Amber (12 page)

Our base was twenty kilometres out of Jalalabad, but the road was so poor it took almost an hour to get there. Around the base on every side rose mountains capped with snow, which glittered dazzlingly in the sun. A river ran close to the base, sucking noisily at the pebbles and rocks as it passed. Beyond the river grew a small wood of poplar and willow, skirting the lower slopes of the rising foothills. Two walls of fencing topped by barbed wire encircled the base, ten metres apart. Between them the ground was mined. The base was rudimentary; the officers had constructed basic huts for themselves but the rest of the soldiers still lived in large tents that billowed in the breeze.

Our first task was to construct huts for the granddads, who spent most of the day lounging in their tents, nursing bottles of vodka and smoking. Hardly a single granddad was dressed in uniform; they slopped around in vests and sports trousers with slippers on their feet. To build the huts we dug holes in the earth and filled them with clay and water. We worked the clay all day and then put it into ammunition boxes and left it to set. These rudimentary bricks we bound with wet clay. The huts we built were small and dark. At first we fitted glass into the windows, but at the end of the first week there was an attack and the exploding rockets shattered the windows, so we made do with polythene.

A granddad took us in the KamaZ with an accompanying APC to a deserted village a few kilometres down the road to get wood for the roofs.

‘When we first set up camp here,' the granddad explained, ‘we got fired on from this village. One of our soldiers got hit in the stomach. We rounded up all the men and interrogated them, but how the fuck were we going to find out who it was? There were fifty of them. Some were little kids and then there were the grizzled old granddaddies with their long white beards and their big fucking turbans. We took one of the men, an ugly fucking git, and shot him to teach them a lesson. The next thing we know the whole fucking village has uprooted and headed off for the mountains.'

The village was at the top of a slight incline surrounded by irrigated fields. The road ran at the foot of the rise, a track leading from it, winding into the centre of the village. The high walls had begun to crumble. Between each of the compounds ran narrow, rutted lanes. We let in a couple of dogs to check there were no mines or booby-traps. In the centre of each courtyard was a well, and around it several complexes of rooms, with beaten-earth floors and sun-dried brick . walls painted with lively patterns.

The purpose of the APC soon became clear. Systematically the driver set about destroying one of the compounds. From the dusty rubble we pulled what wood we could find and loaded it on to the back of the KamaZ. It was only once the huts for the officers and granddads had been finished that we were able to construct shelters for ourselves.

Of the thirty-five soldiers stationed on our base, twenty of us were new recruits, and we were from all parts of the Soviet Union, as was general policy. New recruits were not allowed to drink alcohol. Though, technically, we got a small allowance of vodka per week, this was taken by the granddads.

‘What are you fucking looking at?' one granddad barked in my ear, catching me eyeing a bottle on his desk. ‘Do you understand you are not even allowed to look at vodka, you little shit? Get your little beady eyes off it.'

I lowered my eyes to the floor, as he had indicated, and apologised, but my contrition was not enough to divert a beating. In fact the beatings came so often that it was strange to collapse on to my bunk at the end of the day without some bruise or tender flesh to nurse.

‘I can't sleep unless I've had a beating,' Vassily chuckled, one night.

In our bunks, Vassily regaled us with tales he had heard and laughed at the indolent brutality of the granddads. ‘Did you hear about the recruit stationed not far from here?' he said, one night. ‘His base was at the top of a mountain to the north of Jalalabad. One night one of the granddads sent him out to get some milk. The boy was scared – who knows what band of rebels he might have stumbled across in the darkness? But as he was working his way down the mountainside he was attacked by a snake.'

‘A snake?' We sat up in our bunks, watching Vassily in the dim light of the oily candles.

‘The snake wound around him and began to crush the life out of him, so he could hardly breathe. It held him in its grip like that for half the night, and then as first light was dawning it let him go. He struggled free and made his way back to his base at the top of the mountain, only to find that while he had been gone the mujahidin had raided the base and killed the whole lot of them.'

