Caravans

  To my surprise, as I brooded on these matters I looked up to see Zulfiqar, on his brown horse, staring at me and the house, and I think he was remembering our discussion of the morning before, and deciding anew that he and I were right; but a dog began barking, the villagers poured out, and the old antagonism between nomad and villager was resumed.

  At first I hadn’t realized why the villagers were so apprehensive about locking things up as our caravan approached, but after I had seen flashing Mira at work I understood their antagonism. Whenever we made camp after transiting a village I found that she had acquired some new piece of clothing, or a farm tool, or a kitchen utensil. Ellen once said, “The only thing that child hasn’t stolen is a bed. You watch! If somebody leaves a door open some day …”

  At one camp I caught Mira with a new saw and asked her, “Why do you steal from the villagers?”

  “When we march through,” she replied, “they look at me with hate and I look right back at them the same way.” Then she added, “But do you notice how the men follow me so hungrily with their eyes? They’d like to join the Kochis … for one night. I could spit at them!”

  Our clan had ten large black tents, but many of the Kochis preferred sleeping on blankets in the open. Zulfiqar, his wife Racha, Ellen and Mira occupied one of the smaller tents, notable because it had an awning held up by two additional poles forming a kind of porch where rugs were thrown and where the camp’s social life took place. In the late afternoons, when the animals were at ease, Zulfiqar would sit cross-legged between Racha and Ellen, discussing matters with his people. I often joined them and thus formed the foundation for the friendship which developed between the Kochi leader and me.

  He asked me many questions, but I learned more than I taught. The Kochis were Muslims who ignored the tyranny of the mullahs but who held Mecca in as deep regard as any Sunni. As we discussed Islam, with its strong reliance upon nature and a powerful God who motivated all natural things, I better understood how Ellen and Dr. Stiglitz had been able to embrace this religion. One afternoon as we sat under the awning, Ellen said, “I could never explain my apostasy to my parents, and that’s the real reason why I can’t write to them. You see, I was raised to believe that God personally hovered like an unseen helicopter just above the steeple of the Presbyterian Church on Adams street in Dorset, Pennsylvania”—I had remarked earlier how she loved to reel off that rubric, as if names alone symbolized the focus of her rebellion—“and although He was free to keep a weather eye on the Lutheran church down the street, His real responsibility was our congregation. We were the true religion. All else was delusion. I think that if my parents had only once, while I was growing up, intimated that God might also be personally worried about the Jews, I would still be in Dorset. For that would have made sense.”

  At the end of this rather protracted speech Zulfiqar asked, “Do all American women talk so much?” I said yes and he shrugged his shoulders the way scareyed Maftoon did when he couldn’t comprehend the behavior of a camel.

  The figure of speech Ellen had used disturbed me. Had she spoken with spurious concern for the Jews because Stiglitz had warned her that I was one? In English I asked, “Did Stiglitz tell you I was a Jew?”

  “You are?” she shouted in real delight. “Zulfiqar! Miller is a Jew!”

  The big leader, his bandoleer and rifle beside him on the rug, leaned forward to inspect me. “You Jewish?” I nodded and he burst into laughter.

  Ellen said in Pashto, “You should hear what this big fool believes about Jews!”

  Again Zulfiqar laughed, attracting other nomads, who gathered to see what was happening. He stood beside me and compared his large Semitic nose to my small Nordic one. “I’m the real Jew!” he shouted, and other Kochis stepped up to compare their faces with mine. A long discussion followed, at the end of which Zulfiqar asked, “Millair, are Jews really as avaricious as we say?”

  I thought a moment, smiled at Ellen and replied, “Let me put it this way. Zulfiqar, if you parked your jeep near a bunch of Jews … they’d steal the tires while you weren’t looking.”

