In the Land of Giants

by Gabi Martinez

  In the days that followed, Claire witnessed Shamsur and Ainullah’s affectionate obedience towards Jordi. They were knight, apprentice, and squire, the boys always behind him, never up at the same level. Claire thought that in the west this relationship might have seemed rather archaic, but it worked well in Pakistan. Shamsur and Ainullah got along like brothers, and Jordi undoubtedly took comfort in the role of boss and mentor. After all, Jordi had not only read Camus, but he had believed it, and wasn’t it Camus who had written that thing about how ‘Every man needs slaves just as he needs fresh air. Giving orders is like breathing, you must agree? And even the most abject man manages to breathe. The lowest on the social ladder still has his wife or child. If he’s unmarried, a dog. The main thing, when it comes down to it, is to be able to lose one’s temper when the other can’t answer back. … Power settles everything’?

  ‘My word, I see you’ve shaved to come and fetch us!’ said Claire.

  ‘Looking good, aren’t I?’

  ‘With a cutthroat blade, in the old style like the trappers?’

  ‘No, no. I have a little electric thing, darling. I like the mountains because I like living as well as possible, and anywhere you can plug in an electric razor …’

  In Sharakat, Jordi granted Claire the privilege of seeing his bedroom. As he opened the door, he wanted to confess to her the esteem he felt for her. Hunting trophies, among them several markhor horns, daggers, knives, swords, artisan pipes, a fan, and ancient sculptures, tools, fabrics, paintings of reptiles, of birds, and pieces of Nuristani furniture … all were presided over by the huge Valencian flag hanging on the wall above the bed. Also, in this unit it was possible to see a photo of his parents and grandparents. He was the only one of the Magraner siblings with a picture of his elders in his bedroom.

  Claire wondered why he had marked her out by taking her into his sanctuary. Like Cat, like Fjord, like Ainullah, Claire has a peculiar and memorable biography. Her father was an artist, oscillating between drawing and painting and sculpture. Her mother worked with architects. Claire always thought them both very original, out of the ordinary. Her father brought her up with an insistence that how other people look at you doesn’t matter. That was the rule. What other people think doesn’t matter. They taught her to love nature, to be practical, and she took on their guidance with some seriousness, becoming in her youth a prodigy of concentration: she learned to isolate herself to drive her plans forward. Until the moment when — and not quite sure how this happened — she succumbed to a kind of competitiveness, she started to fire off articles to satisfy a hyper-productive system that was always asking for more … and which sucked her in.

  One day she stepped on the brake. I can’t go on like this. She began to convince herself that she ought to be enjoying other things, and she found a way to do it. Today, in her little corner at the very last room of the Institute of Human Palaeontology in Paris, surrounded by skulls, rocks, tibias, and dozens of fossils that only look like they’re in a state of disorder, Claire works in dim lighting under the shelter of a quotation in Chinese characters that she has behind her: ‘The only true victory is a victory over oneself.’

  Be that as it may, none of these things makes Claire particularly exceptional. Nor does the fact that she has gone from doing karate to aikido, a martial art based on avoiding blows, without offering them. No. Her secret, which really does mark her out and which made her even more fascinating in Jordi’s eyes, was to do with sex.

  ‘Until I was forty-eight I was never in a relationship, and I didn’t need sex,’ Claire told me in Paris. ‘Until that age, I’d had two sexual encounters, and one of them was with the guy who is now my partner. I never felt any need for it, so there was never a question of having to control myself. I didn’t think about it. I just wanted to be on my own.’

