Music was forbidden in the media, in cars, hotels, rickshaws, and any place that might be considered public. And all the men grew their beards after it was announced that if in a month and a half any man was seen clean-shaven, he would be detained and kept in prison until his beard thickened out.
Playing at doves and larks was banned. And with kites, ‘that keep children away from their education and provoke accidents’. Taking photos, playing drums, sewing, and taking female measurements, all this was forbidden again two decades later, and Jordi kept telling himself these people were crazy, crazy, crazy, as he drove through mesmerising valleys of a beauty that millions of people would never see. Crazy. And gripping the steering wheel hard, he almost laughed as he struggled to control his tears when he remembered that those bastards had also condemned magic. ‘Magicians’ books will be burned and they will be incarcerated until they promise not to do magic again.’
The name of the vice-minister who signed those directives was Maolawi Enayatullah Balagh. It’s a name we should all remember. Maolawi Enayatullah Balagh. It’s a name that makes us worse, more savage. Maolawi Enayatullah Balagh. A motivation to be fierce.
XLI
JORDI saw Attiq in the garden, strode over, and threw a big punch that made the Afghan stagger. Then he was a punching machine, and when Attiq fell to the ground Jordi kicked his body, too, that loathsome sack of shit. All he wanted to do was to destroy him. His knuckles discharged the rage he had accumulated in the two weeks of waiting and the days of driving that had fed his fury and confusion. Each time he planted a fist against flesh or bone, he released years of tension. Attiq got himself together and managed to return a blow. The fight didn’t even itself out, with Jordi connecting with devastating hooks, though there was a bit of an exchange before the A.M.I. staff intervened and separated them.
Attiq left the N.G.O. But that had been a proper fight, a savage one. The members of the A.M.I. feared for Jordi: he’d once again transgressed the codes, he’d done the kind of thing you can’t do to an Afghan without fear of mortal retribution. Because if you’re here, the foreigners wondered, where can you hide?
Jordi started work preparing a new convoy to Panjshir. Together with Ainullah, he had to renegotiate with the Taliban to keep the humanitarian corridor open.
‘I’ve seen too many strange people lately,’ said Ainullah. ‘I think they’re following us. I’ve heard there are C.I.A. agents in the mountains.’
‘Don’t fret about that. And anyway, if someone from the C.I.A. does come here, what can they do? Come on, don’t let your imagination run away with you and start seeing things that aren’t there.’
Jordi’s words did not reassure him. Maybe he was wrong to point the finger at the C.I.A., and maybe the people watching were employed in Pakistani espionage, though this wouldn’t be at all reassuring either — quite the contrary. But there was definitely somebody watching them, that was for sure.
Some days later, on the road that connects Badakshan to Chitral, Jordi and Ainullah were stopped by three men who claimed to be policemen. They wanted to talk to Jordi. Only he got out of the jeep. Ainullah and the driver listened to the questioning, which took place about three metres from the hood of the car. They asked him about everything.
‘What are you transporting? Open the trunk,’ one of the policemen ordered him at last.
‘What business do you have sticking your nose in my stuff?’
‘I said open it. Now.’
‘No.’
The policemen exchanged a look. Jordi cautiously retreated a few steps to Ainullah’s open window and murmured: ‘Don’t worry. Get ready.’
We have two Kalashnikovs and some pistols, thought Ainullah. If Jordi tells us to fire, we’re ready.
Jordi’s men took hold of the weapons, keeping them on their knees. The policemen glanced between Jordi and the occupants of the vehicle, whose hands were out of sight.
‘Very well,’ said the one who had been speaking previously.
With an abrupt movement, he gestured to his companion that they should withdraw. All the same, he walked over towards the jeep till he was just a couple of metres from the window.
‘Ainullah,’ he said. ‘We’ll be seeing you again one day.’
Ainullah was frightened.
‘They won’t do anything to you,’ said Jordi, as the dust from the jeep blurred their view of the patrol car. ‘Take it easy, I’m here with you.’
Ainullah rubbed his faced with both hands. With me? That isn’t enough. Who are we? Who is Jordi to defend me from those butchers? From that moment on, Ainullah was aware that they were right on top of him. Every day, every night, he fantasised about running away, about his own death. The fear that had hitherto been latent emerged to torment him. He was unable to think about anything other than the danger that loomed over him. And really, what was more important than his own life? He asked Jordi to let him return to Afghanistan and stay working there. When they arrived at the A.M.I. offices, he was insistent in his request and asked his boss, please, that he leave Chitral, too.
‘It’s not safe for you, Jordi. They’re against you.’
That was what he said.
Ainullah’s going to leave, thought Jordi. He felt a pang. Strangely painless. Why is it not affecting me? Given how much this lad means to me. Why don’t I feel it? By this time, Jordi faced pain in a different way, any kind of pain or fear, as though rage were steeling him. He wondered how far his immunity would go, what other stab-wounds he would be able to bear. Even physically, he suffered less. Perhaps he was reaching one of those states where the body and the spirit really do merge. That being so, how much could his body take?
