A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

by Eric Newby

  We sat down on some curious flat boulders supported on stalks of ice, phenomena of glacial action, and considered what to do next.

  ‘If we can get on to the ridge, we might do it,’ Hugh said.

  ‘How do you propose to get on to the ridge?’

  ‘From the end. We can work our way along it.’

  I thought of the pinnacles; negotiating these might take us days. With no porters to back us it seemed impossible. I produced these objections.

  ‘All right, let’s try the backside of this buttress; at least it’s near.’

  We were about two thirds of the way up the glacier; the backside of the buttress led to the false peak we had admired from the other side in the three-sided box earlier on.

  Hugh led. The rock was a sort of demoralized granite which came to pieces in the hands. After two pitches I had been hit on the head twice by fragments the size of a ping-pong ball, but when pieces as large as cannon balls began to fall I called on him to stop. On this front the whole thing was falling to pieces. It was suicide.

  By now it was intensely hot. The sun was sucking the strength out of us like a gigantic sponge. Because of this, the time of day and our own lack of guts, we gave up. I am ashamed to write it but we did.

  Back in the box we tried the other side of the buttress, climbing the first steep ice slope. By now the mist had cleared and the way ahead shone clearly. Both of us were convinced that the way led nowhere that would advance us to the top.

  ‘Down?’

  ‘Damn! Yes.’

  We made our way to the head of the wall where the ibex trail was, coming to it too far to the left where it was really steep. Now with the same recklessness born of fatigue that I had shown the previous day, Hugh raced ahead and began to descend it unroped.

  All the way down to the camp with Hugh far ahead of me, I nursed this grievance, treasuring up all the disagreeable things I was going to say to him. I even hoped he would fall and break his ankle so that I could say ‘I told you so’.

  It was in this unhealthy frame of mind that I tottered into the camp but he, himself, was so exhausted and so obviously pleased to see me that I forgot these insane thoughts. Abdul Ghiyas had already made tea and rose to meet me with a steaming bowl the size of a small chamber pot. Unfortunately he had damaged my air-bed by dragging it over the rocks and sitting on it with no air in it.

  ‘I suggest we try another day’s reconnaissance,’ Hugh croaked, as we lay side by side on the rock, like a couple of herrings grilling steadily. ‘I think we should try the south-west ridge, in spite of what you said up on the glacier.’

  ‘It’s crazy.’

  We wrangled on for some time; such an altitude is not conducive to mildness. Finally Hugh said, ‘The only alternative is to try the other side of the mountain, the south side of that ridge which we saw from the rock wall yesterday.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Three days’ march – the state we’re in at the moment. If we leave at once we can be at Kaujan tonight, half-way up the Chamar Valley by tomorrow night and under the mountain the day after tomorrow.’

  When we sorted out the gear, I discovered that I had left a karabiner and a nylon sling at the foot of the glacier when we had unroped after the attempt of the day before. It says something for the state of mind induced by altitudes even as moderate as this that I immediately decided to go and fetch them.

  ‘Where the devil are you going?’ I was putting on my boots.

  ‘Going to fetch the karabiner and the sling.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s not worth it. We’ve got quite enough.’

  All would now have been well but he added in a rather schoolmasterish way, ‘The only thing is don’t make a practice of it.’

  ‘I knew you’d say that, that’s why I’m going to fetch them.’

  ‘You must be mad,’ said Hugh.

  I was mad. I went up past the lake that invited me to drink from it or bathe in it or drown in it, all by turns; over the moraine by a different route. I reached the glacier, here a mile wide, and by an unbelievable stroke of fortune struck the exact place where I had left the karabiner lying on a flat rock.

  I turned back feeling virtuous. But not for long; this time the lake was too much for me. It twinkled and beckoned in the sunshine, stirred by the gentle breeze. I thought how agreeable it would be to plunge my head under water, if only for a moment. The next instant I did so. Before I realized what I was doing I was drinking deeply from the warmer shallows. Having done so I felt exactly as though I had participated in some loathsome crime, like cannibalism, a crime against humanity that turns all men’s hands against one. Actually, it was only a crime against my own person but the feeling of defection from moral standards was the same.

