‘Right: exploration.’
‘Yes, a prehistoric exploration. She wasn’t going to say that we were coming for the barmanu. Nobody was going to pay money to hunt for monsters.’
The group had got into the jeep. Jordi put the key in the ignition, and they left the small forecourt that served as a car park.
‘And what about you, why have you come?’ Jordi asked, with the most cursory glance at his co-pilot. Claire’s hair twisted with the speed.
‘Oh, I’m all about the explorations, me,’ she said so seriously that they both smiled.
Some hours later, Claire wrote in her diary that she was readying herself to follow in the footsteps of the last hunter-gatherers of Central Asia.
Jordi was excited to see her. He really did like Claire, and at the same time, although the budget of the mission was some 15 per cent lower than that of ’96, the shower of rupees was going to help him ride out the summer.
‘This is what we’re going to need,’ he said to Claire, holding out a sheet of paper.
Jordi had slightly inflated a few expenses with the aim of putting the difference towards covering some debts. Claire checked over the calculations.
‘This is going to end up more expensive than we’d expected. There are more outlays here, and they’re more expensive than predicted.’
‘The standard of living is also going up here. In any case, it’s not as bad as all that. If you lot hadn’t cut down the size of the party aimed for the mission … but no problem, I’m storing quite a lot of tools in the garage of Khalil and Shamsur’s parents, and all that is going to be free.’
They spent the following morning in the garage selecting what was necessary, with half of Shekhanandeh watching them.
‘And another thing: we don’t have the permits to travel around the region,’ said Jordi when the selected material had been loaded onto the jeep. ‘I’ve asked them a thousand times, and there’s no way to get them to give them to me. But don’t worry, that kind of thing sometimes happens here; the tourist visas will be enough.’
They set off with four horses, the dogs — Fjord and his daughter, Taïga — and Jordi at the wheel of a jeep with a new engine. In Ayun they put the horses onto a truck to transport them up to the mountain paths, from where they would undertake their expedition without vehicles.
They walked for hours without eating, and when they found a victualing place it could only offer them water, so they ate their way through the reserve supplies of tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons.
Sometimes Jordi would mutter the words of an old Arab soldiers’ song that said, ‘Are we properly fed? No! Are we seeing the world? Yes!’
Claire enjoyed watching the trotting figure of Fjord, his silhouette. As soon as she could do it, she was going to clean his ears, which were unusually full of wax. From time to time, the horsemen would ride off, so that the rush of air would relieve some of the heat, and they and their animals would dissolve away until they made up just another part of the landscape. There was nothing to think about, nothing ahead of them but land.
And if at any moment Jordi himself abandoned that inertia, he was something to behold, magnificent in the saddle, taut and strong, fully aware of the wonder of having a body. He almost wanted to sweat in order to feel the coolness of the drops slipping down. At nightfall, the experiences of the day seemed almost sacred to them.
After two days, the horses had the joints of their feet swollen, and abrasions on the hooves. One of them was limping noticeably. Jordi devoted an entire day to treating them. He rubbed the lame horse with a piece of cotton soaked in boiled oil with salt, and by the time the sun set, the animal was able to put its hoof down firmly.
One day, after an illegal border-crossing at Lasht, when they’d taken advantage of the lack of guards at the sentry-house, a couple of Chitral Scouts rode up to them.
‘What do we say if they ask us for our permits?’ asked Claire.
Jordi didn’t answer, but he was prepared: he would list every one of the Pakistani politicians and professors he trusted, so that the soldiers would allow them to continue with their journey. And if necessary, he would drop the name of the colonel of that military detachment, Javeed Kamal, with whom he got on very well. The soldiers greeted them with a nod, and one of their horses reared up.
