The Honey Thief (16 page)

Even as he spoke, Mohammad Hussein had begun to pack. The Englishman’s heart turned over in his chest, such was his disappointment. ‘But we are so close!’

‘Pack!’ said Mohammad Hussein. ‘I will take you down the mountain.’

‘But why? I don’t understand.’

‘I will tell you as we return. Be quick, Mister Ibrahim!’

‘I will stay.’

‘No, that is not possible. It is a disgrace if I leave you on the mountain alone. You saw the storm. The mountain has many more tricks like that.’

‘You said the mountain is made of stone. How can a pile of stones have tricks?’

But Mohammad Hussein was not listening. He made Dobara pack, leaving the fire smouldering. The Englishman’s heart was broken.

They descended the mountain at twice the speed at which they’d climbed it. The Englishman was always behind. He cried out many times, ‘Mohammad Hussein! I have to rest!’ but Mohammad Hussein wouldn’t stop. Finally Dobara burst into tears and sat down with his head in his hands, and this time Mohammad Hussein put down his pack and walked back to the Englishman. He said, ‘Mister Ibrahim, I am sorry. We will rest.’

He found cool water in a spring and filled a cup for the Englishman. Then he opened a tin of peaches and told Dobara to eat them. This kindness did not stop Dobara’s tears.

Mohammad Hussein tried to explain. ‘Mister Ibrahim, my family is in danger, do you understand? The Russian aeroplanes, they were going to Herat to drop bombs. When I left Herat, Ismail Khan ruled the city. He took it away from the Russians. But now the Russians are returning. They will drop bombs everywhere – I know what they are like. My wife, my children – I fear for them, I fear for all the people of Herat. Listen to me. I will come back to this mountain with you. I will come back in winter if you wish. I will find the leopards for you. Do you believe me?’

Dobara did not believe him, but he said, ‘Yes.’ He did not believe he would ever see a snow leopard outside of a zoo. He understood the need to come down from the mountain, and yet his disappointment was so great that he found it hard to think of the people of Herat and their danger. He felt ashamed to confess such a thing to himself. When Mohammad Hussein started the journey down again, the Englishman stayed with him. He thought, ‘I only want a picture. That’s nothing. May this good man’s family be safe.’

*   *   *

He went back to his own country, the Englishman, and reported to people at his university that he had failed to photograph the snow leopard. He was told, ‘Your friend was right. The Russians have invaded Herat.’ He waited with great anxiety to hear from Mohammad Hussein, who had promised to send him a letter. But even if a letter had come, the Englishman’s wife had forbidden him to return to Afghanistan, such was the danger now that civil war was raging.

Even if he could not return to Hazarajat, just to hear of Mohammad Hussein’s safety and that of his family would have been a blessing. But Abraham’s wait for the letter from Mohammad Hussein was a long one of four years. In that time, he sent many letters of his own to the address Mohammad Hussein had given him, and spent many hours at the Afghan Embassy in South Kensington trying to find information about the situation in Herat.

In those four years, snow leopards had been photographed by others in India and Nepal. Abraham had missed his chance, but his disappointment did not last forever. His wife gave birth to a boy and then to a girl. Instead of travelling with his cameras Abraham stayed all year long at his university and taught students about the endangered creatures of the world.

The letter that arrived from Afghanistan after those four years was not from Mohammad Hussein but from his son, Rousal Ali. The letter was written in English and it told of sorrowful news. Mohammad Hussein had been dead almost from the time of his return to Herat. ‘Dear Mister Ibrahim, has my father Mohammad Hussein Anwari spoken of me to you? I am Rousal Ali Anwari, the second son of my father after Kamil Ali Anwari who taught children in the Hazara school of Herat not far from the tomb of the poet Jami. My father Mohammad Hussein Anwari was killed by hanging, it is my sadness to tell you. I have not been able to write this letter to you before this day because I have been hiding with the soldiers of Ismail Khan. The Russian soldiers have gone from Herat now and I am safe. I will tell you, with your permission, of my father’s death by the Russian soldiers. It happened that the Russians came to our house in Sheikh Ismail two days after my father returned from Hazarajat. The soldiers went to many houses and at each house they did painful things to people. One man in Sheikh Ismail said, “Mohammad Hussein has a gun.” It was not his fault to say this because the soldiers made him say it. The soldiers found my father’s gun in our house, and it was a Russian gun. The captain of the soldiers said that my father had killed a Russian soldier and stolen his gun. For punishment my father was hanged by the soldiers in the doorway of our house and my brother Kamil Ali was hanged too. The soldiers would like to hang me but I escaped and hid myself with the soldiers of Ismail Khan. Mister Ibrahim, when my father came back to Herat from Hazarajat he was very sad that he did not find a leopard animal for you in the mountains for your pictures. Mister Ibrahim, if you are still looking for a leopard animal for your pictures, I will take you to Hazarajat. This will be my honour.’