  I reached the camp at a quarter to one, exactly two hours after I had quitted it. It was no longer a camp, just a slab of rock with my pack resting on it, strapped up, waiting for me; somehow it accentuated the loneliness of the place.

  Apart from the sound of rushing water and the occasional boom of falling rock there was not a sound. I stayed there for ten minutes, enjoying the experience of being alone in this great amphitheatre of mountains and at the same time not doing anything. Then I started off with my load. For the descent the loads had been divided among the three of us, so the shares were larger than they had been going up.

  By now my powers of concentration were seriously impaired. Instead of following the main torrent down to the meadow, I started to come off the mountain too far to the north and found myself in the middle of the moraine that descended to the meadow a thousand feet below.

  The descent was a nightmare. It was only a thousand feet but the rocks were balanced insecurely on top of one another, making it impossible to hurry. I could see the rock of our ‘base camp’ below, the horses, our men crouched over the fire, the green grass, but none of these things seemed to get any closer. I was nearly in tears from vexation.

  Finally I got down and stumbled over the blessed grass and the few yards to the shadow of the rock. For the moment shade was all I required. An hour later we left for Kaujan in the valley below. The mountain had won – at least for the moment.

  * * *

  1. A spot height in metres in the N. Hindu Kush shown in map 1/1000000, Geographical Section, General Staff N 1–42.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Coming Round the Mountain

  At the bottom of the third meadow, sitting cross-legged on the thick green grass beside the river, Abdul Rahim was waiting for us. He had already been down to the aylaq and returned, and we wondered what had brought him back to meet us half-way up again. He had been waiting for several hours, news of our failure on the mountain having reached him by the mysterious system of communication, part telegraphy, part telepathy, that operates all over Asia. With him he had brought a loaf of bread for each of us. It had been cooked in butter and was just sufficiently burnt to make it delicious, far better than the awful stodges produced by our drivers.

  ‘I baked it for you myself,’ he said, and waited politely for us to finish it before telling us what he had come about.

  ‘There has been an accident. This morning, while it was still dark, Muhammad Nain, my brother’s son, went out from the aylaq with his rifle to shoot marmot. He was high on the mountain waiting in kaminagh [ambush] on a needle of rock. At the fifth hour I heard a shot and looking up saw Mani [this was how Abdul Rahim contracted his name] fall from the top. Like an ibex I ran up the hill and found him lying like a dead man. I carried him on my back to the aylaq. He is badly hurt; I fear that he will die. Only you with your medicine can save him.’

  Abdul Rahim had seen Hugh dressing the deep cut on the foreleg of Shir Muhammad’s horse; also the saddle sores which that feckless and brutal man had allowed to develop by neglect. Watching Hugh as he had applied ointment and lint, gently as though to a sick child, he had commented dryly:

  ‘If Shir Muhammad was ill he would never receive such treatment as his horse does today.�
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  We set off at a tremendous pace, pains in feet and stomachs forgotten, to catch up with the drivers who were an hour’s march ahead and prevent them going on down the Parian Valley with the medicines. Soon we came to the rock wilderness where Abdul Rahim, who had up to now been travelling barefooted with his shoes slung round his neck, stopped to put them on. I could see no difference in the going, most of the way the track itself had been equally rough. Perhaps like Irish peasants who are reputed to carry their boots to the church door, he sensed that he was nearing civilization.

  At this point I was forced to a halt by an overwhelming necessity and the other two pressed on ahead without me. Thence I had to follow the trail of Abdul Rahim’s shoes in the dust. Soled with American motor tyres they left the imprint ‘Town ‘n Country’ in reverse – yrtnuoC n’ nwoT, yrtnuoC n’ nwoT. On and on it went until by repetition it acquired an almost mystic quality, Town ‘n Country, Town ‘n Country, Town ‘n Country, and I became bemused by it like a Buddhist saying om mani padme hum om mani padme hum, as he tonks along the road to the holy places. As a result I lost myself high above the main track at a dead-end fit for ibex only with a descent as difficult as the descent from the glacier had been a few hours before.