‘Hello,’ said the one in the better-ironed uniform. ‘We were about to start a polo match, and we could really use a couple of players. If either of you fancies it …’
Ainullah and Jordi mounted their best horses and enjoyed a happy afternoon, though Jordi settled for watching the ball go by. He enjoyed riding, but he wasn’t a good rider, nor would he ever have been able to compete with those specialists, so this lack didn’t bother him. It was a matter of sharing a high-speed chase in that mythic setting, feeling the breath of the wind, knowing what a privilege it was. At the reins of his galloping horse, he felt as though the magnificent experience of living in the mountains were somehow being ratified at last.
At night, Jordi described how in Pakistan a lot of people play polo on donkeys, he recalled anecdotes about the game, and recounted a story he had heard from the mouth of his hotelier friend Babu.
‘In a polo match, horses reach considerable speeds. You need much more skill for this sport than a lot of people think. Babu’s brother died during a game. His horse crashed into an opponent’s, and all four were killed — the riders and the horses.’
Uncertain noises could be clearly heard coming from the mountains. Jordi wanted to add some seriousness; he loved to relish such moments, and what else could he do?
‘Horses are a part of these men,’ he said. ‘They teach us something new every day.’
On 3 July, the expedition’s horses got stuck in a muddy swamp. One of them remained quite still, making no efforts to get out.
‘That’s typical of herbivores,’ said Jordi. ‘They aren’t fighters, they won’t put up a struggle to save their skin. They’ve made it pretty easy for the predators.’
In any case, they were able to save it.
In the days that followed, while Claire discovered huts of Neolithic origin and dried stream-beds where quartzite was accumulating, Ainullah practised shooting a carbine. In this way he killed a marmot, which they divided up between them to eat. They dined with a view of the glaciers. Taïga, one of the dogs, broke the spine of a lamb, which also fed them. Occasionally a landowner would ask them for money to cross his land. They travelled through vast prairies, frozen mountains, edenic lakes. They only rarely paid to walk. Jordi drove off one of those tax-collectors, brandishing his well-sharpened Muela knife, and as they saw him disappear into the distance, he said: ‘Who did that kinglet think he was? As though this could belong to one man.’
On 12 July, the group prepared themselves to cross a river that was blackened by a saturation of shale and limestone. The nearby bridge could only bear the bulk of the humans, and so Ainullah tested out the riverbed. The river was flowing down at a rush, but they had been through worse, and the animals’ necks would be far enough out of the water. The boy tied a rope to the tail of a horse, and spurred it forward.
It was a grey, ugly beast that Jordi had bought a year earlier, a rebellious animal with uncommon energy. He reached the far bank. Jordi tied the rope to the tail of the second horse. As it stepped in, the water became suddenly rough. The creature was sometimes completely submerged under the black waves, making it disappear for a few moments. Perhaps because of the swelling in its backbone, or because of the fever it had woken with that morning, or because of its herbivorous nature, the horse gave up the struggle.
The expeditioners began to drag it up by the rope back onto the land, as the water poured out of its nostrils, pop-eyed. They gritted their teeth, their hands bleeding. Jordi pulled harder than anyone — he was the strongest, he had hired that horse, losing it was going to cost him a fortune — and when he understood th
at they were dragging a dead weight, he pulled harder still. As they rested the animal on the ground, Jordi threw himself over the body, leaned over its chest, and at a measured rhythm carried out a cardiac massage with blows from his knees. The creature expelled some water, but didn’t react. Jordi grabbed its muzzle in both hands, breathed in, and gave it mouth-to-mouth via the nostrils. Claire hit the thoracic cavity hard after each mouthful of air. It died.
‘Brutal, isn’t it, Claire?’ muttered young Alexandre, engrossed by the sight of the corpse.
‘It was interesting,’ replied the scientist. ‘Strange. That’s life.’
While Jordi cut the animal’s tail in silence, Ainullah was blaming himself for having sent it into the river, underestimating how sick it was. Between them all, they tried to console him.
‘It’s nothing. Come on, let’s keep moving,’ Jordi said later, pulling taut the reins of a living horse as he thought of the nineteen thousand rupees he would have to pay to the owner of the dead one. What was more, he was in a hurry to get back to the city — he needed to renew his visa, which was just about to expire.
