by Tahir Shah
We climbed into a Land Cruiser and four heavily armed men jumped into the back. No words were uttered. Akram and the dog were asleep outside the gates, I did not call out, but sensed that the situation was getting very serious.
The Brigadier turned from the front seat and spoke slowly:
“Do you realize that it is not my responsibility for your sister, and that I have nothing to do with this?”
I was determined to keep very calm.
He continued:
“Do you love your sister?”
“Yes, Brigadier, I do. What exactly are you getting at?
What is the need to move about like this?”
“Saira has been in great danger. I have no idea where she is or if she is still alive. I cannot help you.”
The Brigadier could see that I was very shaken by his words. He stopped talking, and the Land Cruiser halted about ten miles from the fortress, in the countryside. I recall nothing of the hut where we were taken, just that there were small purple flowers growing in front of the door.
The Brigadier pushed me forward. A Mujahed commander stood guard, picking his teeth with a bayonet. There was a smell of burning wood and the sound of logs being chopped. We entered the house. A fierce-looking figure in battledress — festooned with fragmentation grenades — saluted as we crossed the threshold.
In the sitting room, the same bear-like man with the black beard sat. Beside him was a girl with a chadar veil covering her face. I averted my gaze, in accordance with Islamic courtesy. She turned and spoke my name. It was Saira.
The Brigadier had been playing an Afghan joke. Only when we met initially and the man with the black beard, Akbar Shah, had passed through like a shadow, had he heard that Saira had made it back. Before then he admitted that he, too, was nervous and had not been able to think of words with which to console me.
Back in the compound, Akbar Shah filled his green tea with heaped spoonfuls of salt and bellowed with laughter. We went back to Saira’s red jeep, Akram woke up and started it with the piece of broken glass. Saira, tired out, had gone home to sleep.
The next morning I went to Saira’s house and found her writing about the foray into Afghanistan. I had taken a rickshaw there, managing to avoid Akram. For, if the hoard was as wonderful as I suspected it to be, I would have to be careful as to whom I entrusted with the secret.
The bathroom had been turned into a makeshift darkroom, and several reels of Ilford film were hanging up to dry. The thought of the treasure was driving me crazy. At four A.M. I had switched on the bedside lamp and scanned the crumpled telex that Saira had sent to me in India. I read again and again the four words: HAVE GOT EXTRAORDINARY TREASURE.
Saira stopped typing and made me some tea. I sipped the drink and, trying to subdue my elation, I mumbled, “In your telex you mentioned something you’d located... treasure wasn’t it?”
My sister topped her cup up with milk and said quizzically:
“Treasure?”
“I thought that’s what you said; of course it might have been mistyped by the telex operator.”
My mind raced as I thought of all the possible mistakes an Indian clerk could have made, resulting in error with the word treasure. Saira gulped half a cup of the milky tea and exclaimed, “Ah, the treasure.”
“Yes, yes,” I stammered, “I knew that’s what you had written.”
“I hope it’s still okay. It’s been left in the cellar for weeks,” she said.
“Can I see it?” I gasped, “Can we go and have a look right away?”
“Well, I suppose so,” Saira said, leading me through the house. We arrived at the cellar door. “It’s in the basement, or was when I left. I do hope that no one took it while I was in Afghanistan.”
“That would be terrible!” I said, surprised that she could be so nonchalant, so carefree, about such an important matter.
We descended the stairs and Saira fumbled for the light-switch at the bottom. She flicked the switch and led the way through three illuminated chambers. Behind the door of the third there was a large cardboard box which had been wrapped in newspapers.
“I hope you appreciate how special this is,” Saira said. “It was brought out of Afghanistan by the Mujahed leader Zahir Khan.”
I had heard stories of the great commander Zahir Khan. Some said he was a madman, others that he was esteemed by God and given special protection. He rode a snow-white horse, that he was said to have captured from a Russian General: who had brought it from the Ukraine. He had trained the animal to crouch down on its knees when Soviet helicopter-gunships swooped by.
