American Taliban (16 page)

Armchair travel, Khaled called it. I’m going for real life. I don’t need a guidebook written by an Englishman telling me what to see and do. We’ll be residents, not tourists.

You know, John said. Not everything has to be so black and white, an either/or. Reading informs my experience. I want to be open to all of it, both the learning and adventure.

EARLY NEXT MORNING
, showering, John discovered that Pakistani towels were strangely useless things, and he was glad he’d packed his own. He made a mental note to mention it to Barbara so she could pack a couple when she and Bill visited.

Outside, the sun was rising, with not a cloud anywhere. John stepped out and inhaled deeply. This was for real, he was here, in Pakistan, on the streets of Islamabad, on wheels. Finally. If only Barbara could see him.

The first call to prayer sounded, and suddenly the whole of Islamabad filled with it, from microphones everywhere. He turned his board toward Faisal Mosque, allowing sound and traffic to guide him, and came upon a scene in the courtyard that previously he’d seen only in pictures: thousands of rounded backs, backs of every color and stripe, prostrated in prayer. He found an unoccupied prayer mat, kneeled, dropped his center to his heels and his head to the ground into the jalsa which he still thought of as child’s pose and gave his voice to the voices bearing witness: La illaha il’allah et Muhammed rasulu. La illaha il’allah et Muhammed rasulu. La illaha il’allah et Muhammed rasulu. And giving voice, he felt himself expand, grow larger on the inside. His skin stretched to accommodate this new self. He inhaled. He exhaled. His chest expanded, his ribs opened. He recited, a voice amid voices. He was alive. His voice hummed with the hum, and dissolved into the bluing air and brightening sky as one
voice. And then, all together, all at once, he and these thousands, these thousands plus one, rocked back on their heels, and turned their heads to the right, turned their heads to the left, and acknowledged one another in their descent back to ordinary life: As salaamu aleykum, as-saalamu aleykum, Allahu ak-bhar.

As quickly as the crowd had gathered, it dispersed. John remained on his mat, not yet wanting to move. He looked about him, at what was now a mostly vacant courtyard. Perhaps he’d only dreamed it. But it had been awesome, and he couldn’t explain how or why. Not yet. His voice, a thousand voices. A wave of sound on which he’d been borne aloft. And he’d found himself wanting to stay aloft, with the sound, in the sound. Nothing he’d read had prepared him for this. He stayed where he was and repeated. Allahu ak-bhar. Allahu ak-bhar. He looked forward to the noon call. He would wait for the noon call. And the evening call. And the next day’s call. To this experience of himself as a strangely enlarged I, a broom-swept, uncluttered I.

THEY TOOK THE TRAIN
to Peshawar. The day had gone hazy, but still John could make out the landscape as his guidebook described it: long stretches of a huge gray bowl with a green bottom. He looked for the three chips in the bowl: the legendary Khyber, Kohat, and Malakand Passes. He read aloud to Khaled, who learned some new things about this country he already knew, proving he could benefit from guidebooks.

That may have been true in Kipling’s day, Khaled said, but the GT couldn’t handle modern traffic. The new M2 motorway is three lanes wide and entirely computer controlled. Your guidebook is totally outdated.

John paused to absorb Khaled’s update, decided he still wanted to know these stories, even if the information was ancient, and continued.

Peshawar’s streets were named for their functions—City Circular Road, Cinema Road, School Road, Railway Road, Hospital Road, Sunheri Masjid Road, Police Road, Jail Bridge Road—which ought to make getting to know the city easier, but unlike Islamabad’s straight lines and hard corners, these were winding and circular and irrational. On his wheels John often came upon unexpected detours and dead ends: a crumbled ancient wall or tower, a sealed-up entrance. A sign in English usually explained the reason, always some age-old catastrophic flood or fire. An ancient city, Peshawar’s history was made up of
downfalls, ransackings, renaissances, downfalls, ransackings, renaissances. So Islamia College, John found, was not where he expected it, on Islamia Road, but in the cantonment on Jamrud off Khyber Road. In Old City, wide arches led to narrow blind byways while narrow one-person alleyways opened onto large open-air bazaars, each one renowned for its particulars. The Meena bazaar, with guards at every entrance to keep men out, sold pretty women’s stuff: ribbon, lace, buttons, bows, beads, braiding, threads, embroidery, and printed fabric. To bring back gifts for the women in his life, he would have to rely on a woman, Khaled’s aunt perhaps. The gypsy bazaar sold carved bone and wood, real and false hair, skin and hair dyes, and traditional gypsy cosmetics such as kajaal. Here, gypsies told fortunes, prescribed magical remedies, carved tattoos against the evil eye. Toward Chowk Yadgar was a bazaar for saddles and guns. At Pipal Mandi vendors sold wholesale grain. There were vegetable markets, fruit markets, cloth markets, bird bazaars; markets for pottery, copperware, salt, antiques. The tea shops were on Qissa Khwani, street of the storytellers, where travelers, John read, have been telling tales tall and short since time immemorial.

Khaled, who’d been to Peshawar more than once and had advised leaving the skateboard at home, now warned against exploring the bazaars on wheels.

You’ll infuriate everyone, he said. Peshawar’s crowded, more crowded than the six at rush hour. Besides, some of the roads aren’t even paved.