‘Come on, let’s go!’
In Chitral, the temperature was higher still, and both Jordi and Fjord suffered a physical collapse. The Malamute got sick from the heat again. It was horrible, that powerlessness, enough to make you despair. Why were they so bad at tolerating high temperatures? He settled close to the dog in the coolest part of the house to recover his strength, studying the progress of his weakness, how vulnerable he was under these circumstances. How would he react if someone were to harass him during one of his collapses? Then he looked at Fjord. What a dog. Their bond had led to their falling ill together. He felt the dog was a part of him.
He heard voices at the front door, then Claire’s voice calling out to him.
‘Jordi! They’re asking for you.’
He inhaled a big mouthful of air, and got to his feet. He walked slowly over to the threshold, and recognised the young Pashtun lad waiting for him.
‘What do you want?’ he asked in the middle of the living room.
‘Major Zahïd wants to see you,’ he said.
‘Who’s Major Zahïd?’ asked Claire.
‘The head of the secret police,’ replied the boy.
‘The Gestapo,’ added Jordi, barely audible. And addressing the emissary: ‘Tell him I haven’t got time today — I’ll go some other day.’
If Zahïd thought his orders, threats, and pressure were going to get him anywhere, he had another think coming. Jordi turned his back on the kid and, aching and proud, retreated in search of some cool. He wanted to laugh at his haughtiness in such circumstances, but he no longer had the strength. Whatever did that uniformed vulture think? Did he believe Jordi was going to respond to his calls like a dog? I’m not afraid of you, Zahïd. Let that be absolutely clear. He acknowledged that when he was put under certain pressures it triggered a response that was really on the very fringes of what was reasonable, but the truth was that those seemingly mad impulses continued to be of use to him, marking out his space and getting himself respected, including by the authorities.
The young man left.
‘What could he want?’ asked Claire.
Jordi shrugged. There was no way to shake off that damn bloodhound who was intent on blaming him for who knew what. Zahïd had not given up tracking Jordi, despite that conciliatory gesture of giving him the tip-off for the barmanu.
They let a day go by. Jordi made the most of it to make the faintest recovery, and the following day he and his friend showed up at Zahïd’s office. Claire thought the policeman quite young, friendly, hospitable.
‘Weren’t you people interested in tracking down the barmanu?’ he asked from his seat behind the desk. ‘So why would you now be working on archaeological missions for which you don’t have a permit?’
When Claire gave some scientific justification for her interest, Zahïd sent them to the upper floor to talk to the police superintendent. Jordi climbed the stairs, cursing.
‘Don’t talk so much, it’ll tire you out more quickly,’ said Claire. Save yourself for when it’s really necessary.’
The superintendent was standing waiting for them, his buttocks leaning against the edge of his desk. He was holding, by the tips of two fingers, a piece of paper forbidding Jordi and Claire’s team from undertaking any exploration in the territory, due to their not having the necessary documentation and not being accompanied by a single official Pakistani representative.
‘Sir,’ said Jordi, trying hard to articulate his words clearly, and endowing his voice with a solemnness and strength that masked his weakness, ‘you know as well as I do that what we’re doing here is serious work, trying not to bother the inhabitants of the mountains, and …’
‘Have you studied agriculture?’ There was an interruption from the superintendent, who, while Jordi was speaking, had been leafing through reports on the foreigners he had before him.
‘Yes.’
‘What speciality?’
‘Food and agriculture.’
‘No way!’ the superintendent spread his arms into a cross that ended with handfuls of bits of paper. ‘Just like me!’
He dropped the papers onto the table any old how, turned towards a chair, and invited them to sit. Which was just as well, as Jordi was getting dizzy. They spent most of the time talking pleasantly about their studies and universities until, in the final stage, the superintendent chided them for not completing the permits.
