The Ink Bridge (30 page)

‘So how'd he do it?'

‘I guess an angry Mongol is a determined man. They killed his grandson, shot him with an arrow. Chingis vowed to kill every living thing in this valley including the dogs and rats.'

‘And did he?'

‘Pretty much. He killed everything and then he destroyed the irrigation canals. It would have taken years for life to start again here.'

‘Sounds like a familiar story.'

‘It just keeps happening again and again. The city was mined heavily. You don't want to stray too far from the marked path. The mujaheddin fought the Russians and then the Taliban fought the mujaheddin. And now ISAF – the International Forces – are fighting the Taliban. On and on and on.'

‘But it's peaceful now?'

‘For now. I can't help but feel it's just waiting.'

There is a perfect Russian tank five minutes out from Bamiyan. Young guys in their city clothes and pointy boots are clambering over it and taking photos.

Arezu says, ‘It's too far to tow these beasts to Kabul for scrap, so they just rust here.'

The checkpoint at Bamiyan is a formality. They raise the pole and let us through, waving as we pass. We drive through the gatemaker's end of the bazaar where men weld together gate frames, using old sunglasses as eye protection. Everything is grouped together as if competition is good for business. Tin
samovars
and water heaters are piled on the opposite side of the road with wheelbarrows stacked on roofs. Production looks good, but sales are slow. Cobblers sit under trees stitching the soles back on thousand-mile shoes. A fortune teller folds a man's future into a neat triangle and pushes it into his fist. Pharmacies sell out-of-date medicines to illiterate farmers. There is fruit here, too – apples and overripe bananas from Pakistan. Glossy red tomatoes and beans. Men sell poisons and spices side by side. There are bags of lentils and dusty local chewing tobacco.

We take a right at the roundabout and cross the river.

‘Where are the Buddhas?' I ask.

‘Didn't you hear?' she replies. ‘The Taliban blew them to shit.'

‘Okay, funny. So where
were
the Buddhas?'

‘Over there. You'll see them soon.'

But we don't. Not until we pull into the driveway of the guesthouse and Arezu leads me to the garden.

I see the niche of the small Buddha first – the one they called Shahmama, the mother. It is burnt to gold in the evening light.

‘Let's go there,' says Arezu.

‘What, now?'

‘Yes now.'

I follow her across the field, between the ripening wheat and green vetch. The clover smells like bubblegum and flocks of sparrows rise from the crops and whirr like mechanical toys into the willows.

‘My friend Omed saw the Buddhas being blown up.'

‘Really, he was here?'

‘Him and his friend Zakir. They were watching from behind a rock as the Taliban rigged the statues up with explosives.'

‘I heard they used the Hazara to do the dirty work.'

‘He mentioned that. When the Buddhas were blown up, his friend Zakir was killed.'

Our way is blocked by a stream and the village kids urge us to cross. One grabs a long-handled shovel and vaults back and forth.

Arezu takes the shovel and crosses to the other bank. ‘Come on, it's easy,' she says and passes over the shovel. But my hands slip and I end up shin-deep in the cold stream. I squelch on behind her to the cliff face.

Below the Buddha niche, the caves are blackened with soot. People have lived here since the Muslims pushed the Buddhists out. I close my eyes and imagine this valley filled with the faithful. The pages of Omed's story speak of a wooden mask with jewelled eyes behind which fires were lit. I visualise the chanting monks and the poor peasants looking up in wonder.

‘Hey. Ticket!' A guard is walking towards us. ‘Ticket.'

‘As-salamu alaykum,
Anwar
-jan.'

‘
Arezu
-jan? Chetawr hastid.'

‘Khub asti.
I am well. Do you remember your English?'

‘Little beet,' says the old man, wiping his eyes with a scarf tied around his head.

‘This is Hec, he's from Australia.'

‘Australayi, good.
Khob
.'

I nod. Take Anwar's hand. He lets go and holds his hand to his heart. I have seen people do this when saying hello as if to show, you are dear to me, I hold you here. I touch my heart in return. Could this be the Anwar in Omed's story; the man who baked him bread and took him to see the Dragon?

‘Hec is looking for his friend.'

‘Fren?'

‘His name is Omed,' I say.

‘Many Omed,' says Anwar. ‘Many, many, many.'

‘This Omed, he had no tongue.' I point to my tongue.

Arezu talks to him in Dari. I hear the word Taliban dropped here and there like a bomb. She shakes her head. ‘There was an Omed. He left here for Pakistan before the Americans came. Anwar heard that he had come back, but there was some trouble with a man and he disappeared. His sister, Leyli, lives in the Valley of the Dragon – Darya Ajdahar. Perhaps she knows where Omed is.'