Soon afterwards, on an excursion with Marie Odile and several colleagues, the group spent the night in a barracks of the Red Cross. Marie Odile noticed that Jordi had a nasty-looking wound on his thumb, though for him scratches and scars were a common occurrence.
‘You should do something about that,’ she said.
‘Right.’
The following day, Marie Odile discovered that Jordi had cut off that bit of flesh. He hadn’t gone so far as to amputate the finger, but he had cut off a piece, as though it were a rasher of meat.
Living with Jordi was becoming ever more complicated. He was fed up with Panjshir, he just wanted to go back to Chitral now, he could think of nothing else, and even though he sometimes tried to suppress his bad mood, there was just no way. What was he supposed to do? He didn’t know how to pretend, despite being aware that his aggression and his snubs only made things more and more difficult for him every day.
‘Some colleagues have complained about you,’ Yves Bourny, the man who had selected him for the mission, said at last. ‘They say you have some opinions that are very … personal.’
‘Very personal, that’s right. And what of it? Look, Yves, to you people I’m a mercenary. You understand what’s what, and so do I. So what’s the problem? I do my job, and all I ask is to be left in peace. If my colleagues’ — he emphasised the word, each syllable ‘— want me to go play cards with them and laugh at their little jokes, I say: they can go fuck themselves.’
‘Fine, I’ve warned you. Just keep it in mind, at least.’
‘Very personal opinions!’ said Jordi again. ‘If the organisation means to use me to stamp bits of paperwork, hand out food, and draft reports, they’re wrong. Don’t you realise what kind of man I am? You hired me to lead caravans, and now you want to transform me into a bureaucrat. It’s always the same.’
‘Alright, alright. But keep in mind what I’m telling you — please.’
His relationship with certain members of the A.M.I. team was getting tenser and tenser. Eventually, Bonhoure and Bourny understood that they would have to choose between them and him.
The heads of the N.G.O. organised a meeting with several senior officials to consider Jordi’s case.
/> ‘How could you have entrusted so much responsibility to a lunatic like that?’
‘Well, look, the guy’s an adventurer,’ said another, with mockery.
‘With a shitty reputation. Is there anyone who hasn’t had an argument with the guy? And the thing with the paedophilia …’
‘Those are just rumours …’
‘Yeah, rumours, but …’
‘For several months you’ve had no cause for complaint about him.’
‘Listen, man, you have to acknowledge that he knew how to set up the encampment, and he has some contacts that are worth having.’
‘Those are some fucking contacts alright.’
‘He’s the key person in this thing, you just have to accept that.’
‘And in many ways an example to be followed. His private life is another matter, and …’
‘OK, OK, but he’s more than arrogant enough already. You seem to think that without him everything just disappears.’
‘And doesn’t it?
‘They say that in France he has connections with neo-Nazi groups.’
‘He’s become so conceited. Have you heard about him wanting to establish a kingdom of the Hindu Kush, or something or other like that?’
‘A kingdom?’
‘A kingdom.’
Some of them started to laugh. Others made worse gibes against Jordi. The room broke into disorder, and so the meeting came to an end.
Bonhoure and his team weighed it all up: do we have a choice? Can we really replace him with a tyro who doesn’t understand the situation, without any relationships in the area or familiarity with the language? Who else like him is there around here, anyway?
Do we have a choice?
Jordi continued to co-ordinate the Panjshir bases until the day when he himself decided that there were too many conditions being imposed upon him.
‘I don’t want anyone to restrict my freedom to act,’ he said.
He left without any fuss.
XLII
WHEN a giant speaks, he roars. When he holds out his hand, he crushes. When he treads, he flattens. It’s not a matter of bad faith, just of potency and scale. All the same, it’s true that the inertia that surrounds him does provoke a giant to end up acting monstrously. Normally his strangeness alienates him from others, and it doesn’t take much for rage or sadness to encourage him to isolate himself. Once withdrawn, he contemplates a world that keeps rolling along happily without him, and he nurses the pain that the contempt causes him.
In his den he cooks up a fury, a desire for revenge, incomprehension. Gestures become severe, the voice turns cavernous, good manners vanish — after all, there’s nobody to be bothered — and the giant is transformed gradually into a brute, an ogre, a surly, elusive creature who has all the characteristics that many would think are to be found in a monster.
XLIII
Who am I when I am no longer the person that I’ve previously presented to the world? Then the most immediate answer must be: a human being. Solely as a human being can you meet the dark, primitive people.
For me this experience was a type of revelation, not only regarding the world, but myself as well. And I can say that it was a great and unexpected joy, a liberation. There I could finally, once and for all, dismiss all conventions; I found a new freedom, which until then I had only dreamed of. It was like going out swimming and being able to stretch out in all directions; like rising up in flight, having left the force of gravity behind. I almost felt a little dizzy, and it was not without danger. Courage was required, as it always is in order to perceive the truth.
Karen Blixen, Complete Essays
Will my most beautiful work of art be my life?
