The Ends of the Earth

by Willemsen, Roger; Lewis, Peter;

  A mythical landscape clusters around the banks of the Amu-Darya, which in ancient times was also known as the Oxus. In the ninth century ad, the Persian poet Rudaki, renowned as the ‘caravan leader of poetry’, fantasized that its craggy banks felt like silk beneath his feet, and that its waves leapt right up to his horse’s bridle for sheer joy at the sight of him returning home. Travel writers down the ages talk in hushed whispers of this river and its environs, not only because it was so difficult and dangerous getting there but also because the sights that met your eye when you entered this world-renowned region were said to more than compensate for all the hardships along the way. You conjure up a mental image of the natural conditions around the river, its vegetation, cobbled together from fragments of old tales and stories passed down by word of mouth. But in your mind’s eye it’s all still devoid of people, the landscape still has no faces and the origins of the river still lie shrouded in enchanted mystery – at least, travellers who once made it to the banks of the Amu-Darya certainly speak in these terms.

  Marco Polo visited the source of the river, high up in the Pamir mountain range, and on 19 February 1838, the British army lieutenant John Wood also found himself standing at the same spot, on the ‘Roof of the World’ as he called it, above the Bam i Dünjah lake, or the Sir i Kol, as the Kirghiz people call the body of water that is the source of the Amu-Darya. As the astonished Wood reported: ‘… before us lay stretched a noble but frozen sheet of water, from whose western end issued the infant river of the Oxus’. The beautiful lake, he wrote, ‘took the form of a half-moon’.

  But from here, it’s still a long way down to the valleys of northern Afghanistan, and the traveller asks himself: how can you possibly hope to traverse all these barriers – the mountains, the rivers, the various battle fronts – and finally cross the vast steppe, where all movement always seems to be aimless? That’s what makes it so alluring. And when a person like Robert Byron successfully reached the Oxus, he was so totally enrap-tured he couldn’t help but look down haughtily on all the other poor wretches in the past who had perished in the attempt.

  For a long time, the area around Kunduz was greatly feared. Thanks to its marshy terrain and unhealthy climate, people were wont to say: ‘If you want to die, go to Kunduz.’ But since an urban culture began to develop there in the 1970s – with indigenous tribes and ethnic groups from outside the region combining with international hippies to set up museums, cinemas, theatres and all kinds of sporting and entertainment venues – the place that was traditionally known for rice- growing, silkworm cultivation and the mining of lapis lazuli and rubies has earned itself a new motto: ‘If you want to live, go to Kunduz.’ So it was that a thriving, artistic and liberal city arose, where Koranic scholars, Indian Sikhs, bikini girls and potheads happily rubbed shoulders.

  We leave behind us the tanned hide of clay walls that are threatening to burst after being subjected to winter frosts followed by the raging heat of summer. Outside the city gates, the fields have been flooded to try and make their rock-hard surface a bit more yielding to enable water to soak down into the soil, while on the banks of this man-made lake oxen stand, arching their twitching backs as children brush them down.

  We pass the first sand redoubts of former refugees, who fled back here, to their homeland and peace, along the road from Kandahar. But what did they find when they got here? Fields that had reverted to arid steppe, derelict or shot-up houses with their connections to electricity and the water supply cut off. So they regrouped, erected their makeshift houses on the edge of a stretch of water, and are getting on with the business of survival.

  The steppe stretches out like a desert, and the settlements sit in it like oases. Nomads pass by, selling camel skins, goat cheese and cloth. Kids swarm about, carrying containers of water on their heads. They vanish into the endless waste, like they’ve disappeared over the curvature of the earth. Every so often, there’s a hamlet – a bush with a few huts round it, an enclosed courtyard with a well and an oven cheek by jowl. Old people who have learned to fight for this life and then for their very existence, young people who are almost collapsing under the burden of the life they imagine for themselves, conveyed to them by images, all of them growing up on deserts, rocks, dust – on virtually nothing.

