‘What about the gold?’
‘To hell with the gold. Let him keep it.’
The outline of a vehicle was now clearly visible and I could hear the note of its engine. ‘Shit!’ I said. ‘It’s too late. We’ll be spotted if we try and run for it.’
We hurried back along the line of animals. Amica dropped into step with the wives and daughters and began talking to them, but I could hear the strain in her voice. Daru and I walked a few paces in front of them.
When I raised my head again the vehicle was almost upon us, its red bonnet shimmering in the heat haze. It skidded to a halt and a group of black-clad soldiers jumped out, surrounding the merchant and his son. The merchant exchanged a few words with the Taliban leader, then passed him a bundle of Afghanis. As the man licked his thumb and counted them, I saw his face. I pulled my turban lower on my forehead and wrapped the trailing end around the lower part of my face.
Salan slipped the money into his pocket. Then he began walking along the line of animals, pulling at their packs. He pulled out one of the rifles from a bundle, raised it to his shoulder and pretended to fire at the merchant. His men laughed. ‘Why are you still bringing Kalashnikovs? The Soviets left us plenty. We need Armalites,’ he said. ‘The Americans are dogs and infidels, but they make good weapons.’
He slapped the saddlebags on the next mule and his smile faded. He ripped the strap from it, pulled out the bolt of cloth and threw it in the dirt, then brandished a bottle over his head. His voice rose to a scream.
His men grabbed the merchant and his son, and dragged them back to where Salan was standing. He smashed the bottle over the merchant’s head. Blood and whisky streamed down his face as he sank to his knees. His son received the same treatment.
The Taliban piled the rest of the bottles in a mound in front of them.
Salan emptied his magazine into the bottles, smashing every one. Glass fragments flew like shrapnel in all directions. Then he shouted an order to his men. They stripped the terrified traders to the waist, then pinioned their arms as two other soldiers strode up to them. They wore lengths of electric cable wrapped around their waists like belts, which they untied, twisted around their wrists a couple of turns and began to beat the merchant and his son. The cables rose and fell, whistling through the air, and the men writhed and screamed as the lashes bit into their flesh.
I looked away, but the obscene sounds of the beating continued. Even after both men had lapsed into unconsciousness the Taliban continued to rain blows down on their bodies. When Salan at last called a halt, the traders lay inert in a puddle of spilt whisky, blood and broken glass. Salan took something from his pocket and stooped over them. As he straightened up and put his gunmetal lighter back in his pocket, I saw blue flame envelop the two motionless bodies.
Salan watched for a moment, then strolled down the line of mules towards us, his men at his shoulders, their cables still dripping with blood. I felt sweat prickle my brow. Despite my tanned face and dyed hair and beard, I was sure he would recognise me. He stopped in front of me. ‘You are merchants?’ I kept my head bowed, but gestured towards Daru. ‘We are not merchants but travellers,’ he said. ‘My uncle cannot talk; he is a mute. I will speak for him.’
‘He hears well enough though,’ Salan said. He pulled the cloth away from my mouth. ‘Open your mouth.’
As I hesitated, Salan swung his fist and pain exploded in my head.
‘Open your mouth.’
I did so, and felt an agonising pain in my tongue as he clamped a pair of rusty pliers on it and pulled. Frozen with fear, I made inarticulate gargling sounds. He pulled out a curved knife and laid it across my exposed tongue. ‘As he can’t speak, he won’t need this.’ His men bayed with laughter. The edge of the blade stung my tongue and I tasted blood.
‘Please do not hurt him,’ Daru said. ‘He is the brother of my father, Agha Shah Azuin, a great warrior and ally of the Taliban.’ I felt the pressure from the blade stop and a moment later Salan released the pliers. I tried to stand motionless, still keeping my eyes averted from him as I struggled to suppress the fear that was shaking me.
‘I know your father’s name,’ he said. ‘He is a brave man and a great fighter for the cause. Why are you not at his side?’
‘My father is dead,’ Daru said. ‘Killed with all my other family by the great flood that swept our valley two nights ago.’