Abraham shook his head in sorrow at the news of his friend’s death. He had thought that a man like Mohammad Hussein, so strong, would live into old age. It seemed a disgrace to the nation of Russia and a disgrace to the world itself that a man like his friend should be hanged in his own doorway.

Abraham showed the letter to his wife, remembering, ‘We walked on the mountain and I told him the names of the wildflowers in English. He called me “Mister Ibrahim”. He wanted me to teach him the Millwall song, you know. I wish I had.’

‘You want to meet this Rousal Ali, don’t you? You want to go back to Afghanistan,’ replied Abraham’s wife Sophie. ‘Very much.’

Abraham’s wife was silent for a minute or more. Then she said, ‘The war is over. Go, if it’s safe.’

*   *   *

Letters were written; arrangements were made. Abraham’s university gave him leave of absence for six weeks.

In summer of the year 1990, Abraham returned to Hazarajat and met Rousal Ali Anwari in the village of Chakar near Darreh-ye Awd. Rousal Ali was taller than his father, but he did not look as powerful. Indeed, Rousal Ali was more of a scholar than a hunter as his father had been. He taught at the same school as his brother Kamil Ali had before Kamil’s death. He said, ‘My father did not want us to hunt or fight. He said in Afghanistan, if you pick up a gun you will never put it down. When I hid with Ismail Khan’s soldiers, I dressed wounds and cooked rice.’ He also confessed that he had never seen a snow leopard alive and did not know the secrets of the mountain. He wanted to keep his father’s promise to Abraham for the sake of honour.

So when Abraham and Rousal Ali set off up the mountain in the summer to find a snow leopard, it was Abraham who led the way, and it was Abraham who said, ‘Watch the sky,’ and ‘Put your hand on a rock to test the heat of the sun.’ It was Abraham who told the story of the cloud that spied for the storm to come. And it was Rousal Ali who said, ‘You walk so fast!’

At the end of the second day, Abraham searched for the cave that had saved him and Rousal Ali’s father when the storm came from the east. He found it only when he glimpsed an empty tin left behind five years ago. In the cave that night, he lit a fire on the ashes of Mohammad Hussein’s fire and told the story of the storm. When he had finished, Rousal Ali told his own story of his father. ‘He stayed home in winter if he could, but in summer and spring he went to the north. In autumn he travelled to Kurdistan for bears. Once, in Kurdistan someone asked him to shoot a bandit, a very cruel man who had killed many people for money. My father said no. I asked him if it was worse to kill a man than a bear or a leopard. He said that it was not worse but he would not kill any man or any animal if it gave him pleasure. To shoot the bandit would have pleased him too much. He carried with him a piece of the tomb of a Sufi who had gone to Heaven on golden wings one hundred years after he was buried. When he killed an animal, he would take the piece of stone from its bag and kiss it, to show that the killing had given him no pleasure. Do you know, Mister Ibrahim, my father shot a Russian captain in Herat who was beating a mullah with a chain in Badmurghan near the mosque? This was before he met you in Hazarajat. But he was sorrowful. He said, “I will pay one day.” And he did.’

Rousal Ali showed the piece of stone from the tomb of the Sufi. It was marble, with a red vein running through it. Abraham held it in his palm. He asked Rousal Ali if he might kiss it, to honour Mohammad Hussein. Rousal Ali said, ‘Of course.’

*   *   *

After four days the Englishman and Rousal Ali were as high on the mountain as they dared to go. Patches of snow lay on the ground in places where the sun could not reach.

Up until this fourth day, the two men had followed a path upwards and around, or not so much a path as a way forward that could not be mistaken. But now the mountain became a place of ridges and ravines, impossible to scale or cross without climbing equipment. It became clear to the Englishman that his quest was foolish. Rousal Ali had no experience of the mountain and no knowledge of snow leopards; he had come to honour his father’s promise, but it was Mohammad Hussein himself who was needed.