François Augiéras
THE journalist Éric Chrétien was investigating the legendary Irkuyem bone of Kamchatka when he received an invitation to watch the Arte documentary featuring Jordi. The profile of the explorer was a perfect fit for the series Chrétien was developing, so he wrote a letter:
I’ve started a piece of work on bears, followed by a series of reports devoted to French people who have chosen a lifestyle that is anachronistic at the dawn of the third millennium …
‘Anachronistic,’ Jordi repeated aloud, simultaneously annoyed and proud, with the letter in his hand.
‘What does it mean?’ asked Shamsur, who was sitting on the steps of Sharakat House.
‘From another time. Ancient, more or less.’
‘Oh. And what are you going to tell him?’
‘We’ll see. Comb your hair, Shamsur.’
‘If it’s a yes, will you be getting Ainullah to come help you?’
‘I’ve told you before, Ainullah’s staying in Panjshir. He has his family there, his people. He’ll do very good things in the valley … but he can’t be in two places at once, so we can’t go on working together. And do comb your hair a bit, you always seem to leave it any old how.’
Shamsur flicked his fringe to one side, like his brother Khalil used to do.
Of course he was going to agree to receive the reporter, to put the spotlight back on his campaigns. Although no major media had taken an interest in him since the break with Valicourt, Chrétien’s appearance did demonstrate that his work still had the capacity to attract attention — and, best of all, without any mediators. It was gratifying to feel valued for his own sake, a statement that didn’t depend on the friend of a friend who was the president or director of whatever. It was proof once again that there was someone out there listening, someone who appreciated the enormity of his undertaking. Maybe with that reporter’s help …
He made a few calls and sent some messages so that influential people would know about this interest. The news reached the Natural History Museum.
‘Well, it seems the Spaniard might go far after all,’ people were saying in the corridors. Some went straight to Valicourt to ask for news about the man who used to be her protégé, but the scientist was not able to offer them much; the relationship was less intense than it had been. Instead, Valicourt offered a rather unexpected reply.
‘Jordi’s lucky. At the last minute, when it looks like he can’t go on, there’s always someone important who shows up to give him a hand. Because it’s quite clear that without the support of certain people, even some famous ones, Jordi would never have been able to realise his dream of being an explorer. I made it possible for him to meet Théodore Monod, Jean Chaline, to be invited to the Language Origins Society in Cambridge … If you ask me, the credit for a lot of what he’s done should go to his friend Erik L’Homme, a serious young man who expects no recognition from society, while Jordi, who’s very aware of his great intelligence, does need that recognition. If it hadn’t been for Erik and Yannik, he never would have managed to carry out the missions in ’87 and ’88. He’d just be an unknown. Though let’s be honest. Or, rather, let’s be objective: what has he really made of his life? Has be left us with some piece of work? Some discovery?’
Far away from Valicourt in France, Jordi was continuing with his plans. The letter from Chrétien had perked him up, though he no longer looked towards the west with his old predatory anxiety. Of course he retained the hope of being crowned in Europe as an exemplary researcher, but he was no longer analysing the Hindu Kush from the outside; now he wanted something more of the world that shaped his feelings, of his immediate surroundings. He was a part of the valleys, he breathed the same air, and was threatened by the same dangers as his dear pagans. They treated him as one of their own, confessed their fears and longings to him, and were ready to prosper by his side. And how could he respond not only to this affection but also, above all, to the conviction of having found his natural space?
With his neighbours’ consent, he made himself into a Kalash.
He slaughtered a billy goat at the altar of the god Mahandeo, and while the Kalash prayed, he poured a f
ew drops of blood onto his own head before using it to anoint other parts of his body. Then he received a document that accredited him as one more member of the community.
That night he sat down on the bed beside Fjord. He breathed in, deeply, and then out. Is this what plenitude is? He had acquired responsibilities towards other people, and that seemed good to him. He felt part of something, of someplace. He went back over his life until that night, the people he loved, as he stroked his dog. Yes — now. Jordi was without a doubt a man of the mountains.
While still a member of the A.M.I., Jordi had asked for authorisation and support from Chitral’s department of education to pay the salaries of another four Kalash Storytellers of Tradition. He was denied — nothing new there. But he would insist. And if they kept closing the door to him, he could even finance them himself. He had enough rupees now to try out an increase in the size of his projects — what else is money for? Not that it bothered him, it was just that he never had too much, there was always a house, a jeep, a project needing investment. He was struck by this tendency he had towards profligacy and the revolting discomfort that assailed him at moments like this, when he felt comfortably padded with a good pile of banknotes. All the same, money suited him so well.
The members of the G.E.S.C.H., always between thirty and forty of them, continued to pay their dues, and the collaboration with the A.M.I. had not just increased Jordi’s savings considerably, but also allowed him to be sounded out by the Parisian pharmaceutical laboratories Beaufour Ipsen International to become a gatherer of curative plants and flowers.
When he checked his current account in August 2000, he read: 67,811 francs. It was one of the highest figures he’d had to play with in Chitral. At last he could realise a dream. He quickly climbed the path to Bumburet, thinking that he wouldn’t schedule Chrétien till the spring, and he shouted out to Mr Rahman. The old man came out onto the wooden balcony carved with solar symbols.
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