‘And were there strangers in your village before the flood?’ I held my breath, but Daru shook his head. ‘I saw none. Why do you ask?’
‘There are traitors and enemies in our midst. We will search everywhere, under every rock until we find them. You have seen no strangers on your journey here?’
‘They are all strangers to me here, but apart from those men’ – he gestured to the merchants still lying motionless in the dust – ‘all those we have met were Afghan and good Muslims, as far as I could tell.’
The answer seemed to satisfy Salan, for his stance relaxed a little. ‘Where are you travelling?’
Daru shrugged again. ‘To Mazar, Konarlan, even to Kabul. Anywhere I can find work. My father is dead and our lands are now worthless. The soil has been stripped away by the flood. But I am the head of the family now and I must support my aunt and uncle. They are all I have left – save for my other uncle who, Allah be praised, left on a haj the morning before the flood.’
Salan’s expression changed. ‘I know of no haj from Kabul. From where is he flying?’
‘From Dir in Pakistan, in four days’ time.’
Salan smiled and turned to one of his men. ‘He will be truly blessed.’
Salan reached out and stroked the boy’s cheek. ‘Go to Qandahar,’ he said. ‘We are building a new capital of the Muslim Republic there and the Taliban always has need of brave fighters.’
Daru touched a hand to his heart. ‘Thank you, perhaps I will go there.’
The Taliban walked on to the rear of the mule train, checking all the saddlebags. The women huddled together around the younger son, keeping their eyes averted and heads bent. The soldiers turned and moved back towards their vehicle, past the smoking bodies of their victims.
The truck stopped alongside us and Salan reached out to ruffle Daru’s hair and again pat his cheek. ‘We shall meet in Qandahar,’ he said.
I turned my head away, still fearing recognition, and found myself eye to eye with a soldier in the back. I hurriedly dropped my gaze and as I did so I saw an olive drab shape protruding from a piece of sacking on the floor of the Toyota.
The Taliban drove off up the valley in a cloud of dust.
‘I saw the two soldiers,’ Daru said.
‘I know. I saw the Stinger.’
I paused. ‘Wait one minute.’ Even though I knew it was hopeless, I ran along the mule train and felt for a pulse in the necks of the two traders. I stood up and shook my head. There was a wail of grief from the women as they ran forward to claim the bodies of their men.
I handed Daru the other half of the gold coin. ‘Give it to them,’ I said.
‘But we may need it.’
I shook my head. ‘I have plenty more. Give it to them.’
He handed it to the merchant’s younger son, who stood bewildered at the edge of the group of women, clutching the coin in his palm.
The fate of the men was nothing to do with us. They had died not because we were with them, but because they were smuggling whisky. Still it felt a betrayal to walk away from them. I hesitated, then signalled to Daru.
‘Let’s go.’
Chapter Seventeen
We moved away from the road, across the fields towards the wall of the valley. ‘What will happen to them?’ I said.
Amica shrugged. ‘They will bury their dead and then move on. The lapis dealers will express their sorrow and then try to rob them. The young son will grow up very quickly, Insh’Allah.’ Her voice was matter-of-fact. Daru nodded his agreement.
I was caught between admiration and revulsion for a people who could bea
r the most appalling suffering and accept every cruelty of fate. ‘Where do you think the soldiers are heading?’
‘I don’t know,’ Amica said. ‘They could be making for another cave in the mountains, but more likely they’re making for the border and Peshawar.’
‘It’s the easiest route. The passes north of there are five thousand metres high and winter is coming on. And Peshawar is where the Taliban was formed; they have many friends there.’
‘What about us?’ Amica asked.
I thought about this for a minute.
‘North-east?’ I said.
She hesitated for a second, then nodded. ‘North-east.’
We followed a small trail through the foothills, keeping clear of the main track along the middle of the valley. Towards sunset we climbed higher into the hills, looking for a safe place for the night, but we could find no building, not even ruins, and had to settle for a night in the open, huddled in a hollow in the ground, sheltering from the biting wind.
