Machine Read Online Free Page B

great.
    The darkness, the rain, the tailwind and the black garments aided him. He was possibly aided by Allah as well; Djamolidine was not entirely sure if he still believed in him, but as he headed for the border, he did catch himself thinking about the Gracious and the Merciful. Or he might just have been unbelievably lucky: he encountered no officials, Soviet or Iranian, the fences were few and the barbed wire rusty. Nor was the cold any worse than could be offset by the physical exertion.
    At dawn, after resting, he got back on the saddle and made his way down the mountains into Iran. The skies began to clear as he approached a town which he, with his superficial knowledge of the Persian seriffed Arabic alphabet, could decipher as ‘Ardabil’. Sheltered by the sign, he took a break, changed his clothes, ate, drank and loosened up his muscles before getting back onto his bike, and he did not get off it until he reached Teheran eighteen hours later. The exultation and the lack of sleep induced in him a sensation of being the perfectcycling machine: the pumping action of his lungs and thigh muscles, his eyes and brain reading the road, his thorax muscle contracting rhythmically as he clenched the handlebars.
    The embassy staff in Teheran, personified by a 32-year-old secretary with the remarkable name of James Stewart, was obliging almost to the point of embarrassment; the fact that Djamolidine was in possession of a domestic Soviet passport plus written evidence of participation in an elite sport, together with his stated wish to seek political asylum, meant that Section 19 of the Immigration Act applied, and Djamolidine was issued with F1-type personal papers. Hurrah.
    Outside the embassy gates Djamolidine had reeled off three homemade sentences in English: ‘I name Djamolidine Hasanov. I from Baku, Union of Soviets. I look to political asylum in States of America.’ Taking this as his starting point he began learning the English language with an almost insatiable enthusiasm. His future would unfold in this language; he must transform himself into an American as quickly as possible – a resolution in which James Stewart was only too pleased to assist. James found him atextbook with the ambiguous title
This Way – American English for Foreigners
and changed, at Djamolidine’s request, the name on the F1 papers to ‘Jimmy Nash’. From now on he was Jimmy, Jimmy Nash with an extended, yankee-drawling ‘a’, and would never let anyone call him anything else.
    A week later he was on the morning flight to Washington. He registered no special feeling when stepping on to American soil for the first time, probably because he had in effect already arrived on US territory when they let him through the gates of the embassy in Teheran.
    Upon his arrival he was housed in an ‘economy’ motel situated by one of Washington’s southern approach roads, where he spent a month watching television, teaching himself English from his textbook, and eavesdropping on people’s conversations in the motel restaurant, as well as going for long walks in the anti-pedestrian shambles of the city’s arterial roads. Eventually, the winter weather and a feeling of wanderlust prompted him to call James Stewart, who was delighted to ‘pull a few strings’ and bring about the following arrangement: Jimmy got a second-hand car – a 1964 Pontiac Strato Chief – $500 and a job contract which stipulated that twomonths later, on the 1st of March 1971, he would start work as a tapper at an oil well in Utah. From that date onwards he would be regarded as having been settled in America. He was free to pick his own route to Utah and, having thought about it and having been persuaded by the glittering leaflets from the US Department of Tourism, he chose to drive to Los Angeles via New Orleans, up to San Francisco and back into the country to Utah.
    Fourteen days later he checked into a motel