Iran As I Remember it : Bombay to Khorramshahr

By Colonel V K Bali, Retd

Since the Israel Iran war is in headlines every where, it brings back memories of Iran I had seen as a ten years old and up to early teen years…

My dad was posted as Head of Indian Mission at Zahedan in South East corner of Iran and not far away from Pakistan Western border…that was in 1959.

We had sailed from Bombay to the Iranian port of Khorramshahr by a British ship and it had taken us a week’s Voyage touching the ports of Karachi, Muscat, Kuwait enroute to Khorramshahr…my memories of this Voyage are still vivid…

Only Karachi port appeared to be a developed port where our ship actually docked. At Muscat the ship had anchored about half a mile out in the sea, the cargo and passengers were boarded/ de boarded into large wooden barges and landed at the small port jetties.

At Dubai, the coastline could hardly be seen as due to shallow depth, the ship had to drop anchor about two miles away from the shore. Only after an agonizing long wait some Arabs came in a local Dhow to board the ship.

I and my younger sister ran up to the ship forward section to see our new co passengers….all the while craning our necks over to see the dhow below…a rope ladder were thrown by the crew and the Arabs climbed up the deck one by one.

We were wondering about their dress…all men, from young to elderly…those white robes looked quite heavy…about twenty of these Dubai passengers were going to Khorramshahr as Deck Passengers as they couldn’t afford to pay for cabin or bunk berths. As soon as the ship weighed anchor, these Arabs rushed to the lower deck which housed a stores canteen and a cafeteria for the passengers..

They purchased bottles of duty free liquor from canteen and some food and made themselves comfortable on the deck for next four days till the ship docked at Khorramshahr…they could be seen eating and drank continuously. However this bunch smelt horrible and I was not sure if the smell was theirs or this foul smell came from the camels they always ride.

Anyways, coz of this drunk bunch our activities shifted from the foredeck to astern section of our ship which seemed peaceful and safe to us kids.

The ship sailed and next stop was again far from the coastline…we were told it was Bahrain…. fortunately no foul smelling passengers boarded except some loading and unloading of cargo and we moved on…..

There was no stopping at Qatar…an unknown entity those times and next we reached a place called Kuwait…..a small berth, barely enough for one under 10k DWT ship like ours…it was a cargo halt only..

The port charges were paid for in form of drinking water to the port from the ship. Those days Kuwait had hardly any drinking water it appeared… there were only two cargo sheds and nothing else….kind of a boring barren place

Finally after two more days we reached Khorramshahr port on the river after sailing inland for the whole night. As we left the ship and headed to the gangway, we saw those Arabs still on the deck drinking liquor and talking in loud voices.

They were busy gambling and guess the currency…It was Indian currency notes but red in colour instead of blue colour notes we used. During the British rule, the Indian currency was used in gulf countries too for trading and on ships. This had continued even after Brits had to leave India.

We were told that since drinking liquor and gambling were HARAM ( banned) in Islam, such groups had found a way around the ban by indulging in these activities on board ships to avoid Allah’s wrath…they would take a return trip on board a ship for about ten days and have their fill to repeat the Voyage again after couple of months

So finally we reached Iran after a Voyage of seven days

There were more interesting things waiting to happen for our short stay at Khorramshahr before our train journey to Tehran.