I hugged the shade cast by the silvery black granite walls and leaped across the patches of painful sunlight as though they were rushing streams. My canteen was empty, but out of shame I dared not ask where I could fill it. After another forty-five minutes of marching, Jihan-zeb casually walked over to a hollow in the rocks, cupped his hands, and withdrew a mouthful of water, which he slurped while observing me with an impish smile. It was barely a trickle, and it took a full two minutes to fill up the plastic canteen, but it was clear and clean and ice cold — the best I had ever tasted, it seemed to me then. Jihan-zeb and Wakhil laughed as I drank up the contents of the canteen before filling it a second time. Each of them had taken only a single mouthful. Lurang gave me a disapproving stare: he hadn’t drunk at all.
It was only a short walk before we reached another, more plentiful spring at the foot of a mountain bearded with thorns and lichen. “Rest and drink all you can,” advised Wakhil. “It will be the last good water for a while.”
It was about three in the afternoon when we started up the mountain. At first the climb was easy, but by the time we neared the seven-thousand-foot summit I was sweating and out of breath. The view from the top, like many scenes I was to see, was one of both beauty and horror. Ahead, unfurled below us, was a dust-wrapped, sulfurous plain marked by landslides and vibrating with intense heat. It billowed on for miles before finally rising into a wave of cathedrallike mountains that towered above the mere hill I had, with some difficulty, just scaled.
“There’s water down there?” I asked Wakhil, already losing my discipline.
“Yes, but we must walk for some hours first.”
“And where does Afghanistan begin?” I asked.
“After some hours will be Afghanistan, inshallah [God willing],” Wakhil said, hesitating. He probably never thought about the border in such terms.
“How many more hours?”
“Oh, I don’t know that question.” Wakhil smiled and turned up his palms, as though I had asked him to explain the meaning of a difficult Koranic parable.
We descended into the plain known as the Valley of Tirah Bazaar, the sanctum sanctorum of the Afridis — several hundred square miles of butchered, cursed terrain southwest of the Khyber Pass that few foreigners ever really penetrated, except to slip through surreptitiously.
“You know some Arabic,” Wakhil stated.
I had told him that I had studied the language briefly in Egypt.
“Good. Then you will tell anyone who asks us on the road that you are an Arab. They cannot know that you are American. Otherwise do not talk or take pictures or look at anyone. And don’t ask for water. Afridi people — bad people, like dogs. They are the agents of Najib [the Afghan Communist ruler],” said Wakhil, lobbing a thick gob of spit on the ground, as if to emphasize his disgust with the people we were about to encounter.
Jihan-zeb just smiled and placed his finger over his lips, warning me not to talk, then took my rucksack to carry. I was grateful. (The rule amongjournalists was that if the mujahidin offer to carry your pack, don’t be a hero — accept the help. If you refuse, later on when you really do need help, they might not offer.)
They are “amongst the most miserable and brutal creatures of the earth,” wrote Winston Churchill in 1897, referring mainly to the Tirah Afridis, after they had littered this plain with the bodies of hundreds of British soldiers. “Their intelligence only enables them to be more cruel, more dangerous, more destructive than wild beasts.”
Of all the difficult places on the Northwest Frontier that the British had to control, Tirah gave them the most trouble. Their running battle with the local Afridis over safe-conduct and the trade in weapons was never won, and occasionally the Afridis would resort to such outrages as the kidnapping of a seventeen-year-old English girl. Molly Ellis was abducted on April 14, 1923, and released unharmed several days later, after the British had burned down the village of the kidnapper, one Ajab Khan, who was a suspect in the murder of an English couple three years earlier. Kidnappings still occurred here, and that was why I had to be smuggled in and out of Tirah as quickly as possible: an American journalist would require an exorbitant ransom.
The greater Tirah was divided into two smaller valleys, the Maidan and the Bazaar. The Bazaar was so named by the British because of a tribal market there, which might not have contained more than a few stalls. It was the more remote and inaccessible of the two, and in it tribal law still applied: there have been actual cases of adulterers being stoned to death in the 1980s. In 1984, a twelve-year-old boy was ordered by a tribal Jirga (council) to execute a grown man who was the proven killer of his father. In an area not far away, after two teenagers had tried to elope, ajirga ordered the girl’s father to shoot the boy and the boy’s father to shoot the girl, and thus the matter was settled.
