It appears that what drove the settlement of Dozdab toward becoming a city was the British government's perceived need to construct a railway. The Nushki-to-Dozdab railway was an extension of the line built by the British from Sindh to Baluchestan in 1879. At the terminus of this line, they had established the city of Quetta. With the outbreak of World War I, owing to wartime exigencies and the possibility of delivering supplies to the British army, they undertook the construction of the Nushki-to-Dozdab railway, and before building it, they had seized all of Baluchestan. The planned railway was fundamentally for military reasons, and the British were inclined to extend it as far as Birjand and Mashhad. To build the railway, the British contracted a Muslim Indian man named Malek Shafi, and since India was under British guardianship at the time of this contract, this individual was considered British. He had completed his education at a college affiliated with Cambridge University in India, and is perhaps in some respects one of the founders of the city of Zahedan (Soltani, 1998, p. 40). Malek Shafi Ahmad and Malek Shafi Mohammad were two brothers who won the British contract in Lahore. Malek Mohammad was born in 1894. His parents were Indian Muslims. His father was a farmer, and Malek Shafi himself had studied at university. The family's financial situation, according to the accounts of Mohammad Taqi (the eldest son of Malek Mohammad Shafi), was quite comfortable. Malek Shafi had an interest in and aptitude for technical work and even engaged in piloting. This deep passion for technical matters later proved useful—when the city of Zahedan received its first immigrants. Malek Shafi had a wife in Lahore before coming to Dozdab. In 1922, he became the father of his first child, Mohammad Taqi Malek. Mohammad Taqi was twelve years old when he arrived in Zahedan in 1935. Over four years—from 1914 (approximately 1290 in the solar calendar) to 1918—the construction of the railway was completed. In fact, this line was being built throughout World War I. The British were stationed at Sefidabeh, in the vicinity of Birjand and Bidokht. They had a clinic at the site of the current Pakistani consulate, and apparently built no other structure in the area besides this one (Soltani, p. 43). In 1918, the picture of Dozdab was as follows: apart from the clinic, all the railway workers lived in tents. These tents remained standing for a long time, and afterward, shanties were built for the workers from railway sleepers, reeds, and mats. The railway line extended as far as the old courthouse. The wooden houses of the workers were a sign of their intention to leave. The number of workers was large, lending the work the necessary speed. At that time, a train arrived in Dozdab once a week, bringing with it food for the British army—sugar, tea, diesel, chintz, fabric, and machinery. In the area, only a number of Baluch families of the Gorgij tribe lived. They
were engaged in farming near a spring north of the present city. The quarters for British staff were atop a sandy hill where the Sikh gurdwara now stands. Today the site bears no resemblance to a hill, and the road surface is level (ibid., pp. 44–45). The first building in the city to use concrete was Malek Shafi's house, which they began constructing two years after their arrival in the area. This house is located on Ferdowsi Street and its trading house on what was then known as Kambuzia Street—today known as Imam Khomeini Street—and was built with construction tools imported from India. Indeed, all building materials required—including wood, cement, and metal—were imported from India. Behind the building there used to be a tennis court and a swimming pool. Today the pool is gone, and the empty space of the tennis court can be discerned by two net posts. The rear archway of the house is collapsing, and at first glance it does not appear inhabited. Yet the grandeur of the house's earlier days is visible in the trees, garden beds, the columns at the entrance to the green space on the left side of the large courtyard, the site of the tennis court, the large polygonal pool, and some old furnishings remaining in the residence. It is a quiet, secluded house, and the fall of one of the pine trees—while obstructing the front facade—has added to its melancholy and solitude. Upon entering the house, a low wall has been placed that recalls a kind of hijab for the home. Behind this wall stands a very old bench without cushions, a remnant from Cinema Malek. It is said that this type of bench was the oldest model of cinema seating in the world, and how it ended up in Dozdab must have been the doing of the British. On the veranda, which comes into view past the wall, two old beds can be seen on either side, evidently the summer sitting area. For many years, this house was one of the city's largest and most beautiful. The main plan is rectangular in form. "The house stands as a pavilion in the center of a large compound. This building is among the few pavilion-type structures in Zahedan. It has two entrance doors on the eastern side and one on the western side, seven rooms, a kitchen, garden beds, a bathroom, sanitary facilities, and two porches on the eastern and western facades. The main structure, at the center of the building, features open verandas on both the eastern and western sides. The building is constructed in a corridor-and-interconnected-rooms layout. The average room size in this house is 6 by 9.5 square meters. In the southeastern corner of the large courtyard, there are old buildings that once served as quarters for the house's servants and workers. Surrounding these buildings was a brick partition wall that separated this section from the main courtyard" (Archive of Registration Documents and Reports of the Cultural Heritage Organization, 2013). Mohammad Taqi Malek recounted that their house had for years been the lodging place for most important persons who visited the city. When Reza Shah came to Dozdab in 1929, he was initially supposed to stay at the Malek house, but because
Current plan of this building, which has undergone only minor changes. This plan was drawn by Mohammad Taqi Malek. Source: Soltani, 1998, p. 98.