One weekend, when the granddads were particularly drunk, we slipped off base and drove into Jalalabad to buy alcohol. Discarding our uniforms, we took our Kalashnikovs and stuffed a couple of grenades into each pocket. Vassily took a KamaZ and Kolya and I jumped into the back. At the last moment we were joined by another recruit, a lean, dark-haired Russian called Kirov. New recruits guarded the gates and we bullied and bribed our way through with little difficulty.

The market in Jalalabad was a riot of noise and colour. We slipped through the streets, attempting to remain inconspicuous, glancing nervously over our shoulders. The crowds milled and jostled around us and forced us forwards, towards the heart of the market. The street was lined with stalls piled high with fruit and vegetables – bananas, nuts, oranges, tangerines, pinky-yellow carrots, delicious-smelling bread piled high like pancakes at home. Other tables displayed hats, sheepskin coats, ox hides, TVs, digital watches, videos, tea and coffee sets from China and India. Vassily was drawn to the stalls at the side of the market selling trinkets and jewellery fashioned from local stones.

‘Look at this,' he said, picking up a necklace fashioned from amethyst. ‘Look, comrade, my friend, how beautiful. You know, the word amethyst comes from the Greek for “not drunken”. The ancients used to believe amethysts prevented drunkenness; they made their cups from it. And lapis lazuli, look, my friend.' He picked up some of the beautiful blue stone. ‘As clear and beautiful as the Afghan sky.' He held it up as if to compare and, in fact, the two did glow with a similar brilliant luminescence. ‘This is one of the ways they are financing their insurgents, their arms deals. They smuggle it over the mountains into Pakistan.'

‘You seem to know a lot about these things,' I said.

‘I'm a jeweller,' he explained. ‘It is my job to know about jewels.'

We slipped into a small store at the side of the market where Vassily knew vodka could be purchased illicitly. Being a driver, he had accompanied older soldiers into Jalalabad on previous occasions. A small, wizened man with a straggling white beard stood in a dark doorway at the back of the store, wrapped tightly in the cloth the Afghans employed universally. The cloth served as a turban, a wrap and something to spread beneath them when they sat. By the side of the man stood a small boy, who stared at us frankly.

‘Drink?' Vassily said, tilting back his head and miming emptying a bottle into his mouth.

‘What you got?' the old man asked in broken Russian.

Vassily indicated Kirov, who was carrying a plastic bottle of fuel, which we had drained from the KamaZ. Kirov placed the bottle on to a scarred wooden desk beside the man.

‘Phh!' The old man waved his hand dismissively. ‘You drink that.'

‘What's the matter with this?' Vassily demanded. ‘Last week you take it.'

‘Last week you was with different men,' said the shopkeeper. ‘I know them… ' He waved his hands indolently in the air. ‘Years.'

‘How much?' said Vassily.

‘What you got?'

‘You've seen.'

‘What else?'

He wafted his thin, strong hands towards us. Kirov slipped a grenade from his pocket and laid it beside the bottle of fuel. Vassily glanced at him and then at the grenade. For a moment I thought he was going to snatch it up, but he didn't. The old man smiled thinly and nodded his head. He nudged the boy, who slipped through the door behind them and returned a few moments later with a jar of clear liquid. Vassily unscrewed the top and smelt it. He took a small sip, then nodded.

‘Good.'

The old man nodded but did not smile again. We made our way quickly back to the KamaZ, which we had left some streets away. Kolya, whom we had left to guard the truck, was in the back, his gun resting across his chest. He sat up with a start as we jumped in beneath the canvas.

‘It's only us,' I said.

He set the gun down. ‘Well?'

Vassily held up the bottle. A broad grin broke across Kolya's large, square face. He reached for the bottle and kissed it.

‘So what are we waiting for? Crack it open.'

We passed the bottle around between us and Vassily took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and handed them out.

‘Where did you get these?' I asked, surprised.

‘Ah!' He tapped the side of his nose.

The alcohol burnt our bellies, unpicked our cares. Three of us settled back against the side of the truck, while Kirov sat with his legs dangling from the back, his gun across his lap, keeping watch.

‘I was in Lithuania,' Vassily said. ‘Once, on my way to Kaliningrad.'

‘What were you doing in that shit-hole?' Kolya asked.