Anwar smiles, his teeth like broken bricks. ‘Omed good.' He touches his heart. ‘Good.'

‘Can we see the Buddhas, Anwar? Salsal and Shahmama.'

‘Balē. Balē. Budd.'
Anwar looks around and quickly hands Arezu the key and a small torch.

The staircase is tunnelled into the rock. The stairs are steep as they twist up to the Buddha's head.

‘You know Anwar used to live in one of the caves,' says Arezu.

‘I think he is the man Omed wrote about, Arezu.' I don't know why I feel the need to verify Omed's facts or why it gives me such a buzz when I do.

‘The Taliban used Anwar to load the big Buddha up with dynamite. Then they made him push the plunger that tore him down. He said it was like killing his father.'

I think about my own father. In the departure lounge at Tullamarine, for the first time in my life, I caught the fear in his eyes. He, the man who believes in stone and steel, in its permanence, was terrified for me, the fragility of my bone and flesh. And inside this porous cliff I can hear him muttering his curses over the senselessness of the violence against these statues.

We come out on a landing. ‘Follow me,' whispers Arezu and she disappears into a room.

Inside, the roof is domed, carved out of the cliff and plastered with gypsum and straw. I can see the traces of Buddhas around the dome, repeated over and over.

Arezu shines the torch over the roof. Their faces are missing. ‘The early Muslims believed that by striking the face from the idol, they could remove its soul.' She moves the torch into a niche. Here I can see the blue outline of the Buddha, his golden halo. ‘The Taliban were just the last in a long line of intolerant assholes,' says Arezu. ‘But they had dynamite as well as a divine right. Come on, I'll show you Salsal.'

We walk along the base of the cliff. It is pocked with hundreds of caves and niches. Some are closed with doors. ‘What's in those?' I ask.

‘Probably more paintings. They keep the best ones hidden so people don't break them from the walls and sell them. The archaeologists took most of the good stuff for the Kabul Museum. But during the war, what the mujaheddin and the Taliban didn't sell, the Ministry for Virtue and Vice broke into pieces.' She squints up the valley. ‘We're losing the light. There are landmines on the track, we want to be up and back before dark.'

I stand at the feet of the big Buddha; all that remains is a giant sole. Above me, the niche rises fifty-five metres.

Arezu puts her hand on my shoulder. ‘Mullah Omar said he was just “breaking stones” when he gave the order. Thirteen hundred years they stood and then they were gone in two weeks. They tried with tanks and mortars, but the Buddhas held on. Finally they got in the experts from Pakistan who had them wired up with explosives. Most of the Muslim world pleaded with them, but the bastards went about their business. They said that no one had cared about the Afghan people before, why was everyone making such a big deal about some rocks.'

‘Can we go up?' I ask.

‘Of course. But we should be quick.'

The track leads up the hill to the right-hand side of the Buddha niche. There are white rocks marking the safe path.

‘Don't step off the track,' says Arezu.

I mime walking gingerly off into the minefield.

‘It's no joke, Hec. Really.'

We keep on up the steep path. Bamiyan is at two thousand five hundred metres above sea level and my lungs burn as I climb. We enter a doorway and walk up and around the back of where the Buddha's head once was. Below, the wheat fields are egg-yolk yellow, the Koh-e Baba range smeared with snow.

‘What's that?' I ask, pointing to a hill just beyond Bamiyan.

‘Shahr-e Gholghola – the City of Screams. Another of Chingis' wastelands.'

‘It's amazing that this was a Buddhist kingdom for hundreds of years. You'd think some of that peace and nonviolence would have rubbed off.'

‘We need to go,' says Arezu. ‘We still have a minefield to get through.'

That night I read the opening of Omed's story to Arezu, holding the typed pages up to the kerosene lantern. She sits quietly, listening and sipping the contraband Coronas we have chilled in the well. The robber moon is sifting through the ruins at Shahr-e Gholghola. I feel tiredness like grit in my eyes. It is late when I finish and we turn into our separate beds. The snick of her lock is a final punctuation.

WE SIT ON THE CARPET in Leyli's house. But it is not her house, not really. She is the second wife of an old man, a greybeard. He is in Mazar-e Sharif on family business or Leyli would never have seen us here, could never have welcomed us as she has done with
chay
and hard bread. She whispers to Arezu that she hopes he will die soon. Then she will take the burqa from its nail on the door and go to town to beg.