The Avatari (39 page)

After tonight’s performance, Josh’s respect for the woman increased manifold –
she was a professional!
Just like Terry Hoover had promised. Josh felt he needed to get to know Claire better. Rightfully he was her employer, though somehow he didn’t get that feeling from their interactions thus far. All he knew about her was what Terry Hoover had told him, that she worked freelance for some organization called ‘Saving Democracy International’, whatever that was or meant.

‘Like I said before, Claire, you were outstanding; they probably thought you were a professor who specialized in the subject or something. You really sold it to them,’ he told her with genuine feeling.

The woman who called herself Claire Donovant gave him a smile, which didn’t quite reach her thoughtful brown eyes.

‘So it looks like we have got a game’ she retorted.

CHAPTER 22

Zhawar, Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan

S
EPTEMBER 1986

They had been on the road for a week, travelling north, when they hit the junction where the track met the main road just ahead of a bridge. It was here that they jumped down from their respective trucks and gazed at the tarmac road winding sharply to the west ahead of them as it followed the contours of the Badakhshan ranges to Feyzabad, the capital of the province. Another track, best described as hard gravel, continued northwards, descending gradually to the valley floor. In the fading light of sundown, this second track disappeared in the far distance into another high ground, a position the Soviets had recently occupied. From there, the track moved to the Zhawar Kili Valley.

Addressing the group of foreigners accompanying him, Suleiman pointed out the high ground astride which the gravel track lay.

‘That, my friends, is where the Russians are sitting – between my people and the road.’ He then turned and pointed down the road they were about to leave behind. ‘And thirty kilometres from here is the Russian base at Baharak.’

‘What about the other end of the valley? Is it open?’ Ashton asked him.

‘It is, but the terrain is rough; no roads at all.’ Suleiman shrugged. ‘This track ends at the village – a dead end.’

The men quickly began unloading their goods from the trucks. Catching the look of alarm on Peter’s face as he observed the rough manner in which the Afghans were handling the boxes containing the Stingers, Suleiman barked a sharp command to his men, warning them to be careful.

For an entire week, Peter and Susan, along with Suleiman and his men, had waited in a safe house until Ashton and Duggy could join them after flying from Delhi to Karachi, a city in the extreme south of Pakistan, instead of Lahore, where the first two team members had landed earlier to avoid the heightened security measures they expected to be in place after Susan and Peter’s escapade at the Dera. Suleiman had arranged for Ashton and Duggy to be picked up from the port city on the Arabian Sea and transported across the border to Kabul on a truck similar to the one they had just got off.

‘Not a problem,’ Suleiman had reassured Peter when asked if it was going to be safe for Ashton and Duggy to travel in this manner. ‘Entire truck business of Pakistan is in the hands of Afghans.’

With the senior members of the team now having joined the group, they had hitched a ride, north of Kabul, in three large ramshackle trucks filled with groceries that Suleiman had arranged for in advance. They suspected he had used the trucks on previous occasions, because he seemed to know the drivers well. The owner of the trucks appeared to be fairly influential, judging by the ease with which they had been waved through the two Russian roadblocks they had encountered at Mahmud-e-Raq, where the road bifurcated, with one lane moving eastwards from the main highway and heading for the province of Badakhshan.

Having got off the road, the trucks had turned back and arrived at the point where their team was at the moment. After they had had their evening meal, they would start off back to Kabul.

Until recently, Zhawar had been of little interest to anyone, least of all the Soviets. But suddenly, towards the end of the war, this sleepy village had become a flashpoint for very personal reasons. The base commander at Baharak, freshly appointed to his post, was a new broom, so to speak, and, as is customary with military men, eager to establish his position by doing things differently. In an ostensible bid to provide greater protection to the axis, the high ground overlooking the road, which Suleiman had pointed out to his ‘guests’, had been occupied, as were other areas, by the Soviets on the new base commander’s orders. In reality, the whole exercise was quite pointless, for this was a tedious and circuitous alternate route, at best, to be used as a last resort by the withdrawing Soviets, only if and when the mujahideen effectively blocked the main road from Kabul. It would have been obvious even to a layperson why the base commander’s predecessors had followed a live-and-let-live policy, with a token patrol moving daily along the road from Mahmud-e-Raq to Baharak.

