I dragged my eyes from the sight of them, as boatmen drag a lake with starry hooks. My mouth was dry. My heart was a prisoner pounding on the walls inside my head. My legs felt leaden, fixed to the earth with roots of shame and dread. And as I looked up at the sheer, impassable mountains, I felt the future shudder through me like thunder trembling through the limbs and wearied vines of a storming willow.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THE MAIN ROAD FROM CHAMAN, in those years, crossed a tributary of the Dhari River on the way to Spin Baldak, Dabrai, and Melkaarez on the highway route to Kandahar. The whole journey was less than two hundred kilometres. By car, it took a few hours. We didn’t take the highway route, of course, and we didn’t have cars. We rode on horseback over a hundred mountain passes, and the same journey took us more than a month.
We spent that first day camped beneath the trees. The baggage—the goods we were smuggling into Afghanistan, and our personal supplies—was scattered in a nearby pasture, covered by sheepskins and goatskins to give the appearance, if seen from the air, of a herd of livestock. There were even a few real goats tethered among the woolly bundles. When dusk finally smothered the sunset, a whisper of excitement went through the camp. We soon heard the muffled tread of hooves as our horses approached. There were twenty riding horses and fifteen pack animals. The horses were a little smaller than those I’d learned to ride on, and my heart lifted with hope that I might find them easier to control. Most of the men moved off at once to hoist and secure the baggage onto the pack animals. I started off to join them, but Nazeer and Ahmed Zadeh intercepted me, leading two horses.
‘This one is mine,’ Ahmed announced. ‘And that one is yours.’
Nazeer handed the reins to me, and checked the straps on the short, thin Afghan saddle. Satisfying himself that all was as it should be, he nodded his approval.
‘Horse good,’ he said, in his grunting, gravel-throated version of good humour.
‘All horse good,’ I replied, quoting him. ‘All man not good.’
‘The horse is superb,’ Ahmed concurred, casting an admiring eye over my horse. She was a chestnut mare, with a deep chest and strong, thick, relatively short legs. Her eyes were alert and unafraid. ‘Nazeer picked her for you from all that we have. He was the first to reach her, and there are some disappointed men back there. He is a good judge.’
‘We’ve got thirty men, by my count, but there’s less than thirty riding horses here, for sure,’ I remarked, patting at the neck of my horse, and trying to establish first contact with the beast.
‘Yes, some ride and some walk,’ Ahmed replied. He put his left foot in his stirrup and swung into the saddle with an effortless spring. ‘We take turns. There are goats, ten goats with us, and men will herd them. And we will lose some men on our way, also. The horses are really a gift for Khader’s people near Kandahar. We would be better on this trip with camels. Donkeys would be the best, in my opinion, in the narrow passes. But the horses are animals of great status. I think Khader insisted on using horses because it is important how we look when we make contact with the wild clans—the men who will want to kill us, and take our guns and our medicines. The horses will make us important in their eyes. And they will be a gift of much prestige for Khader Khan’s people. He plans to give them away on the way back from Kandahar. We will ride some of the way to Kandahar, but we will walk all the way home!’
‘Did you say we’re going to lose some men?’ I asked, frowning up at him.
‘Yes!’ he laughed. ‘Some men will leave us on the way, to return to their villages. But yes, also, it might be that some will die on this journey. But we will live, you and I, Inshallah. We have good horses. It is a good beginning!’
He wheeled the horse expertly and cantered over to a mounted group who’d assembled around Khaderbhai some fifty metres away. I glanced at Nazeer. He nodded for me to mount the horse, offering me an encouraging little grimace and a muttered prayer. We both fully expected that I would be thrown, and his eyes began to close in cringing anticipation. I put my foot in the stirrup and sprang off with my right foot. I hit the saddle with a harder jolt than I’d planned, but the horse responded well to the mount and dipped her head twice, anxious to move off. Nazeer opened one eye to see me sitting comfortably on the new horse. Delighted and flushed with unselfconscious pride, he beamed one of his rare smiles at me. I tugged at the reins to turn the horse’s head, and kicked backward. The horse responded calmly, but with a smart, stylish, almost prancing elegance in its movement. Snapping at once into a graceful canter, she took me toward Khaderbhai’s group with no further prompting.