The Valley of Tirah Bazaar lived in a time warp. At least inside Afghanistan the population had been introduced, however rudely, to the modern world through the Soviet invasion and the refugee migrations and influx of Western-supplied weapons it provoked. But the Bazaar Valley, without a usable road until 1988, remained untouched. The mujahidin, the Afghan Communist regime, and the Pakistani government dealt with its miserably poor Afridi inhabitants exactly as the British had: through a pattern of raids, bribes, threats, and negotiations. “In these remote valleys, even more so than on Hadrian’s wall in Britain, a thousand years pass as a dream,” wrote Sir Olaf Caroe. “It has been but the fashion of arms that changes; Lee-Enfield going back to carbine, carbine to jezail, and jezail to bows and arrows.”
The first sensation I had upon entering the valley was a pleasant one: that of being washed by soft, fresh breezes rolling over a yellow-green steppe. On each side of us as we plodded through fields of tall, withered grass was a long, low wall of chocolate-black hills. In the distance, like a two-dimensional cutout, was a crude mud brick fort with a square tower leaning slightly to one side as though it might tip over. I was tired, thirsty, and hungry, and the closer we came to that leaning tower, the farther away it seemed. Then suddenly we were passing it, and other mud brick forts — exactly like the first one and painted a fabulous golden yellow by the late afternoon sun — loomed ahead, punctuating the bleak, abstract landscape. The shrill sound of the wind in the grass was strangely deafening in the otherwise silent terrain. The grass thinned away and we were encased in a mist of fine dust. I felt I was dreaming, and in my dream I was traveling along the Silk Route of western China with Marco and Maffeo Polo. Had they also been struck by the alienation of the central Asian plateaus?
We marched steadily until late evening across flat stretches of land broken every so often by a landslide several hundred feet deep, which we had to walk down and then up again on the other side. At dusk the sky turned a nacreous, heavenly white for a few moments before going purple and black. Groups of Afridis in white turbans were leading their sheep and mules to stagnant pools of water to drink before disappearing behind the walls of those massive fortresses. We avoided their suspicious glances. Like Lurang and Jihan-zeb, they were all armed with assault rifles. I watched enviously as two Afridi boys hauled up a bucketful of water from a well. Sensing my thoughts, Wakhil tapped me on the shoulder, clucked his tongue, and shook his head at me. Instead, the four of us rested by the muddy bank of a pool after the Afridi shepherds had gone. Lumps of animal dung floated in the water; Wakhil, Lurang, and Jihan-zeb drank heartily. I filled my canteen and dropped an iodine pellet inside when the others weren’t looking. According to the instructions, I had to wait twenty minutes before drinking. Lurangjerked my shoulder with an open palm, gesturing to me to slurp directly from the pool, as he did. When I politely refused, he turned his head away in disgust, as though there were no hope for me. As night fell and guns began going off in the distance, we started walking again. I couldn’t believe that the hike through Tirah Bazaar had been much different for Alexander’s soldiers over 2,300 years ago.
An hour later, in pitch darkness, we reached our first c
haikanah, a mice-ridden wooden platform with benches and jute beds where tea and biscuits were sold. A boy of about nine poured the syrupy-sweet green tea into ceramic cups on a rush mat. I had a pounding headache from thirst. Carefully, I gripped the cup’s rim but it was still too hot for me to hold. I was so thirsty that I got down on my stomach and tried sipping the tea with my chin resting on the ground, but it was so hot I jerked back in pain. Almost in tears, I waited the long minutes for the tea to cool just enough to slurp it, scalding my tongue, until the boy refilled the cup. The biscuits were stale and dry. They must have been in their wrappers for years in the hot sun. After a few cups of tea I felt better and could enjoy the pleasant breezes and feeling of absolute peace and silence that overtook me, despite the echoing pop of rifles coming from over the border — not far away now, I hoped.
“We will spend the night near here and cross into Afghanistan in the morning,” said Wakhil.
The tea boy led us to an Afridi fort a few hundred yards away. Wakhil explained that this particular Afridi family was of a clan that had a truce with Khalis’s mujahidin, who were allowed to stay with them while passing through the valley. So the fact that we had interrupted our journey at this point was no accident.