  We turn once more onto the wide black road, which runs across the pale yellow landscape of the steppe. Now there’s an old man with us in the car, with a voice like an organ; he knows the hidden tracks that will take us to the shy Uzbeks, and he’ll be able to find a way to get us into one of their villages. We drive for a long time. On the horizon, we see what could be distant haze or maybe the curve of mist-covered hills – who knows, it may even be a mirage. After twenty minutes, we encounter the first bend in the road.

  We turn off from the metalled road and drive into this nothingness. On we go, over humps, across dips and over hills, we’re driving in a cloud of dust and sand, then it’s downhill across the soft ground of the steppe, which yields like pressed straw underfoot.

  Finally, there’s a bulge, a slight swelling in the horizon line. Those are the sheep herds, guarded by one young shepherd who’s asleep on a sand hill and another who’s trotting around in a circle on horseback in leisurely fashion and three fierce dogs, whose job it is to tackle wolves and jackals and who are always spoiling for a fight. Then again, when the war was going on, the wolves ate the corpses of people that lay scattered around.

  The shepherd knows that, he slips off his sand hill and takes a couple of steps towards us. Under his long felt coat, he’s wearing a pullover, a padded green jacket and a pinstriped waistcoat. He uses the long crook he’s holding to lean on, and to protect and herd the community’s sheep. There are around seven hundred all told in this region, guarded by anything between ten and fourteen shepherds, and constantly threatened by tarantulas, snakes and wolves.

  Where does he sleep?

  ‘Somewhere on the steppe.’

  Where does he get his water from?

  ‘It’s six hours with the herd to the next watering hole.’

  ‘And is the herd safe?’

  ‘Sometimes rustlers will come along and steal a couple of animals. But what can I do about it? So we just steal some back to even up the score.’

  ‘And what would you do if I stole some of your sheep?’ our friend Turab asks him.

  ‘I know karate’, the shepherd replies, with a face that has never joked in its life, or at least looks that way.

  ‘What do you eat?’

  ‘My bread, with a bit of fat that I carry with me in this jar here.’

  He shows us it.

  ‘Why do you choose to stay around here,’ Tuareb protests jokingly, ‘rather than finding yourself a sensible job in the city?’

  ‘I can’t leave.’

  He learns where we’re from.

  ‘You live in a good country where there’s always plenty of rain.’

  ‘What do you earn?’

  ‘I get a tenth of all the newborn lambs in any one year. If I’m in luck that may be as many as fifty.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘No idea. Twenty-one, maybe?’

  ‘But you haven’t even grown a beard yet!’

  ‘Maybe you tell me how old I am, then?’

  Conversations among Afghans often run like this. They start talking straight away about each other’s circumstances, about quite personal matters in fact. They never refuse to respond to a question or answer one with another question. They share their history as readily as the air they breathe.

  We proceed through the steppe on foot, and for a long stretch all we can see is solidified sand dunes and dusty hollows – and then all of a sudden we’re ambushed by children who come running from all directions, appearing as if from nowhere. They’re clutching plastic submachine guns and toy Kalashnikovs; it’s the first things they spend their pocket money on here, having no conception of disarmament.

  Then suddenly there’s a change in the atmosphere. The
air becomes clearer, and ahead of us we see taller vegetation. Cotton fields come into view, and some maize. The Uzbek tribal villages are situated behind straw palisades, with their dwellings laid out defensively in squares and their well-trodden connecting paths, dusty thoroughfares which the camels are led along. All the buildings here look like African mud-brick architecture, no different to, say, Mali or Burkina Faso.

  We remain outside the gates, waiting to see if we’ll be allowed in. There’s a ceremony in progress somewhere nearby. In traditional fashion, a bride is being led on camelback to the house of her fiancé. We can hear the clatter of a motorbike, but for all that, we really are on the fringes of an isolated civilization that’s sealed off from the surrounding world, yet which at the same time is in danger of choking on its own poverty. While we’re waiting, a boy, accompanied by a mangy dog, drives a camel with a matted coat past us, followed by an old man riding a lady’s bicycle.

