The convoy had left the outskirts of Quetta before dawn, following the long, straight desert highway west toward the border with Iran. To the north the rugged, bare granite of the snow-capped Chagai mountains marked the border between Baluchistan Province and Afghanistan. Every so often, a lonely blue sign would announce the distance to the next small town, with the inevitable mosque and flat-roofed stone houses in an otherwise featureless desert. It wasn’t until late afternoon before Yousef was suddenly alert. The truck slowed, and they entered Taftan, the last town before the border with Iran, a few hundred metres further on. The highway was littered with rubbish, and a goat herd was unhurriedly moving his animals from the highway toward the town square. They skirted the truck park on the Pakistan side and joined thirty more semi-trailers, queued at the Iranian border town of Mirjaveh and the crossing of the rail line from Quetta to the first major Iranian town, Zahedan to the west.
What do You think about The Alexandria Connection?