Inside the mud brick walls of the fort was a dirt courtyard with rooms off to the side. Along the inner wall, jute beds and brass water pipes were set out. My mouth was choked with dirt and dust.
“Salaam aleikum” shouted the dark, turbaned Afridi elders, who gripped each of us hard and took my gear off to a corner by the wall. They told us to sit on the jute beds and cross-examined us. Lurang and Jihan-zeb knew these men from previous trips. There was a distinct air of tense, exaggerated friendliness, in the way enemies and rivals in all cultures compensate for their hostility when meeting face to face. One of the Afridis, an obese fellow who never stopped coughing, spitting, and blowing snot out of his nostrils with two bare fingers, kept harassing me with the only English phrase he knew, which he bellowed over and over again: “How dooo you dooo! How dooo you dooo!” I was too tired and dirty to appreciate his awkward attempts at amicability, though, and I just nodded back at him with a forced smile. Before leaving Peshawar I had promised myself that no matter how physically awful I might feel during the journey, I would try my best never to act irritable in front of the mujahidin. This man gave me my first challenge.
Someone unfurled a large carpet in the middle of the courtyard, sending up small clouds of dirt. It might have been a cheap machine-made rug bought in Peshawar or Landi Kotal, but in the gas-lit darkness, surrounded by all the dismal earthen shades of dust, dried mud, and dung, it seemed magnificent. Round loaves of flat bread were thrown down, and a boy came around with a brass pitcher and bowl so we could wash our hands before eating. I’ll never forget the damp, mildewy reek of the towel he gave me. It must have been wiped by hundreds of pairs of hands since it was last washed. We turned up our palms toward the starscape, moved them down over our faces in unison, and said “Allahu akbar,” thanking God for the meal we were about to eat.
Except for a bowl of shriveled, overdone fried eggs swimming in thick oil, there was nothing on any of the plates that I could identify: no meat, chicken, or curd even. All the other bowls contained only oil and grease of differing shades of brown and green into which everyone dipped their bread. After green tea was poured from a blackened kettle, everyone said prayers again and the plates and carpet were quickly removed from the ground. One of our hosts filled a water pipe for the men to smoke while lying on the jute beds. There was a sweet, acrid odor to the tobacco; perhaps it had a trace of hashish in it. Wakhil, Jihan-zeb, and Lurang took only one or two puffs and then declined to smoke more. The Afridis then withdrew naswar from their shirt pockets — a potent Afghan chewing tobacco laced with opium and other stimulants. Several months later I tried some. One pill-sized ball placed along my gums was enough to make me dizzy and nauseated five minutes later. I never used it again.
The moon rose over the mud walls of the fort and shone into the courtyard like a searchlight, disturbing my sleep. Finally, I drifted off to the sound of distant gunfire, wild barking dogs, and Afridis coughing up and spitting the tobacco a few inches away from my head.
“Afridis bad people, very dirty people,” Wakhil muttered while washing his feet, before saying his last prayers of the day.
The relationship between the mujahidin and their Pathan cousins the Afridis was full of so many layers of intrigue and games played within games that at times it seemed that every commander and malik (tribal headman) had his own foreign policy with regard to KhAD, the KGB, and the Pakistani intelligence service. Truces were so short-lived and based on such a degree of subtlety that each new fact or insight I gained seemed to contradict much of what I had heard before. After a while I gave up and realized that this whole tribal system I was studying was just what the dictionaries called anarchy.
To begin with, the Afridis are divided into eight separate clans, or khels. One clan, the Adam Khel Afridis, controls the weapons market at Darra. Another, the Kuki Khel Afridis living in the Valley of Tirah Bazaar, had made pacts with Na-jib’s Communist regime in Kabul, hence the danger of transporting an American journalist through their area (though it was yet another, rival clan who had put us up for the night).
The pro-Communist Kuki Khel Afridis were led by Malik Wali Khan Kuki Khel, a man in his fifties with a dour expression stamped permanently on his face. I met him once briefly in Peshawar. When I asked him about accusations concerning the kidnapping of Khalis mujahidin by the Kuki Khel in the Bazaar Valley, Wali Khan Kuki Khel gave me a syrupy smile and said that such acts were rare and those responsible had had their houses burned down as punishment. Abdul Haq and his brother Abdul Qadir claimed that this was nonsense and that the malik was a liar.