“He risked his life to bring us this box; to bring to us what is naturally ours,” said Saira.
Naturally ours? I was desperate to find out what it was, but was baffled by what she had said.
Saira tore away the newspapers and revealed the contents of the box. My confusion increased when I saw what was inside. For it was a box of very ripe apples.
“They are from our ancestral orchards in Paghman,” said my sister. “Zahir Khan picked them himself. They”re more precious than any gemstones. They are the fruit grown on Afghan soil: in the garden of our ancestors.”
* * *
The Brigadier had accepted our invitation to dine. He had said that he would be pleased to come; but, in accordance with Afghan tradition, he gave no date or time. And of course it would have been rude for us to press him. For two days we supervised the cooking of a feast at the mansion. Afghan meals have to match the esteem in which the guest is held. The Brigadier was expected at any moment. Another two days passed and we were still sitting around waiting for the guests. There was no word.
Then, just as we were giving up hope, Akram rushed in and announced that a convoy of about twenty jeeps was turning off the main road in our direction, and would arrive any minute. The Brigadier and his chief commanders, a dozen men, entered the house. About one hundred of his fighters sat in the garden, brandishing every kind of weapon, from Kalashnikovs to blunderbusses, waiting to be fed.
The presence, the aura, that surrounded the Brigadier was most unusual. He sat crossed-legged on an Afghan rug in the durbar room. A pakol cap was propped on his balding head and an army coat covered his square shoulders. He sat silent for a moment. A mysterious power seemed to radiate from the man, an air of absolute confidence. He spoke with precise deliberation, in almost a whisper. Everyone leant forward to hear his words.
“Your sister is very brave. You must be proud of her,” he said. “The party was shelled four times, but they escaped the danger. I selected my best men to escort her and they would all have been willing to give their lives for her protection.” The corners of his mouth turned upwards and he smiled like a cheeky schoolboy, “I hope I didn’t scare you with my little joke!”
“I am grateful for the help which you have given my sister,” I said.
The Brigadier produced a tin insulated with polystyrene and removed the lid. Inside there was what looked like a large lump of yellow marzipan. He Brigadier motioned me to smell it. It smelt of marzipan too. Then he said, “This is so hard to get, I like to keep a supply with me.” I looked in query at Saira and she whispered, “C5... plastic explosive!”
The men in the garden chatted and smoked cigarettes until the food was brought. Several lambs, chickens buried in trays of rice, huge flaps of naan bread, bowls of beans in yoghurt, and many great melons, were devoured in a few minutes. Almost every scrap of food had disappeared.
The men rubbed the grease into their beards, stretching out and waiting for their leader to speak, while green tea was served. The Brigadier eventually put down a leg of lamb and started to talk again.
“The war in Afghanistan weaned children who have known nothing but hostilities. Now that the Russian forces have pulled out, the struggle continues between numerous factions vying for power. For the refugees the road ahead will not improve. Their lands have been destroyed by chemicals and mined beyond all reason. The international aid organizations co
me, their people prance about, but often, sadly, are manacled in their corruption.
“Go to the bazaars and you will be able to buy any aid, from coats and grain to pills and even grenade launchers. The Afghan factions shell, rocket and ambush each other and end more lives, as if the war did not claim enough. The fighting continues, exterminating the ordinary people.
“The future of the warring in Afghanistan, which dictates the future of Peshawar to a great extent, still seems very bleak despite the Soviet withdrawal. The one unifying element to all Afghans is Islam. It bound them together, inspired their heroism during the conflict with the Russians, but is now becoming too fundamentalist in its more fanatical believers. Remember, for ten years, foreign interests have been supplying fanatics with arms. Further, the Cold War and other factors have been behind the rise of fundamentalism. There is no doubt that some powers have actually backed both sides, for reasons of their own. Islam, as a result, has been hijacked, in some places by men who commit blasphemy in its name.”
The Brigadier’s words became clearer when, the next day, I visited a clinic for children with my sister. A line of long beds bathed in bright sunshine ran along one wall of a room. Children with burns more horrible than I can describe were wriggling about like deformed animals. Indeed, I would hardly have known them to be children if I had not been told.