Nazeer ran along with us, a little behind and to the left of my horse. I glanced over my shoulder and exchanged equally wide-eyed, bewildered looks with him. The horse was making me look good. It’s gonna be okay, I whispered to myself, knowing, as the words trotted through the thick fog of vain hope in my mind, that I’d uttered the certain jinx formula. The saying, pride goeth … before a fall … is condensed from the second collection of the Book of Proverbs, 16:18—Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. It’s attributed to Solomon. If he did say it, Solomon was a man who knew horses intimately well; much better than I did as I clicked up to Khader’s group and reined the horse in as though I knew—as though I would ever know—what I was doing in a saddle.
Khader was speaking in Pashto and Urdu and Farsi, giving the men last-minute instructions. I leaned across to whisper to Ahmed Zadeh.
‘Where’s the pass? I can’t see it in the dark.’
‘What pass?’ he whispered back.
‘The pass through the mountains.’
‘You mean Chaman?’ he asked, mystified by the question. ‘It’s back there, thirty kilometres behind us.’
‘No, I mean how do we get through those mountains into Afghanistan?’ I asked, nodding toward the sheer rock walls that began to rise less than a kilometre away from us, and peaked in the black night sky above.
‘We don’t go through the mountains,’ Ahmed replied, gesturing a little jab with the reins in his hands. ‘We go over them.’
‘Over … them …’
‘Oui.’
‘Tonight.’
‘Oui.’
‘In the dark.’
‘Oui,’ he repeated seriously. ‘But no problem. Habib, the fou, the crazy one, he knows the way. He will lead us.’
‘I’m glad you told me that. I was worried, I admit, but I feel a lot better about it now.’
His white teeth flashed a laugh at me and then, with a signal from Khaled, we moved off, churning slowly into a single column that stretched to almost a hundred metres. There were ten men walking, twenty men riding, fifteen packhorses, and a herd of ten goats. I noticed with deep chagrin that Nazeer was one of the men walking. It was absurd and unnatural, somehow, that such a fine horseman was walking while I rode. I watched him, ahead of me in the darkness, watched the rhythmic roll of his thick, slightly bowed legs, and I swore to myself that I would convince him, at the first rest break, to take turns with me in riding my horse. I did eventually succeed in that resolve, but Nazeer was so reluctantly persuaded that he glowered miserably at me from the saddle, and only ever brightened when our positions reversed and he looked up at me from the rocky path.
You don’t ride a horse over a mountain, of course. You push and drag and sometimes help to carry a horse over a mountain. As we neared the base of the sheer cliffs that form the Chaman range, dividing the southwestern part of Afghanistan from Pakistan, it became clear that there were in fact gaps and pathways and trails leading into and over them. What had seemed to be smooth walls of bare, mountainous rock proved on closer inspection to be formed in undulating waves of ravines and tiered crevices. Ledges of stone and lime-encrusted barren earth wound through those rocky slopes. In places the ledges were so wide and well flattened as to seem like a man-made road. In places they were so jagged and narrow that every footstep of horse or man was brooded over with careful, trem
bling consideration before it was made. And the whole of it, the whole stumbling, slipping, dragging, shoving breach of the mountain barrier, was done in the dark.
Ours was a small caravan when compared to the once mighty tribal processions that had plied the silk route between Turkey and China and India, but in that time of war our numbers were remarkable. The fear of being seen from the air was a constant worry. Khaderbhai imposed a strict blackout: no cigarettes, torches, or lamps on the march. There was a quarter moon that first night, but occasionally the slippery paths led us through narrow defiles where smooth rock rose up sharply, drowning us in shadows. In those black-walled corridors it was impossible to see my own hand held in front of my face. The whole column inched its way along the blind clefts in the rock wall, men and horses and goats pressed hard against the stone, and shuffling into one another.
