that Taff’s getting his clutch replaced,’ said Bert. ‘The other two had paperwork problems with Sammi Sarissi. We overslept, which is why we’re late.’

      ‘Well you’d best get your papers in before 9am Bert, otherwise you’ll lose another day. At least you’ll have a chance at the afternoon convoy. Here, have a cuppa.’

      ‘You do know you can pick up Radio Luxembourg down here,’ said Mick, trying to block out the incessant dirge of a Jordanian driver playing ‘The Arabic Top Ten’. ‘I can’t stand the tuneless stuff they play here.’

      ‘Can you?’ I said, twiddling with the knob on the radio. ‘I could pick it up further north.’

      Settling the dial onto a fuzzy sounding 208 was still a huge improvement on Mustafa’s ‘music’.

      ‘Look at the size of that,’ I said, watching in amazement as the biggest sun I’ve ever seen sank slowly over the horizon.

      ‘Aye,’ said Mick, ‘it’s something to do with the dust in the atmosphere, makes it shimmer and look bigger, or something like that.’

      Sitting on the kerb, we talked well into the night about everything lorry, but it wasn’t like sitting in a British transport café moaning about roadworks, car drivers, weather, transport managers or the ministry. Oh no, that was mundane stuff. This was adventure on the hoof. Everything was new and had no parallel in the UK. I mean, tomorrow we were being convoyed to H4, whatever that was, and from there to the Saudi Arabian border was 70 miles of open desert, no road, just desert! How would that little nugget go down at Kate’s Cabin on the A1!

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