  I was tired and the track seemed to go down and down for ever; past the defile where we had had such difficulty with the horses on the way up; past nomad tents that had not been there three days previously; past a woman who crouched like a scared rabbit by the side of the track, face averted until I passed; past mountain men, Tajik and Pathan, who clasped my hand silently but in a friendly way; down until I reached the aylaq where I found Hugh with the horses all unloaded and the medicine spread over the path blocking the way.

  He was in a filthy temper. ‘Couldn’t find the—medicine chest; had to unload every—horse before I could find it. Never realized we had so many packets of soup in my life. Do you know where it was? In the last box, on the last—one.’

  ‘Should I have given him morphia?’ he asked anxiously. Hugh’s attitude to medicine was always a little vague, reflected in the curious collection of drugs he had assembled for this journey.

  ‘What have you done up to now?’

  ‘Cold compresses, washed the cuts I could get at.’

  ‘You haven’t told me what’s wrong with him yet.’

  ‘I’ve seen him,’ Hugh said. He was calmer now. ‘I went with Abdul Rahim. He was lying in one of the bothies under a pile of quilts. It was very dark, difficult to see anything inside and the place was crowded with people. He must be about sixteen; his moustache was just beginning to grow. I could only see his face. It was covered with flies. His nose and his lips were so swollen he looked like a Negro. The women had shaved his scalp; it was all bruised and covered with bloody patches. He was very restless, moving under the quilts and groaning.’

  ‘Lucky you didn’t give him morphia: he’s probably got concussion. It would have finished him off.’

  ‘I didn’t. His eyes were sealed up with congealed blood. We washed his head and face. Gradually he managed to open one eye and part of his lips. He groaned a lot. Then everyone began to shake him. “Mani, Mani, can you hear us?” they began to shout but he couldn’t answer. Then the most extraordinary thing happened. The time had come to dress his other wounds. Abdul Rahim pulled the quilt back and uncovered his arms and chest. It was the most devilish thing I have ever seen. The boy had the body of a goat. He was completely encased in a thick black goatskin. It fitted close up under his arms and sticking up above his chest were two grey nipples. I asked Abdul Rahim what was the meaning of it.

  ‘“When our people are sick,” he said, “we always put them in this goatskin. Its heat draws the poison out of the body and into the skin.”’

  It was a strange story. Was Mani’s goatskin a last vestige of the kingdom of the goat-god Pan who, having been driven from the meadows by the sword of Islam, still retained some influence in the sick room of the nomad peoples?

  Back in the poplar grove at Kaujan we were too tired to eat much. Abdul Ghiyas and his men cooked the lamb they had bought from the Pathans in the top meadow, boiling it for an hour and a half in a big iron pot with salt, pepper and the fat of the tail until it was ready to eat. The meat was rather tasteless and peppery, but the smell of fat was almost unendurable after such a day. We had been on the go since half past four, climbed to 17,000 feet and had now come down to 9,000. Thinking to please me, for I had kept my views about the tail of ovis aries to myself, Abdul Ghiyas dug into the wooden bowl from which we were eating communally and fished out the most esteemed gobbets of fat which he presented to me. Not daring to hurl them away, I chewed them with grunts of appreciation for some minutes and then, when no one was looking, put them inside my shirt to be disposed of later.

  During the night the Lord of the Waters played his joke with the dykes for the second time and once again we were flooded out. I woke to find myself in an attitude of prayer, completely lost, having forgotten which way round I was sleeping.

  The next morning we lay around after breakfast but apart from repairing our punctured air-beds and taking pills for bad stomachs we did very little. In the compo. boxes I found several bottles of water-sterilizing tablets and made a solemn vow that I would not drink a drop of water that had not first been treated with them. Sterilizing water is tedious work: from now on, I was a more than usually remarkable sight on the march as I swung my water bottle like an Indian club in an effort to dissolve the tablets, which were as hard as lead shot and far less appetizing. There was another little pill that was supposed to take away the bad taste but sometimes this failed to operate and I was left with an Imperial pint (the contents appropriately enough of my water bottle) of something that reeked of operating theatres.