In the centre of just such a black ravine, I heard a low whining sound that rose quickly in pitch. I was walking, or sliding my feet, between two horses. I had the reins of my horse in my right hand, and the tail of the horse in front wrapped around my left hand. My face was sliding against the granite wall, and the path beneath my feet was no wider than the length of my arm. As the sound rose in its pitch and intensity, the two horses reared in the same instinct, and stamped their hooves in staccato fear. Then the whining sound suddenly erupted in a roar that rattled the whole mountain, and ripped into an explosive, shrieking scream of satanic noise directly over our heads.
The horse to my left bucked and reared in front of me, pulling its tail from my hand. Trying to retrieve it, I lost my footing in the dark and slid to my knees, my face scraping against the rock wall. My own horse was terrified, as frightened as I was myself, and it struggled forward on the narrow path, following an impulse to run. I still held the reins, and I used them to pull myself to my feet, but the horse rammed into me again with its head, and I felt myself slide backward from the path. Fear stabbed into my chest and crushed my heart as I stumbled, slid, and fell off the path into the lightless void. I fell the full length of my body, and stopped with a wrenching snap as the reins in my hand held fast.
I was dangling in free space over a black abyss. Millimetre by millimetre I felt the downward creep, the easing, slipping creak of leather as I slid further from the edge of the narrow ledge. I could hear the shouts of men, all along the ledge above me. They were trying to calm the animals, and they were calling out names to account for their friends. I could hear the horses screaming their fear and snorting in protest. The air in the ravine was thick with the smells of piss and horseshit and frightened man-sweat. And I could hear the scrabbling, scraping clatter of hooves as my own horse struggled to maintain its footing. I suddenly realised that as strong as the horse undoubtedly was, its foothold on the crumbling, jagged path was so precarious that my weight might’ve been enough to drag it over the ledge with me.
Flailing with my left hand in the impenetrable dark, I grasped the reins and began to drag myself back up to the ledge. I put one set of fingertips on the edge of the stony path and then choked a scream as I slipped backwards into the dark crevasse. The reins held again, and I dangled over the gap, but my situation was desperate. The horse, fearing that it would be dragged over the edge, was shaking and dipping its head violently. An intelligent animal, she was trying to rid herself of the bridle, bit, and harness. At any moment, I knew, she would succeed. I gave a snarl of rage through clenched teeth and dragged myself to the ledge once more.
Scrambling up to my knees, I gasped in sweating exhaustion and then, working to an intuition that starts in fear and spikes on a jet of adrenaline, I jumped up and to my right as my neighbour’s horse kicked out in the black, blind night. If I hadn’t moved, it would’ve struck me on the side of the head, and my war would’ve ended there and then. Instead, the life-saving reflex to jump meant that the blow struck my hip and thigh, driving me into the wall and against my own horse’s head. I threw my arms around the animal’s neck, as much to comfort myself with its touch as to support my numb leg and aching hip. I was still cradling her head in my arms when I heard shuffling steps and felt someone’s hands slide from the wall onto my back.
‘Lin! Is that you?’ Khaled Ansari asked into the darkness.
‘Khaled! Yeah! Are you okay?’
‘Sure. Jet fighters! Fuck me! Two of them. Not far overhead. A hundred feet, man, no more than that. Fuck! They were really smashing up the sound barrier! What a noise!’
‘Were they Russians?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Not this close to the border. More likely they were Pakistani fighters, American planes with Pak pilots, crossing a little into Afghan space to keep the Russians on their toes. They won’t go too far. The Russian MiG pilots are too good. But the Paks like to remind them they’re here, just the same. Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Sure, sure,’ I lied. ‘I’ll be a lot better when we get out of this fuckin’ dark. Call me a weak motherfucker, but I like to see where I’m going when I’m trying to lead a horse along a ledge outside a ten-storey building.’
‘Me, too,’ Khaled laughed. It was the small, sad laugh, but I drenched myself in the reassurance of it. ‘Who was behind you?’
‘Ahmed,’ I replied. Ahmed Zadeh. I heard him swearing in French back there. I think he’s okay. Nazeer was behind him. And I know Mahmoud, the Iranian, was near him somewhere. There were about ten behind me, I think, counting the two guys herding the goats.’