John shrugged. He’d skated crowded streets in D.C., in New York City, in Brooklyn. He’d found concrete everywhere.
CONCRETE CONQUERS EARTH
was a headline in the summer issue of
Skate
. If fifth-grade geography hadn’t changed and two-thirds of earth was still water and the remaining third still land, then two-thirds of this remaining third might now be concrete.

Khaled looked at him. That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever heard. But, listen, you’ve never experienced real crowds. D.C. and New York aren’t crowded, not compared to what you’ll see here. Seriously, it would be like trying to skate on a subway platform at rush hour.

Quit warning me, John said. I won’t crash into anyone.

He was reading about the Pathan tribes, the Wazir, Mahsud, Khattak, Bangash, Afridi, Mohmand, Yusefzi, Shinwari. Even their names sounded more legendary than real. The Pathans themselves, he read, made all sorts of claims about their origins. The Wazirs thought they were the ten lost tribes of Israel.

Tell me about these tribes, John said.

Pathans, Khaled explained, follow a tribal code. First rule is hospitality, which is offered even to enemies. Revenge is the second rule. Tribal feuds usually begin over a woman. They’re touchy about their women. The smallest gesture can lead to major retaliation. My mom says the Pathan word for cousin also means enemy.

Khaled’s mother had lived in the hills above Peshawar until she was eight. But when John asked him to contact his Afridi relatives and wrangle an invitation, Khaled said no way.

You may think getting yourself killed’s an adventure. I plan to live long enough to tell my life story, even if long life is very un-Pathan. But remember I’m half Brahmin.

But John wanted to meet these tribes, stay with them, learn their ways, know them. Into the twenty-first century, he wished to wrest a nineteenth-century-style adventure, complete with danger and deprivation, wounds and scars, immersion, scholarship, becoming. Though a twenty-first-century man, he wanted to insert himself into a medieval legend, a form of time travel, and he was prepared to go all the way.

If you worry too much about surviving to tell your stories you’ll end up without any, John warned. Besides, I really can’t do it without you. I need your contacts and your Pashto.

Khaled lifted an eyebrow. You could start by learning Pashto.

John agreed. Islamia College offered classes in Urdu, Pashto, and classical Arabic, and though he’d registered for the Arab-language sessions, he signed on to also audit a Pashto-based class on the Qur’an. With only a year in Pakistan, he would have to learn the way children do: he would jump in and flounder. To avoid falling back on English, on easy familiarity, he asked to be housed in a Pashto-speaking dorm, though it meant separation from Khaled.

Why do you always want to make life harder for yourself? Khaled asked.

To speed up my learning curve, John said.

HIS WHITEWASHED DORM
looked like a Victorian orphanage: a large bare room with fifteen single white iron beds, each three feet apart, all facing the same way, headboards against the back wall.

His first night, after brief introductions in which he shook about ten hands and heard ten names, John felt an embarrassing lump in his throat. He missed Katie and the girls. He missed the surf, his large attic room at Southern Shores, his privacy. He’d asked for this, and now he had to live with ten strangers. Greeting him, they all spoke English, but they quickly dropped back to Pashto with one another. Pashto was the reason he’d moved into this dorm alone, but now he missed Khaled, both his teasing and guidance, and wondered whether he could still reverse his decision and move back to the international dorm. Then Zaadiq, who occupied the bed on John’s right, noticed that John was too long for his bed, and laughed.

I’m hanging ten, John said, feeling better.

So you’re a surfer, Zaadiq said in English. He was small and agile. And he’d grown up on the water—his father was a skipper on a fishing boat, he said. He shared with John a love of seafood, and they compared notes on crab feasts. Karachi crab, John learned, was stewed with potatoes, onions, and spices.

I’ll show you where Peshawar’s best fish kebabs are, he promised.

Zaadiq translated for John, as needed. A transfer student from the Aga Khan University in Karachi, he’d moved to Peshawar, he joked, to experience life higher up in the mountains, closer to the heavens.

MORNINGS BECAME BUSY
with classes. John’s first session was Arabic grammar, and though he was good at it, he was always glad when it was over. After a quick tea, he went on to his workshop on vocabulary and conversation, which was more fun. Then his Arabic poetry class. Afternoons, he audited the Pashto Qur’anic session.

Summer classes at Islamia were intended largely for students who were missing certain credits, needed a prerequisite or a language, and classical Arabic classes were most popular.

That’s because Pakistanis already speak Pashto or Urdu or both, Khaled explained. Also English. Unlike Americans, Pakistanis grow up hearing many languages.

Between and after classes, grinding. On the smooth paved paths, his wheels rolled without a rumble. Islamia’s campus was a giant white skate park, its concrete the smoothest and whitest he’d ever seen. Spotless white was Islam’s color, its identity, it seemed to John. All the maulanas and scholars at the school wore spotless white, and since it was way too hot for jeans, he purchased several of these white sets of shalwar kameez, the Punjabi suit.

He was getting by on a combination of 65 percent English, 25 percent Arabic, 10 percent sign language, supplemented by the bits of Pashto he was picking up. Students, especially students from urban centers, spoke English well, often beautifully, and on wheels, he attracted
attention. He became known as the Ahm-ree-kee Moos-leem, the traveling moo-seh-fer, and Mr. Skating. The younger kids in the bazaar crowded him. One kid named Mahmed presented himself as a skater and declared that he was better than John because he could fly. Oh yeah? John said.