The Road to Oxiana

Fields of opium poppies surrounded the infrequent villages shining their fresh green leaves against the storm-inked sky.Purple lightning danced on the horizon. It had rained here already, and out in the desert we could smell the aromatic camel-thorn as if it was on fire. Yellow lupins mingled with big clumps of mauve and white iris. Kariz itself was pervaded by an overpowering scent, as sweet as beanflowers, but more languid, more poetic. I walked out to try and place it. The opium flowers called me, glowing in the dusk like lamps of ice.

Road to Oxiana

Road to Oxiana

England looked drab and ugly from the train, owing to the drought. At Paddington I began to feel dazed, dazed at the prospect of coming to a stop, at the impending collision between eleven months' momentum and the immobility of a beloved home. The collision happened; it was 19 1/2 days since we left Kabul. Our dogs ran up. And then mother - to whom, now it is finished, I deliver the whole record; what I have seen she taught me to see, and will tell me if I have honoured.