  Eventually an elder from one of the farmsteads bids us enter. He doesn’t take off the absurdly modish sunglasses he’s wearing – less practical eyewear than status symbol. Behind our little party trots a boy holding a pitcher of hot water and a bowl for us to wash our hands in.

  The inner courtyard of the settlement contains all the vital functions of the tribe within one confined area: the well and the fireplace are here, as are the barn and the workshop. The latter building is empty as we approach, since the women, who assemble here every day to weave Uzbek carpets, have all withdrawn into the interior.

  The foreman of this estate was interned in Kunduz prison for a long spell. He mentions that he was tortured there, in passing, like he’s just ensuring, for the sake of completeness, that he doesn’t omit to touch on this fact, which is a commonplace for many people in these parts. As he’s speaking, his turbaned head looks down at the ground, and his slender hands stroke the unfinished pieces of woven material in front of him, brightly coloured textiles, which are finally assembled by the deft fingers of children into complete carpets. Even the soles of the kids’ feet here are decorated with henna designs drawn on as part of the celebrations just past. The senior village elder offers us tea:

  ‘Wait, I’ll drink mine first, so you don’t need to worry.’

  In former times, people here were given to singing the praises of caravan tea, which actually came from China:

  ‘It’s got creases like Tartar boots, curly locks like the dewlaps of a mighty ox, spirals like mist rising from a gorge, and it shimmers like a lake caressed by the blue of heaven …’

  As we’re drinking our tea, the children stream out to convene the Elders’ Council, and in no time, there they all are – twenty-five men, most of them wearing turbans and long cloaks, with dignified, profoundly serious and sometimes even melancholic faces – and then through the crowd of elders strides Nadia, the Afghan exile, her hair hidden beneath a scarf but with her face uncovered, heading for the community hall, where she will hear the council’s petitions.

  The community assembly hall has only recently been completed, and is the pride of the village. In a fit of either presumption or idealism, it has been decorated with light blue cloud motifs. In these surroundings, it looks as strangely newfangled as encountering a jacuzzi in a nomadic settlement.

  We sit in a circle on cushions. More men keep crowding into the room from outside. Boys squeeze between them, carrying dishes of pistachios, almonds, dried fruits and pulses. There are also some sweets wrapped in cellophane on the plates. All these refreshments arrive without us hearing any command for them to be brought in. Later, Nadia tells us that there was a great flurry of activity behind the scenes to try and assemble the makings of a proper meal, but that they couldn’t find enough ingredients.

  As soon as she starts to speak, the room falls silent. The elders – with countenances showing they’ve entered their twilight years, their fear of the future and their adherence to the last vestiges of tradition – gaze into Nadia’s open face and see how radically times have changed. They all knew her father. That doubtless makes it easier for them to listen to her now. Nor do they need to learn to trust her – they do so already. But their requests are exhaustive and, when measured against Nadia’s ability to deliver, really quite excessive.

  Suddenly, the light in the room shifts abruptly into twilight mode. The elders bite open an almond or two, but keep their gaze focused on Nadia’s face the whole time, trying to divine what she might donate to help them sink a well, build a school or pay for a doctor to staff the local clinic, because there’s no one running it at present.

  Most illnesses hereabouts are contracted from the water. Sometimes animals will die in a well and contaminate it, and sometimes uneducated farmers will throw a cadaver down the shaft just to get rid of it. Malaria is rife, too. Nadia listens to all this, as patiently as if she’s hearing it for the first time; all these stories have the same basic pattern. Numerous pairs of eyes are glued to her every facial expression, unblinking. Many of the faces are finely chiselled, while others tend toward Mongol, Asiatic features. Nobody begs, nobody complains, nobody wrings their hands, tears their hair or loses their composure.

