Harry Holcroft - The Silk Route

Below is an diary extract from The Silk Route and some sample paintings.

The Treasury in the Omyad Mosque, Damascus, Syria

Inside the sanctuary of the Temple of Bel, Palmyra

Last Refuge of the Zaroastrians, Yazid, Persia

Mashed
ARREST
Saturday, 11 May 1996

My wife Sarah is dressed in a chador. I am similarly Iranian - looking and she walks behind me. Thus, illegally we gain entrance to the Holy Shrine (the eighth Imam, the Shiites' most important after Mecca).

In order to sketch the Shrine, I leave Sarah on her own and find a small staircase to a balcony which offers the best view.

I sit outside a small doorway and paint. Shortly, a Mullah appears at the doorway. Seeing me producing an image he realizes that I am an infidel. He speaks little English.

'You Paint.'
'Yes,' I shrug despairingly.
'Allah is great'

'God is great,' I reply as an electric tingle of forthcoming disaster goes down my spine. He bows very politely and disappears.

Two minutes later - whoosh! Five black SAS-type soldiers with UZI machine guns assault me and drag me off to a cell, amidst considerable screaming and commotion.

In this isolated fundamentalist theocracy suddenly being 'banged away' is a little unnerving, particularly as I am not sure I am actually ever going to get out.

What I dont realize at the time is that I have been sitting outside the office of Khomeni's Personal Representative in Mashed (in Western terms the equivalent of the Pope). It is not me personally that causes the concern, but the previous month sixty people had been slaughtered by a terrorist bomb within the Shrine while at prayer - totally unreported in the West. As a result, an infedel outside 'The Pope's' Office causes security to go berserk!

How do I escape? Sarah in her chador pleads my innocence and rescues me, after four hours of considerable concern.

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