  It took some moments for the boldness of my reply to sink in, and some of the lesser Kochis caught on before Zulfiqar. They were loath to react until he had set the pattern, but they obviously relished my gall. Then he exploded in rollicking laughter and imitated a steering wheel. “Millair,” he laughed, “you scared us when you started for the jeep. We had most of it packed on camels.” Then he stopped laughing and looked suspiciously at Ellen. “How did you know about the jeep?”

  “In the bazaar at Musa Darul … they tried to sell it back to me.” My discovery of their duplicity pleased the Kochis, and from that moment Miller the Jew became blood brother to the Aryan nomads.

  But to one obligatory aspect of Kochi life I never did become adjusted. As we marched week after week through the treeless valleys a detail of four women worked at the rear of the caravan, moving back and forth across the landscape, and it was their duty to gather the fresh droppings of the camels, the sheep and the donkeys and with their bare hands to mold the manure into briquettes which were carefully hoarded in the panniers carried by the donkeys; for in a land where there were few trees other fuel had to be found, and dried dung was excellent. It burned slowly, like punk, had a pleasing odor which imparted flavor to food cooked over it, and was light in transportation.

  The Kochi children delighted in coming upon dried dung which the sharp-eyed women of some former caravan had overlooked, and it was a kind of game for them to see who would spot the next camel dropping. One day Mira and I were following Aunt Becky, who as usual was straying, when the camel dropped a large deposit which the women would probably miss; so I gritted my teeth, turned my nose away, and scooped up the precious stuff, running it to the panniers, where the women tending the caravan cheered. I was blushing when I returned to Mira, who, when she satisfied herself that no one was spying, threw her arms about me and kissed me for the first time. “You’re a real Kochi!” she teased, and thereafter when I went to her father’s awning-porch it was to see her and not to talk with him; and we took long walks among the deserted hills.

  Two days after our first kiss, we were hiking up a narrow valley where flowers were in bloom and I thought: The Kochis know only two seasons, the best of spring and the best of autumn. I looked at Mira and asked, “You never know winter, do you?”

  She surprised me by pointing to the mountains overhead and saying, “It’s always ready to pounce on us.” And there it hung, the snowline of the Koh-i-Baba, an ominous threat which reminded me of our impending arrival at Kabul, when I would have to leave the caravan.

  I think Mira must have sensed my sadness, for she kissed me ardently, but the moment was spoiled by the sharp voice of Ellen, who said, “You’d better join the others, Mira.”

  When the little nomad left the valley, Ellen said with some asperity, “You be careful what you do with that girl. One day in India a camel attacked her and in rage she nearly killed it. She takes nothing lightly, and remember … she is the chieftain’s daughter.” Then she added, “She’s also much smarter than most of the girls I knew in college.”

  “Why don’t you teach her to read?”

  “You be careful what you teach her,” she warned.

  It was after this intrusion that I first began to notice that Ellen was also becoming involved in matters which could lead to dangerous conclusions, and that when she warned me about Mira she was perhaps thinking not of me but of herself. For example, on the trail she most often walked with Dr. Stiglitz, ahead of the camels; and under the canopy, when we gathered in the afternoons, she took her seat beside him. One of the reasons why Ellen sought out Stiglitz was that at Bryn Mawr she had studied German and French and could thus converse with him in four different languages, and they maintained long discussions on philosophical matters.

  I wondered if Zulfiqar took umbrage at this, for I had read in many books that men of the desert were subject to ungovernable passions whe
re their women were concerned, and certainly in normal Afghan life the chaderi and the high wall topped by broken glass proved that the books were right; and I began to fear that my affection for Mira might get me involved in these nomad rages; but the more I watched Zulfiqar the more confused I became, for he certainly did not act like the vengeful, romanticized sheik of fiction. On the contrary, when Ellen and Stiglitz were hiking together, Zulfiqar often rode by on his brown horse, kicking its ribs expertly, and he would occasionally stop to talk but more often he continued past, according them his professional smile, and I got the clear impression that instead of being jealous of Stiglitz, he was somewhat relieved to have in the caravan a man who had spare time for arguing with his second woman.

