20 years ago today - Day 276

Wednesday, December 4th - Zahedan, 14,579 km

Glories of glories, there is a message from Vincent waiting for me in Poste Restante in the post office this morning, just when I was on the verge of giving up on them! He says very little in his note, just that he and Coen have made it here safely and that they will meet me here 5 pm this afternoon, but it feels like a HUGE amount. It is the best news I have had in many weeks.

I am ecstatic all day. I feel like dancing in the streets, become an even-weirder anomaly in this brown desert town. 5 pm feels like an age away and I fidget away the hours waiting impatiently for them to pass. I take down my note in the bookstore and organize my bags that have become scattered into disarray in the past three days. This takes far too little time.

My mind is full of questions that I will find out soon enough. Are the two Brits still with them? What held them up? Are they sick, injured or have they had mechanical problems or a run-in with the police? Where are they staying? Obviously they have just arrived or I would have probably seen them walking around.

I ride around a bit looking for other hang-outs other than the chai house I know. I watch for them everywhere. Why did they say they would only meet me at 5 pm instead of noon? Surely they could expect me to check first thing in the morning, especially with them being this late.

4 pm arrives and I am waiting for them in case they show up early. Anxious, me? I see them crossing the wide, dusty street. I want to run and hug them but I play it cool and keep eye contact as they approach. We are each smiling uncontrollably. They don’t resist when I hug them tightly in turn. (Coen is so tall I am just hugging his chest.)

I am full of questions, the first being when did they arrive. I am shocked to here that they have been here three days, since noon on Sunday. My jaw drops in amazement. Why did you wait three days to contact me after promising to reconnect on the weekend, I want to ask. I feel a wave of anger for what I have been going through, but I just ask Vincent politely why he didn’t leave me a note before this morning. He just brushes off my question, saying they have been busy and that they are staying here kilometres from the post office and didn’t get around to it. The Brits are still with them, and after chatting for a couple minutes they say they have made arrangements to meet them for dinner a few blocks away.

I suppose I should feel honoured to finally share a meal with them. I settle with feeling relieved. This is a necessary arrangement, I tell myself as I listen to the four of them relate their adventures from Yazd to Bam. They met a fellow in his late 20s in Bam who insisted that they stay with him, but he turned out to be a total control freak who would not let them leave or go sight-seeing on their own. They finally lied to him that they needed to visit the post office on urgent business Sunday morning and caught a bus to Zahedan instead.

Kate loves to talk but she never speaks to me and none of them ask how I have been other than to ask if I can eat solid food yet. Questions that require one word answers. I now understand that Vincent and Coen held off contacting me until they are ready to leave Zahedan because Kate didn’t want them to, though there is no way to prove this decisively. They do want to leave for Mirjaweh tomorrow morning though and ask me to meet them in front of the Jameh Mosque at 9 am. I suppose they held off meeting me until the evening so that I would not change hotels to stay with them. What is the purpose of this if we will need to stay every night together after today? We will be together at least until we reach Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan at the end of the Valley of Death, which might be 10 days away.

So I spend another boring evening in Zahedan alone, shunted aside. I wonder if Coen and Vincent were hoping I would not answer their note, and if they’d prefer me not to travel with them anymore. I don’t care. I will travel with them and make the best of it because I must. I will try to strengthen my friendships with them and even with Stephen and Kate. She is giving me plenty of reasons to dislike her, more than I have given her, but I can ignore them. Traveling with a bitch isn’t the worst I have been through.