  Where their livelihoods are concerned, in good years they can keep themselves afloat for six months by selling carpets and livestock, while for the second half of the year they have to live on what they’ve managed to grow themselves. The farmers are in the fields or tending to their animals from the crack of dawn. They breakfast on tea and bread, and milk as well when it’s available.

  I’m simply reporting here what one of the farmers said at the meeting. Everyone in the room was taking a discreet but definite interest in what I found intriguing, and scarcely had I put pen to paper than all eyes were upon me. As far as they’re concerned, all they’re recounting here is their everyday lives. Why would that be worth writing about? Maybe because there’s a high risk of treading on a landmine while you’re working in the fields? True enough, but then it’s not exactly easy dealing with the wolves, either.

  The most fortunate farmers are those with an ox-plough and who have a cow of their own that they can rely on for milk. Farmers like these can sometimes even afford to buy fertilizer.

  ‘But doesn’t the milk taste better without fertilizers?’ I ask, and everyone laughs, delighted that all foreigners seem to think the same way.

  The conversation now turns to arable farming – the harvests, and the late sowing of rice. Behind a school, we discovered a couple of poppies. Where, we want to know, might the seeds have been blown from? In any event, no one had spotted a poppy field from the road.

  ‘We don’t grow poppies here,’ the local superintendent announces with a deadpan expression.

  ‘But we’ve been told you got a forty-kilo yield off your fields,’ Turab calls out and everyone laughs again; the man to whom he addresses this remark rewards him by slapping him matily on the back several times.

  Yet if we somehow imagined that there was a secret source of wealth in these villages, we’d be barking up the wrong tree. Tilling the fields is backbreaking work, and time and again drought destroys the harvests. The kids get up at six o’clock to go to school so that they can come back in the late morning to help their parents again, either picking cotton or looking after the livestock.

  In the meantime, Nadia has begun to draft the proposal for a new well on a page she’s torn out of an exercise book. As she does so, the oldest villager resumes his account of the daily life of a farmer. After a lunch usually consisting of rice, nothing else is eaten until evening prayers, when there’s bread and buttermilk.

  ‘That bloats your stomach and makes you sleepy,’ says Nadia. ‘We call it Afghan Alcohol.’

  After supper, the men go and sit with the women, and knot carpets or swap stories. Sometimes, they’ll even take charge of looking after babies so that the women can do their carpet-knotting in peace. Because men can take several wives, they also leave behind multiple widows. As a result, in many villages women play a vital role in keeping the community
alive. The place we’re visiting today doesn’t have a television, and only the richest farmer has an electricity generator. So people go to bed early.

  ‘Has the climate in this area changed over time?’

  ‘Yes, generally it’s become warmer, which means we get more pests, and that’s hit the cotton harvest. Years ago, we used to get much more snow.’

  Their faces, which are as tanned as pairs of shoes, are permanently etched with worry. They keep their hands, the chapped tools of their trade, folded in their laps, and even their feet look leathery and worn out. The tea tastes of the smoke of the wood fire it was brewed on.

  Meanwhile, the proposal for the well is finished. Someone appears with an ink pad, and all but two of the men press their fingerprints over their names, which the secretary has written out in block capitals. One of them even has a wax seal. Then another farmer approaches Nadia and whispers:

  ‘Help me, get me a moped!’

  Finally, Nadia is left holding a grubby proposal sheet, smudged with candle soot and covered in inky fingerprints – a draft from which a well will result within the foreseeable future. The senior elder of the village then presents us with three sumptuous robes, draped over his forearm, in violet and green, just like those worn by the Afghan president. Quite impossible to refuse this gift, especially after he’s delivered a little speech:

  ‘It’s true that we have nothing, but two things that we possess and will never give up are our humanity and our pride.’

  We travel on northward, now moving across the steppe as the crow flies, straight towards the border, in order that we might set foot on the riverbanks that turn their back on wartorn Afghanistan. Caught up in the all-pervading atmosphere of imperturbability here, we too have begun to move more slowly – or does it just seem that way because this endless plain makes all movements across it small-scale and slow?