The Ink Bridge (27 page)

‘Sounds confusing,' she says, her eyebrows the highest arches. ‘What are you
writing
?'

‘A story.'

‘Is it classified or something?'

‘Not really.' Do I tell her? If I say it out loud does that make it true? ‘It's sort of my story and sort of someone else's. The someone else – he was a refugee and things ended badly for him.'

‘They often do.'

And then a tap opens and my story gushes out. ‘When I finished my journalism degree I realised I hadn't believed in or cared about anything I'd written in that three years. That there was only one story worth telling. Instead of getting a job like every other sensible person in my year, I came here.'

‘Oh-kay,' she says it slow and I imagine the little hyphen as a bridge between the syllables.

I say, ‘The refugee, he was called Omed.
Is
called Omed.'

‘That means
hope
in Dari.'

‘I didn't know that.'

‘And now you do.' She folds her legs under her on the plastic seat.

‘He might be dead. I couldn't find out anything from Australia.'

‘And why do you need to know?'

I blurt out, ‘To find out what happens next.' My journal is on the table between us. I put my hand on top of it in case she is curious. In case she finds out my throwaway lines are carefully scripted inside it.

‘To who?' she asks.

‘What?'

‘To find out what happens next to who?'

Again with the spinning wheels. Can she hear them screeching, the smell of the burning rubber? ‘What happened to Omed, I guess. And what happens to me. It's a shared story.'

‘Like Hansel and Gretel?'

‘Without the forest, the stones, the bread, the birds, the gingerbread house, the witch.'

‘So nothing like Hansel and Gretel?'

‘Not really, no.' I cough out a nervous laugh.

‘Everyone has a secret here,' she says out of nowhere.

‘Do you?' I ask.

‘Except me. I am an open book.' She opens a small mirror and rubs the dirt from her forehead. ‘You're a New Zealander, right?'

‘Australian. And you?'

She laughs now, and it sounds like the finches I have seen in wicker cages strung above shops. ‘I'm Afghan.'

‘Cool.' I wonder about the perfect English; her accent.

She shrugs. ‘So where are you going in Afghanistan? Are you waiting for an army embed? The next great war story. Kandahar? Or zg n?'

‘Bamiyan.'

Her eyes ignite. ‘Bamiyan is the most beautiful place on earth.'

‘That's a big call.'

She smiles and the dimples on her cheeks could hide snipers. ‘You wait,' she says.

‘I have been. Waiting, I mean. I can't figure out how to get there. I hear it's pretty dangerous. Taliban, bandits.'

‘Just don't go through Wardak. It's shorter, but you'll get nabbed for sure. Buy yourself some local clothes and cross the Shibar Pass. It's not too bad. Don't hang around in Ghorband though – the locals aren't so friendly.'

I want to ask her what she considers friendly and what she considers unfriendly. The words
friendly fire
ricochet in my brain for a while. And then
oxymoron
stumbles out, bleeding, clutching its comrade
war on terror
.

‘Really, the worst part is the road.'

‘Roads are no problem,' I say. Roads I know. Roads I can deal with. ‘We have bad roads in Australia too.'

‘Maybe not like this one. I am pretty sure this is unique.'

‘How do I get a car?' I don't want to treat her like a tour guide, but this isn't Thailand or Vietnam. My guidebook was written in 1970. Forty years on, the situation is what is called
fluid
. Meaning what? That it will cool me and quench my thirst? No, meaning that it keeps changing, that it may rise up and separate my head from my neck.

I say, ‘The overland companies want five hundred US or they want to take me there and back in three days in an armoured four-wheel drive.'

‘Just go up the street to the bazaar. At the
charahi
– the roundabout – there are
Tunis
that leave every morning. But early, like 4 a.m. Wear your local clothes and keep your mouth shut. You'll be fine.'

It sounds extremely dodgy, like everything about this country. But I keep on asking questions, and not the important ones like:
Will I be kidnapped by militants?
or
Should
I buy a gun?

‘What's a
Tunis
?'

‘One of those Toyota vans. I think the word is a Dari mangling of TownAce. They'll go anywhere.'

Just walking to the
charahi
would take more guts than I can summon right now. ‘I don't know.' In the spaces between the words I am screaming,
I want home! I want
off this ride!

‘You'll be cool. I mean it. Look, if you're worried, I'm leaving day after tomorrow and you can tag along with me.'

‘You're going to Bamiyan?'

‘I have a project starting there.'

‘What kind of project?'

‘Education. Women and children. I'm trying to get a school up and running in a valley to the west of Bamiyan.'

‘That's huge.'

‘It's not so big. There are people doing incredible things here. You are lucky to see this place at this time.'

She tilts her head back so I can see the taut lines of her neck. ‘Ghulam! Ghulam Ali!
Lotfan
,
chay sabz
!' she shouts.

‘I didn't even get your name,' I say.

‘And I didn't get yours.'

‘It's Hec.'

‘Arezu. My name is Arezu.'

‘That's beautiful.'
And that was so creepy.
I feel like an old man in a dirty coat on a commuter train.

‘It means
wish
.'

‘So what are you wishing for?'
And why am I such a freak?

‘Me? Oh, the usual: world peace, an end to hunger and poverty. A glass of
chay sabz
.'

‘Good luck with that last one,' I say. ‘So where are your parents from?'