Abraham, the leader against his will, found the only place at this height where a tent could be safely raised. With no cave to shelter them, the two men prepared for the night ahead. The tent was held firmly to the ground with steel pegs hammered in to a depth of fifteen centimetres, but even so, the strength of the wind in the night was enough to make the two men fear that they would be hurled down the mountain in the darkness.

Rousal Ali said to Abraham, ‘If we live through this night, I will pray at the mosque in Herat for ten days and keep a pebble in my shoe for six months.’

‘Yes, and if we live through this night I will walk to Herat beside you in my bare feet.’

‘No, no! You must do something for your God, for the God of the Jews!’

Abraham thought for a minute then said, ‘I will attend my brother-in-law’s Seder two nights in a row at Passover. Believe me, that’s doing a lot for God.’

The morning was so bright and the sky so blue that the two men reconsidered their fears and decided to stay another night. After Rousal Ali’s prayers, and then breakfast, they climbed a little higher, leaving the tent and their packs where they were. They reached a place where they could look east, north and south, with only the western view hidden from them. The sun stood in the sky so fresh in its beauty that it may have been the first day of its life amongst the planets. To the east, a chain of mountain peaks each higher than the other gleamed with the snows that remained for the whole of summer, and the whole of the year. On all the earth, no greater wonder could be imagined. It seemed as if the world itself was saying to the Englishman and the Hazara, to Abraham and Rousal Ali, ‘Remember this.’

But when the day had passed and the two men huddled in their tent once more, the wind howled as if in anger and Rousal Ali and Abraham swore again that they would hurry down the mountain the next day.

‘I have three children and a wife who is dear to me, I think I must return to them,’ said Rousal Ali.

‘Sophie will worry every day I am gone, yes, we must go back tomorrow,’ agreed the Englishman.

Then Rousal Ali spoke clearly. ‘I do not believe we will ever find a leopard.’

Abraham responded, ‘If your father were here, maybe. But neither you nor I have the skill.’

And yet they stayed one more day, and then one more still, and another and another. It was not the beauty of the mornings alone that kept them on the mountain. Each man spoke of a feeling that the journey down the mountain was not yet right, not ready
for him
. At one point Abraham said to Rousal Ali, ‘If a storm such as the one that came down on your father and me blew in from the east now, we would die. We must promise each other to go tomorrow, no matter what we feel.’

The next day dawned, but the reluctance to leave was still strong, and so the two men remained. They didn’t search for a snow leopard but only spoke of their children and their wives and of how much each wife, Sophie and Fatima, would worry. Rousal Ali told Abraham of the Russians in Herat; Abraham told Rousal Ali of his adventures in South America when he was photographing tapirs.

Of the Russians, Rousal Ali had this to say: ‘The soldiers are very young. They hate Afghanistan and wish to go home to their own country. The first thing they think of is killing – it is their answer to every problem. They drink alcohol all the time and put needles in their arms. Mister Ibrahim, they killed my father but I feel sorry for them truly in my heart. Ismail Shah’s soldiers killed many of the Russian soldiers and many of the soldiers of the communists in Kabul. Mister Ibrahim, I am sorry to say that they make them die in painful ways, in cruel ways. I was excused from watching because I only dressed wounds and cooked rice. Now the Russians have gone and they accomplished nothing. Many thousands of Herati died, as well as many thousands of communist army soldiers and many thousands of Russians. Like water poured on the ground in the desert. The water is a waste and in two minutes it has disappeared into the sand. The Herati disappeared, the Russian soldiers disappeared, the Afghan soldiers of the communist army, they disappeared too, all into the sand. It was a waste and a tragedy.’

*   *   *

The morning of the tenth day on the mountain began with the sound of a human voice outside the tent. Rousal Ali lifted his head out of his sleeping bag in alarm, and his alarm was greater when he saw Abraham looking back at him. The Englishman had put on his spectacles.

‘What in the Prophet’s holy name is that?’ said Rousal Ali.

The voice seemed that of a man speaking as if in confidence to another; a low voice, and gentle. Rousal Ali, listening closely, could not make out a single word yet he was sure the voice was speaking Dari. Then the voice broke into laughter.