By Major Parmjit Singh Pammi

1977.Ras-e-Jask(Iran).Another fifteen days of sailing past Gwadar and Chah Bahar took us to the narrow entrance to Persian Gulf famously named Strait of Hormuz. Our "Pilot", book giving useful information about harbors, written by some British sailor perhaps a century ago, talked of a coastal town called Ras-e-Jask with a fort and population of 12,000.It also mentioned a battle that took place at Jask in which reinforcements for the British Indian Army came from Surat, India. In the fading light of dusk, we noticed a brightly-lit coastal habitation and decided to break our journey for a day. The sea was running high and we decided to anchor safely in deep water in a small bay. Two Iranians were sitting on the shore and we started shouting for them to help us land. One of them named Karam, who had lived in Pakistan and spoke fluent Urdu, rowed to us in a rickety contraption nailed together from scantlings. Luv and I climbed in with Karam and the "boat" sank down to our shoulders in the water. Karam rowed gingerly with his bare hands and the contraption miraculously managed to crawl to the shore with us in it without capsizing. Knowing that Iran was a police state and not taking any chances with the law, I wanted to report to the Customs as soon as possible. But, it was too late and Karam had no means to transport us to their office. Instead, he took us to his humble one-room mud house.

Karam's wife was asleep with two little kids in front of the house under a blanket when we arrived. He shouted"Mariam barro"(Persian;"Mariam get away") and she ran inside carrying the two little kids and leaving the warm blanket outside. Though wet and cold, we refused to accept the blanket but Karam would have none of it. Ridden with guilt for having deprived the little kids of their warm blanket, we spent the remaining few hours of the night under the blanket but got no sleep. At dawn, we saw Karam ride away on his tiny motor cycle. He came back with a tin of condensed milk and a few Lipton tea bags. Mariam lit a fire mainly using their solitary goat’s droppings and served us hot and sweet tea. Karam, had done so much to help us and we wanted to compensate him. We requested him to row back to our boat and tried to give him some cans of pre-cooked food. He accepted these after great deal of coaxing.

On the break of dawn, we went to the customs office. The closer we got to the place, the more it looked like an army unit. Soon enough we found ourselves sitting on our haunches in front with two young sentries pointing bayonets at us. Karam saw us in trouble and quietly melted away in the darkness not to be seen again. The guards spoke only Persian. In my twenty-year old rusted Persian learned at the National Defence Academy, I managed to convey that we were army officers from Hind and we wished to speak to an officer. They said the unit's medical officer was from Pakistan and he will see us when free. Sometime later a tall, handsome Pathan came walking towards us:"Bhai Jaan,aap in kambakhton ke paas kaise pahunch gaye?"(Dear brother, how did you land up with these idiots?")I told him how we had mistaken the bright lights of a strategic airfield for a town that landed us in his para-military unit. Dr Khan wasted no time in declaring us to be sick and we were moved to his air conditioned field hospital. He also arranged for the boat to be towed to a safe inland waterway that freed AP to join us. To our great good luck, Dr Khan had become our guardian angel and we were treated like guests and not prisoners any more. He later told me that he had lived with some Sikh friends in Iran and had great regard for their Pathan-like qualities.

Walking past the Quarter Guard, I noticed a crowd of shabby men packed like sardines behind iron bars. They recognized me."Khudaa ke lie hamen bachaa lo.Ham mar rahe hain."( Save us for God's sake. We are going to be dead.)They told me that they were Pakistani fishermen arrested many days ago. There were seventy of them packed in a single room. The daily nourishment allowed to each of them was a glass of water and half a nan. Not far from where they sat in the dark hovel, there lay a rotting heap of Nan, kabab and basmati rice. Lieutenant Reza was responsible for the prisoners and I asked him about the poor treatment being meted out to them. He said he could spare only two sentries for their custody, there was only one toilet and he could not afford to treat them any better.

 

Next day, us and the fishermen were to be escorted to Bandar Abbass (400 miles away by road) by Lieutenant Reza and his two guards. We were to be interrogated at the naval headquarters and the fishermen had to be produced in the court of law for a hefty fine as punishment and only then their impounded boats could be released. Three of us traveled in his jeep whereas the fishermen were made to sit in an open truck with the two guards standing over them with orders to to shoot any man standing up. The journey through desolate desert landscape took almost a day and a night. On the way whenever we drove into a village, the headman will turn up with a platter of Nan and Kabab. Reza told us that the whole area fell under his unit's jurisdiction and the village headmen had standing orders to provide these facilities to the officers of his unit.

We reached the town in at night and Reza settled us in a hotel after we paid for the room. Towns all over the country were under the control of the dreadedSavak ( the secret police organization) and our friend Reza had no authority here. Hotel manager refused to give him a room. We did not want our brother officer to be thus let down, and I gladly paid the rent for his room out of our meager foreign allowance.

I had already been very thoroughly questioned at Jask with many government and defense officials in attendance. Perhaps because of this, our interrogation was canceled and we were brought back to Jask. America-trained Commanding Officer of the unit turned out to be polite and friendly. "Since he now knew that we were genuine army officers and not spies, why would he not let us go?" I asked him. "This is not American or Indian army. If I make a mistake, I will be stood against the wall and shot without an appeal" he replied. He was waiting for the orders for our release that had to come from the upper echelons. We enjoyed the kind hospitality of Dr Khan for five days before the orders came late in the evening. Fearing a possible change of the orders which seemed descend from high heavens, we decided to motor out to the sea on a dark night in heavy seas. The narrow mouth of the Gulf being a very busy highway of oil-carrying ships, we stayed anchored in the comparative safety of shallows for the remaining night. Our destination, Bandar Abbas was only two days' sailing away.