‘We’re going to let it pass this time — we’ll treat it as an accident. But if it happens again, you’ll pay the consequences.’
As they left the office building, Jordi was fuming. ‘It’s not possible that while co-operating nicely with Pakistan we should be treated like outlaws. Claire, you ought to send a letter of complaint to the people in charge here, copying the French ambassador. Right from the start, this co-operation has been nothing but trouble.’
The following day, while Jordi was travelling to Islamabad to renew his visa, Khalil told Claire how the police had been harassing him in the preceding weeks.
‘While you were travelling, they asked me questions about Jordi — they wanted to know his passport number, and they accused me of having him as a friend and sheltering him. I said to them that until I was told in writing that I was forbidden from putting up foreigners, I would keep seeing him. “We’ll fire you if you go on like this,” they told me. “Say goodbye to your job.”’
Claire was beginning to comprehend the delicate position in which Jordi found himself — Jordi, who was deaf or oblivious to the threats from his surroundings, who just kept on doing his thing, getting involved in causes that were ever more generous and high-risk. And she conveyed this uneasiness to her diary:
Until now, Jordi has never known the police. Now he’s got them on his heels. In any case, the thing is, the Pakistanis don’t like the French because of their support for Massoud.
On 2 August, they commemorated Claire’s birthday. On the 4th, they slept in Peshawar. On the eve of her return to France, Claire awoke around three in the morning, and found her host also up. He was going over the expenses of the trip, which had been budgeted at 11,926 francs. They talked about the future, about survival, and about how Jordi planned to ‘rescue’ the Kalash.
‘If I can just get enough money …’
When Claire opened the most secret fold of her purse, she remembered that a couple of months earlier her father had handed her two hundred francs, saying: ‘This money is just for you, not for the mission.’
Claire sunk her fingers into that hitherto untouched compartment, took out the notes, and held them out to her friend.
XXXI
Nuristani culture is in mortal danger. Today its only links are to the Kalash […] And the N.G.O.s, perfectly ignorant of this culture, have entrusted their schools to the religious Musli
ms. The schools tend to be transformed into madrasas. This situation does ipso facto exclude girls, and limits the teaching of boys. And even these schools are not very numerous, for two reasons: on the one hand, the majority of the population do not like madrasas; on the other, the classic educational system is not adapted to the mentality of the mountain dwellers nor to their lifestyle, which is regulated by the natural calendar. Besides, the salaries of the teachers are so low, that they prefer to opt for some other source of income to feed their families.
(Report by Jordi Magraner)
MALEK, the schoolmaster, told the children: ‘There are more than three thousand of us, we may be as many as three thousand five hundred, and we grow grapes to produce wine. This wine, our clothing, and the uncovered faces of our women and the fact that we men shave our beards are very important marks of our identity.’
Kasi Khoshnawaz, the elder, stated: ‘We Kalash say that men attain immortality by the memories they leave behind them.’
Janiar Khan, the teacher, said: ‘The markhor is a symbol of fecundity, nobility, good leadership. It is the animal of the mountain spirits.’
And his colleague Mirzamas explained: ‘Guish is another of our gods, the god of the war of the Kafir pantheon.’
The G.E.S.C.H. — the Group for the Study and Safeguarding of the Cultures of the Hindu Kush — was founded by Jordi Magraner in 1998 with the purpose of disseminating the culture of the valleys in the west. With its headquarters at the Magraner family home in Valence, like the Troglodytes Association, its subscriptions would contribute towards paying the fees for four Kalash teachers who, under the name The Storytellers of Tradition, would carry out some work that had never previously been undertaken: teaching Kalash children and young people the history of their ancestors.
‘We need an extra half-salary,’ said Abdul as he came into the garden of the hotel, where Jordi was waiting for him. Abdul had just done his periodic round of reconnaissance. He had visited the schools and supervised the teachers, to whom on that day he was also paying their first wage.
In the Land of Giants Page 18