We waited until full dark before risking a fire. As I boiled water, after we had eaten, Daru reached back into his pocket and produced sugar and green tea in twists of paper. He looked very pleased with himself, and I knew exactly how he’d procured the supplies. ‘Daru,’ I said, ‘I can’t deny it’s wonderful to have these things, but you’re taking a terrible risk in stealing them. Every person we meet offers us hospitality anyway. They give us the food from their table without even being asked. Why steal from them?’
He stared back at me, his face sullen. ‘You are not my father. You do not tell me what I can and cannot do.’
‘If I speak to you as a father might, it’s because I’ve come to respect and like you. And I don’t want to see you hurt. I’ve been in the sports stadium in Kabul when they have cut off men’s hands for stealing. I don’t want it to happen to you.’
‘If they are stupid enough to be caught, they deserve to lose their hands. They will never catch me.’
‘I hope not. But please – no more stealing unless I say so. All right?’
He shrugged. ‘Okay. Okay. No more stealing.’
Amica changed the bandage on my leg before we settled down for the night. To my surprise the primitive medicine had worked and the wound was already cleaner and much less painful. I kicked earth over the ashes of the fire and kept watch for an hour as the others slept, in case it had been spotted from the valley below. Then I too lay down and slept next to Amica, huddling into her to share the warmth of our bodies.
We moved on at first light. After a few miles, the trail we had been following led into another, slightly broader track. We had gone only a hundred yards along it when we came to a checkpoint manned by a man and a boy. They could have been a grandfather and his grandson.
‘A hundred Afghanis to pass,’ the old man said.
‘We are refugees.’ Daru said, ‘made homeless by the earthquake and the great flood that swept our valley.’
The man’s face remained impassive. ‘A hundred Afghanis to pass.’
‘I am Daru, son of Agha Shah Azuin.’
‘And I am Omar, son of Abdul,’ the old man said. ‘A hundred Afghanis to pass.’
Amica whispered to me. ‘Give him fifty.’
I turned my back on the old man, peeled a few grubby, damp-stained notes from the bundle I still carried and handed the old man the money.
Daru was staring at the man with fierce hatred. ‘My father would have killed you for this.’
‘He would have had to,’ the man said in an even voice. ‘No one passes here without payment.’
I put my arm around Daru’s shoulders and led him past them. ‘I should have killed him,’ he said, his jaw clenched.
‘You should,’ I said, ‘but then we would have had to fight his relatives too. Are the Taliban not enemies enough for now?’
We moved on, past fields of opium poppies, their seed heads already milked of sap, dried brown and hard in the sun. A row of golden poplars by the river shimmered with light as the sun struck their leaves and the last summer flowers flared from the fields around us in slashes of crimson, turquoise, purple and blue. Birds and clouds of butterflies darted among them, drinking the nectar and feeding on the seed heads, their own vibrant colours accentuated by the barren brown of the hills around them.
The valley began to narrow and the air was sharper and cleaner as we climbed into the hills, leaving the baking heat and dust of the plain behind us. Bands of parched grass and dusty scrub alternated with cool forests of cedar and larch.
I saw another rough barrier ahead. The twisted barrel of a Soviet artillery piece had been dragged from its grave in the undergrowth and laid across the track between two boulders. It was manned by four Taliban soldiers. I slowed almost to a stop.
‘Come on,’ Daru said. ‘There is nothing to fear. Give me some money. I will need maybe two hundred Afghani.’
He strode to the barrier, announcing his name and lineage as he walked. He spoke to them for a few minutes, gesturing towards Amica and me, and then produced his bundle of notes.
The Taliban leader inspected it, weighing it in his palm, but made no move to pocket it. He looked again at Amica and me. He was so young he had no more than a few stray wisps of beard, but he stroked them thoughtfully. ‘How do I know this man and woman are who you say they are? My commander was here not two hours ago. He warned me of enemies loose in the country – jaranji kafir.’
‘Do I look like a foreigner or an infidel?’ Daru said.
The Taliban soldier ignored him, pushing him aside. He stopped directly in front of Amica. ‘Take off your burka.’