the homeowner was not an Iranian citizen, the arrangement was changed. Reza Shah stayed at the house of Arbab Mehdi, although Mr. Malek reported that many furnishings from his father's house were nevertheless taken there for the Shah's use—for instance, the magnificent dining table, an electric generator, and even a Chevrolet automobile on which, according to Mr. Malek, the Shah rode (Soltani, 1998, p. 46). In 1922 (corresponding to 1301 in the solar calendar), Malek Shafi established the General Motors dealership in Dozdab. The automobile showroom was situated in the city center of that era (on present-day Imam Khomeini Street). Taking advantage of the railway, Malek Shafi launched an extensive trade—exporting dried fruits and carpets on one end, and importing goods from America via India, especially automobiles. After Reza Shah's ascension to the throne, in 1925 the Iranian government clashed with the Baluch clans of the region in Iranshahr and Khash. Mohammad Taqi Malek recounted that during a period of difficulty for the Iranian government, the General Motors agency in Zahedan
donated one hundred American pickup trucks to assist the Iranian army. The agency was shut down in 1936 by order of the Iranian government, pursuant to the law prohibiting foreign trade by non-citizens (ibid.). Documents held at the provincial National Archives and Library Center indicate that Cinema Malek, in the 1940s and 1950s, was highly regarded as a cultural and recreational venue. In a letter from the then-mayor of Zahedan, Bani-Eqbal, to the Governor-General's office, a request was made to waive the cinema's fees and establish subsidies for Mohammad Shafi Malek, who had intended to close the cinema due to financial losses—in order to dissuade him. The document also references the municipality's considerable revenue from Cinema Malek (Provincial Governor's Archives, National Archives and Library Center). Mr. Malek, regarding the old courthouse building on Imam Khomeini Street at the intersection with Kaf'ami Street—where today the Applied-Cultural Comprehensive University is housed—says it is very old, was originally one story, and also belonged to Malek Shafi, initially used as a garage. A worker who served as the building's guard subsequently sold it secretly. After that, the building was converted into a guesthouse and sold to a man named Shabrakh. Following the Revolution, the house was seized by the government. In the earliest years of the city's construction, when the British still controlled affairs, non-Baluch people were not permitted to enter the area. The Sikhs built houses about seventy meters around the gurdwara for themselves. Malek Shafi is quoted as saying: "When the railway work was finished, we decided to return. An Iranian officer told me, 'Stay—you're young, develop this place, it will be yours. This
is the law: cultivate the desert and you will own it.'" Later, General Jahanbani confirmed this as well. "We built the shops, the bazaar, and then a city came into being. That same officer returned after a while and said, 'Its appearance has improved; expand it—the lands you've claimed will be yours.' On his next visit, he brought the government's order to sell the lands (probably in 1923). I asked, 'What is to become of me?' He said, 'I promise the lands will be yours.'" The lands never did come into Malek Shafi's ownership, but the plots were allocated to him, and the trade became so profitable that it compensated for the loss of the lands. At the site of the present gurdwara, there were originally two shops that Malek Shafi had built. One day the Sikhs gathered and asked him for those buildings to serve as a gurdwara. Previously, their place of worship had been on Azadi Street, across from the present city hall—far from their homes. Malek Shafi gave them the gurdwara and, by his own account, accepted no payment, for he believed that building a house of worship was, in any case, a sacred undertaking. These are fragments of the urban memory of a city that transformed from Dozdab of the desert into today's Zahedan—a city whose very first bricks were laid with ethnic diversity and religious plurality. A city that, contrary to its jumbled and seemingly haphazard appearance, has carried a current of tolerance, endurance, and cohesion through all these years.
Sources: — Documents of the Provincial National Archives and Library Center, documents pertaining to the 1940s and 1950s, the Municipality and Governor-General's Office of Baluchestan and Sistan. — Soltani, Sima (1998). "Zahedan, Volume One: The Emergence of the City," Plan and Budget Organization of Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Publication No. 67. — Registration reports of the Cultural Heritage Organization, Summer 2013. — Interview with Alireza Malek, grandson of Malek Mohammad Shafi, Spring 2017.