Faced with Esperanza’s momentum, Andrés seemed to revive. Although he is still taking his rest, he has plans: ‘I’m going to lobby for the creation of a museum or something to remember him by. If his research is forgotten, it will be like killing him twice over.’
The siblings are well aware that there’s no such thing as an impeccable past. Recovering Jordi’s memory might lead to revelations for which they believe they are prepared.
LXVII
WITH so much that was different, with such novelty, my days in Chitral flew by. I thought danger would slow time down, but it wasn’t like that at all. It made only the nights drag on forever, and as morning broke it was as though they’d never existed at all. Light and darkness marked a sharp border between the worlds of terror and ease. Each morning, the day’s expectations made me focus on the actions to come, which would again require all my attention, without the excuses of tiredness or fear, without even feeling them, really. All my attention.
Abdul was constantly with me, translating where necessary. The fact that Noor Mohamed had accused him so flatly meant that he was included among the suspects, but after his welcome and our chats and the way he expressed himself and drank, his face twisted by pain, it was hard for me to accept him as one of them.
Apart from the brothers Shamsur and Khalil Rahman, only Abdul was a frequent visitor to Jordi’s office, and I decided to believe that Noor Mohamed had associated him automatically with the group of murderers, revealing what was merely an intuition as though it were a truth. On other occasions in Pakistan, I had encountered categorical statements that ended up being proved false.
Abdul remained as well disposed and friendly as ever, and there was no change in our arrangement. We visited people who had known Jordi, we saw the slingshot he gave to Prince Hilal’s son, and we drank tea in the cholera-racked valley with Wazir’s parents. The previous day, I’d asked Shamsur what he’d do to the guilty party if they caught him.
‘I’d slit his throat, like he did to my friend,’ he replied.
I asked the same question of Samsam, the father of the dead boy.
‘I suppose he should be punished according to the law,’ he replied.
‘Do you think the fact he was Kalash harmed him?’
‘I don’t think being Kalash made anything any worse.’
In the jeep on the way back to Bumburet, Abdul said: ‘What’s true is that he was Kalash. The first one Jordi ever lived with.’
On the way up the valley path, we stopped outside the enormous museum to the Kalash — a sumptuous construction of stone and marble, distinctly out of place in that austere, wretched gorge — which had been funded by the Greek government and which was run by Athanasious Lerounis. Lerounis wasn’t able to see us; they said he was in a meeting. I wrote a note to the effect that I was keen to talk to him, that we could meet that same afternoon at Abdul’s hotel. Though the valley is long, people are easy to track down — you just need to give a shout. And it wasn’t fifteen minutes from the museum to the hotel.
In the garden of the hotel, Abdul told his daughter Asmat Goul to serve us some tea. The young woman had pigtails, and her face was grimy with soot, in contrast with her radiant smile. She also brought three books, some fresh goat’s milk in a saucepan, and a pot of honey, though I was the only person who tried it. During the day, Abdul took nothing but tea, or at least nothing in my presence. He almost observed Ramadan despite his pagan creed.
‘Look, these are the books I lend my guests,’ said Abdul.
Two were romantic novels, and the other an essay published by the New York Times entitled The Politics of Rich and Poor. Abdul wanted to make other people understand the reasons for his condition. How do you shake off a feeling of poverty when you know you are poor and you have no possibility, none at all, of changing that situation? We talked about that, about rich and poor, about prisons by another name.
‘In winter here it gets to twenty below zero,’ said Abdul. ‘Then I go away for two months to Peshawar or Lahore to work as a night-duty manager in a hotel — or, if I have no choice, as a bellboy. I show people to their rooms. And do you know why I do it? So I don’t die of grief in the valley.’
Abdul began to get carried away.
‘Apart from the others of their own religion, the Muslims treat everybody else like animals — they look at us as though we are second-class. We aren’t slaves and we don’t clean toilets, fine, we do have our own toilet. But we aren’t equals. I’ve told you before of the only thing I’ve kept of Jordi’s: the chair where he died. He died in my house, but they took everything. Shamsur and Khalil made off with everything that the police didn’t keep.’