  With me the problem was somewhat different, for Mira was his daughter. I was sure that once or twice he had seen us kissing, and he must have noticed how we always sat together at the tent or at meals, yet he treated Mira and me much as he did the others: infrequent conversation, inevitable smile.

  On the night before we reached Kabul, the Ko chis prepared a farewell feast for me. Maftoon impressed some men who formed a noisy orchestra for nomad dancing and songs from many trails in Asia. I tried to keep away from Mira, for leaving her was proving to be extremely difficult, and several times I caught myself staring at Stiglitz and Ellen, thinking: They’re the lucky ones. Together all the way to Balkh.

  That night as I crept into my sleeping bag I asked Stiglitz, “Have you told Ellen what you told me … at the pillar?”

  “I’ve told her I can’t leave Afghanistan.”

  “Have you told her why?”

  “Sooner or later everyone knows everything,” he replied. “The timetable of discovery is not significant.”

  “That’s not true. When I discovered your history … in the caravanserai … I might have killed you.”

  “It would have been of no consequence,” he said fatalistically.

  “How do you feel about me now … as a Jew?” I asked.

  He considered this for some minutes, while the camels moved about behind us, and at first I thought he had fallen asleep. Then he replied in evasive fashion, “I’ve given up my home, my family …”

  “You called her your filthy wife,” I reminded him.

  “I was speaking of my children,” he corrected. “They were different. I surrendered everything … profession, opera, a city I loved … so in a sense, Herr Miller, I’m a dead man, and dead men have no further responsibility for passing judgments.”

  I made no comment to this and he continued, “To the Jews I did terrible things. You’re a Jew. Believe it or not, Herr Miller, the two facts are completely unrelated. Toward you as a Jew I have no feeling whatsoever. Toward you as a man … I’d like to be your friend, Herr Miller.”

  “Would you stop calling me Herr Miller?” I asked.

  “I’m very thoughtless,” he said, reaching out from his sleeping bag to grasp my arm. “Please forgive me,” he begged, and a cesspool of bitterness began to drain away.

  After a long silence he asked, “Do you remember how our discussion at the pillar started? No, I thought not. You were berating me for not having amputated Pritchard’s leg at Chahar. I tried to tell you that there are factors in life which go beyond medical comprehension, and I equated Pritchard’s determination to die with Sem Levin’s determination to live. The point is this, I’m sick with shame and grief over what I did to Sem Levin, because I acted against his will, but I haven’t the slightest regret over the case of John Pritchard, because I acted in furtherance of his will. One way or other he had commanded himself to die.”

  “I’m beginning to see what you’re talking about,” I admitted.

  “With me it’s the same way,” he added. “I’m dead. If the Russians hang me it’s no matter. They’re hanging a dead man. But if I’m allowed to live, I have willed myself to be reborn. When you saw me in Kandahar I was a walking corpse, concerned only with my bottle of beer. Now I shall be a human being.”

  I asked, “Has Ellen accomplished this?”

  “Yes,” he confessed. “But don’t forget, Miller, when you leave us in Kabul you’ll be a living man too.” He allowed this to sink in, then asked, “Have you ever made love to a woman?”

  “Certainly,” I lied, counting some frenzied moments in war as qualifiers.

  “Well, leaving this nomad girl is going to be a different experience from what you imagine. I am wondering what you will do after Mira vanishes. What will you do, Miller?”

  “I’ll go back to the embassy,” I said brashly. “Pick up where I left off.”

  “With the smell of camels haunting you? Don’t be stupid.” He turned over and went to sleep.

  From the caravanserai to Kabul had been a distance of some three hundred and fifty miles, which required twenty-five days of marching, but since we occasionally held camp for two or three days at sites with adequate forage, it was not until the middle of May that we came over a pass and saw below us the sprawling capital whose center was filled by the low mountain. I stood with Mira and explained, “My house is over there … to the north of that mountain. Tomorrow I’ll be sleeping there.”