‘Amber.'

‘You are interested in amber?' I asked.

‘You know where amber comes from?'

‘From beneath the sea,' I said.

‘But originally? Let me tell you the tale of the origin of amber.'

‘
Oi!
' Kolya protested, but Vassily ignored him.

‘Phaeton wanted more than anything to drive the chariot of the sun across the sky like his father the sun god. But his father wouldn't let him; wild horses pulled the chariot and only Phoebus was strong enough to control them. But Phaeton would not let his father alone. Finally he gave in.'

Vassily paused as the jar of vodka came round to him. He took a large slug of the spirit and grimaced. ‘Fucking appalling,' he said, wiping his lips on the back of his sleeve. He passed it on to me.

‘Phaeton was so happy. He raced across the sky, showing the world how great he was. But suddenly the horses bolted. He lost control. The chariot swooped down close to the earth, setting it ablaze. Whole forests burst into flame, mountains exploded, fertile planes became parched deserts. He swooped down so low over Africa that all the people were scorched black.

‘Zeus struck Phaeton dead with a bolt of lightning, to save the earth, and his body fell into a river, which bubbled and simmered from his heat. Phaeton had three sisters. The three beautiful young women went in search of their brother. When they found the river in which he had fallen they stood by it and wept. Day and night, week after week, they stood and wept beside the river, until their bodies wasted away. Their feet rooted themselves in the earth and their waving arms grew leaves. The trunks of their bodies became thick with bark. They became poplars wailing in the evening breeze. Long after they had been turned into trees they continued to cry and their tears turned into amber, which rolled down the smooth bark of their bellies and dropped into the river.'

Over the following week the sporadic gunfire coming from the woods, across the river, became more sustained. The night was disturbed by the shudder of incoming rockets. The mud-brick buildings we had built shook and dust billowed around the small space, coating us thickly. The rolling explosions from the two howitzers that opened up from within our compound made sleep impossible.

At daybreak, after one particularly heavy night, the CO informed us of a plan to strike back at the
dukhs
– the insurgents. Information from Military Intelligence suggested that the
dukhs
were sheltering in a village ten kilometres away, on the other side of the river. The sappers headed out first, checking the road through the forest for mines. We followed, two APCs, the mobile command centre and a BMP bringing up the rear, its caterpillar tracks tearing up the rough surface of the road.

We advanced slowly, the road winding through the trees, climbing steadily. Deep gullies dropped away at our side, and along their bottoms fierce streams crashed down from the mountains.

‘We should burn these fucking trees down,' said Sasha Goryachev, another new recruit, his face drawn tight with nerves. He was sitting on top of the APC beside me, stiffly upright in his bulletproof vest, his ammunition belt slung across his belly. Dust billowed up from the road, thickly caking our clothes and faces. The muj loved the trees. Green meant snipers – trees meant hidden
dukhs
just waiting to spring their ambush. Whole forests had been felled by our troops across the country. Deserts were safer than jungles.

I cradled my gun across my lap; my eyes flicked from tree to tree, searching in the darkness for a glint of the enemy. My pulse raced and I felt a strange mixture of exhilaration and numbing fear. I glanced over at Kolya, who was sitting next to Vassily on the APC in front. He raised his thumb and grinned. We perched lightly on the tops of the APCs in case of mines. If you were stuck inside when a mine exploded you had no chance.

The village was just above the tree line, its baked walls rising above the verdant treetops. It was situated on a rocky outcrop, which was riddled with dark holes. The village slumbered silently beneath the hot sun, its walls shimmering in the haze of heat bouncing up off the rock. We paused while a small group of granddads headed for higher ground to get a clearer view of the village. They returned after an hour not having seen movement within the walls.

As the armoured cars moved in, we sheltered behind them, covered, in case any hidden snipers should try to pick us off. The streets between the high walls were too narrow for the vehicles and the commander split the platoon into small groups to comb through the enclosures. I followed Chistyakov, Sasha and two granddads down towards a small wooden door at the end of the street, attempting to imitate the feline movements of the granddads, who slipped among the shadows with none of the shivering fear the new recruits were showing.