‘So, the chair is here …’
‘I’ve got it round the back.’ He pointed to the annexe to the cabin where I’d spent my first nights.
‘May I see it?’
Abdul told another of his children to fetch it.
‘Why would Shamsur make up that business about the blow to the head?’ I asked while we waited.
Abdul shrugged a shoulder.
‘There are people who make stuff up and repeat it so often they end up really believing it,’ he replied. ‘Then they try to make you believe it, too, just so you won’t tell them they’re crazy. And some do manage to make you believe. To tell the truth, there are more and more people who manage it.’
The boy put the chair down on the grass. It cast a long shadow. It was a piece of wooden craftsmanship. Mice had begun to eat the corners of the cowhide-covered seat, and it was missing one of its armrests, the right. The pieces of wood on that side were clearly stained with old trails of blood that darkened the battered legs even more.
‘Hello!’
Shamsur called out from the edge of the garden wrapped in his shawl. The sun was already mild.
Almost simultaneously, a jeep came to a stop at the entrance to the hotel.
‘Malik Sha,’ said Abdul.
His son appeared with another man. They were bringing the gravestone.
By 5:56pm, Lerounis the Greek hadn’t shown up, so we set off for the cemetery. Pastiret, the Kalash who was carrying the gravestone on his shoulder, recalled having done sixteen days’ work looking after Jordi’s horses. Beside him, Malik Sha was pushing the wheelbarrow with the sack of cement. Shamsur was walking alongside. And then, as though it were part of some plan, the loudspeakers of Bumburet projected the voice of the muezzin calling to prayer, his chant taking hold of the whole valley.
On the bridge, a group of five children joined us, and they accompanied us, playing around, to the grave. Soon afterwards, Abdul arrived, and sent a lad off for water. Pastiret cleared the rectangle of gravel and leaves while Shamsur helped to thicken the mixture. When the cement was ready, Pastiret began to spread it out over the surface.
‘Don’t fight,’ said Shamsur to one boy who had hit another.
They had to add a bit more of the mixture.
‘Is he Jordi’s brother?’ asked one of the boys, pointing at me.
I wanted to cry.
For Esperanza.
For Andrés.
For Dolores.
For each of the Magraners.
For every one of us for whom dreaming is not enough.
We lay the marble down on the cement and decorated around its edge with carefully chosen stones. There were no speeches. We stood for two minutes, maybe three, in silence at the grave. At 6:59pm, we left the necropolis.
The inscriptions today face towards the mountain. There are no other words carved in the wood where the ancestors of the Kalash reside.
Jordi Federico Magraner.
The sole name in the anonymous forest.
One name.
The privilege that the Hindu Kush reserves for the highest, for the greatest, for those who raise themselves just a little above those remarkable heights. A name. A crown f
it only for giants.
LXVIII
Recognise the flame of power, or glory, and a corresponding flame springs up in yourself. Give homage and allegiance to a hero, and you become yourself heroic.
D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse
… in the stories we tell of ourselves we were not the crazed and destitute radicals you see on your television channels but rather saints and poets and — yes — conquering kings.
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
To be a poet is not to make a poem, but to find a new way to live.
Paul la Cour, poet
Epilogue
AFTER we had laid the gravestone, I had dinner with Abdul and Shamsur in the annexe of the cabin. It was a banquet worthy of the occasion: fried sweets, shoulder of lamb with potatoes and rice, tomato and onion salad, apples for dessert, as well as the indispensable apricot wine, which disappeared while I smoked beside a smiling Shamsur who was entertaining and able to recall stories of a better time.
We enjoyed the illusion of abundance in the hope that we might fix that date in our memories in a way that was not too painful.
