The Places in Between (23 page)

As I walked through the bazaar, I saw a number of fair-haired children. Afghans are often fair-haired. They sometimes say it is because they are descended from Alexander's troops, but there were probably blond inhabitants before Alexander's arrival.
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The marines at the airfield, however, thought they were descended from the Russian soldiers who lived in Chaghcharan when it was one of the few permanent Russian bases in the interior of Afghanistan. Afghans in the bazaar told me a Russian had deserted and converted to Islam, and was still in Chaghcharan twelve years after the Russian withdrawal. They wouldn't tell me where he lived.

That night I found the other foreigners in town. The office of the International Committee of the Red Cross consisted of a Swiss manager, a Dutchman, and Colin, who was from somewhere near London. They all seemed to have worked in Rwanda. Now they were coordinating food aid and running flights in and out of Chaghcharan, which was the center of the "hunger belt." With the roads blocked by snow, the town was only accessible by plane or on foot. These men had 175 grain-laden trucks stuck in the snow on the road from Herat. The next day the bazaar heard that I knew the Red Cross and I was besieged with requests for extra ration tickets.

The ICRC men did not seem interested in making their own lives more comfortable. They wouldn't buy local meat or fruit in the bazaar because they thought it too expensive, and they were opposed to importing foreign food on their airlifts. For a month they had been living on rice and
nan
bread, supplemented with sachets of strawberry jam. They did not seem very interested in the history or culture of the area. They did not socialize with the soldiers, because they wanted to remain neutral. It must have been quite depressing. But they were very kind to me. They shared their rice dinner with me and, against regulations, let me sleep on their office floor, and later gave me some food to take away.

The following afternoon the third pillar of the international involvement in Afghanistan arrived in two giant Chinooks. The choppers swept in low over the hills from the east, with machine gunners seated on the open rear ramps. Two foreign civilians in their thirties emerged flanked by soldiers. One civilian was a German in a Chitrali cap. The other was a large Irishman, bareheaded in
shalwar kemis.
These were the political officers of the United Nations.

The agreement setting up the future shape of Afghanistan had been signed in Bonn a month earlier. In five months a Loya Jirga assembly was to choose a new government. Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN Special Representative running this process, had staffed his Political Affairs office with some of the most competent expatriates in Afghanistan: people who spoke Dari or Pashto well, had worked in Afghanistan for years, and had experience with village culture. But these few people had to manage the conflicting interests of foreign governments, other UN agencies, warlords, international organizations, and Afghan technocrats. They knew too much of the reality on the ground to be popular with either the new Afghan government or the international bureaucracy. By the end of the year they had been moved into almost meaningless jobs.

At this point, however, they were still in charge. The German and the Irishman were driven in jeeps to the only concrete building in town. Its flat roof was packed to the edges with spectators; heads crammed every window; and a thousand people crowded the forecourt. The foreigners stepped out of the jeeps and moved down the crowd, shaking hands. It was a sunny day and everyone was enjoying the warmth.

The Irishman stood at a microphone to explain the Loya Jirga process in Dari and, as he did, caught the eyes of the three foreigners in the crowd: Colin from ICRC, me, and a soldier from the airfield. He smiled. We smiled back—each I suppose surprised at being in the middle of Afghanistan.

The Irishman explained to the audience that they could select a new kind of representative for the Loya Jirga. Traditionally this assembly had been dominated by feudal landlords and district chiefs such as Commandant Haji Mohsin Khan of Kamenj. The plan was for more ordinary people, including women, to be nominated. Everyone applauded. I wondered, however, whether anyone thought it possible. Haji Mohsin certainly intended to go to the Loya Jirga, and it would be a brave villager who stood against him. Three months later, before they could reach the assembly in Kabul, three of the new Loya Jirga delegates from Ghor were killed by local militia.

Dr. Ibrahim, the new governor of Ghor, stood to talk about democracy. He wore a turban and a pair of large aviator sunglasses.

"Don't use the word
democracy.
It is un-Islamic," shouted a mullah beside him.

