2 Search for Identity

An Unsafe Train Ride

I'm old enough to remember when it was possible to travel across Asia by local transport, before ISIS, Taliban, wars in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. A friend and I set out for India from London. It was 1972. No guidebooks. No phone. We didn't know the way, but I had a large map of India.

My friend Philippa and I knew little of the cultures or history of the lands we were travelling through. We looked, listened and made guesses about what was going on inside people's lives.

In Istanbul we took a train, known as the Orient Express, to Mashhad in Iran. It was not the luxury train of Hollywood fame. Ours may have been the original Orient Express built almost a hundred years earlier or, if not, a close relative. Though it had a traditional dining car and first- class accommodation, on our budget, posh carriages were irrelevant. We were happy to be in the cheap seats.

Our train chuffed through the Anatolian plateau. Out of the windows, we saw a vast landscape with scattered villages, sheep or goat herders and an occasional nomadic black tent. The main activity was chatting to others, some of whom we had already met.

It was exciting and fun. In theory, that is. For hours, I stared out of the train window at passing images that, until then, I had only seen in National Geographic magazines. In truth, the journey was comfortable and, given that the schedule was estimated to take two and a half days, though eventually it would take more than three, there was plenty of time to feel slightly bored.

All was about to change. The train, behind schedule by several hours, stopped when we reached Lake Van in Eastern Turkey. It was early evening. First-class carriages were shunted onto a ferry. The rest of the train was parked by the dock.

Philippa and I picked up our luggage, boarded the boat and headed for a café which soon filled up. Grabbing seats, we bought a beer. Men who had finished their week's work were heading to homes on the other side of the water. Some were drinking too. I don't remember seeing any local women. With lots of mutual smiling, we attempted to chat as we drank. American friends going first-class were missing this local colour. We felt smug.

Once the ferry had reached the other side of the lake, we headed towards the sidings where replacement coaches stood. It was now dark and there were no lights, but luckily one or two of the Turkish men and a few of the western travellers had torches to show us the way. As we neared the carriages, a sense of urgency grew. People began to run towards the doors. There appeared to be too many for the length of waiting train.

Men pushed ahead and took possession of compartments. We were no match. Deciding we would fare better if we split up, I jumped up through a door at one end of a carriage and Phil with New Zealanders, Di and Jane, ran further up the train. With me were a woman from Seattle and a guy from Scotland. We'd all met at a cheap Istanbul hotel and become friends.

The two were at the beginning of a romance.

With a forty-pound backpack weighing me down, I was a target, a bulky one at that. Some men closed in, encouraged by the chance of female interaction offered in the darkness. One grabbed and pushed me against a window frame. He was small, strong and wiry. It was impossible to escape him. He reached down and undid the zip of my jeans. I shouted, making as much noise as I could and tried to punch him in the pit of the stomach. This was useless.

A couple of men had jumped up high to get a better view, putting a foot on the upper frame of a window and the other on the top of a compartment door, so that they straddled the space. They were shining torches down, all the better for the crowd to see the action by. On my left stood the loving couple. They were embracing. 'Oh,' she said, 'it's awful!' The new boyfriend pulled her tighter: 'Don't look, Susan, don't look', and with his arm manfully around her, they hurried away from the ruckus. I watched them go; neither looked back. With me now without support, though noisy, my suitor took courage. He held my head between his hands and bashed it against the closed window.

Surrounded by men and with my head hurting, I was overpowered and slipped to the floor.

Then my luck changed. I heard English being yelled across the crowd. In a foreign accent, a man's voice, 'Stop! It is inhuman. It is immoral. Stop that now!'

I guess the sound of a foreign language took some energy out of the crowd, for the man broke through and came to my side. He pulled my attacker off me - it was, after all, quite difficult for the assailant to do anything intimate in such a constrained space - lifted me up onto my feet and spoke. 'Let's get away. Come with me.' Still shouting at the crowd, now in a language which they did understand, the man pulled me along the passage.

The press of bodies made us turn around to face our pursuers. We moved backwards along the cramped corridor, side by side, kicking out and throwing punches (mine more for show) at the men who pushed towards us. Still in semi-darkness, I tried to open doors of compartments as we moved past. They were locked from the inside. The train was not yet moving; first-class carriages were still being coupled to the rest of the train.

I don't know what would have happened if my backpack hadn't come to our aid. As we retreated, my arm went through a broken window in a compartment door. Much of the glass had disappeared, perhaps earlier in that chaotic night. There was still a potentially dangerous slice of glass across the lower part of the frame. I turned my back on the door and pushed hard against the glass with all the weight of my backpack. It gave way and I fell through the gaping window and landed on my back. My protector followed me in.

By this time, a few lights were flickering. This compartment was full of young men. They stood up in shock as I crash landed. Speaking English, their words were full of concern: 'Are you alright?' Fired up by adrenalin, I wasn't going to be mollified: 'I was shouting for help. Didn't you hear what was going on?' with some swear words thrown in. I'm not sure if those added much, but, from where I stood, the men looked shamefaced: 'We didn't know what was going on. It's wild out there.'

Me: 'You bloody bet it is.'

My attacker and pals had moved on, looking for fun elsewhere. As we stood flushed and panting, surrounded by glass and embarrassed men, I thanked my rescuer. He said he was on the way to his home in Iran, explaining that he had yelled loudly at the mob in English to give me hope that help was on its way.

Then Philippa screamed, clearly from some distance further down the train.

Without thinking and still fired up, I slid open the door and launched myself up the corridor towards the noise. My ally followed.

The corridor now empty, the two of us moved through until we came to the final carriage, the mail car. At the far end, sitting on sacks presumably filled with post, were Philippa, Di and Jane. They didn't appear to be hurt, though later Phil would show me scabs on her back that marked the track of a knife. Seeking sanctuary, they had headed to a toilet, but when they opened the door, two men were waiting behind it, at least one of whom was armed. It was the feeling of his knife that had triggered Philippa's piercing cry. The blade had bounced up her spine, making small cuts from her waist to her shoulders. The thick woollen jumper she wore had protected her from worse.

In front of my friends were three men, one wearing an Indian turban. They stood tall, arms folded, facing a vestige of the mob who had been so enthusiastic earlier. 'Oh, do come join us,' one said in the most upper-class English accent. I walked in with my Iranian companion, the crowd parted, and I was offered a mail sack to sit on.

The men standing guard introduced themselves. Two were friends 'down from Oxford', travelling East together to stay with the turban- wearer's father, a Maharajah. The third, also recently graduated, had been cycling around the world until he'd tired. His old traditional black bike was propped against the carriage wall.

This unlikely trio had gone to Philippa's rescue.

The rest of that night was spent in a face-off, us barely moving. We watched the men who had earlier been climbing the walls to see us. They stared back while our new friends kept the mood light-hearted and almost convivial.

Just before dawn, the train halted at the border with Iran. Uniformed customs officials came to check passports and, though a few men objected to getting off, the mail car was cleared of all non-passport holders.

A Safer Story

Continuing.

News of the night's events spread through the train. First class travellers treated us to breakfasts in the dining car. Philippa and I were celebrities.

This was the sort of experience that I had yearned for, when I left home aged 21. It involved the threat of danger, real jeopardy, examples of courage and princely rescue. What more does a girl need?

I reached that point in reading this account to my friend Aisha, when she stopped me. 'You can't say all that, Lisa.'

'Why not? It's...