  Jordi possessed a large repertoire of weird stories. Since he talked about everything so amusingly, a lot of people told him their own stories about love, and also about sex, and he was always ready to repeat sexual anecdotes he’d heard here or there, though he himself proved impenetrable when it came to revealing his own inclinations. In any case, Claire’s story attracted him because it completely connected with a belief that at least in theory he had himself defended in public: sex is not a priority; it can be kept under control. To the extent of remaining a virgin? Who knows. There was no way he was going to give anything away about his own sexual entanglements. The truth was, it was strange for nobody to know about any amorous adventures on his part. A common friend claimed that Jordi reminded him of Saint Bernard, the founder of the Cistercian order: a very handsome man, with great energy that he focused on his faith and his works, and with a mystical side that was very developed, very pure. Saint Bernard had died young. After all, why couldn’t Jordi be a virgin?

  On 12 July, when the French and Brazilian national teams were warming up just minutes before playing in the football World Cup final, night was falling in Pakistan, and the Kalash were partying. Claire and Jordi had spent the day planning their imminent expedition, and it was time to relax. Sitting on the grass watching the men dancing, Jordi looked at his friend out of the corner of his eye. What a good connection they’d made. They had shared a lot of time together, they enjoyed almost the same things, and, what was best, Claire was a good listener.

  Stéphane, Agnès, and Shamsur soon left the dancing to go watch the match.

  ‘You coming, Claire?’

  ‘No, I’m not really that into football.’

  Claire stayed behind with Jordi among the men who were drinking and smoking hashish. At a certain moment, a group of Kalash women gathered around the men, who wielded bicycle brakes and started to beat oilcans transformed into drums while everybody sang and howled. Then the intensity diminished until it was only a background of drums and a sweet female chorus. An elderly man raised his voice. In his speech, he praised some of the inhabitants of the valleys and one of them was Jordi.

  ‘Claire!’ Jordi said. ‘Claire! He said my name!’

  Jordi had just received a public tribute from the Kalash. Intoxicated by many things, that moment was a high point in his life.

  ‘He said my name!’ he repeated again and again while the drums thumped mutedly and the speaker went on with his speech and the women sang in a whisper.

  When the dancing resumed, Claire livened up, her shalwar-kameez fluttering harmoniously among the fabrics of the smiling, devoted countryfolk. Jordi seemed to be floating on air.

  When the party ended, the match was still going. France won. She was the World Champion. Stéphane didn’t budge; he wanted to see the bleus raising the cup. On the TV, the French people were hugging, crying. Jordi stopped in front of the screen and watched the unbridled joy in the country he had adopted, the place where he had grown up and where his family lived. For once, he felt close, sharing something with France that was truly memorable: victory.

  Two days later, they headed off into the mountains.

  They passed shepherds and opium traffickers; they ate a goat’s kid dismembered by Jordi with butchers’ knives; they contemplated mountains of pebbles and glaciers that Claire had only seen in books; they were received by the Shah of Khadzé; they passed Ismaili mausoleums and tombs close to a tributary of the Amu Darya; and they chatted with members of an N.G.O. that specialised in detoxing opium-smokers.

  Before returning to Europe, as they spent their last days in the house of the Shah of Zebak, Stéphane’s white hair aroused expressions of amazement from a number of Afghans. He was twenty-nine years old, but his hair was as white as the elders’.

  ‘By the way, today is my birthday,’ said Claire.

  They greeted her effusively, and the Shah gave everybody gifts of lapis lazuli. Jordi leaned in towards his friend’s ear: ‘Don’t think I’d forgotten: I’ve got your present in Bumburet. August the 2nd is a red-letter day for me.’

  XXXIV

  T
HE noun freak refers to abnormal phenomena while also indicating a very particular type of ‘monster’. Years ago it was used for people who had a physical deformity or anomaly and who would be exhibited in circuses. Bearded women, elephant men, giants … they were the freaks. As the years have gone by, the word has come to be also identified with people who are considered ‘outlandish, especially for having an extreme or unusual obsession with some concrete subject, on which they are specialists’ (Wikipedia). This gave birth to a more particular Spanish word, which has become popular: friki, meaning ‘geek’.