"
Democracy
is not an Arabic word; it is English," replied Dr. Ibrahim.

"Well, in that case it's all right," said the mullah. I don't suppose this exchange meant anything to anyone, but everyone seemed satisfied.

Half an hour later the helicopters took off again.

***

I left Chaghcharan the next morning. I had had two days off, but I was not well rested as I had hoped to be. I had spent a night on the floor of the night watchman's room in the ICRC compound, a cold night in a swept-out donkey stable in the center of town, and one night in the Afghan Aid office. But my hosts were busy and wanted me out early in the morning. During the days, I had nothing to do but limp between the two teahouses in the bazaar with my pack on my back and Babur behind me. I had kept the metal top and bottom of my walking stick, and I persuaded the ironmongers to fix them to a new pole. I wrote nothing in my diary. I had a migraine; everything I tried to eat made me sick, so for a day and a half I ate nothing.

THE WINDY PLACE

Any regrets I had about leaving Chaghcharan faded after half an hour on the road. My pack was still heavy, the hills tall, and Babur reluctant, but I felt my confidence and ease returning with the familiar motion of my muscles. The road ran gently up from the Hari Rud onto a plateau and then into rolling hills. Among the pugmarks, footprints, and hoof blows on the pale track, melting snow had left patches of dark, glutinous mud. To my right the line of mountain peaks curled, fell, and rose again in silhouette, as regular as waves or ocean liners, heading east.

I pressed through a group of teenage donkey drivers in shabby turbans with dust-caked faces. They were fighting about who would ride the donkeys. When they saw me they poked Babur with their sticks, whistled, shouted questions, beat their donkeys so they careened into the side of my pack and nearly toppled me over, and told me I would never make it to Badgah by dark.

We soon left them behind. An hour later I sat down beside a mud wall and opened a green packet of British army cookies marked
BISCUITS FRUIT S
. I didn't feel up to eating more than one so I offered the rest to Babur. He wouldn't touch them. Finally, in the late afternoon, we came into a valley with an old mud caravanserai at the bottom and two mud towers on the slopes above. The Hari Rud was mostly frozen and a line of bare silver poplars stood along the bank. A shepherd sat by the ice, playing a flute.

This was Badgah, "the windy place," the home of Commandant Haji Maududi, who had once been allied with the Pakistani-supported warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and was now the owner of the only Stinger missiles in Ghor. I had a letter of introduction but he was away. We found his sixteen-year-old son in the family mill, covered in flour. He was very uncertain what to do with me, but after a long delay he led me to a guest room and then left me for the rest of the evening. He did not come to say good-bye the next day. I was grateful to be left alone.

The next morning it began to snow again. I turned off after ten minutes of walking to let Babur drink. Just above us the river was frozen and we watched four men from a neighboring village stamp across the thirty-foot width of ice without pause. Then we turned away from the Hari Rud, following a gorge through low hills. A gentle snow-hail started. Black hairs rose on Babur's golden pelt, each tipped with a small ball of ice. But for some time the day was warm enough for me to walk without my coat. Then the hail strengthened and I pulled my jacket out of my pack. We continued for three hours through winding, brown, snow-stained hills, with the sun hidden in thick cloud. So far we had been luckier with the snow than the Emperor Babur:

The farther we advanced, the deeper was the snow. At Chaghcharan the snow reached above the horses' knees. Two or three days after Chaghcharan the snow became excessively deep; it reached up above the stirrups. In many places, the horses' feet did not reach the ground and the snow continued to fall.

One Sultan Pashai was our guide. I do not know whether it was from old age, or from his heart failing, or from the unusual depth of snow, but having once lost the road he never could find it again, so as to point out the way. We had taken this road on the recommendation of Qasim Beg [Babur's ancient chancellor]. So, anxious to preserve their reputation, he and his sons dismounted, and after beating down the snow, discovered a road, by which we advanced. Next day, as there was much snow, and the road was not to be found with all our exertions, we were brought to a complete stand.

