‘Let’s toast,’ said Gyuri.
The children had just come out of their bedroom. Little Imre caught hold of one of Jordi’s legs and, as usual, he sat on his foot to pretend he was riding a horse. Jordi did what he always did, tickling him in the groin with his toes.
‘He does like that, doesn’t he? Just tell me he isn’t having a good time,’ said Jordi while the boy writhed with laughter on his foot.
Gyuri watched them play. An old idea passed through his head, but it was too fleeting and uncomfortable to pause on it. He couldn’t imagine Jordi trying anything with his son.
They put the children to bed, and over dinner they recalled things that had happened in Afghanistan, cursing the Greeks. It was all very pleasant. At the end of the evening, Jordi made up his mind: ‘I know it’s never a good time for these things, but could the two of you lend me a little money? It’s just that I’m going to Europe soon and, well, I’m completely skint …’
‘I might be able to get you a job,’ said Iris. ‘I know they need people in the U.N.H.C.R.’
Iris had an administrative post in the organisation.
‘Well … but I’m asking you for money because it’s urgent. If I can then get the job, that’d be better, of course.’
Gyuri lent him two thousand dollars, which Jordi promised to return.
LI
But I shall lead them eventually, he considered, because it is intended I shall justify myself in this way.
Patrick White, Voss
IN June 2001, groups of Muslims devastated several Kalash vineyards, trampling them and beating them with sticks, shouting that the wine was tempting their young people. The police intervened in defence of the farmers.
‘You’re the ones who have to control your children so they don’t come over here and drink. Anyway, don’t talk nonsense. You all know there are plenty of Muslims who are growing grapes to sell them at a higher price to the Kalash so they keep producing wine. Leave these people in peace. Get out of here.’
The authorities have supported the idea that wine is a part of Kalash culture and they cannot be forbidden from producing it […] Ever since the arrival of Musharraf in the spring we’ve had a few spots of bother, but the authorities solve them because they want to avoid any altercations in the valleys. They use them as showcases for their image as a place that’s tolerant and open towards minorities. It’s fake and hypocritical, but for the time being it’s what’s saving the Kalash. But for how long? (Letter to Andrés.)
That night, the apricot wine flowed again in Sharakat House. For Abdul, this dinner was unforgettable. He and Jordi each clung on to his glass at the little table with the leftovers of the food. Both men had leaned forward as though they were about to confess secrets. The weak mother-of-pearl light of a bare bulb accentuated the shadows of their faces.
‘These people could attack at any moment, and you lot are too few, Abdul, you’re defenceless.’
‘And what would you have us do? But, yes … I do worry about the future. If the situation gets more complicated, where can we go? And how? We have no money, and nowhere to go. How could we get tickets for so many people to travel?’
Jordi got to his feet, pushing the chair back noisily. He spoke in a rush, his cheeks taking on a scarlet colour, his fists clenched.
‘I’ll do it. We just have to talk to the UN — it’s very easy for them, there are a lot of nations in it, and between them they’re paying a load of money to refugees from various countries. They’re helping the Afghan refugees, for example. If they learn of your situation, they’ll get you out of here, I’m sure of it.’
‘Till when?’
‘For years, your whole lives. They’ll take you someplace else.’
Jordi aspired to bring an end to the problems of the Kalash for good. And Abdul was so grateful for it. The Greek, the N.G.O., and others could help with particular targeted things, but Jordi wanted to solve it for good, so they could live forever without feeling fear.
‘I’ll talk to Musharraf!’ cried Jordi. Pervez Musharraf was the president of Pakistan.
Abdul nodded slowly, partly won over by his friend’s momentum. Sometimes he thought Jordi’s ideas were possible. Other times, not.
‘I’ll take you to speak about the Kalash all over France, Europe, everywhere,’ Jordi told him. ‘You’ll be the ambassador.’
LII
STUDIES of animal life have determined that solidarity can be explained by the search for food. The way lions hunt in packs, for example, is well known. Pelicans, too, come together in groups to get food. But solidarity isn’t limited to individuals of a single species. In some places, hunger has made wolves and African wild dogs hunt together, and it’s said that Neanderthals used to go out with packs of snow leopards to kill yaks. Perhaps, someplace in the mountains, leopards and yetis still associate with one another. Nature shows that unusual bonds are more possible when it’s a matter of survival.
On the other hand, a pact can be considered a sign of weakness.
Society diminishes an individual’s resistances. It makes him less suited to fighting for his life. The herd is more vulnerable than the solitary animal.
Raymond Fiasson, L’homme contre l’animal (‘Man against the Animal’)
LIII
THAT year, the hotel-owner Siraj Ulmulk travelled up into the Kalash valleys for the first time in a long while to attend the festivities with which the pagans welcome the solstice. The narrow geography of the valley overwhelmed him a little. And the truth was, those people had never shown him much appreciation … or any at all. But from time to time it was necessary to make a gesture — they’re always useful, at least to be able to remain at peace, even if it’s with oneself rather than with others.