Daru swung round, cursing him, but one of the other soldiers pressed a rifle to his stomach.
Amica’s voice cut through the silence. ‘You call yourself a Muslim? You would shame me in front of my husband and my nephew, expose what the Prophet – may his name be blessed – has said is for the eyes of my husband alone?’
He blushed crimson, averting his eyes, but his voice remained firm. ‘Sister, in a time of jihad, all is subordinate to the fight against the infidel. The Holy Koran tells us we may break the Sabbath or we may lie to our enemies. If I ask you this, it is because of the jihad we are fighting to rid our Muslim republic of traitors, infidels and enemies.’
‘You lie,’ Amica said. ‘It is because you wish to see what is forbidden. I am unclean, I am menstruating, would you defile me further?’
He blanched and I could see beads of nervous sweat form on his brow, but he would not back down. ‘I wish only for proof that you are what you say and that you and this man are truly man and wife. If you have papers, a marriage licence…’ His voice trailed away.
I fumbled in an inside pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. It was torn and tattered and the green ink had run after its soaking in the flood, but the pictogram and the lines of wavering script were still just visible. I held it out to him.
He opened it, fumbling with his thick farmer’s fingers and tearing it still further, then began to study it, his brow furrowed, the tip of his tongue protruding from his lips.
The seconds dragged by. At last he raised his eyes from the paper, folded it and handed it back to me. ‘That is in order,’ he said. ‘May you travel safely. I meant no offence to you or your wife.’ I inclined my head in acknowledgement and moved past, stooping under the barrier. Daru followed, but turned to spit on the ground. I took his arm and dragged him away. None of us spoke until we had turned a bend in the track and passed from their sight.
‘Never have I heard a woman speak so strongly,’ Daru said.
The release of tension made me laugh. ‘Get used to it. Where we’re going they’re all like that.’
I glanced at Amica. ‘That was very brave. He could have killed you for it.’
‘What did you show him?’ she said.
‘The forged pass. Lucky he was illiterate.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘It’ll be curfew in an hour. We need to get off the track and find somewhere to spend the night b
efore then, but I don’t want to stop too close to those guys. Let’s give it another half hour and then start looking.’
The gradient of the track was growing steeper. We zigzagged around escarpments and across narrow, rock-strewn valleys, then climbed again through forested hillsides rich with the scent of cedar wood. A shrike – the butcher bird – flew out of the bushes, chattering its anger at being disturbed. It left the bloody remains of its half-eaten prey impaled on a spiky thorn. I looked away.
We hurried on up the mountain, Amica’s burka billowing behind her. Where the sun struck the face of the mountain and we climbed in the shelter of the ridge, sweat poured from me and the glutinous mud caked my boots. Where the slope was in shadow, our breath fogged in the cold air and our feet slipped on the rocks as the water dripping from the cliffs above the track began to freeze.
As the sun sank towards the horizon, the snow-capped peaks looming ahead of us were bathed in rose-pink light. It deepened to russet and gold as the sun set. Aquamarine ice fields and glaciers high on the slopes caught and refracted the last rays of light.
‘If we keep going,’ Amica said, ‘we will find a chai khana – a teahouse.’
‘Even in a desolate place like this?’
‘Especially in a place like this.’
‘What about the curfew?’
‘Let’s risk it a little longer.’
We climbed still higher. A bitter wind knifed through my clothes, and flurries of snow stung my cheeks. We must have passed a handful of isolated houses in the dusk, though their location was revealed only by the barking and snarling of the dogs that guarded them, but I had heard nothing more than the moan of the wind and the crunching of ice beneath my boots for over half an hour. I was wearing every piece of clothing I had, but the cold bit like a dog and my breath froze into icicles on my beard. Only the thought of the unpleasant night that awaited us if we had to sleep in the open kept me going forward, my lungs labouring for breath in the thin mountain air.
As we crested another small rise, I saw a shape in a hollow ahead of us, black against the snow. I caught the whiff of woodsmoke on the wind and saw a faint glimmer of light.
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