On the high ground which the Soviets now occupied lay the
pir
or burial place of Ahmed Shah, a Sufi mystic who had died a hundred and fifty years ago. It was considered a holy place where every now and then the village gathered to pray and barren women offered a
chador
, seeking the dead mystic’s blessings so that they would become fertile and bear children. The local mullah who had, until recently, ranted against Sufis now saw the Soviet occupation as an opportunity to ratchet up his standing in the community. In a dramatic volte-face, he began openly voicing his opinion that the village had no option but to physically evict the Soviets, whose presence in the area was an insult to their beloved Ahmed Shah.

Hazarat Khan, Suleiman’s father and leader of the tribe in all the villages in the area, had until now observed the mullah’s antics with an indulgent and amused disdain. It wasn’t the first time that the old man had launched into his anti-Soviet propaganda; he did it with faithful regularity on the occasion of every Jumma or Friday namaaz, inciting the local men to gear up for the Holy War. The patriotic fervour lasted till Saturday morning, when they would get back to tending their herds and repairing the
kerez
, the tiny underground water channels that irrigated their fields. Hazarat Khan had carefully cultivated the Soviets who were more than willing to deal with him; as a result, his people were free to carry on with their lives in peace and tranquillity.

The Russian occupation of the
pir
had changed all that. If the tribal chief was perceived to have done nothing to counter the threat posed by the foreign invaders, he would lose face among his own people. Hazarat Khan and his men tried to reason with the Soviets, but their efforts were met with hostility. Then some of the men, angered by the Soviet response, hastily organized a raid without informing their chief. It was poorly planned and executed, resulting in a large number of casualties on their side. The Soviets responded by sending out their attack helicopters and bombing the villages. Although the Russians had not entered the valley with ground troops, the Afghans were still forced to abandon their homes on the valley floor and move up the slopes. From then on, no action had been initiated by either side.

Hazarat Khan, who had lived long, had seen much of war and the nature of the peace that was cobbled afterwards. He knew from his years of experience that breaking the stalemate was essential to his plans. The Soviets were about to withdraw from Afghanistan and the country would inevitably find itself again in the throes of a power struggle, where active participation in the war would be richly rewarded. It was imperative that he and his men exploit the situation to their advantage before the Soviets left the country for good; it would simply not do to sit this one out, for Allah alone knew when the next war would come by. Capturing the high ground from the Soviets would be a victory which could be tomtommed in the Shura, the Council of Tribes, and help him to acquire for his tribe their rightful position on the Council. With this in mind, he had sent for his son, asking him to return from the Panjsher to join his men and fight against the Soviets on behalf of the village. If Ahmed Shah, the Sufi who had sung songs of love and brotherhood and healed the sick with his miraculous powers, would have known that men were going to die fighting over his grave, he would have been dismayed. But then, he had been a poor and simple man who did not have much knowledge of politics and war.

‘How many men do you have inside the valley?’ Peter now asked Suleiman as they walked off the track to begin their long journey on foot.

‘Over time, we have built up our forces which now include between three hundred and four hundred fighters and their families. We’re doing all right. We have enough food and sufficient stocks to last us for a while and despite the Soviets’ best efforts, we do manage to go in and out, as you will see tonight.’

The group had been walking for nearly an hour, when the moon came out. They halted near some rocks. There was a stream flowing nearby and Susan announced she needed to go for a wash.

‘Just give me a minute,’ Peter murmured, taking off his boots.

In the beginning, it had bothered her that he needed to follow her around everywhere. That and the fact that she had to keep her head covered with a shawl at all times. But after spending ten days in Afghanistan, she had become immune to it all.