Little girls, of perhaps five or six had had their faces wiped off: the disgusting effects of Russian napalm, used in what the Soviet Air Force called its “International Duty”. Only the remains of a mouth were left, and a hole where the nose had once been. Akram said it was good that those children were now blind, “They shall not see how ugly they are on the outside. Tahir, they are beautiful inside.”
Legs had been fused together and fingers melted off. A boy called Ibrahim smiled, his bright blue eyes shining inside a scarred face. He was like any other child, perhaps like I once had been. But Ibrahim had both legs missing. They had been so badly embedded with shrapnel that amputation had been necessary. We spoke for a few minutes, he told of his escape from the Rouss shortly before the Russian withdrawal.
“The helicopters came and the sky went black. Bombs fell all night, and there was the sound of bullets. I looked outside and I could see tracer bullets flashing through the air. My father went outside to shoot. He was killed that night.”
“What will you do when you get better?” I asked.
“I will go back to Panjshir and make sure the Rouss do not return. I still have hands and my eyes are good!”
I raised my camera to a little girl who had a gaping hole in her lower abdomen. I remembered how in the West people seem to give more money to charity when there are pictures of suffering. I would document the results of unmitigated evil. The child screamed and screamed in a fit of terror. A nurse came to comfort her and we left the room. As I was leaving, I asked the nurse why the little girl had been so afraid of a camera.
“Sofia thought your camera was a gun. Her parents were shot dead in front of her; she was hit in the stomach and left for dead. She is a very brave little girl. We are very proud of her.”
As I left I noticed a poem written by a child pinned next to the door. It read:
When I see fields of wheat I remember
My own village with green fields and high trees,
When I see a river I remember the rivers
Of my own province, Paghman.
When I see the mountains I remember the range
Of the Hindu Kush. I will never forget
My friends, nor how I went with them to the nearby hills,
Covered by green grass,
With hundreds of cattle grazing there;
And then we were forced to leave.
PART TWO: CENTRAL GONDWANALAND
West and East Africa
NINE - Rats Eating Cats
TEN - My Name is Zakaria
ELEVEN - In Search of the Source
TWELVE - Beowulf and Buckweed
NINE
Rats Eating Cats
Saw a pestle hard and heavy...
With it thrashed those Giant’s daughters;
Thrashed them till they bellowed loudly,
Fled and roared like Bulls of Bashan,
Fled and hid them in their wigwams.
A pair of pregnant ladies sat either side of me on a bench. They looked at each other and giggled. The one on the right made a joke in Wolof and they both rolled about in laughter.
I had come to the Clinique Troy in Castor — a suburb of Dakar — in Senegal, to get a visa for Sierra Leone. During the journey from Asia to West Africa I had tried to bury all memories of greed. The apples from Afghanistan and the mutilated bodies of the innocent had helped me to understand that treasure was more than a chest of jewels.
Blake’s mention of Macumba, a magical science thought to be more comprehensive than any other, occupied my reasoning. There was one man whom I knew could assist this pursuit. His name was Max, and he lived in Freetown, the capital of the West African country of Sierra Leone. If Macumba had, as some claimed, derived from the most ancient lore in Africa, it had at least — by association — some resonance with the Gond theme.
The journey from the borderlands of Pakistan’s northwest frontier, to West Africa, had been anything but simple. A travel agent in one of Peshawar’s darker backstreets had sold me a cut-price ticket. Although somehow the fare was extremely convenient, the route was not. Having diced with death by taking the “Flying Bus” from Peshawar to Islamabad, I first flew to Damascus. From there, I jetted on to Aden in Yemen, before taking an evening cargo flight to Moscow — then I was hustled on board an indirect flight to Paris. And, it was from there — as my internal clock was spinning out of control — that I ventured on by air to Dakar.
* * *
When I was told that the maternity clinic issued visas I had hardly flinched. My travels in India had made such practices seem normal. Assuring myself that the experience of Mumbai, Rajasthan and the Afghan frontier would hold me in good stead for what was to come, I was determined to press on across Gondwanaland.