‘I’ll go check,’ Khaled said, giving me a comforting slap on the shoulder. ‘You keep going. Just slide along the wall for another hundred yards or so. It’s not far. There’s still some moonlight when you get out there, outside this ravine. Good luck.’
And for a few moments, when I reached that pale oasis of moonlight, I felt safe and sure of myself. Then we pushed on, hugging the cold, grey stone of the canyon-silo, and in minutes we were in blackness again, with nothing but faith and fear and the will to survive.
We travelled so often at night that we sometimes seemed to be feeling our way to Kandahar like blind men, with our fingertips. And, like blind men, we trusted Habib, without question, as our guide. None of the Afghans in our group lived in the border region, and they were as dependent on his knowledge of those secret passes and fortuitous ledge-pathways as I was.
When he wasn’t leading the column, however, Habib inspired far less confidence. I came upon him once as I scrambled over some rocks to find a place to take a piss during a rest stop. He was kneeling in front of a roughly square slab of stone, and beating his forehead against it. I leapt down to stop him, and discovered that he was weeping, sobbing. The blood from his torn forehead ran down his face to mix with the tears in his beard. I poured a little water from my canteen onto a corner of my scarf, and wiped the blood from his head to examine the wounds. They were rough and jagged, but largely superficial. He allowed me to lead him, unprotesting, back to the camp. Khaled rushed up at once and helped me to apply ointment and a clean bandage to his forehead.
‘I left him alone,’ Khaled muttered when the job was done. ‘I thought he was praying. He told me he wanted to pray. But I had a feeling …’
‘I think he was praying,’ I answered.
‘I’m worried,’ Khaled confessed, looking into my eyes with a febrile mix of heartbreak and fear. ‘He keeps setting mantraps all over the place. He’s got twenty grenades on him under that cloak. I’ve tried to explain to him that a mantrap has no conscience—it might just as easily kill a local nomad shepherd, or one of us, as a Russian or an Afghan soldier. He doesn’t get it. He just grins at me, and does it a little bit more secret. He rigged some of the horses with explosives yesterday. He said it was to make sure the Russians didn’t get their hands on them. I said to him, what about us? What if the Russians get their hands on us? Should we be rigged with explosives, too? He said it was a problem he worried about all the time—how to make sure we were dead before the Russians got their hands on us, and how to kill more Russians after we w
ere dead.’
‘Does Khader know?’
‘No. I’m trying to keep Habib in line. I know where he’s coming from, Lin. I’ve been there. The first couple years after my family was killed, I was as crazy as he is. I know what’s going on inside him. He’s filled up with so many dead friends and enemies that he’s kind of locked on one course—killing Russians—and until he snaps out of it, I just gotta stay with him as much as I can, and watch his ass.’
‘I think you should tell Khader,’ I sighed, shaking my head.
‘I will,’ he sighed in return. ‘I will. Soon. I’ll talk to him soon. He’ll get better. Habib will get better. He’s getting better in some ways. I can talk to him real well now. He’ll make it.’
But as the weeks of the journey passed, we all watched Habib more closely, more fearfully, and little by little we all realised why so many other mujaheddin units had cast him out.
With our senses alert for menace from without and within, we travelled by night, and sometimes by day, north along the mountainous border towards Pathaan Khel. Near the khel, or village, we swung north-north-west into deserted mountainous terrain that was veined with cold, fresh, sweet-water streams. Habib laid out a route that was roughly equidistant between towns and larger villages, always avoiding the main arteries that local people used. We trudged between Pathaan Khel and Khairo Thaana; between Humai Khaarez and Haji Aagha Muhammad. We forded rivers between Loe Kaarez and Yaaru. We zigzagged between Mullah Mustafa and the little village of Abdul Hamid.
Local pirates, demanding tribute, stopped us three times on the way. Each time, they revealed themselves at first in high vantage points, with guns trained on us, before their ground forces swept from hiding to lock the way forward and cut off our retreat. Each time, Khader raised his green-and-white mujaheddin flag emblazoned with the Koranic phrase:
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