Ulmulk had some idea of Jordi’s activities in the region, despite not having seen him for years, and he was surprised when, on meeting him, the zoologist spoke only of the Kalash, never even mentioning the barmanu. He felt somewhat disappointed; he had always liked bizarre stories, and crackpots amused him. But it would seem that this Frenchman — or had he said he was Spanish? — this whatever-he-was must have turned reasonable with the years, and now he’d taken to supporting the Kalash. Though, giving it a bit more thought, perhaps it wasn’t as sensible as all that. The change he’s made hasn’t been for the better, thought Ulmulk. He ought to go back to the barmanu.
In August, Jordi received a visit from Esperanza and Andrés. It was an enjoyable parenthesis. They danced at night-time parties after Jordi had sacrificed lambs, they travelled up and down the valleys dissecting the family, they talked about their intentions, about the winter that Shamsur would be spending again in France. Esperanza noticed that her brother was thinner.
‘Ach, you have no idea how much I miss chocolate, fish, and sausage.’
Esperanza gave a laugh, and she was surprised that it had been occasioned by Jordi, because by now her brother didn’t joke around like he used to. He talked more slowly, and he would often hold his thoughts back for some time before speaking, if he spoke at all. But Jordi did experience a tingling of genuine happiness when he discovered that a member of the G.E.S.C.H. had sent him as a gift the satellite phone he had so longed to have.
Early in September 2001, Jordi set off with his siblings and Shamsur on a P.I.A. plane headed for Paris. When they landed, on the 10th, the airport televisions were broadcasting the news of the assassination of Massoud. Jordi stood transfixed at the feet of a monitor. Two apparent journalists had managed to get to the Lion of Panjshir, and had detonated explosives in the name of Allah. What effect would his death have on the region? Who would hold back those savages now?
He needed to make himself stay calm. He had several months to think. From the comfort of his French viewing-gallery, he would watch events unfold. There was no hurry. Stay calm.
The following day, as he was clearing the table afte
r lunch in Valence, the TV news began to repeat the same few sequences over and over, as though it were a scratched recording. Jordi, Dolores, and Shamsur in the dining room, Esperanza in front of a screen in her office, the whole world, everybody, seemed hypnotised. The sequences were quite similar. Some featured two planes that slammed against each of the Twin Towers in New York. Others showed the towers crumbling, leaving a geometry of dust where, moments earlier, concrete and glass had stood proudly.
The Magraners, each one of them, thought of the price the United States was paying for its meddling in Central Asia, though most of all they thought about Pakistan. About how things were going to change. Jordi also wondered: Why does it have to happen exactly now? Why is it that when the Kalash need me most, I’m so far away?
In the months that followed, he tried to focus on the lectures and debates that had been programmed for him by the G.E.S.C.H., but it proved a titanic effort to separate himself from the avalanche of feelings that assailed him. Everything he said, everything he did, would be meaningless if he didn’t return to the Hindu Kush to complete his work. You don’t just leave things halfway. I’m not one of those people who gives up on things. Besides, the valleys are still a haven of peace; there’s no danger there. After all, the United States’s problem isn’t with Pakistan. He deceived himself a great deal, and when he had exceeded his tolerance for his own lies, he clung once again to the certainty he had of his skill at overcoming problems; or to his Roman ideology, imagining himself as a martyr: ‘The individual hardly matters alongside his functioning in the group … faced with necessity, he should sacrifice everything that matters to him, including his person.’ Because, yes, even without losing his almost regal pride, now he really did understand without a doubt — he understood! — the scale of those magnificent lines that contained words like compassion, help, solidarity.
The risk of death appeared more powerfully now than it had before. And it was up to him to decide whether or not he wanted to run that risk. He became even tougher, he worked more wherever that was possible, he wrote constantly. When people spoke to him, it took him a while to reply. He stopped getting irritated when people behaved contrarily. Jordi’s retreat coincided with Shamsur’s expansion. Finding himself capable of functioning in a foreign country, so far from his own people, gave him a sense of security and a new strength. The boy noticed his own physical transformation, his belly hardening, his arms like real maces, his heart beating at an unvarying pace. And that was not a bad thing. Being hard. Feeling capable.
‘If I go back and I have to fight, I’ll kill the Americans. I’m a Muslim,’ said Shamsur one evening at the Valence house while Dolores poured a bit of milk into his glass of tea. ‘Thank you, mamá.’
This was a risky statement to make in the Magraners’ house. The clinking of Shamsur’s teaspoon as he stirred in the the sugar seemed amplified. No one responded to his comment. After all, he was a Moor — what else would you expect from him? Jordi opened his mouth to answer, but chose instead to take a sip of his coffee. Think about what you say. He would have to take care when he spoke to him. Shamsur was descended from an honourable warrior stock, and relations between them had deteriorated significantly of late. Jordi was aware that Shamsur had accompanied him to France again because he wanted a residency permit and to get away from certain family responsibilities that were suffocating him, although he had also spent too many years putting up with the temperament of the barmanu-hunter, who on top of everything no longer spoiled him like he used to. Yes, Jordi would have to treat him with care. But once again he was unable to contain himself.
‘What’s up with you? Don’t you know where you are?’