“Kuki Khel people — stupid people,” Abdul Qadir had said. “Wali Khan is a stupid man. He has the face of a rat coming out of mud. He is an agent of KhAD and KGB.”
Qadir himself had the delicate, distinguished features of a Dürer portrait, enhanced by white sideburns and a fine gray beard. His eyes glowed with an intelligence that reminded me of a Talmudic scholar. But when it came to Afridis or other Pathans who had sided with the Soviets, every trace of humanity left him.
“In 1986, Kuki Khel people in Maidan Valley get nine hundred guns from Najib in Kabul,” Qadir had told me. “They make trouble for mujahidin and mule caravans bringing supplies into Afghanistan. So I say to Wali Khan Kuki Khel, ‘If you want to make trouble, I have artillery on this mountain and that. Mujahidin there will blow up your houses and your mosques and your schools.’ So we bomb some houses of Kuki Khel and then there is no more trouble for our mujahidin passing through this valley. Kuki Khel become very easily afraid.” Qadir sneered and spat a gob oinaswar on the ground.
Though the Kuki Khel dominated the Valley of Tirah Bazaar, a family of Zakha Khel Afridis had been providing us with hospitality in the fort. The Zakha Khel were the most populous of all the Afridi clans, and their leader, Malik Nadar Khan Zakha Khel, was a colorful character whom I visited in his Peshawar and Landi Kotal homes. Nadar Khan Zakha Khel maintained a tenuous, on-again-off-again truce with the mujahidin. And because I wasn’t sure what Qadir’s attitude would be to my interviewing the Afridi leader, I kept my meetings with Nadar Khan a secret from all the mujahidin. It turned out to be a wise idea, I thought while lying on the bed in the Afridi fort.
Though Nadar Khan had a veritable palace in Landi Kotal, when in Peshawar — where he held court several times a week — he deliberately projected a relatively humble image in order to keep the respect of his tribesmen in the city, all of whom were very poor. His house was down a narrow alley with an open sewer in Peshawar’s old quarter. In the early morning, as many as a hundred Afridis would wait in a dim, dirty anteroom to pay their respects. Plainclothes Pakistani police loitered there too, casting an eye on every person who went into the malik’s chambers; Nadar Khan’s name was often mentioned in conne
ction with all sorts of unsavory dealings on the Northwest Frontier. Outside his room stood four Afridi bodyguards with bandoleers and Kalashnikov rifles.
Nadar Khan was sitting on a soiled, unmade bed with a towel around his neck when I entered his air-conditioned room. On the table beside him was a half-eaten dinner, including a vat of sweets being devoured by flies. He didn’t seem bothered by the intrusion, however. “Salaam aleikum” he called to me, raising his thick black eyebrows with a lively smile. He was wearing a white shalwar kameez and yellow vest, and playing with prayer beads. I was struck by his impressive turban and kullah resting on a shelf next to a plastic, heart-shaped sign with gold lettering that said in English, “God Bless Our Home.” A Western-style suit hung from a nail on the wall. On the floor in the corner was a cheap cardboard suitcase with a First Class sticker on it. In the eyes of his tribesmen in the anteroom, such objects implied a certain wealth and sophistication.
Nadar Khan had the dark skin and lilting, clicking accent of a Punjabi. He spoke passable English and was pleased to tell his life story to a foreign journalist. I was trying to cultivate Nadar Khan. This leader of eighty thousand Zakha Khel Afridis was a useful man to know: his word and written orders carried more weight in the Khyber Tribal Agency than those of the Pakistani authorities. When you traveled up the Khyber Pass in a vehicle owned by Nadar Khan, nobody questioned your permit, and the police just waved you on at the checkpoints.
To hear Nadar Khan tell it, he was an Afghan patriot who supported the mujahidin without restraint but who nevertheless, on account of his great political skill, was able to maintain cordial relations with the Communist regime in Kabul at the same time. Nadar Khan had lived nearly half of his fifty-nine years in Afghanistan and the rest of them in Pakistan, and he saw himself as the ultimate go-between, loyal to all sides without betraying anyone’s confidence. Among the many gifts in his palatial fortress in Landi Kotal was a 9 mm nickel-plated Makarov pistol given to him by Najib when the latter was head of KhAD and a Belgian 7.62 mm rifle with a gold-plated inscription from “General Zia ul-Haq, President of Pakistan.”
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