At one point, Abdul laughed, remembering how many nights he’d rolled drunkenly down the path on his way back from Sharakat House. Perhaps for a few seconds, he managed to forget.
On the way out of the cabin, all three of us a little drunk, Shamsur said: ‘Noor Mohamed came to see you, didn’t he?’
I didn’t answer. A torch moved at the foot of the stairs that led to my room, and I recognised Khalil. How long had he been waiting outside?
‘Hello. I’ve just come to say goodbye. I know you wanted to see me again, but I’m leaving early tomorrow for Chitral, and we won’t get a chance to talk, I’m sorry.’
I don’t know what else we said; my nerves were tormenting me. Abdul listened beside me. Who was who? What were they prepared to do? The atmosphere had been thickening those past days, the sense of danger increasing with each question I formulated, but on foreign terrain it’s hard to be aware of the boundaries you are crossing, the daggers circling. Perhaps it was just my fantasy. Just as Jordi believed himself untouchable, I thought myself an instant victim, felt that everyone around was lying in wait for me. But they were not. I told myself that I shouldn’t lose control. Easy now. Take it easy. And anyway, the threat was too intangible, a gathering-up of stories that I might have been exaggerating, me with my tendency towards paranoia … But what was it, then, that tormenting oppressiveness, that stifling? Where did it come from?
I went up to my room in a state of near panic. As there were three beds, I put one mattress up against the door to serve as a buttress, and used another to block the broken window. I tried to sleep with the penknife in my hand, knowing that if something happened, I would have no choice. I only succumbed for two hours, at dawn.
Around nine in the morning, I popped into the museum in search of Lerounis the Greek. Again, it was impossible to find him. When I was just about to leave Bumburet, I ran across Khalil on the path. For some reason, he hadn’t woken early. He tried to avoid me, continuing on his way down the valley. A few minutes later, he came back. There were no vehicles left going to Chitral, and he asked if we could take him.
Fortune continued to provide such implausible situations.
We sat together in the back of the jeep, shoulder to shoulder. When we started up, I set about an interrogation I wouldn’t have dared had I not known that I wasn’t going to spend that night in Bumburet. I asked him how they had killed Jordi, and I did it in the most aggressive way, almost taking for granted that Khalil had been present at the execution. I asked why he and Shamsur hadn’t protected him, having promised that they would? Why, after his death, had he and his brother taken the jeep and so much else from Sharakat House?
‘The jeep?’ he said. ‘It wasn’t worth much.’
We were travelling down that terrible road, and for the first time I wasn’t afraid of going over the edge, I just wanted to ask, to provoke, to unburden myself. I resorted to dirty tricks, hoping to get Khalil to give himself away.
‘Did they ever find the stone they hit him with?’
‘He wasn’t killed with a stone,’ he replied. ‘It was something flat that smashed his skull. He was killed by a professional, maybe a commando. The knife to the throat was perfect — not just anybody can do that.’
Again, that blow to the head, smashing his skull? Where did he and his brother get that from? Had they seen it? Had they been told? Had they themselves constructed a story that, for their own good, they now had to believe? And if so, what were they protecting? Their mental health? Their freedom? Their lives?
‘What’s clear is that whoever killed him had wanted to kill him,’ I said. ‘The next day he was going off on a trip, but they weren’t going to let him leave.’
Khalil fell silent. He was looking ahead at the chasms.
‘And what I really don’t understand,’ I went on, ‘is the ferocity of what they did to the boy. That’s not something a professional would do. There’s something else going on there. Maybe it was a kind of revenge.’
Khalil showed his profile, slender and completely immobile.
‘Who could have wanted revenge?’ I insisted. ‘Why?’
‘Asif is the key,’ he replied. ‘If they catch him, everything will fall into place, like water and milk, as the saying goes.’
‘Why don’t you call Ainullah?’ I asked. ‘He’s in Afghanistan — he has contacts in the army. If Asif’s a soldier now, like you say, Ainullah could help you find him.’