He just could not give Shamsur’s cause up for lost.
‘In France.’
‘Right. France. A civilised country. Here, you don’t go around killing people. You just concentrate on your studies and forget about the Americans.’
‘Ha. And how am I meant to forget about them?’
‘Study in order to go back to Shekhanandeh and lead the Nuristanis in the recovery of their lands and their rights. Forget all the rest of it. Forget it.’
‘Don’t start, Jordi. Always coming at me with that same bullshit speech: I want you to be a great man! A great Kafir of Nuristan! I’m not a great man, and I don’t want to be one. I want to be left in peace.’
Shamsur got up and left the house, slamming the door behind him. He headed for a nearby park. Where should he go? Should he go up to the Vercors, or just loiter around here in Fontbarlettes?
‘Oy, you — little piece of shit — where do you think you’re going?’
Two young Muslims jumped up off the bench where they were positioned, and walked over towards him. Danger. He could tell at a single glance.
‘What’s up with you, can’t you see losers like you ain’t welcome round here?’
They said something like that. The truth was he didn’t completely understand them, but it was clear that the lads were provoking him. Shamsur started yelling at them in Urdu.
‘Hey, you ain’t American or English?’
This he did understand.
‘I’m from Pakistan!’
The pair unleashed a repertoire of cocky gestures, greetings, grimaces.
‘Damn, sorry, brother. I’ve just never seen a Paki who was so blonde and with that colouring … Seriously, you’re a Paki?’
They chatted, friendly. The French lads took out an already-rolled joint, and the three of them smoked it. When the same pair of Muslims ran into Shamsur on another day, they invited him to go with them. They led him to a basement where they stored guns, and said that if at any time he ever needed anything, he wasn’t to hesitate.
As soon as he arrived home, he asked Jordi to come to his room, where he described the meeting.
‘Damn them!’
Jordi wanted to thump the wall. He left the room, and brought Dolores up to speed.
‘You see how you’ve got to get out of the neighbourhood? I’ll figure out the money, mamá, but as soon as I get it together, you move somewhere better, OK?’
‘Oh, you can be such a pain, son. That’s enough now of your nagging. I’m fine here! When are you going to Paris?’
‘Thursday. But mamá …’
‘Bring me something pretty. That really is quite a city, isn’t it? But no, I won’t be going there either. This is where I’m from now. Don’t go fretting about me. You should worry about yourself.’
Jordi and Shamsur came to Paris several times. The boy was fascinated by the city. When he’d discovered it on his previous visit, he had spent three nights unable to sleep — very strange for him, but it was just that the energy radiating from this colossus kept him wide awake. Out on the street, he suggested going into every place, to get the scent of every type of food, although he then would try almost none of them because he didn’t eat just anything — ‘I have a refined palate’, he’d learned to say sarcastically — and because he needed to save. And there were so many people in different colours and different clothes … All the same, he didn’t ask many questions so as not to appear ignorant, or that was how it was interpreted by Jordi, who when in Paris was in the habit of polishing up his role as a model tour-guide, informing Shamsur about life in the neighbourhoods, the history of certain places, taking him to sites that left him as dumbfounded as possible.
‘You should have seen his face at the Moulin Rouge,’ said Jordi to Claire and Alexandre after one of his intensive tours. As he so often did when visiting Paris, Jordi was staying at his friend’s house.
‘Did you go inside?’ she asked, wiping her lips. They had just finished dinner.
‘No chance! I don’t want to give him a heart attack.’
Shamsur smiled, but he had the nerve to reply: ‘Speak for yourself! I would have rather gone on the attack …’
‘Oooohh!’ exclaimed his hosts.
Shamsur fell asleep in an armchair. He was exhausted, and the grown-ups had descended into one of those typical night-time conversations about nature and animals that served as his lullaby, a familiar murmuring punctuated by some feverish outburst from Jordi, who was really the one carrying the conversation. Claire felt Jordi’s tone and words seem to wake her like a hit of caffeine. The Spaniard’s erudite demonstrations still impressed her, especially his speeches about fish and amphibians, and his wisdom in developing social theories. When she was with him, Claire felt free enough to express ideas without engaging in the dodges of political correctness, fed up with the unrelenting restrictions that had, for example, led so many scientists practically to eliminate terms like ‘race’ from their vocabularies.
‘The thing is, anthropologists are traumatised at the consequences that might follow from speaking that word,’ said Claire on the Thursday night. ‘Now it’s as though all men were biologically the same, as though we all had to belong to the same species. As though the possibility of a specimen appearing that belonged to a different order was inappropriate. They won’t even allow for the possibility of the hypothesis.’
Jordi was equally unable to understand how conventions had reached the point where they were promoting self-censorship in the scientific community, and he got worked up talking about it. When he was with Claire, he got worked up often. Perhaps this was why she didn’t agree with the comments many people made about Jordi. Some claimed that he looked desperate, that he must be having an awful time in the Hindu Kush, that he must need money. But when she talked to him, Claire could never see this apparent despair. Watching him, listening to him, what she did sense in him was rage.
In the Land of Giants Page 27