She leans back in her chair. ‘My mother, she's Hazara, from Bamiyan Province. My dad's from the US. They met here in the seventies. When the Russians came, they went to the States.'

‘So, do you feel American or Afghan?'

‘Both, though I wasn't born here. When I graduated from college, I knew I wanted to work in Afghanistan. When the Taliban fell, I decided to come here.'

‘That's pretty brave.'

‘I'm not brave, not by Afghan standards. I wouldn't have come here under the Taliban. Some people stayed. Some foreign NGO workers, a lot of Afghan people. They are the brave ones.'

‘But the locals didn't have a choice, did they?'

‘Some went to Pakistan or Iran. Those with more money went further – Norway, America, Australia. Some had no money and so no choice but to stay and suffer. And others stayed because they believed this was their country and they had a right.'

Rights? It is hard to believe they could exist with all this mayhem. ‘It must have been hard here under the Taliban.'

She smiles. ‘Yes. And the Russians. And the civil war.'

Ghulam Ali eventually brings a flask of tea. Arezu pours us each a cup and we watch the leaves settle.

‘So,' she says, ‘if we are going to Bamiyan we should get you some travelling clothes.'

I have never been to a tailor. Never had a man run his tape across my shoulders and down my leg. He scribbles my measurements in a columned book. He asks what kind of collar do I want – French or Hindu?

‘Hindu,' says Arezu. ‘Trust me. And you should have the rounded bottom on the shirt. It is much more elegant than the straight.'

We choose a cloth. Arezu feels the weight of each one between her fingers, holds them to the light. ‘If the cloth is too dark,' she says, ‘it will be too warm for summer. But if it's too light, it will show the dirt.'

I choose a blue that is like the Kabul sky at dusk. The tailor promises the
shalwar kameez
will be ready tomorrow morning.

‘What have you got planned for the rest of the day?' asks Arezu.

‘Nothing.'

‘Let me show you Kabul then,' she says.

‘First of all – life,' she says and we catch a taxi to the bird market at Ka Faroshi. The streets are a mess. The city's walls are scabby with bullet holes. The roads are open sores.

‘The mujaheddin fought the Russians for ten years.' Arezu pulls her scarf over her face to filter the dust. ‘Then civil war erupted as the warlords squabbled for power. Finally, the Taliban flung rockets and mortars at the city.' She nods to a half-finished apartment block. ‘There is a lot of rebuilding. Aid money pouring in from around the world. But for the people of Kabul it can't happen quickly enough. They are sick of this chaos.'

The Ka Faroshi bird market is hidden behind the Pul-e Khishti (Bridge of Brick) Mosque, beside the Kabul River. Arezu crosses the bridge, the tails of her scarf trailing her like smoke. She is hard to keep up with and it is crowded here. Money changers, donkey carts, herds of goats; stalls selling limes, sweet dates covered in flies, plastic tubs, sachets of snake-killer; widows begging, tied to the ground by their blue burqas; Vaseline by the kilo; dried mulberries; juice stalls; goat heads; peeled cow legs on barrows; bright beads in bottles. The noise is a weapon, unconcealed. Whistles and shouts and the crying of animals; the croaking pleas of beggars. We push past concrete blocks and into the market proper.

‘The Four Arcades Bazaar used to be here before the British flattened it in 1842,' says Arezu over her shoulder. ‘They wanted revenge after us Afghans gave them a thrashing in Jalalabad.'

But life continues with bangles and flyblown meat and cheap Pakistani suits and music and trembling masses of happy children reciting,
Hellohowareyouiamgood
.

Arezu takes a right beside the mosque, down by the hanging carcasses of lambs, their impossibly huge arses flecked with wasps. On the other side – street barbers under tarps, scraping bristles from leather faces. We turn again, between the booksellers, red spines, red-eyed sitting on their worn rugs. And again near the kite sellers, spooling string, cutting struts, folding paper.

And we are a hundred years back. Wickerwork tumbling across the narrow alley. Doves and fighting partridges and canaries managing their cheerful songs. Arezu stops to buy a small brass ring. She laughs, holding the ring up to my ear so I can hear the little bell inside.

‘It's for a
kaftar
– a dove. They fly them here in competition. Sometimes the best doves will lure a competitor's bird away from the flock. Then the owner will have to pay for its return.'

Across the way is a
kaftar
shop. The owner is an old man with a grey bib of beard tumbling onto his shirt. Here, the birds are kept in a big caged enclosure in the back. She asks to see a one.

‘
Balē. Balē.
That one.'

She claps her hands once in excitement as the bird is brought out. It is brilliant white with a brown throat. Holding it gently on its back, the owner helps her slip the ring onto its leg.

‘What are you going to do with it?' I ask.

‘You'll see,' she says, paying the man a bundle of filthy notes. She tucks the dove inside the folds of her scarf. ‘Come on.'

We walk back down the alley and into the market. At the Pul-e Khishti, she stops. Touching the bird's head lightly to her lips, she flings it into the air above the sickly trickle of the Kabul River. Its wings unfold and it is blinding white against the sky. It turns a circle once, twice, over the riverbed with its throngs of humans, shitting, eating, laughing, singing, dying. It is graceful, a poem with wings. It makes one final turn and heads back towards the bird market.

‘It's going back,' I say.

‘Yes.'