Babur the dog, in the heart of the blizzard, stopped to savor the bouquet of a wet grass hummock. As we moved on the weather shifted, as did the sharp angles of the slopes, revealing new valleys on each side. My mind flitted from half-remembered poetry to things I had done of which I was ashamed. I stumbled on the uneven path. I lifted my eyes to the sky behind the peaks and felt the silence. This was what I had imagined a wilderness to be.

At midday I reached the village of Gandab and from there left the road and took a narrow footpath into the mountains. "Stay high and right," said the villagers. "Don't be tempted by the path to your left."

When we were halfway up the mountain, the snow began to fall faster, obliterating the line of footprints I had been following. Babur and I stumbled again and again into three- and four-foot-high drifts, and were soon both drenched. Visibility was down to fifty yards. Eventually we reached a ridge and the clouds cleared suddenly to reveal some peaks. But I saw no sign of any path or village. To my right nine hundred feet above was what appeared to be the shoulder of the mountain and a potential pass. I started up the hill through deep snow, sinking on every step and making slow progress. The powder slopes below seemed very long.

On this slope Babur lay down and wouldn't move. The weather was closing in again and the snow came harder. I leaned over him. He was shivering and sucking air into his lungs in an asthmatic wheeze. I held him for two minutes while he trembled and panted and fought for breath, and then the fit passed and he was able to stand again. I thought we should turn down the hill, but I could see no promising path.

We were both tired and cold and we would be pressed to reach Daulatyar by dusk. We were supposed to be traveling east so I set off on a traverse across the slope, dragging Babur behind me and hoping there were no crevasses. After half an hour of stumbling through more deep powder, we came over a lip. The fog lifted and I could see on the next ridge a line of footprints heading downhill. We began to follow the prints and a little later, to my delight, saw an arrow of dark purple rock pointing into a village and tiny figures moving among the stands of poplars on the bank of the Hari Rud. We ran and slid down the snow slopes into the broad valley of Shinia.

From the village, I kept moving east. I walked across two half-frozen streams, jumping the cracks, but Babur was reluctant and I struggled to drag him across the ice. We were now walking through hard sleet. Fog descended, hiding the low hills on either side.

We came onto a vehicle track. Tires had gouged a glutinous dark brown strip, twenty feet wide. My boots stuck to the mud, so I walked on the ice in the roadside ditches. This was better, except when the ice broke and my feet plunged into cold water. Babur was now coated in black mud. We had been walking for nine hours.

Daulatyar was only fifteen kilometers away and there were probably two hours of daylight left, but I had forgotten how much deep mud and wet snow slowed my pace. I felt muffled in the snow-fog and imprisoned by the rain hood I was wearing. I threw back the hood. I could hear and see again. The day was very silent and the plain seemed very large. The snow driving into my eyes at a forty-five-degree angle made me feel much freer, but my left foot seemed frozen to a cold iron plate.

Exhaustion and repetition created within the pain a space of exhilaration and control. And at this point, I saw two jeeps, their headlights on, weaving slowly toward us through the fog. They were the first vehicles I'd seen since Chaghcharan. When they reached me, an electric window went down. It was the Special Forces team from the airstrip.

"You," said the driver, "are a fucking nutter." Then he smiled and drove on, leaving me in the snow. I had seen these men at work when I was in the army and in the Foreign Office and I couldn't imagine a better compliment. I walked on in a good mood.

We reached Daulatyar just after dark. This was the last Aimaq village before the Hazara areas. Its headman was Abdul Rauf Ghafuri. Everyone had spoken of him in Chaghcharan, emphasizing his feudal background,
⁴⁴
his position on the frontier, and his connections with the Hazara. "He knows the Hazara Begs [chiefs]," they said. They implied that dealing with the Hazara was a strange and dangerous thing. They made him sound like a Yankee colonel on the edge of Sioux territory.

Abdul Rauf Ghafuri did not enter the guest room immediately, and when he did it was with an air of condescension I had not seen since I left Haji Mohsin Khan. The room held a number of other men, all of whom leaped to their feet. He shook my hand with the others but did not attempt to speak to me. I went outside to check on Babur.