  Frikis are characterised by not yet being accepted or well regarded by society. Their tastes are usually considered childish, immature and unsuited to their age. This is frequently related to the development and demonstration of the imagination, creativity and intelligence and does not necessarily have anything to do with the individual’s level of socio-economic development, since these inclinations can be experienced in very different ways and depend on each individual. (Wikipedia)

  Bernard Heuvelmans, father of the crypto-zoologist, is a friki by definition. Heuvelmans had a good friend, a strip cartoonist, who in 1958 was going through a serious personal crisis, whose name was Georges Prosper Remi, but who was better known as Hergé. One day the two men arranged to meet, to talk not about their problems but about the yeti, because Hergé wanted to develop a new adventure for his comic book character Tintin. Heuvelmans advised him about the man of the snows, and Hergé set about creating him.

  In Tintin in Tibet, Hergé reduces the number of characters to three: Captain Haddock, Tintin, and Tharkey the Sherpa. He has no other books with so few characters. They set off in search of Chang Chong-Chen, a friend of Tintin’s. In this album, Hergé surrenders to the great forests and the vast white spaces — white being the colour that filled his constant nightmares. On concluding the work, the author thinks: This is my greatest adventure. My favourite. Soon afterwards, the nightmares dissipate and he gets a divorce from Germaine, from whom he had separated fifteen years earlier.

  When talking about Jordi Magraner and his adventure, a fair number of people use the word friki, though there are also many people who see him as related to Tintin.

  Franck Charton: His sophisticated team was made up of one scientist, one hunter, one Tintin in Central Asia.

  Maurice Lévêque (former director-general of the Alliance Française in Pakistan): When I met him in Islamabad, he reminded me of Tintin.

  Jean-Paul Thomas (naturalist): He was a kind of Tintin, a romantic impelled by the elation of the adventurer moving about in extraordinary conditions. A perpetual adolescent.

  It has frequently been said of Tintin, pejoratively, that he was a friki and homosexual. That is a matter of debate. What is beyond doubt is that Tintin is one of our giants.

  XXXV

  BETWEEN July and August 1998, the Taliban offensive forced the A.M.I. to pull its staff out of Kabul. Like all the other humanitarian teams, the air workers withdrew to the base at Peshawar.

  Yves Bourny, the head of the A.M.I. in Pakistan, held several consecutive meetings with Gyuri Fritsche and other aid workers, hoping to ascertain where they ought to be focusing their efforts. The Afghan corridors were blocked by the war, and furthermore, the Kosovo crisis had necessitated the transfer of a large amount of the A.M.I.’s materials and personnel to Europe, leaving the Pakistani delegation pared to the bone.

  ‘We ought to open Pakistan up. Help the areas here where the most refugees are gathering,’ argued Bourny.

  Jordi was following developments, but he was still on the fringes of the discussion about humanitarian aid when he came into the A.M.I. offices to present Bourny with his plan: a medical project in the Kalash valleys.

  ‘… and of course achieving results will also require economic development, that’s vital,’ said Jordi. ‘Growing vineyards, for example. The wine made by the Kalash in the traditional manner is a part of their culture, and a lot of Pakistanis come to them in order to enjoy this cheap wine. Because, as you already know, the Muslims do drink, of course. And boy do they drink, some of them! So the wine will bring them money, and …’

  Yves Bourny listened to Jordi’s well-ordered and passionate argument, which conveyed the ideas he had been incubating for months and which he had captured in the report he was now reciting.

  Plans for the Kalash:

  Improve health conditions in the bashalis.

  Construct maternity hospitals (x2) for hygiene, to reduce mortality.

  Install latrines and septic tanks inside homes.

  Develop natural and local medicines (homeopathy …) through a European pharmaceutical firm that will study local plants.

  Train women teachers.

  Develop pedagogical materials.

  Make the population better informed.

  Gyuri couldn’t quite see it. Bourny was pensive. This Jordi was an odd character, always getting excited about strange things — including the barmanu, no less. But it was true that whenever they had talked, they’d been impressed by how well this curious creature knew the province. Nobody they met had a better grasp of the region than him. Nobody.