The break was short enough and after a quick meal of dried goat meat and stale naan, the local leavened flatbread, washed down with unsweetened tea, the men lifted their loads and started off again. Peter noted how fit and tough they were, moving easily in their sandals over rocks that he himself found painful to walk across in his boots. Night had fallen and the wind was icy cold, its sting warded off with nothing more than moth-eaten blankets that the men draped like shawls over their loose, thin tunics. Observing that each of them carried heavy loads, Peter had offered to share the burden, but Suleiman had not taken it well.

‘Do not shame us, Peter Khan,’ he had said in a hurt voice. ‘You and your friends are our guests.’

The moon now shone down on the
pir
of Ahmed Shah, which they were skirting from the east.

‘What do the Soviets have here?’ Peter asked Suleiman in a whisper.

‘Less than a platoon, we think, but they have communications with Baharak.’

Peter nodded. He understood the Afghans’ position only too well. Within five minutes of the Soviet base being alerted, the attack helicopters would be down here. Unless the helicopters could be taken care of, there was no way the platoon could be dislodged. And even if one managed to do that, it would still not be easy to capture a defended position on high ground without artillery.

After trekking for four long hours, they began climbing the hill feature flanking the valley. They crossed the crest and halted. Shielded from the wind, they gazed down into the bowl of the valley.

‘Our people,’ Suleiman said simply. ‘Allah be praised.’

The men knelt down in prayer; they would be rejoining their families after many months of absence.

Soon, they were descending the slopes into the valley below before climbing a hillock which rose from the middle of the valley floor, where orange trees grew in profusion, though many had been burnt down to their stumps by artillery fire. Suleiman led them to a brick-and-mud house built on higher ground than the other makeshift shelters which stood some distance away from it. It had three rooms, one of which had caved in. This was where they would be staying.

‘Goatherds fed their animals on the grass of the slopes,’ he said. ‘No one uses it now.’

Duggy, who had taken a quick look around, said in an undertone, ‘I think I know why,’ and pointed to the bomb which lay half-buried in the dirt floor of the third dilapidated room.

‘I will come over to fetch you before the midday meal so that you can meet Father,’ Suleiman told them. ‘Today is a special day, a day of celebration. They will be organizing a
daavat
– a feast.’

Once he had left for his home, the team bedded down in their sleeping bags which they had spread out on the dirt floor, oblivious to the presence of the unexploded bomb and the smell of old fires which pervaded the hut, along with the odour of goat dung, the small, hard droppings scattered around them like manure. They were all too exhausted to mind.

Susan went out of the hut to relieve herself and on returning, announced to the others, ‘I’ll be using the clump of rocks upslope. So when any of you need to go, please go down.’

‘Sure,’ Peter said and the other men echoed his response in murmurs.

God
, thought Susan, not even trying to hide her yawns,
the room and toilet at the Hilton were heaven in comparison!
She envied the men, who could slip so easily into a different time and civilization, as if they were born to it.

True to his word, Suleiman was there at midday to escort them to his village. Despite the hour, it was still cool, even under the glare of the sun, for they were quite high up in the mountains.

When the group entered the village, Hazarat Khan was seated on a wooden stool in the courtyard of his mud-walled house. Facing him in a semicircle and seated either on the ground or on flat stones were his men. Though they sat out in the open, they remained mindful of their vulnerability, alert to the first hint of an attack. At the first sign of shelling, they would rush to the bunkers they had built in each house by excavating the mud floor. As the visitors approached, their eyes went to the spit on one side, from where the aroma of goats set to roast wafted down to them. At their appearance, a pair of burqa-clad women came up and led Susan – suitably covered from head to toe on Ashton’s advice – away to an area behind a stone wall, where the
zenana
, the village women, were seated.

Ashton and Peter exchanged quick glances and sat down on the blankets placed on the ground beside the chief. Hazarat Khan wore a turban and a faded black patch over one eye. One of his legs hung limply, with that end of his shalwar tied in a knot. A crutch lay on the floor beside him.