  But it was not until late the following afternoon that we summoned enough energy to set off.

  To get to the south side of Mir Samir we had to go right round the base of it. At Kaujan we crossed the river by a wooden bridge. Ahead of us going through the village were a band of Pathan nomads on the way up to their tents, members of the Rustam Khel, a tribe who spend the winter in Laghman, what they call the garmsir (warm place) near Jalalabad, kinsmen of the tented nomads we had met in the Samir Valley.

  The eyes of the young men were coloured with madder. Some of them carried sickles made from old motor-car springs. With the tribe there was an old blind woman and when they crossed at the next bridge, a single pole over the river, she went over hanging on to the tail of a donkey.

  We were accompanied up the Chamar Valley by a Tajik to whom some strange mutation had given pink eyes and a blond moustache. With this Albino, the Thanador (literally the Keeper of Nothingness) of the Nawak Pass, the keeper of the Pass retained at a salary of 500 Afghanis a year to over-see it, we never got on good terms. He came at his own request, ‘to protect us from brigands’ as he put it. How he was to do this unarmed without recourse to bribery was not clear.

  His name was Abdullah, The Slave of God (it was unseemly, as he backfired like an early motor-car all the way up the valley). Shir Muhammad and Badar Khan ragged him unmercifully at the frequent halts he insisted on making at the nomad encampments to eat mast, for he was a greedy man.

  ‘Look at his face.’

  ‘Look at his hair.’

  ‘Look at his eyebrows.’ He had no eyebrows.

  ‘Like a bastard German.’

  ‘O, Abdullah, who was your father?’

  And so on.

  Abdul Ghiyas took little part in these pleasantries. He was in his element. Down by the river the Pathan women, beautiful savage-looking creatures, were washing clothes. Now as Hugh had predicted he vanished into the tents on one pretext or another, ostensibly to gather information, having first warned the laundresses to veil themselves.

  The Chamar was a wide glen, more colourful than the Darra Samir, with grass of many different shades of green and full of tall hollyhocks in flower. The nomad tents were everywhere and there were sheep hi
gh on the mountains. At seven we rested at a small hamlet of bothies, Dal Liazi. Behind us, above Parian, we could see the way to the Nawak Pass with Orsaqao, the big brown mountain which it crossed, with a serpent of snow wriggling across it.

  It was an interrupted journey. At the instigation of Abdullah we had stopped at seven, at eight we stopped again and this time everyone disappeared into the tents for half an hour, leaving Hugh and myself outside with the horses, fuming and sizzling in the heat. But when he wanted to stop at nine, even Abdul Ghiyas protested.

  ‘O thou German,’ said the drivers.

  ‘My mother was a Kafir.’

  ‘Ha!’

  Like small boys at prep school, they mocked him. From now on he sulked.

  As we climbed, the country became more and more wild, the tents of the Chanzai Pathans, in which the drivers had been assuaging themselves, less frequent. From the rocks on either side marmots whistled at us officiously like ginger-headed referees. Here the horses stopped continuously to eat wormwood, artemisia absinthium, a root for which they had a morbid craving.

  After five hours on the road we came to the mouth of a great cloud-filled glen stretching to the west.

  ‘East glacier,’ said Hugh, ‘we’re nearly there. Pity about the cloud.’

  As we stood there peering, it began to lift. Soon we could see most of the north face of the mountain as far as the rock wall, and the summit, a snow-covered cone with what seemed a possible route along the ridge to it. Our spirits rose. ‘If we can only get to the ridge we can make it,’ we said.

  With the cloud breaking up and lifting fast, the whole mountain seemed on fire; the cloud swirled like smoke about the lower slopes and drove over the ridge clinging to the pinnacles. From out of the glen came a chill wind and the rumble of falling rock. It was like a battlefield stripped of corpses by Valkyries. In spite of the heat of the valley we shivered.