ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

I know, I just know that I’m going to upset legions of Eric Newby enthusiasts with my thoughts about this book, but I was appalled by it, and I am astonished that Harper Press are so crass as to reissue it.

Newby is apparently highly-regarded as a travel writer, according to the book’s blurb: the ‘most successful travel writer of his generation’. First published in 1958,  A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is said to be characterised by his ‘self-deprecating humour, sharp wit and keen observation’ but I was not only underwhelmed by the tale of these amateur explorers and their ill-prepared post-war venture into the mountains of Afghanistan, I failed to see anything funny about the prejudices he took with him – and reinforced – on the trip.

I consider myself rather lucky to have learned a little bit about Afghanistan before 9/11.  I was teaching English as a Second Language when the first refugees from the Taliban began arriving in the mid 1990s, and I could not do my usual lessons using what I knew about my students’ country because I didn’t even know where Afghanistan was, much less anything about it.  There was nothing much in the Encyclopaedia about it, I couldn’t find a single book about it in any of my libraries, and Wikipedia and Google didn’t exist back then.  (Or if they did, I didn’t know about it).

But with the help of a very smart eleven year old girl in my class, and an enterprising photographer from Vermont who was selling online his 1980s picture postcards showcasing Afghan art and architecture, its ancient treasures, and its beautiful landscapes, I began a crash course in Afghan history, geography and culture.  So while the Afghan kids learned grammar and sentence structure and the intricacies of English vocabulary, I learned about a beautiful country with an impressive ancient history (and, thanks to the friendly generosity of my students’ parents) a most delicious cuisine.  

Newby, escaping from a job he didn’t like in his parents’ fashion business, went to Nuristan on a whim, with his pal Hugh Carless who worked in the Foreign Office.  One does not need to read far into this book to understand why British Foreign Policy caused so much strife, if Carless as represented in this book is anything to go by.  He was an arrogant prat with complete disregard for the protocols and customs of the places he visited on this trip.  (He wrote an epilogue for the book in 2008, so presumably he’s not bothered by this.)

There’s a not-very-funny scene early in the book where in Turkey en route to Persia (sic)  they almost crashed into an injured man on the road.  Carless went into a panic because their presence there might have provoked an international incident: they (having been as careless about maps as about every other aspect of their preparation) were on the wrong road, very near the Russian border during the Cold War with a carload of cameras and other stuff that looked a lot like spy equipment. And Carless didn’t have a diplomatic visa for Turkey which had hostile relations with Britain at that time.   So did Persia/Iran which had not so long ago ceased diplomatic relations with Britain and booted them out of the country after Mussadiq’s coup.

The authorities thought that the duo were responsible for this accident (which turned into a fatality because the unfortunate man died in the military hospital) but all was resolved because they behaved ‘in a gentlemanly way’ and anyway, the dead man was ‘only a nomad’.   Is there something wrong with my sense of humour that I don’t find this funny at all?  Is it supposed to be funny when later Newby drove onto a Moslem cemetery which he claims to have mistaken for a rubbish dump? Would this be funny if someone did it in the UK, or America or Australia?

Every prejudice you can think of is reinforced by this ‘witty’ book.  The man in the car repair shop in Meshed in the Persian province of Khurasan is a ‘broken-toothed demon of a man’ who takes a fancy to Carless and offers him a ‘small blind boy, good-looking but with an air of corruption’ (p55).  After fondling the boy and suggesting that Carless do the same, this man then disappears into a cupboard with him, from which emitted a ‘succession of nasty stifled noises that drove [Carless and Newby] out of the shop’.  This is not the only time that Newby goes out of his way to suggest that people in this part of the world are casual about sexual mores.  In Farman, he reports that he is propositioned while he is vomiting in the street (how ‘gentlemanly’ is that??), and later he reports on polygamy almost as if it were prostitution. 

The difference between Newby and the iconic travel-writer H.V. Morton is respect for The Other.  In every circumstance Newby sets out to depict The Other as quaint, strange, dirty, stupid and corrupt.  In a ‘horrible little hamlet’ the locals - including ‘several women in a state of happy hysteria’ – stand around and do nothing when a child is thought to be drowning in a sewer, so heroic Newby dives in only to find that the child is safe and well having merely strayed next-door and no one is very grateful (p58). Likewise, in the Customs House at Taiabad, the military commander bemoans the opium trade in remote areas, oblivious to his own staff puffing away within eyesight.  Every stream in this remote, sparsely-populated area is, according to Newby, polluted by human effluent and the food in any cafe is overwhelmed by ‘a terrible smell of grease’ , the mast as ‘stiff as old putty, the same colour and pungent’.  They would rather eat ancient ex-army ration packs of Irish Stew. 

But it was the descriptions of the people that I found the most offensive.  At the Afghan border the Pathans have ‘Semitic, feminine faces but were an uncouth lot, full of swagger’, and Newby mocks the pantaloons that they wear as pyjamas  (p62). When the people who help them over a collapsed bridge afterwards bargain for payment (as is the custom, and more fools Newby & Carless for not concluding an agreed price beforehand) these helpful people are ‘ruffians’, while the ones accompanying American vehicles on the road are ‘piratical’.  Hazaras (who in my experience are attractive people) are ‘slit-eyed, round-headed Mongols’ (p94) while the Tajiks are the ‘original Persian owners of Afghan soil: pleasant, regular-featured people’ (p34).  Both Newby and Carless think it is okay to delude their guides as to their real destination, because they know full well that the locals would refuse to take them to where long-standing tribal hostilities would put the entire party at risk. Their arrogant sense of entitlement is breath-taking.

If I had picked up a 1958 edition of this book for 20c in an Op Shop, I would put the grotesque misrepresentation of Afghanistan and its people down to the era.  In the 1950s, post-war Britons had not adapted to Britain being the vibrant multicultural society that it is today, and Newby was probably representative of many nobodies who grew up believing that Britain’s Empire and its people were infinitely superior to everywhere else on earth.  But times have changed and this book belongs in the dust-bin of history.

Author: Eric Newby
Title: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
Publisher: Harper 2011
ISBN: 9780007367757
Source: Personal library, bought from the Pokolbin Village Bookshop in the Hunter Valley, and destined for my dust-bin when I get back home.