  ‘Let us think about it, and we’ll talk again soon,’ the head of the mission replied.

  Jordi spent those days visiting a few expat colleagues to bring them up to speed with his new project, buoyed up with hope from the good vibes he had got from Bourny. During one of the frequent parties of the expatriate community, he noticed an attractive girl with short hair who, like him, had been invited. He had already seen her on odd days at the A.M.I., where she worked as administrator. Marie Odile had noticed him, too. How could you not notice that little man with the big blue eyes? He was all nerves, and he didn’t stop talking. He explained a bit about the barmanu, but mainly he talked about the Kalash, as though he were their representative or it was his job to defend them.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Jordi asked Marie Odile.

  ‘The same as you, I guess. Drinking, having fun …’

  Jordi closed his eyes melodramatically. He tried again.

  ‘I mean in Pakistan.’

  ‘I don’t know … I wanted to work outside France. I wanted to get out of there. I did a one-year training, the A.M.I. gave me an offer to come here … I don’t think they had all that many candidates, so the whole thing happened quickly.’

  ‘And so you wind up in Pakistan. That’s quite a debut.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem like such a difficult country.’

  ‘Ooh, aren’t you brave! So, wait, to get out of France they taught you administration?’

  ‘Well, I also learned to assemble radios, to handle medical emergencies … I can even purify water — just imagine.’

  ‘You know how to assemble radios?’

  ‘You think that’s so weird?’

  They hit it off at once.

  While far from stunning, Marie Odile does possess a certain delicate grace. That night, she was wearing a discreet outfit with bright motifs that stamped a certain sense of free-spiritedness onto her seductive air of an all-terrain princess. Nowadays Marie Odile’s features are very nearly becoming hard, but have retained just enough softness. She lives in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, near Little Chicago, where you can see the sober course of the Seine upset by brawling. It’s a difficult neighbourhood. Marie Odile is studying to be a teacher of Qi Gong, a martial art whose aim is to dodge blows and which does so without any attacking — entirely different, of course, from the style demonstrated by Jordi in the fight that he would have over her some months later.

  ‘Gyuri will travel to the Kalash valleys with you to get to know the territory and to evaluate the possibilities of developing your plan,’ said Bourny.

  Superb. Just as well the humanitarians were waking up, though for them to really get involved he now had to persuade that cocky Dutchman who had made him shut up t
he moment they first met. In their subsequent meetings, the Dutchman had gone down with him somewhat better, but he would often find him peering at him as though he were an insect — which was why, whenever he saw him, Jordi thought of owls.

  Before leaving, Jordi bought a few recent publications about Pashtuns and pagans from Peshawar’s English bookshop. He needed to get himself up to date; he mustn’t miss a thing. They travelled to Chitral by jeep, the Lowari Pass not yet blocked by the snow. At first, he preferred to talk to the owl as little as possible, but Gyuri insisted, he drew him out, and so Jordi immersed himself in the conversation, and, against all expectations, he liked him at once. Gyuri was Dutch, but he also spoke Spanish, having studied it for five years and worked nine months in South America. He lived with his family in Peshawar.

  ‘Two children, and your wife’s pregnant again — it’s not bad for this day and age,’ replied Jordi. The jeep was zigzagging along the appalling highway, skirting around craters in the road.

  ‘What about you?’ asked Gyuri.

  ‘My family’s in France.’

  Gyuri had his suspicions about Jordi’s sexual orientation. He’d heard so many rumours … he had to ask him.

  ‘And some girl?’

  Why did people need to ask him these things? Why did people immediately ask about a family, about a girlfriend? Whatever happened to modesty? Fuck.

  ‘There was one,’ replied Jordi, looking at the new precipice that opened up at the next curve. ‘But we were in a car accident, and she died. That was why I started travelling.’

  ‘Oh, man …’