My passport was examined thoroughly. A hundred irrelevant questions were asked and it was hinted darkly that maybe I just wanted to get close to expectant women, rather than to obtain a visa. I pleaded with the director — a middle-aged lady dressed in a blood-drenched surgical gown — who had just delivered twins. Finally, agreeing that a visa could be granted, she led me into the operating theater and offered me a cigarette. The mother was recovering from the trauma of childbirth with her twin daughters.
“It will take forty-eight hours,” said the director, blowing smoke into my face.
“I was hoping to leave Dakar as soon as possible...” I said.
“All right, come back at five this afternoon.”
At five P.M. the director’s assistant — who was a nurse — took my money and handed the passport back to me. I checked the visa. It filled a whole page and was striped in several colors. Just as I was leaving, I noticed that the wrong dates had been entered. Plucking up courage, I informed the assistant. Without batting an eyelid, she ripped out the page and stamped a new visa in another part of the passport.
“Will there be anything else?” she growled.
I went back to my hotel feeling as if a piece of my anatomy had been amputated.
The Hotel Monlogie had been recommended by a burly Parisién at the airport. He had been unloading crates of gear for the Paris-to-Dakar rally. The famous desert race was just ending, the first drivers having made it across the wasteland of Mali to Dakar. The tension was electrifying. People were rushing about, everyone shouting in French. It seemed that the whole of Paris was in Dakar. I had no visa for Senegal, and was very surprised to be waved through without any bureaucratic contretemps.
Hotel Monlogie was on Rue Lamine Gueye. A faint line of blood could be made out about three feet up the wall: a sign, my guidebook assured, that bedbugs shared the premises.
Men in wide Mauritanian ro
bes flapped about the dusty streets of Dakar. Their fingers were concealed, tucked into a flap of cloth around the stomach. As I stared at the fine gold embroidery, two small boys came up and started to rub my knees. The sensation was not displeasing and I allowed them to continue for a moment, before my western thought-patterns forced me to question the reason for their activity. They looked rather disappointed. Just as I was going to ask the cause of their dissatisfaction, they ran off. The smaller one tossed back a black piece of curved metal. It was the key to my hotel room.
A doddery old man staggered over to where I stood and took charge. He spoke French with a thick accent that I could barely understand. I had soon become his property and, when a younger man came up and offered to take me around the city, he protested vehemently. After a while the man, his face wrinkled with blue-black lines, gave up, and insisted I go on, even if with the other man.
The newcomer, after telling me that his name was Joseph, pulled out a lump of gold — the size of a golf-ball — and offered it to me as a gift. His legs were bulging in black denim jeans and he wore the colors of a Rastafarian. I refused the nugget, suspecting that an obligation would ensue, and asked him for a good place to eat. “Chez Lourcha on Rue Blenchot,” he said.
Joseph accompanied me there. A French woman slid a plate of spaghetti in front of me and threw a spoon at Joseph, screaming for him to leave. He shuffled his feet in the doorway, asking for a commission for bringing a customer. The woman slammed the door in his face — and turned my chair to the far wall — where a poster of the Eiffel Tower seemed to be all that was holding up the ceiling.
The next morning I went to the bus stop early and caught a coach to Barra Point. My intention was to get to Banjul, the capital of Gambia, from where the flight to Freetown would leave.
Rally cars and relay runners were bounding towards Dakar. The stripes of sponsorship and names of multinationals enveloped all. They became a blur as the vehicles pulled away, as we drove to the south of Dakar, and entered a forest of baobab trees. Grey trunks twenty feet thick stretched from horizon to horizon. They were spread out from each other, unlike a normal forest; and somehow looked more like a herd of grazing elephants than anything else. Baobabs are among Africa’s most bizarre trees: they can live for over a thousand years. Their enormous trunks store water and in a drought they actually shrink, as the water is used up. The giant pods have seeds containing concentrated vitamin C.