  The nomad girl rejected my prediction and took my face in her hands. She kissed me warmly and whispered, “Oh, no, Miller! Tomorrow night you won’t be sleeping there.”

  Few Kochi caravans ever entered Kabul with the advance excitement caused by ours, and as soon as we pitched our black tents in the traditional nomad area some miles west and south of the British embassy, we were visited by three important emissaries. First Moheb Khan, trim and polished in a new Chevrolet, drove out to investigate my report that Ellen Jaspar was traveling with the Kochis, and he consulted lengthily with Zulfiqar and Ellen while Mira and I lingered outside the tent trying to eavesdrop. I remember her asking me, “Who is this Moheb Khan?” I explained that he was an important official who could do her father much harm if he was made angry and she agreed: “He does look very important.”

  I avoided seeing Moheb, because I did not want to talk with him at that moment, dressed as I was in Afghan clothes; but after he had gone, a lesser official reported to see Dr. Stiglitz, and they sat in a corner of our tent conversing in German, so I did not understand what they were saying, but the upshot was that Stiglitz was not to be arrested or sent back to Kandahar.

  Now came my turn, for Richardson of Intelligence drove out after lunch at the British embassy, lit his pipe with infuriating care, stroked his mustache and said in his deep voice, “Miller, I’m afraid there’s hell to pay over that jeep.” He watched the effect on me and added, “Going to cost you … say … six hundred dollars. Miller, they stole everything but the name in front. Nazrullah had to make two trips across that desert.”

  I threw myself on his mercy: “It was stupid, and I know it. But I did feel that Verbruggen would understand.”

  “The ambassador is raising hell,” Richardson confided, and I could feel the boom being lowered.

  “What’s the bad word?” I asked.

  “Well, you saved your neck by that report from Musa Darul. We notified Washington and at least the senator from Pennsylvania’s mollified. But the girl’s parents! Why doesn’t she write to them?”

  “She has written … several times. I sat over her while she did the last one. But there’s so much to explain she tears the letters up. I’ve drafted this letter, which we can send them, and this complete report.”

  “Good, and I don’t think you need worry too much about the ambassador. Washington’s rather pleased that you rescued Miss Jaspar.”

  “Rescued her? She’s never been happier in her life.”

  “You mean she’s staying with the Kochis?” Richardson gasped.

  I thought: If I try to explain everything … Zulfiqar, Stiglitz, Islam … he’ll get all balled up. So I said, “I didn’t rescue her. She rescued me.”

  “Now what the hell do you mean by that?” he asked huffily, drawing on his pipe.

  “I’ll explain
in the office tomorrow.”

  “Now wait a minute,” he protested. Then he changed his mind and asked quietly, “Could we take a walk?”

  “Why not? I’ve just walked three hundred and fifty miles.”

  “Don’t you ride the camels?” he asked, and I looked at him with scorn.

  When we were far from the tents he said, “Maybe you won’t be in the office tomorrow.”

  “They sending me home?” I asked with a sort of sick feeling.

  “No. Washington’s come up with a peculiar idea.” He paused to let the drama sink in, then sucked his pipe and studied me. “You ever heard of Qabir?”

  “No.” Then I reflected. Where had I heard that name? I corrected myself: “I’ve heard the name but I forget where.”

  “It’s an important meeting place of the nomads,” he said. “Somewhere in the Hindu Kush.”

  “Where?”

  “Doesn’t show on the map.”

  “Did you ask the British? They know these areas.”

  “They know it only as a name,” he said. “Qabir. Qabir. Does it mean anything at all to you?”

  Then I remembered. “One night the chief was ticking off the route of the caravan. Musa Darul, Balkh. And he said he’d be able to use Dr. Stiglitz at Qabir.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Richardson walked away from me and kicked pebbles for some time. Then he asked bluntly, “Miller, could you manage some way to stay with the Kochis till they get to Qabir?”