‘I’ve had no word from Ainullah in five years. Why would I call him now?’
‘Before now, Ainullah wasn’t in a position to help. Now he is. Besides, if you find Asif, the police will leave you alone, won’t they? Isn’t it worth trying, just for that?’
Despite my impertinence, Khalil did not give an annoyed grimace, as though he understood the need to defend himself. As though his position as a suspect was something he could tolerate.
‘The case has been reopened twice,’ he said. ‘Do you know what the police said to me? That I should go to Kabul to find Asif. With what money? And am I the person who’s supposed to arrest him? What help will I get to do that?’
‘You’d have Ainullah’s now.’
‘I’m not going to call Ainullah. Or Jordi’s family. Say hello to them from me, tell them I’m very sad, but I’m not going to call them. I risked my life going to Jalalabad with Jordi in search of the barmanu. The barmanu! I did it out of friendship. And then the family had no concern for me at all. It’s been five years since I’ve heard from them. I’m tired of repeating the same things again and again all these years. I want to forget.’
‘You can, but Jordi’s family doesn’t want to. All they can think about is arresting the killer, and they’re going to be taking action soon,’ I lied. ‘Up till now they’ve been prevented, there was too much sadness, but they’ve started hiring lawyers, advisers. Besides, Erik L’Homme — remember? — Erik is going to publish a book about Chitral, and the whole world is going to get interested in what happened here. Soon foreign policemen are going to show up to investigate, and it’s not going to stop till the killers are found.’
I didn’t know what else to invent, but if Khalil and Shamsur really were involved, I didn’t want their hell to end.
‘And what about the neighbours?’ I had a sudden thought. ‘Asif lived right next-door. Nobody saw or heard anything?’
‘What would the neighbours have seen? It was night-time — everyone was in his own home.’
‘But nobody saw a thing?’
‘Asif, Asif. Asif is the key to it all.’
Imagination
HOW far does the imagination reach?
How far should we trust it?
How much reality is there in intuitions?
The day I got back to B
arcelona, I’d received an e-mail from Siraj Ulmulk, the hotelier. The subject-line read: ‘Sad.’
Dear Gabi,
I imagine you’ve already heard the terrible news about the kidnapping of the Greek from the museum in Bumburet and the murder of his security guard. It happened the day you left Chitral.
Hours later, word got out that a group of between ten and twenty men had taken Lerounis in the small hours into the mountains of Afghanistan. They were asking for two million dollars in ransom and the release of three Taliban leaders.
In the days that followed, hundreds of Kalash came down from the mountains to protest for the first time in their history outside the seat of the government in Chitral. They demanded the freeing of the Greek, their last window to the outside world. Without him, they felt completely vulnerable. They asked the government to send the army into the valleys. What would happen if the wild men invaded?
Not long before this book was sent to press, Ainullah wrote to me from Kabul. He’s scared. A few months ago, he offered to try to discover Asif’s whereabouts in Afghanistan, and he learned that now it’s Asif who’s looking for him. He fears for his life. He wants to know what I can do, and has asked me for help. I’m trying to get the Spanish ministry of defence to intercede; after all, Ainullah is seeking to resolve a crime committed against a Spaniard for whom Spain has done nothing. The ministry has replied that they are keeping it in mind. Ainullah wrote:
Please, stay in touch with me. I’m in danger because they don’t want me to help you, or Jordi’s family. If anything happens to me, it was Asif.
‘We are born men, but we become human.’
Kalash saying
A Nuance
THERE is a first version of this book in which everything is was described exactly as it happened. In the one you have just read, I preferred to change a few names so as not to injure any sensibilities and, as far as possible, to protect those involved. Occasionally I have also recreated the unfolding of episodes that had only been conveyed to me in the barest facts. I put in some details, atmosphere, tension, colour … without ever distorting the ultimate meaning of the message I received. These minimal recreations are what make this book a non-fiction novel.
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